Black Cat Alley and Explorium Beer

Sorry that I didn't blog yesterday. It was a weird day, because one of the lights in my plant room burned out, and then when Travalon tried to put in a new bulb, the whole fixture came off the ceiling! Because it's connected to the other three, I was afraid it would pull them all off, but we propped it up with some books, and that took the pressure off the others. Richard Bonomo came over, and after we fed him a takeout fish fry from Mariner's, he fixed it. He did point out that two other bulbs are about to burn out, so hopefully we don't have to go through this whole adventure again. Then I talked to Tiffy as usual, and I was saying how I used to want to write screenplays, but as a teenager I didn't really understand the laws of physics, so I would have the main character rolling under a moving car and not getting run over. Tiffy said with CGI you can do anything, so why not have that happen? Then I was talking about a musical I wrote about Pizza Bear, basically an extended version of the double entendre "He REALLY delivers!" and Tiffy said, "Oh, so this wasn't a children's story?" I said no, he was delivering to lonely female large cats, like Mrs. Lion and Mrs. Tiger and Miss Panther. Somehow we had Pizza Bear rolling under the moving car, and I said, "What about his pizza?" and Tiffy said, "He could throw it over the car and catch it on the other side," and I said, "That's genius!" But don't look for this movie at a theater near you anytime soon - the screenplay still needs a lot of work. 

I get all sorts of random emails, like from both sides of the political spectrum, and for some reason a lot about travel. I enjoy reading those, which are often lists of "Craziest road side attractions," or whatever, and sometimes I have actually been to one or two of the places they mention. The other day I got one about the five coolest murals in the country, and one was in Milwaukee! How could I have missed something so close by? So this morning Travalon and I headed to Black Cat Alley. 

Our ride there was almost interesting enough to be its own blog post. A car ahead of us had a license plate that said "LMBO" and I said, "Look at that! It says 'Laughing my butt off!'" but Travalon pointed out that it was a Packers license plate, so it was probably a contraction for Lambeau, as in the field where the Packers play. Then I had brought a "rosary" from Brodhead, but one "decade" only had six beads, and another had a missing bead... and then as I was praying the Joyful Mysteries, I realized about two decades in that there were two extra decades! It must have been a Franciscan rosary of the Seven Joys of Mary, and I don't exactly remember those, but they are basically the Joyful Mysteries, and I think the two extra are the Visit of the Magi and the Resurrection of Jesus, so I just added those two. I would not have expected this rosary to be a Franciscan one, since it didn't have a San Damiano crucifix, but it just goes to show you really have to count all the beads on these antique rosaries because you never know what you are getting.

We got to Milwaukee and got lattes before setting out for Black Cat Alley, which is an outdoor gallery of murals. We took loads of photos. Then we walked to a spot from which you can see the lake, and then we drove to place where we could park for free and catch the Hop, which is the free streetcar that goes through downtown Milwaukee. We took it to one end and saw a Christmas lights display in a park, then we took it to the other end and saw some fire pits, so we walked over and found a brewery called Explorium, which had some very tasty beer. We had a flight with turtle cheesecake tart, peanut butter cup stout, and toasted coconut porter, and we also got a taster of creamsicle ale and a sip of peach gose and what they called a "Big A-- Pretzel." (We had to take two thirds of that home.) Wow, was the beer ever good! We bought some cans of the peanut butter cup and coconut to take home. The craziest part of that was that our waiter is from a Basque family, so he actually spoke a little Basque to me! Our trip home was uneventful, and now Travalon is watching the Badger game that we taped. We saw bits and pieces of it in Milwaukee, and I think it didn't have a happy ending for us, but we don't actually know yet.

Here are a bunch of photos of the murals in Black Cat Alley. There was art everywhere, even on the sidewalks!

This is the sign outside of the alley. We have been by it many times and never knew it was there!

We also found this outside the alley on the other side.

And there was a lot of artwork just outside the alley too.

These are photos from when we took a walk to a place with a great view of the lake.

And here are some shots of what we saw from the Hop.

Update: now we have learned that the Badgers lost to Northwestern, so Travalon just deleted the recording of the game after we saw the one beautiful touchdown they did manage to score. They kept turning the ball over, and who needs to watch that??

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Last Lovely Day of 2020?

 

Today the weather was so beautiful, I sat out on our screened-in porch. I had a meeting with my boss, and I told her things were kind of slow today, so she said, "Why not take the afternoon off?" So Travalon and I got steak tacos from the nearby gyros place and took them to Governor Nelson State Park, where we went out to a picnic bench on a little spit of land to enjoy our lunch by the lake. It was perfect until the wind knocked my hat off, and as I grabbed for it, all the napkins blew away. Fortunately I was able to recover the hat and all the napkins, and nothing went into the lake. 

After lunch we drove to Sauk and got lattes and treats at the Mixing Bowl, then we hiked on a section of the Ice Age Trail by Lodi that goes right up a bluff. We took the Merrimac Ferry over to the north side of Lake Wisconsin and drove up Highway U to some side roads I was curious about, and there were spectacular views of the lake from there. We went to the park in Merrimac, then we took the ferry back over to the south side of the lake and drove along it, trying to get photos of the sunset. It turned the whole lake pink! But by the time we got to Sunset Island, the sun had mostly gone down. 

If you like photos of sunsets, then you will really enjoy this post. First are a couple of shots of the sunset that Travalon took the other day at Governor Nelson State Park.

These are some photos from last night's sunset, from both Travalon's camera and mine.

We got this sparkly little unicorn in the Dells a couple of weeks ago.

These are my little pea plants. They are looking pretty scraggly, and one seems to have died completely, but on the far left you can see one has a bud. Will I actually get some peas??

As we were leaving around noon today, we saw two of our neighborhood cranes.

These photos are out of order - they are from my camera when we were hiking on the Monches section of the Ice Age Trail the day after the election.

These are photos from the Lodi section of the Ice Age Trail we hiked on today.

There were some really interesting rock formations as we hiked up the bluff.

Here are some photos of Lake Wisconsin. People were boating on it today, and we sort of had two boat rides: taking the Merrimac Ferry over and back.

Isn't this European-looking chalet cool? 

We also passed a large (but not as beautiful) house overlooking the river with the name "Reilly" on the mailbox. I guess when they say "living the life of Reilly," that's who they mean. Here is the view of the lake from the road these houses are on.

Here are some shots of the sunset I took as Travalon was driving.

Here are some photos from the park in Merrimac from which you can see almost all of Lake Wisconsin.

Paradise Island

Owl's Head Bluff

I took this shot of the sunset with Travalon's camera from the spot where you catch the ferry.

Here is a shot of it from on the ferry.

I liked this shot of the crescent moon with the pink clouds behind it.

Here is the sunset just after we got off the ferry.

These last two photos aren't as good. This one shows how the lake was pink, but it's not totally in focus. I took it as Travalon was driving. By the time we got to a good place to take a photo, the sunset was done.

This photo makes me laugh. I was trying to take a photo of the lights of Prairie du Sac (the blue one is a cross on top of a church which I think is Methodist), and Travalon turned, so they made streaks. I was just going to delete it, but then I thought it looked kind of artistic.

So it was a wonderful day off. Tomorrow it should be a little cooler, and then I imagine we'll be moving into our usual bleak late November weather, and soon... snow.

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Spem in Alium

 

I apologize for not blogging yesterday. Travalon sent me some sunset photos he took last night at Governor Nelson Park, and I could have posted those, but I am still on my sacred polyphony kick and was too busy finding pieces on YouTube. One that I listened to was "Spem in Alium" by Tallis. I have an interesting history with this piece.

When I was a young pup just out of college, the tenor in our church choir mentioned that Tallis had written a 40-part motet, and I said, "That sounds awful!" as I imagined people singing forty different notes at once. He said oh no, it's very beautiful. A few years later I was at a concert put on by a university choir from Germany, and "Spem in Alium" was their final piece. We were in a church, and they made a circle around the sanctuary and sang it. The way the song is actually structured is that there are eight five-part choirs, so part of the circle would sing, then another one would respond, then several choirs at once... and then suddenly, all eight choirs swelled into a wave of glorious sound! It was one of the most incredible experiences of my life.

A number of years later, we performed that song at the Early Music Festival. The giant choir there gets to do all sorts of interesting pieces like "Praeter Rerum Seriem" by Josquin de Prez (of course I listened to that last night too!), and the year we did "Spem in Alium," I was a first soprano in Choir Seven. It's not as much fun to perform as you might think, because you spend a lot of time not actually singing but just focusing on when your next entrance will be. I prefer the pieces where there are two choirs singing back and forth, like "Duo Seraphim" by Gallus, because you get to spend most of the time singing, and the entrances are more intuitive. Still, it was an amazing experience to be part of "Spem in Alium."

Forward another couple of years, and Light Bright was obsessed with the Fifty Shades of Gray books. She lent them to me, and in the first one the author describes a piece of music that sounded just like "Spem in Alium"... and it was! The books, if you are not familiar, are about kinky sex, so last night when I found "Spem in Alium" on YouTube, half the comments were things like, "I hope you're not here because of those trashy books!" I understand the piece was also in the soundtrack of the movie, which I didn't see. One guy, however, had a more expansive view (which I agree with), that anything that gets people to find this wonderful music is a net positive. Maybe people who read the book found the piece on YouTube and then went on to discover Tallis's protoge Byrd and the whole wonderful world of sacred polyphony. It could happen.

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A Couple of Crazy Dreams

 

Travalon had a really funny dream the other night. He was an errand boy for the Senate, but they were meeting in a church hall, not in the Senate chambers. They told him it was his job to tell Mitch McConnell that they were firing him as majority leader, so Travalon went into a little side room to tell McConnell, but he was gone - there was just a dummy there dressed up to look just like him, with a stick of dynamite in its hand. And that was when he woke up. What does that mean? Who knows?

I had a dream last night that I was eating all this chocolate, and then it was all gone, but a woman told me I could get more at the University of New Hampshire. "It's in the mountains," she said. "Are you afraid of driving in the mountains?" "I am," I said, and she said, "No need to be afraid while I'm driving - I'm an excellent driver, and I'm used to these mountains." So we drove up into the mountains, to a beautiful campus... and that's where I woke up. According to the online dream dictionary, this dream means I am self-indulgent but am seeking wisdom. Sounds about right.

Here are some recent photos. First, the rosaries I got in Brodhead.

Tonight there was a lovely sunset, so I took a picture from our dock,

Travalon took many pictures of it while he was hiking at Patrick Marsh.

Right now I am listening to "Surrexit Christus Hodie" by Scheidt. Still on that sacred music kick - I guess if I can't make music myself, the next best thing is listening to others do so.

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Musical Musings

 

This was a strangely unsatisfying football weekend, even though both Wisconsin teams won. As I mentioned, the Badgers really beat up on the depleted Wolverines, and then today the Packers barely beat the Jaguars, who are having a lousy season. It seemed strange that they had such a tough time, like they weren't really trying. Right before the game, Travalon and I took the two big plants we had rescued over to Rich's, then after the game we took a walk, but it was so cold and windy that we didn't take a very long one. I had my second Irish class, and then after that I walked with my neighbor, so I just barely got my steps for the day. It's hard to walk five miles when the weather is so uncooperative. We even saw little snowflakes swirling in the wind!

This evening I was saying that it seemed random when Steely Dan mention the Alabama football team in the song "Deacon Blues," since they don't seem like football aficionados, and Travalon found on Wikipedia that the song was actually built around that theme: "They've got a name for the winners in the world/and I want a name when I lose/They call Alabama the Crimson Tide/Call me Deacon Blues." Donald Fagan and Walter Becker were talking about how winners always have catchy nicknames, like the Crimson Tide, so why shouldn't losers have cool nicknames too? And then they wrote a song about it.

Speaking of classic rock, we were listening to that station in the car yesterday (since the 40's station is sadly all Christmas music until the day after Christmas), and to my surprise they kept playing songs I liked. I realized that this was because they were all minor-key songs, and while classic rock songs tend to be major key, there are enough in the Aeolian mode that I could make a whole playlist of classic rock songs I like. I'm a simple creature, and I like minor key music, and so must the woman DJ who was spinning the discs yesterday afternoon. One song was that one by the Moody Blues that goes: "I'm just a singer in a rock and roll band," and that got me to thinking. To me, making music with others is one of our highest human callings, so he's not "just" a singer, he's a musician doing something complicated and, dare I say, sacred with other people. Maybe classic rock isn't that sacred per se, but music is a gift from God. Today I was listening to a bunch of sacred music I was lucky enough to sing in various choirs, like "O Sacrum Convivium" by Byrd, "Duo Seraphim" and "Jerusalem Gaude" by Gallus (Handl), and "Angelus Domini Descendit" by Gabrieli. And of course anything by Victoria. I will never get over my amazement that we disgusting, violent, self-centered creatures can sometimes cooperate enough to produce something so beautiful and divine. But that's the key - we have to work together. If one person gets egotistical, the whole thing falls apart. It's like music is the closest God has come to letting us see creation as He sees it.

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Another Day of Antiquing

 

Sorry that I didn't blog last night. Travalon and I had dinner at Mariner's, then he was watching TV so I put my headphones in and listened to the Bach Concerto for Harpsichord in D Minor while praying the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary, and that was mind-blowing. I was crying through the whole thing, and it almost felt like I could understand what God does, the worst and the best of humanity. It's very hard to put into words. I didn't have time to blog about it before it was time to talk to Tiffy, and even now with a day to think about it, I'm still not sure how to describe this experience. Just... mind-blowing.

Today I was taking a walk when I saw a couple of neighbors taking down the tennis court net, so I went to help them. A sad day - the tennis season is over! We forgot to play last week when it was so warm, so we lost our chance. When I got back, Travalon told me his buddy's little dog Nala died suddenly this morning. We see her every New Year's Eve, and she is so cute. So that was very sad. Then Travalon and I went antiquing, in Cambridge, Fort Atkinson, Jefferson, and Watertown. Travalon found the exact bobble-head he was looking for, some player from the Bucks from back in the day. I didn't find any rosaries until we got to Watertown, and then, oh boy - did I ever find rosaries! I found not one but two that are made out of garnet, which is my birthstone, and some others made out of lace agate and other natural stones. They are so beautiful! I don't mind rosaries made of plastic, but the ones made of wood, glass, and especially stones just feel more "alive." Maybe it's because they are more natural substances. 

In the evening we watched the Badger football game, but I didn't enjoy it. I never liked it when the Badgers would beat up on some little school, but it was more painful to watch them beat up on a formerly worthy adversary. I don't know if Michigan is missing a lot of first-string players, but their defense was awful, and they didn't have a lot of offense either, so I found myself in the awkward position of cheering for the Wolverines, hoping they would at least get one touchdown. They did get one, and a two-point conversion, and a field goal, so they lost to the Badgers 49-11. Now people want the coach Jim Harbaugh fired, but I feel like this year everyone should get a Mulligan. How can you judge a coach during this very strange season? Everyone is struggling, so I imagine college football players are really struggling. Utah just fired their coach, who used to be the Badger coach, but I think that's so unfair. Once things are back to normal, then we can judge coaches' performances. Right now we all need a little mercy, including college football coaches.

Here is a picture of Travalon with Nala. She was a schnorkie.

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