God of Literature

 

Sorry for a couple of days of silence. Friday at work we had a China-America Friendship Festival, and my Chinese colleague was there, as well as the President of the Union, and we sat by a bunch of people who just lost their boss... because he's my new boss!! What are the odds?? They said he's really cool. Then I had a quiet evening talking to Tiffy while Travalon watched baseball playoff games.

Yesterday Travalon and I went to Hartland for coffee, because we have to go to four Ice Age Trail communities and patronize certain businesses, and then we can take ten miles off our Mammoth Hiking Challenge. We parked at a park in Merton, since that was the closest parking lot per the official Ice Age Trail map, then we took the Bug Line Trail to the Ice Age Trail, but it was much longer than we expected, so we walked about twenty feet on the actual Ice Age Trail and realized we had to turn around due to time constraints. We met Tiffy at the Milwaukee Park and Ride, then we had lunch at an empanada restaurant on Brady Street. I love how they brand the empanadas with a letter; in the photo below, you can see my mushroom, tinga, and barbacoa empanadas, as well as the jicama slaw. It was all delicious.

Alas, this will be the only photo on this post because it's late and I have a lot to say. Travalon took so many beautiful photos of fall foliage that it will probably take several posts to share them all. 

During lunch Tiffy said they should have a musical about Marcel Marceau, it could be called "Mime: the Musical," and I said the music would have to be by John Cage. (If you don't get that joke, he once wrote a piece called something like "Two minutes and twenty-four seconds of silence.") Then we took a walk by the lakeshore, since it was a beautiful day, and then Travalon dropped Tiffy and me off at an Episcopal church to hear an Early Music concert. It was a wonderful concert, but not all early music; the theme was music by women, about women, and some was Medieval (like Hildegard of Bingen), some was modern but set to Medieval or biblical texts, and my favorite was Renaissance polyphony by a Spanish nun. It was a group of four women singers and a woman playing the vielle or the rebec, depending on the song. So lovely! After dinner we went to a nearby Irish restaurant called County Clair and all got shepherd's pie and a half-pint of Kilkenny cream ale, and we split bread pudding. So good!

Today Travalon and I went to the later Mass closer to our house because we did not feel so well when we first got out of bed, and who should be there but a regular from brunch after Mass at our usual church. So that was a fun surprise! Then Travalon and I went to campus, and he took much better photos of the foliage that I have featured on here. It's so beautiful there right now. We went to a pizza place in Verona to get our fourth business for the Mammoth Challenge, and we watched the first half of the Packers game, but it was terrible. Then we hiked on a section of the Ice Age Trail with little kettle ponds alongside it, and when we got done, the Packers were doing even worse, so I'm glad we didn't bother watching. On the way home we drove through Maple Bluff - all the years I've lived in this neighborhood, and it has never occurred to me that a place called "Maple Bluff" is THE place to go leaf-peeping in this town! It was like driving through a magical forest of vermilion, crimson, and yellow. Then I was a little late to Irish class, but half the class came in after I did, so I don't feel so bad, plus the teacher thought I did a good job discussing fall foliage in the Irish language. The colors really are stunning, like they were two years ago. Last year was kind of a dud for fall foliage - too dry, I guess, or maybe too warm at night. It certainly hasn't been warm at night this year!

You may be wondering about the title of this blog post, or maybe you aren't, but it's still a good story. Tiffy was saying how to foreign companies, English names have more cachet, but sometimes their English skills are a little iffy, so they come up with names that sound weird to us native English speakers. She said one of their suppliers is called God of Literature - I mean, with a name like that, you'd think they had grand literary aspirations, or theological ones, but they just write brochures about medical products. Letdown!

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