Irish Tunes and Ice Cream at the Elks Club

 

Today I worked on campus, and one of my coworkers and I were puzzling over a poster advertising a class about palaces put on by the history department. The poster featured a European castle, an Asian palace, and... the Taj Mahal. But that's a tomb! So my coworker emailed the instructor to ask how a tomb was a palace, was it one for the soul of the dead lady? Then I bought Hardingfele Indian food at the cafe in her building, since she had bought it for me last week. We also split a blood orange she had in her pocket, and we each had a kind of stale Russian gingerbread cookie also provided by her. I told her about my instruments, and she said, "Wow, and I thought I had a lot!" I have divided them into categories:

1. Non-negotiable: family heirlooms that are keeping me sane - the violin and the mandolin.

2. Very useful: the ukulele and the electric mandolin.

3. Gifts from Travalon: the balalaika, the tamburitza, the Chinese moon guitar, and the sitar.

4. I spent too much money and nobody else would want them: the rebec and the German folk instrument.

5. Who cares: the garbage violin, the bowed psaltry, Bubba Sue the mountain dulcimer, and the woodrow. I should probably donate these. Hardingfele suggested donating the garbage violin to a school. 

I also have a little ukulele from an antiques shop that I haven't tuned up, but it takes up so little space. And of course there is the tiny ukulele, but I'd never get rid of that. It's so adorable.

My boss had asked a colleague I know well to help me during this time of grieving/way too many expense reports because there was just a big conference, so she came down and we divided to conquer. I figure I'll be the one to back her up if something happens with her sick mom, so this works out well.

Meanwhile, Travalon went back to the wood duck pond today.

I like this next picture because you can see so much blue on the one wood duck's wing:

Travalon also went back to the island in Cherokee Marsh, and the pelicans were there again.

At the end of the day, the instructor from the Palaces course emailed my coworker and me back to say we were the first to have noticed she put a tomb on a palace poster, and she wasn't going to address tombs per se, but if we wanted to take the class, we could do that for our final project. Hmm... I am curious about the class, since it's asynchronous and online, so it wouldn't get in the way (other than taking up time) of my other activities, but I'm too young to be an auditor and too old to be a regular student.

Right after work I went to the Elks Club for the monthly Advanced Irish Session that I am not allowed to play in, unsure if anyone else would be there, but four other Shamrock Club people were already there, including the couple we see all over the place. (This reminds me - I still need to post the videos Travalon made of the farewell party for the red panda. This couple were there too.) Soon Famie joined us, and then Travalon came from work. We all had dinner, and most of us had a little ice cream, as we listened to the fiddle tunes. I knew a lot of them but wasn't sure about their names. The fiddler who used to play bass in our band played in the session, and so did the red-headed flute player. After everyone but Famie, Travalon, and I had left, she came over to chat for a little bit. These are all such pleasant people, and I'm embarrassed that I talked too much, a problem I used to suffer from greatly, but I thought I had mostly gotten it under control. Hopefully people cut me slack for my mourning period.

Yesterday Travalon made a video of a train. I love the soundtrack! (He was listening to "40's Junction" on the internet radio.) The ending is a little weird, but if I edit it and put it on YouTube, they might slap a copyright injunction on those tunes, so enjoy the raw footage.

I have other train videos he made that, like the red panda videos, need to be edited and put on YouTube. I just haven't had any time lately.

Famous Hat

Trivia with the Grads and Irish Soda Bread

 

Today I walked with Seabird and heard all about her trip to Lisbon and Seville, then we had a party for the grad students with lunch and cake and a trivia game. There were two cakes, mixed berries and mango, so my coworker and I took a sliver of each. We sat with mostly the same people as last year, since our team had won trivia. This year the faculty member on our team said our team name should be Winners 2025, so of course we came in last, but we were laughing through the whole game. During the "two truths and a lie" segment, the question said a particular grad student had never broken a bone, so my coworker said, "We can take care of that," and we all laughed. Then two questions later, it was that my coworker had never broken a bone, so everyone said to the grad student, "There's your cue!" 

In the afternoon I met with Famie to speak Irish, but none of the grad students could make it, so she and I chatted in English. She had made a ton of soda bread, so she gave me some to take home. Then I walked with Hardingfele. Not my most productive day, but I promise that I did do work in between all that.

Meanwhile, Travalon went back to the wood duck ponds again, and here is what he saw: wood ducks, mallards, a green heron, and a great blue heron.

I love this photo because Mr. and Mrs. Wood Duck look like they're made of plastic:

Also, the pelicans are back to hanging out around the island in Cherokee Marsh:

No idea where they've been all this time, but it's good to have them back.

Famous Hat

Locked Out of the Church Parking Lot

 

Today I worked from home and had meetings. On my breaks I went for walks and took some photos. Here are flowers that smell good in my neighborhood: jonquils and crabapples.

In this photo, you can see two crabapples, a magnolia, and a redbud.

To my surprise, as I was out sniffing the flowers and enjoying the sunlight, I came up with a eulogy for Pa Hat, in case anyone asks me to provide one. It's not even a sure thing that we'll have a funeral for him.

It was a very calm day until I headed to Adoration. Fortunately I left a bit early in an attempt to see a train from a new vantage point, but no train came. (They used to come around five, but today Travalon saw our neighborhood train around seven.) A relative called, so I was on the phone as I turned into the driveway for our church parking lot and entered the code to open the gate... but the gate wouldn't open. Oh no, I would have to back out into rush hour traffic! And then someone else pulled in behind me, so I was trapped. It was a young priest, and he seemed a little skeptical of why I wanted to get into the parking lot, but I told him I have an adoration hour, and all the adoration spots were filled, plus the non-adoration ones right in front of the church (where you don't have to go into the gate) were taken up by some sort of crane thing. He wouldn't give me the new code, but he did enter it so I was able to get in. He said, "I can't give you the new code. You need to talk to Richard BONN-o-mo." By which I assume he meant Richard Bo-NO-mo, so I called him, and he said oops, he'd forgotten to give me the new code. He texted it to me, so now I shouldn't have this problem again... until the next time they change it. I did fantasize about quitting my adoration hour, and then I wouldn't have to get a sub for going to choro every fourth Tuesday, plus on the second Tuesday I could check out Just Folking Around, but my old church always seems so happy to see me. I can just feel the love pouring out of her. It is good to see her once a week, even if I no longer have keys and feel like a non-entity around there.

Famous Hat

In Memoriam: Pa Hat - The Rainbow over the Railyard

 

This morning I got to work just as Ma Hat called to tell me that Pa Hat had died at 4:30 this morning. I tried to get some work done but gave up and went home, and then Travalon, Kathbert (who is also now Kayhu), and I had lunch at Silk Road. Kayhu's falafal was so visually appealing:

All the food was delicious; I had a chicken kebab, and Travalon had lamb chops. Then the three of us took a walk in the Arboretum, where the magnolias, crabapples, and lilacs are all blooming, so fragrance is coming at you from every direction. Kayhu said my description of it as a "scent cathedral" is pretty apt. Here are some photos. The first one is from my phone, and the others are from Travalon's good camera.

We walked back to the boardwalk where Travalon had proposed to me, but we only saw one trillium and a couple of large yellow flowers that Kayhu thought might be invasive. We couldn't find the Teal Pond, where maybe there were teals, but as you can see, Travalon got some shots of turkeys. Also, earlier today he went back to the ponds on Wheeler Road and got some shots of wood ducks and a great blue heron.

After we brought Kayhu home, Travalon and I drove down to Janesville to see the roundhouse. We stopped at a park so we could take a bio-break, and while it hadn't been raining when I went into the restroom, it was raining very hard when I emerged, so I got soaked running to the car. Then it seemed to stop, so we got out and explored the roundhouse, which had lots of tracks running by it (but we never saw a train moving on any of them). Here are some photos.

It began to rain again, but the sun was still shining, so (you can see where this is going) we looked to the east and saw a vibrant rainbow! At one point there was a second rainbow over it, and then that went away but the main rainbow had a mirror image underneath it. The first three are from my phone, and the rest are from Travalon's good camera.

Here's a video:

Then we hurried back to Madison so I could go to Moldy Jam tonight. I brought the mandolin and found a good way to learn new tunes was to play the chords the first time through, then after I'd heard the others playing the melody, I could play it. The fiddler next to me did put the music up for a few tunes, but that was only marginally helpful because they didn't necessarily play exactly what was written. I told them Pa Hat had died this morning, and they said, "Tell us about him." I said he was proud of his Scottish heritage, so we played "Flowers of Edinburgh." Boy, I thought I knew that tune, but not their version! I also had an insight that hadn't occurred to me before: you can easily tell a tune is in the Dorian mode if the opening chord is a minor key but the key signature is the major key before that, so an A Dorian mode starts with a A minor chord but the key signature is G major, or E Dorian mode starts with an E minor chord, but the key signature looks like D major. Wow! So simple! I think it might be the same for Mixolydian but with major keys, like the opening chord is A major but the key signature is G major. I'll have to look into this more. My drumming buddy was intrigued by my talk of modes and said, "We need to discuss this over a beer sometime." Good idea - I still owe her a beer.

Famous Hat