The Prairie Flowers

 

Today after Mass there was another meeting of the Care for Creation team. We started with a prayer taken from Laudato Si, and there was one line that was so beautiful, something about how we are connected to everything as we journey toward the eternal light. It reminded me of how in the In-Between Time I thought all humans were bad and destructive, so I didn't want to have any children. This shows that actually many of them aren't, and maybe my children would have been good people who cared for creation, if I taught them right. I was sort of useful, adding an idea for the Lenten calendar, and when they bemoaned that their old website had disappeared when their parish merged with another one, I said, "Could you find it on the Way-Back Machine?" Most of them had no idea what I meant, but one guy said, "Archive.org - that's a great idea!" So now we won't have to start from scratch with our new website. One guy had come up with a really great logo of Our Lady Queen of Apostles (the name of the new, merged parish) holding the Earth in her hands. Meanwhile, Travalon was antiquing, and he found some books of Beetle Bailey and magazines about the Beatles, and also this adorable Lewis and Clark bear:

We went straight to the East Side Club to see a band called the Prairie Flowers, three ladies who sang with gorgeous harmonies. Travalon made a video of them doing "California Dreamin'" that I will have to post to YouTube, if that is ethical, and then link it here. It's too large to just post to the blog. Here are a couple of photos of them.

At first only a few people were there, mostly friends of the band I suspect, but soon more people started to arrive. The band was playing for three hours, but at their second break we left because we needed to run to the greenhouse before it closed so I could get plant supplies (no plants), and then we took a walk on Governor's Island. It was a cold day, but sunny, and not too much wind.

At band practice tonight the guitarist seemed thrown off by me on "Pennsylvania Polka," where she plays straight chords and I play ornaments, but this time she started playing in the rhythm of my ornaments. Then I made the mistake of suggesting we try some slip jigs we used to play, because they are modal and awesome, but nobody seemed to remember them, and the bassist got annoyed to waste the time on them during our second-to-last practice before our gig in two weeks. (Sunday the 22nd at the Spring Green General Store, I believe 1-3.) Meanwhile, Travalon checked out a rocking Super Bowl Party at the Willows Bar. Look how many people were there!

I hate both the Eagles and the Chiefs, the latter mostly just because they have won so many times lately so I was slightly more in favor of what Travalon has been calling "The Filthy Birds." (As opposed to the Dirty Birds, aka the Atlanta Falcons.) I said I only cared about the halftime show by Kendrick Lamar, but Hardingfele looked at social media during a lull in our practice and said everyone was saying how boring the halftime show was. She showed me the score, and it was like 24-0 the Eagles, so we speculated that The Evil Orange Thing (who was supposedly at the game) had bet on the Eagles and let Mahomes the Chiefs quarterback know, so he was purposely losing in order not to piss off Dear Leader. The Chiefs did come back to life in the second half, but it was too late and they lost by a lot. Not sure how I feel about any of this. I also heard that Taylor Swift (who is dating one of the Chiefs' players) got booed by the crowd. I'd say I don't want to live here anymore, but in fact nothing in my immediate surroundings is as stupid and horrible as the stuff on the news. Let's hope Dear Leader never notices we even exist.

Here are a couple of photos Travalon took on Friday evening. This is an icon of John Coltrane at Cafe Coda. I may have posted a photo of this before.

This is the Weary Traveler across the street. They always light up their canopy different colors.

Sometimes it's lit up like a rainbow. I love that.

Famous Hat