One Last Fiddling Class

 

This morning I was going to work in the apartment for four hours, but we had to be out at eleven, and there was no way I'd be ready to work before seven. Instead, I worked from eight to ten and said I'd do the other two hours this afternoon. Famie went to her first dance class, and when I was done with work (mostly checking emails), I packed everything up and left. I was lugging my work laptop, my violin, and my purse, and of course this was the day I took a wrong turn after going to the Celtic Cultural Center for days, so I went a tiny bit out of my way before realizing my mistake. I still got to the Center in time to register for one last fiddling class. It was actually open to any instrument, to learn the music of the Sliabh Luachra area of Ireland. The teacher played the accordion, and we had three fiddles, one concertina, and one pipe player in the class. We learned three tunes, and some of the women (we were all women, except for the teacher, who was a rather attractive man) made sure to let everyone know what experts they were in Irish tunes, but I fumbled along trying to learn the new tunes, and it felt like the teacher was most impressed with me, because he knew I was actually learning them on the spot.

Famie and I grabbed a quick lunch and then had an easy drive home, chatting amiably, but we were surprised by the amount of traffic midday, even in the middle of nowhere. I logged back on and did two more hours of work, then when Travalon came home, we planned to go to Mass at the church two minutes away, since it seemed to be the only one having a late enough Mass for the Assumption to accommodate us working stiffs. However, when we got there, only a couple of other people were there, and we were all confused until one guy called and found out the Mass was at the church in a tiny town twenty minutes away, because this is a merged parish and we all misunderstood the code for which physical church the Mass would be at. Who knew SM meant St. Michael's, not St. Mary's? By then Mass would have been half over if we'd gone to the other church, and it would be half over by the time we got to the Spanish Mass across town. We looked frantically for other Masses, but the A-frame church we went to last weekend makes you log in to see their bulletins, and we don't have a login. I am really getting fed up with the Catholic Church. How can they demand we attend Mass and then make it impossible to get to if you work full-time? 

Here are some photos from this weekend. First is the rainbow we saw Tuesday night.

Here is the church that looks like a castle where the music lessons were held.

And the beautiful light patterns made by the morning sun shining through the stained glass.

The river was very high, and we could see flood damage.

Here is the board after we played Scrabble in Irish.

And this is a rainbow that was at Irish Fest last night.

I did do DuoLingo while at summer school, because how better to learn Irish than to do Spanish exercises? and I got this comment.

I don't know why Duo is wearing makeup, since he's always presented as male. I also got the monthly badge.

Now I'm back to the cold, harsh reality of not having a session to go to every day. How ever will I survive?

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The Grand Hooley

 

Today was my last day of classes at the Irish Fest Summer School. One person dropped out of the fiddling class yesterday, but the rest of us really enjoyed it, and I plan to stay in touch with a guy from the UP who plays in an Irish band up there. The lunchtime slow session was wonderful, and my Irish teacher was happy with how many tunes she could play. I had a cheese bagel that I bought at the Celtic Cultural Center (suggested donation: $2), and I still had half my sushi from dinner last night, so I wasn't planning to go out to lunch. Good thing, because the two ladies I have had lunch with the last couple of days wanted to play Scrabble in Irish. We didn't keep score, so in a sense we were all winners. 

My Irish teacher wanted to get gelato at the local chocolate shop at two, so one of the ladies and I walked over there, but she was just buying chocolate. My Irish teacher at summer school was there, so when my Irish teacher Famie arrived, the three of us sat together, and they chatted in Irish. I got a scoop of chocolate gelato and one of pistachio to replicate a Dubai chocolate. In Irish class, we read proverbs in Irish, then we joined the other half of the class led by our teacher's brother, upstairs in the music library. They were acting out some goofy scenario about drug dealing, and the brother said we were the three sisters Anne, Anna, and Anya, so one of the ladies decided we should be the three weird sisters from Shakespeare, cooking a potion, and we ended up making ice cream that they sold. Improv is crazy.

When class was done, the two ladies and I exchanged hugs and contact info, then Famie and I went back to the sushi restaurant because last night we were too full to try the desserts. We wanted to try the yuzu cheesecake and the matcha cheesecake, and they were both good, but we had to give it to the yuzu one because the citrus flavor went so well with the cheesecake. Back at the apartment I ate my leftover sushi, then we went to the Grand Hooley. In our student packets, we each got a ticket to go to Irish Fest for free tonight, and Thursday night is The Grand Hooley. (If you have any idea what that means, feel free to tell me.) Friday is The Gathering and Sunday is The Scattering, and I can't remember what they call Saturday, which is the main day. Not all of the festival is running yet, but some of the stages had acts, so we watched a trad band from Ireland, then we danced a circle dance, then we chatted with some other people from the summer school, and then we watched two dancing brothers who are internet sensations. The fish and chips is ridiculously expensive there, but it's also a ridiculous portion size, so we split one. We also got bottles of water and then refilled them, since you can't bring water bottles in but there are drinking fountains. We took a turn through the shopping area but didn't see anything compelling enough to buy, so we just headed back to the apartment. The bridges by the fairgrounds are lit up so beautifully at night.

My big decision is whether to take a brief class tomorrow. I'm supposed to work for four hours tomorrow morning, but we have to check out by 11, so I may end up working at Starbucks or just working a couple more hours after getting home tomorrow afternoon, so in that case I could take the class. It's some survey of Irish tunes.

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The Grand Irish Session

 

Today was another great day at Irish Fest Summer School. We worked on ornamenting jigs in the fiddle class, but I did feel bad because one woman who had been struggling to keep up just left in the middle of class. There was leftover pizza in the church where we were meeting, and they told us to help ourselves, so I had a slice. I knew a lot of the tunes at the lunchtime session and quickly picked up the ones I didn't know. Then the two ladies I ate lunch with yesterday actually came to find me, so we walked to a nearby restaurant and sat outside. I just had a bowl of wild rice clam chowder. In my Irish class, we debated whether men should be allowed to wear skirts and whether children under sixteen should be allowed to own smart phones, then we did an improv scene about buying a boat, and then we asked each other hypothetical questions to practice the conditional tense. My Irish teacher, the red-headed flute player, and I had dinner at a sushi restaurant, but we were too full to try the exotic cheesecakes they have for desserts.

The big event today was the Grand Irish Session. Apparently there was a session last night at a tavern called O'Donahue's, but it must have started at ten because the faculty concert went till 9:30. Today the session allegedly started at seven, but when we got there at about half past, there were a handful of our fellow students, so we had a sort of slow session. A couple of children joined us, a boy who was really good on the bodhran and a girl playing the fiddle. She suggested "Drowsy Maggie," and I started to play it, but nobody joined in because just then the really great fiddler from Ireland arrived. He started playing it at a breakneck speed that I could not keep up with, and the rest of the night was like that: lots of tunes I didn't know, but too fast for me to figure them out on the fly, and even the ones I did know, I could barely keep up. At one point I dumped the contents of my purse on the floor by accident, and the professional musician sitting next to me (who is actually from Italy) leaped in to help me. The real musicians are very nice and have no airs about them, but boy are they a level above me! I finally gave up on faking it and just listened. There were some dancers too. Just about the time Famie and I decided to call it a night, so did the real Irish fiddler, and then things quickly ended. Still, what a group, with flutes, whistles, fiddles, mandolins, banjos, guitars, and two hammer dulcimers. It was an incredible sound.

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First Day at Irish Fest Summer School

 

Today was my first day at Irish Fest summer school. My Irish teacher came very early in the morning to pick me up, and we drove to Wauwatosa, which has had some flooding. You may have heard about it; it was in the news. The Celtic Cultural Center was unaffected, so we were able to go to our classes. 

My first class was Intro to Irish Fiddling. I was afraid I'd be so rusty that everyone would mock me, but I did fine. We learned a couple of polkas by ear today. The music classes all seem to be in the big Lutheran church across the street that looks like a castle. When class got done, I came back to the Celtic Cultural Center and joined a session led by a flautist who I have seen perform with one of the local Baroque groups, so I had no idea he did Irish music too. By the time I got done with that, my Irish teacher and the red-headed flute player both had classes, so I invited myself along to lunch with two women who, as it turned out, were in my other class. We still had a lot of time until that class, so I took a rosary walk in the neighborhood, lugging my fiddle and my purse. 

The second class is Intermediate Irish, and I wasn't sure I was good enough for it. I was right about that, but we had a lot of fun, because the teacher had us do improv in Irish, first that we got pulled over for drunk driving, and the guy who was the cop was trying to determine which one of us was driving because we were all in the back seat. More fun was the one where I was a shopkeeper trying to sell a dress to a bride, and she said she wanted a purple dress with gold flowers. She didn't like the price I quoted and said she wanted a green and orange dress, so I said I had a green dress with orange dolphins on it. Her "fiance" was skeptical, so I said it was perfect for a seaside wedding, and he said, "What if it rains?" so I offered to throw in a matching umbrella. The Irish teacher had to help me a lot with all those words, but he gave me kudos for creativity.

After classes, I met up with my Irish teacher and the red-headed flute player to go to the apartment we'll be staying in, except not the redhead because she has to get home to her dog. It's within walking distance, so we walked back toward the Celtic Cultural Center. A lot of the local restaurants were closed due to flooding, so a bunch of us ended up at a soup and sandwich shop I had gone to with Travalon previously. We had passed a gelato place, but it was closed by the time we got done with dinner, so my Irish teacher and I just went back to the apartment until the faculty concert at the Celtic Cultural Center. My fiddle teacher played, and so did my Irish teacher. (He played the bodhran, or drum.) There was going to be a session after that, but we were exhausted and just went back to the apartment, where I am blogging now. Maybe I will check in tomorrow too, or not, since there will be a big session tomorrow night. Stay tuned...

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Band Drama

 

Since I will be at the Irish Fest "band camp" for four days, I have to wear all four of my good bras those days. Today I dug up a painful underwire bra that at least makes me look decent in public to go work on campus. Nobody was around but my young coworker, so while in my office, I slipped out of it and tossed it over the back of a chair. Then our new department chair stopped by and chatted, and only after he left did I realize the bra was in his clear line of sight. Did he see it? Hopefully he didn't notice...

There is some band drama going on. Our leader thinks I go to the Irish session instead of band practice too often, and she's not happy that both our bass player and I are missing the Ukrainian picnic gig. In my case it's because we only learned about this last week, and I have longstanding plans on that day to go to an Anglican Rite Mass in Milwaukee, and then dinner at a Serbian restaurant. I don't know why our bass player can't make it, and when Hardingfele and I walked at lunch today, she said she was going to grill her about her absence. I couldn't seem to convince her that this would be a bad idea. Then someone contacted Hardingfele in the afternoon about playing a gig at a retirement home, but we'd need a caller. The caller we used for years is long dead, and we have never had really good luck finding another one. Hardingfele found some list that said our bass player is a caller, so she sent an email saying could we do this gig, and could the bass player be our caller. This led to a long email from the bass player about how we are not really a contra dance band but an English country dance band, and if she was calling for us we'd have to change our evil ways, plus she couldn't play bass. If we find another caller, she could lead us on the fiddle, and then we could be a real contra dance band. I emailed her privately and said she made a lot of sense, and what she is looking for is what we do at the Moldy Jam jams, and she said some of them do play for contra dances. Why we couldn't memorize our songs we've been playing for decades so we can just start playing whichever one is called out is beyond me, but I'm starting to understand why the bass player is frustrated and goes to the Irish sessions instead of band practice... and in fact why I do too. Some of us want to grow as musicians, and some people seem fine with the (pretty mediocre) status quo.

After work I changed the battery in my Snark tuner, and Travalon had gotten me a shoulder rest and set of replacement strings at the music store near his job, so I felt ready to go. As we drove to the health club to go swimming, I said I wondered if the violin is happy about all this activity around it, and it's thinking, "Yay! Finally I get some attention instead of the mandolin!" Travalon said he pictured the violin with a little cartoon smile. We swam outside, and now I feel very relaxed. There's so much to stress about, like will I drive my Irish teacher crazy, will I suck at Irish fiddling, will I be the worst one in the intermediate Irish class, but I've done what I can to prepare. There are also floods in Wauwatosa, which is where we are heading tomorrow, but the Irish Fest people said it isn't affecting where they are located. Complications for Travalon too, because one of the buddies he was going to hang out with while he's a temporary bachelor caught our cold at the wedding in Sheboygan, so they may not get to hang out. He will see another buddy, and Travalon never gets bored anyway - he always finds something to do. He'll be just fine.

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Walking Around the Ponds

 

This morning there was a huge thunderstorm right at the time we were going to leave for Mass, so we didn't go. I'm terrified of lightning, and Travalon is terrified of the road flooding and causing his car to need expensive repairs again, like what happened last summer. About an hour later the rain died down, so we met Tiffy for brunch at the Venezuelan restaurant. We told her to be careful going home, since there was bad flooding in Milwaukee last night. True story: Travalon was thinking of going to see Lynyrd Skynyrd at the State Fair last night, but he decided the ticket prices were too high when there were no original members, so we listened to classical guitars and lutes at a coffee house. This morning we found out the State Fair was shut down and the concert was canceled, so he totally made the right call.

The weather continued to improve, so we met Jilly Moose for a walk around Stricker Pond. We saw a family of sandhill cranes.

We saw a lone mallard.

And we saw a green heron in a tree.

We also met lots of friendly dogs. We then walked around Tiedemann's Pond, which had just as many friendly dogs, no interesting birds that we could see, but way more wildflowers. This is obedience plant.

This is common rue.

I took both of those with my phone. Travalon took some photos of hibiscus and lotus blossoms with his good camera.

He also took a photo of this "blossom" on the ground. I assume it fell off of some little girl's jewelry.

There was a creek we didn't remember seeing before.

By then we had just enough time to get to the big A-frame church on that side of town.

The music was better than at the parish we usually go to, but there isn't the same sense of joy. I wonder why that is? It was a lovely Mass, and the young priest chanted a lot of it, but the vibe is definitely that people are there out of a sense of duty. The people at our church seem happy to be there.

So that was our day. I skipped band practice, since they were practicing for a gig I can't attend next week, so I'll probably hear about that. Our leader thinks I go to the Irish sessions too often and that we should practice more often as a band rather than going to the sessions, but I feel like the sessions make us better musicians. And believe me, we all could use that!

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Daughter of Denni Birthday Pub Crawl 2025

 

This morning Tiffy got up and went to the Farmers' Market. I got up too, but I sat around in the house doing word game puzzles until Tiffy called. Travalon and I picked her up downtown, then we went to a sushi restaurant at Hilldale, since that is very close to the house of the Daughter of Denni, who was doing her annual bar crawl/bike ride for her birthday. However, after we had sushi and mochi, we texted the Daughter of Denni, and she was already somewhere else. So we went there... and by the time we got there, they were all just leaving. The owner of the house had a funky camera that took black-and-white photos, so she took a photo of Tiffy, Travalon, and me, and also of my feet by accident. I took a photo of the two photos, but it is not downloading from the Cloud. However, I do have some photos from Tiffy's trip. Here are a couple of mystical-looking mountains that it seems like you would climb to find enlightenment.

Those were both from Glacier National Park, where Travalon worked one summer when he was in college. He was delighted to see they still have the red "jammer" buses in the park.

The next spot for the pub crawl was Minocqua Brewing, which Travalon and I had been to for a Quebecois jam. Some of the group wanted to go outside, so I went with them, since it was very loud inside, but then it started to rain really hard so we gave up on this experiment. Back inside I talked to the Son-In-Law of Denni, the brother-in-law of the birthday girl, who is a classical guitarist. We had a good talk about music, and then he had to head out because he was playing tonight.

Our next stop was the Lone Girl on East Washington, not the one in Waunakee. Tiffy and I checked out an ice cream shop next door, but their flavors were all really weird, like peanut butter and jelly, so we weren't interested. It also had that very strong smell I associate with fake vanilla. Half the group sat outside at this stop, since it had ceased raining, but some of us stayed inside since it was hot and humid out. When the group was heading to the next spot, Tiffy, Travalon, and I walked down to the river, and we could hear music. We walked under the bridge and saw a woman playing viola on the other side of the bridge. She was really good, playing a solo Bach sonata. I took a photo, but again it's not loading to the cloud.

The next stop was the Baldwin Street Grill, a true dive bar. (However, as Travalon points out, it is the height of civility compared to the Moqua Dive Bar.) Tiffy and I were a bit "taverned out," so we took a walk in the neighborhood, then we collected Travalon and went to Cargo Coffee to hear the Son-In-Law of Denni. He played classical guitar, and so did another guy, and the other guy played lute with a guy who used to go to the Early Music Festival. We had thought about going to the Forward game, but the weather forecast was for storms right in the middle of the game, which never happened. But the music was wonderful, and a lot less expensive (free, but suggested $5 donation, which I did give). After that we went to check out the Baked Wings place on the corner of State and Johnson that has been preparing to open for over a year. It finally is open, and we had some wings. They were very tasty.

Oh looky here, my photos finally downloaded from the Cloud. First, here are the black-and-white photos taken with the funky camera.

The Son-In-Law of Denni laughed about the bottom photo because the lines from the vinyl panels on the house make it look like a suspect line-up photo, and he said the photo of my feet was very good. I just think it's hilarious - it was an accident - but maybe it truly is my best side.

Here is a photo of the viola player.

If she was playing for tips, we were too far away to tell. The resonance under the bridge really amplified her music. We did applaud when she finished a movement, and she seemed appreciative. Lots of people walk or bike along the path she was on, so maybe she was hoping to get an audience. I would have kept listening, but the others were expecting us at the next stop on the pub crawl.

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