And the Answer Is...

 

I know everyone was waiting with bated breath to find out whether I went to the International Festival or the Bach Around the Clock marathon today. Well, wonder no more - I am about to reveal the answer.

This morning Travalon was watching Crystal Palace with Jerry and Roy Jr., then he drove me to St. Andrew's Episcopal Church to attend... Bach Around the Clock. He thought about going to the men's Badger Basketball game, but the tickets were really expensive, and he figured it would be a boring game because they were playing Penn State, who are not good this year. Instead, he watched part of the game at the Laurel Tavern, and then he went to Leopold's.

I got to Bach Around the Clock just as the recorder ensemble was finishing up, which includes an old choir mate of mine. The next group included the lead singer from Yid Vicious and a guy I know from early music circles, and they did a really fun mashup of Bach's Invention in D Minor and a Macedonian folk song. My choir mate joined me, and the next group we saw was a community choir, so we talked about joining it. She's already in the St. Andrew's choir and the recorder group. I remember when I used to be in two choirs and three bands - where did I find the energy?? This choir practices on Monday nights, which is the same night as the Russian Folk Orchestra, which I keep saying I'm going to join but haven't yet. After that there was a bell choir playing Bach, and a cellist playing Bach, but the pianist that was next on the list apparently couldn't make it, because the MC led us in a rousing rendition of "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," verses 1 and 3, with the implicit understanding that we are facing the evil forces in the hymn in Dear Leader, his overlord in the Kremlin, and the oligarchs destroying our democracy. 

And then... my favorite part, a tribute to PDQ Bach. First some singers sang some of his pieces, which sound quite beautiful if you don't listen to the words, like that the hocket causes the singers to sing: "Hot!" "Dog!" "Hot!" "Dog!" Or if you disregard the fact that the bass just wandered off during one piece and started scatting like he was singing jazz, not a madrigal, which I assume is in the directions. After all, these are the "discoveries" of Peter Schickele, who was allegedly the Very Full Professor of Musical Pathology at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople. (A real town of 247 people - I looked it up.) Then the husband of the Professor Formerly Known as Lute Player played two Musical Contraptions, one of them based on the simple melody that as kids we sang to the words, "On the Planet Mars/Where the Ladies Smoke Cigars," and the last part was a concerto for viola four hands. I made a brief video.

The concerto had four movements, and in the last one, the two violists get in a fight, run offstage, and make a lot of noise. Eventually one came back triumphantly holding an instrument in several pieces (which was actually a violin), and then the other one shuffled back onto the stage with an ice pack held to his forehead. Then they both exited the stage again, and the pianist kept playing the same figure over and over, waiting for them to come back, until he got disgusted and left too. I was laughing so hard! My favorite character who commissioned a piece by PDQ Bach is Count Pointercount. That reminds me of the terrible jokes in Bullwinkle, which we were watching last night, like regarding Boris and Natasha, "the two heels with no souls." I laughed so hard at that, I didn't even catch the rest of what they said.

This reminds me that late last night I told Travalon that Niko really matches the cover of this month's Magnificat, and he said, "He should have been on the cover of Time. He could have been Person of the Year instead of Dear Leader," and I said, "Person? Nah. Maybe Keychain of the Year."

Anyway, back to the Bach marathon. My former choir mate went downstairs for snacks, but I stayed to watch an organist before joining her. Another former choir mate was a volunteer downstairs, so the three of us chatted before I had to go outside to meet Travalon. As I waited, the sandwich board announcing the marathon ("Free Bach Event Today! BachClock.com") fell over not once but twice. It may have even fallen over again after that, but I wasn't there to do anything about it, because Travalon arrived and told me the Badgers had actually lost to the subpar team. (As Boris Badinov said, "I didn't go to Penn State - I went to State Pen!") (Another line that made me lose it: "Are you incinerating that I'm stupid?") He had brought me a pandan latte from Leopold's, and I happily drank it as we drove to Tiedemann's Pond, where we took a vigorous walk around the circumference. No birds there yet.

We had to get back so that I could go to a meeting of the condo board members from the three area boards, to ask questions of the developer who is buying Mariner's. He says he would like to have a restaurant on the ground floor that honors the memory of Mariner's, so that makes me happy. He is thinking only two floors of apartments above that, and one of the other board's members was not happy that it would be apartments instead of condos, but it was implied that these would be pricy enough apartments to keep the riffraff out. Also, the marina is going to stay the same. The developer really wanted to talk to us after the fiasco with the developer who purchased the Nau-Ti-Gal and then pissed off the neighborhood so much with his grandiose plans that we got the town to turn down his plans, and he has yet to come back with acceptable ones, so the building is just sitting there empty, surrounded by fencing. 

After the meeting, Travalon and I went down to the dock, where we saw geese and some small ducks hanging out on the ice or swimming in the open water in the channel. We saw a muskrat, and he started to climb onto the ice, but then Travalon moved closer to take a photo, so he dove back into the water. It is definitely getting to be spring! 

Tonight we are going to see Gaelic Storm, so I'll try to blog about that tomorrow. It will probably be a late night, so that's why I'm blogging now. Luckily the Mass we always go to is at a late time, because tomorrow Fake Time starts. I vaguely remember someone telling me months ago that, "You might not like Dear Leader, but he banned Daylight Saving Time." I said, "Really? Then I do have to give him credit for doing something good." But apparently he did not ban it. My fear is that, instead, in November he will say that we are never going back to Real Time again. He is totally evil enough to do that.

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Bach Around the Clock in the Frank Lloyd Wrong Auditorium

 

Today my "Irish Word of the Day" was "sneachta," which means snow, and the sentence was, "Ta se ag cur sneachta," which literally means "is it putting snow," but you'd translate it, "It is snowing." And it was snowing outside! (The verb coming first doesn't make it a question like it would in English - it always comes first in Irish. They would have a whole different form of the verb for a question.) The "ag" is basically "-ing" in English, in case you were curious about its function. It was snowing during my morning walk and during my lunchtime walk, but by my afternoon walk it had stopped. 

This evening Jilly Moose and I went to a Bach Around the Clock concert at First Unitarian. The concert was in the Landmark Auditorium, which I thought was the big concert hall I'd been to many times, so Jilly Moose and I went in that end of the compound and were bewildered by the very un-Lenten spread of brownies in front of us. I knew they were having a birthday party for Bach, but I had been expecting champagne and a sheet cake. We sat down, and a guy got up and started talking about the documentary we were about to watch, and I realized we must have been in the wrong place. We snuck out, and a guy in the hallway said the concert was in the Frank Lloyd Wrong area of the compound, so we went to get our coats, and he said, "You're going the wrong way!" We had to tell him three times we were getting our coats, and then he followed us all the way to the Landmark Auditorium, as if he thought we wouldn't make it across the parking lot. Fortunately, a woman had been talking the whole time, so the music hadn't started yet. If you look at the windows, they look a little like a face.

The first part of the concert was inventions in many of the keys, but not all of them. The performer played them on a piano tuned in equal temperament, and I wondered what they would have sounded like on a harpsichord tuned the way Bach's was when he wrote them. I suppose that's why some of the keys were missing, like E flat minor and B major, because they probably sounded horrible in the temperament Bach used. In modern tuning, it just seems random to leave some keys out. 

The second part of the concert was a concerto where the pianist was joined by a string quartet, and that I really enjoyed. Even the slow movement, which was a Siciliana and so not as boring as the slow movements of Baroque concerti often are. Afterwards there was a party for Bach's birthday, but we just had sparkling water instead of Prosecco, since we had to drive home. Tomorrow there are more free concerts for Bach Around the Clock, and also the free International Festival at the Overture Center, so I'm not sure which to choose. Also, I have to go to a meeting at 3:45, so I can't spend all day at either festival like I have in the past. Watch for my next blog post to see which I choose to attend.

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Brainless Day

 

I recently found out that I can get a free subscription to the New York Times through my job, and so I have been enjoying Wordle every day. People told me I'd be good at it, and Prairie Man said the best word to start with is "canoe" because it has so many vowels, and that has served me well. Maybe too well, because yesterday Wordle asked if I wanted to put it into "difficult mode." No, I do not want to put it into "difficult mode" - I enjoy the illusion of thinking I'm a super-genius because I can usually solve it in three guesses. Life is hard - why should Wordle be unnecessarily hard too?

Last night as one of my Lenten practices, I actually got to bed something like on time, and it's just not working for me. I didn't wake up until my alarm yanked me out of a dream, and my brain never really woke up. For example, I was meeting with a person who is one of those incredibly good people, so decent that they almost don't seem real, like he would never do anything the least bit morally problematic, which has nothing to do with the story but I'm just painting a picture for you. We were paying a bill, and I had to multiply the per capita cost by the number of people, but then I forgot it was for four months and had to redo the form to multiply by four. I wrote out the check... and then put it back in my secure file cabinet and locked it. He said, "Um... don't I need the check?" Why yes, yes you do! I was just keeping it safe for you, see. My chair gave me a strong cup of coffee, and it turns out the two of them know each other, so I didn't even have to introduce them. I'm still a little unclear on how they know each other, but the university is like a big small town - everyone knows each other somehow. I am not sure who the Village Idiot is, so hopefully that doesn't mean it's me...

I walked with Hardingfele at lunch; we don't walk together that often because she usually turns me down. Today she said, "Maybe," and then when I asked her closer to lunch, she said, "Sure." It was a bit cold out, but no wind and very sunny, but she wanted to go into the Horticulture greenhouses. She thought it was wonderful in there, but I was dying in what my coworker calls my "sleeping bag coat" because it goes all the way down to my feet. I also have Spyder gloves that I paid a fortune for a quarter of a century ago, and they are just now getting holes in them so I should probably replace them. Those are some high-quality gloves! Hopefully they still make them - I'd like another pair exactly the same.

I'll try to get to bed on time again today, but after that strong coffee, it may be a waste of time. We shall see.

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Ash Wednesday 2025

 

I am still obsessed with "Ai No Corrida," and I wonder how many other wonderful songs are out there that I have never heard. For example, why do you always hear Post Malone on the radio but you never hear Thundercat? I wouldn't have known about his song "Dragonball Durag" if Colbert hadn't had him on his show. How do I find these great songs that don't get as much exposure?

Today: no social media reels for me! I'm addicted to these short videos. I was also trying to fast all day, and right at the end the chair offered me some cookies, but I said, "It's Ash Wednesday!" Then I apologized for being rude, but she said I wasn't rude. Guess I have to try harder...

The weather was terrible today, and I meant to take a photo out my office window of the "winter wonderland," but of course I kept forgetting. I walked outside on my morning break, but under the roof to avoid the snow, and for some reason my heart rate really spiked. Is that a bad sign? Am I about to die? I was hoping to walk in the big conference room overlooking the lake during my lunch break, and the online calendar said it was free, but someone was in there anyway. This time I know I didn't get the day wrong - it was just someone doing a video call. So I went outside again, and again in the afternoon, and by then the ground was icy. 

When I got to my car, it was covered with ice. I drove to a gas station, but the cover to my gas tank was frozen shut. My windshield wipers were also frozen (I should have put them up), but fortunately the snow had stopped by then, so I didn't need them. No idea what I would have done if I had needed them! I met Travalon at the church on the far east side for Mass, and when I told him about my gas cover, he looked online and found the liquid on the squeegees at the gas stations can help melt the ice. After Mass we went to the gas station closer to our house, and by then the gas tank cover had thawed enough for me to open it without using the squeegee, but the windshield wipers never got free even by the time I got home. Hopefully a night in the garage will thaw them out...

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Happy Mardi Gras/St. Casimir's Day/Vivaldi's Birthday

 

This morning Travalon and I went to get our taxes done, and I felt like maybe I left a bit abruptly when my FitBit said I had ten minutes left to get my steps for the hour. We get a little back from the feds (someday?) but owe a little to the state, so we had the deduction set to go on Thursday, since that is my payday. It was all futile, because I missed my move hours somehow between 11-12, after doing a chaplet that usually gets me enough steps and failing to make sure, and then weirdly I was paid today so no need for the delay. I mentioned it on the chat at work, and several other coworkers were surprised to see they had also been paid, but apparently our credit union now puts the money from your paycheck into your account two days ahead of time. So that's cool. 

This evening, once I got back from adoration, Travalon and I went to Lola's for Mardi Gras. They had a special Mardi Gras menu of shrimp po' boys or gumbo, but they were out of the po' boys. I did get the gumbo, and Travalon got pelmenis, which were really delicious; he gave me a few, since my bowl of gumbo was very small, maybe because they were running out. Travalon had a tropical drink called an ornithology.

I always take Mardi Gras seriously because I take Lent seriously. In that spirit, we had the same dessert we'd had on my birthday, the chocolate pot de creme with lavender whipped cream, only instead of dark chocolate, now it's milk chocolate with caramel. Almost too much going on there; I liked the simplicity of the dark chocolate and the lavender, but this was still delicious. There was a DJ playing excellent music like the Squirrel Nut Zippers and Satchmo, and then she played a song I'd never heard before, "Ai No Corrida" by Chaz Jankel. I was eight years old when this song was released, and in all these years I'd never heard it. It's like he wrote it with me in mind: it's fast-paced, syncopated, minor key, and he sings in falsetto. I was so enchanted that I asked our waitress if I could tip the DJ. She didn't have a tip jar, so I just handed her what I had left from my own tip playing in Spring Green, and she lit up: "Nobody has ever given me a real tip before!" I said, "That last song was a revelation," and she told me what it was. (Which I already knew, since I'd asked Shazam.) That felt like some good karma, since the DJ is young and probably needs $5 way more than I do, since I have a day job that pays okay. Honestly, I often end up using my own tips to tip other musicians, since it's the only cash I usually have, and a lot of them do it for a living where it's just a hobby for me. So I have listened to "Ai No Corrida" about a hundred times tonight, and now I'm listening to Vivaldi, first his concerto in D minor for two violins, and now his concerto in B minor for four violins. 

I don't have much to say about St. Casimir, not being Polish, except that Ethel had a friend who named her daughter Casimir so she could call her Cassie, and we all thought that was kind of weird. Then again, that same woman had two daughters named Greta and Gretchen, so naming daughters was not her strong suit.

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Proof You Exist

 

Today I worked on campus and took a quick walk before a lunchtime meeting. Here is another contribution to my "Faces of Campus" series:

I had another meeting after lunch, which was online, and we had our cameras and mics muted so they could talk at us. It was a very refreshing nap. Then in the evening, Travalon and I went swimming in the warm pool. The last few times we have been swimming, it doesn't show up as exercise on my FitBit. I must not be swimming as hard, yet my arms slightly ache. Partly this is because there were pink weights in front of a pile of pink pool noodles, and I was so enchanted with the pinkness of it all that after swimming around for about twenty minutes, I grabbed the weights and used them. 

Here are a couple of things I forgot to mention: during my gig a couple of weekends ago, people kept raving over my mandolin, saying how beautiful it is or that they had one like it once but how did I play it without a strap? That's why I love playing gigs - it's definitely not the money, and sometimes it's not the tunes we play (I like some, and some I could live without) - it's the people going all gaga over my antique mandolin. It makes me feel like a Z-list celebrity.

Thursday my shuttle buddy was back, and we talked all the way to work and all the way back, so she must not be sick of me. When the shuttle dropped us back off at the parking lot, I could hear a nearby train blowing its horn. When I was waiting to turn from Aberg onto Sherman, I could see the train behind the houses there, and I hoped to beat it home. As I turned onto Knutson, I looked down at the railroad tracks and could see it in the distance. I waited in the Nau-T-Gal parking lot for what seemed like much longer than it should have taken to get there, and just when I had decided to go to the intersection at Highway M, I could hear it coming so I stayed put. It was the slowest train I'd ever seen pass by on that track.

For some reason today I was remembering how my college roommate and I wrote a newsletter for our dorm. We had both had friends in high school who called us "Biff," so the newsletter, called "Proof You Exist," was written by Biff and Biff. Our house fellow had said her boyfriend who went to another school might bring some guys with him when he came to visit, so one of our headlines was: "Mass Blind Date from Out of State??" The other Biff and I were considered kind of weird by the other people on our dorm floor (fair enough, we were kind of weird), and they complained about the title of the newsletter, so the next issue was called "Irrefutable Evidence of Your Existence," and it was just as goofy, so two other girls said they would take over. They wrote one issue, which everyone said wasn't as good as the work of Biff and Biff, and then, sadly, the newsletter ceased publication. I wonder if I have a copy of either issue somewhere?

Time for bed! Also, time for some DuoLingo bragging:

No calculus yet. I'm still adding fractions, and negative numbers, and sometimes negative fractions. I thought the next unit was imaginary numbers... but maybe I imagined it.

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Madison Mystery Tour and Schlitz Audubon Center

 

Yesterday I went to get my hair cut, and since it's close to the Essen Haus and Come Back In, we thought we'd get lunch at one of those places. However, they were not open yet, so we went to the Cardinal Bar, a place I went dancing thirty years ago and never pictured having lunch. The empanadas were really good, especially the vegetarian one which was more like a samosa with Indian spices. I couldn't find Niko in my purse and felt a little panicked, but the logical part of my brain was like, "You left him at home," and indeed, he was safe in his Niko Nook. Then Travalon and I took a walk on a boardwalk they have made in our neighborhood for trucks to go into the marsh to work on the power lines. Nowhere does it say we can't walk on them too. It was colder than a few days ago, but still lovely and sunny out. 

In the afternoon we met Rich, Kathbert, and Pete the Sailor Man at Mr. Why's grave to put flowers on it for the anniversary of his death, like we do every year. This time we actually remembered on the right date and not halfway through the month. Then Rich, Pete, Travalon, and I had some snacks and warm beverages at La Brioche. Travalon and I swung by Picnic Point to see if there were any birds around, but we mostly saw ice fishermen who are braver than I am - no way would I walk on that rotten ice! We did see a few geese. On the way home we stopped at Mendota County Park, and Travalon took a couple of photos.

In the evening we went to see a Beatles tribute band called Madison Mystery Tour do music from 1965-66, which is the era of two of their best albums, Rubber Soul and Revolver. I had taken an edible, but I didn't read the directions, which is that you are supposed to cut them in half. Why put the work on me? Why not just make them half as big? Anyway, that was way too much THC, and I felt like I heard every tiny error the musicians made, although I really enjoyed their version of "Tomorrow Never Knows." I felt dizzy and like I didn't know where I was in time and space. Everything was slowed down, and I was having trouble walking like a normal human being. Now I get why Travalon didn't enjoy it when he had a whole chocolate instead of half of one like the people selling it recommended. I was bummed that the band didn't do "Michelle" or "I'm Only Sleeping," but they did do "Girl," which is another one I really like, I suppose because it's minor key. It was still a great show. 

The funny thing about being stoned is that you see connections where there probably aren't any, so maybe stoned people are the ones who create conspiracy theories - I came up with that theory while I was stoned. Can't remember any of the deep thoughts I had, but at one point I was trying to determine the numeric value of two words, and I got as far as figuring out that L was 3 and then realized I couldn't remember what the words were. So much for that theory!

Today I still felt, if not stoned, at least very groggy all through Mass. Immediately afterwards we drove to Milwaukee to visit the Schlitz Audubon Center, but first we had lunch at the Three Lions Pub, and I realized I was wearing a very Irish outfit (scarf and necklace with Celtic symbols) to an English pub. Oops! The center is in Bayside; my interest in going there was to see a display of astronomical photography done by amateurs, and some of them were amazing, of eclipses and nebulas and the aurora borealis. Travalon and I took some photos, but I'm not sure about the ethics of posting them here without permission. Instead, enjoy these photos I took last night of Venus and the crescent moon.

You could really see the planets in an arc across the sky last night. It was so cool! 

There are lots of hiking trails at the Schlitz Audubon Center, so Travalon and I took one down to the beach.

I think we saw a fata morgana, because looking at the far shoreline, we could see a floating peninsula beyond it that looked odd, like it was in pieces. It looked like photos I've seen of the phenomenon. Unfortunately, Travalon didn't have his good camera, and it was way too far away to take photos with our cell phones.

This is a soft-shell turtle they have at the center, burrowing into the sand.

Then we went to Virmond County Park and took a walk there too. From there we couldn't see the fata morgana; the far shore looked totally normal. Here are some photos. The park is on top of a bluff overlooking the lake.

Would you like to take a seat?

We hurried back to Madison, but we were a bit late coming back for me to get to band practice, so we just had some dinner at It's Good for You Pizza. So delicious! We tried to go to Bellitalia, which is closing in about a week, but there was a two-hour wait. We may not be able to get in before it closes for good.

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