Trains and Choro: the Sequel

 

Today the weather was much more pleasant, so I could walk outside. Travalon came home for a bit around three, and we heard a train go by. Then he headed off to go swimming in Lake Mills and check out trains in Jefferson and Watertown, while I went to the monthly choro session once I was done with work. On the way, I was stopped by a train on the one track in town that doesn't belong to Wisconsin and Southern. I didn't see the engine (did see some great graffiti but couldn't get photos), so I can't say if it was Canadian Pacific (like the Holiday Train), but I'm guessing it was. I NEVER see trains on that track, so that was very exciting for me. Not so much for other people, who turned around and went another way, but despite its slow speed, the train did pass pretty quickly, and I was not late to the choro session.

Today we had the leader on guitar (and sometimes mandolin), the really good guy on mandolin, the young guy I recruited from the Slow Irish Session on violin, the music club owner and her employee on cello and bass, a new guitarist, and a new drummer. What a crowd! We sounded pretty good too, I thought. The leader asked if the other mandolinist and I wanted to try his mandolin, which has ten strings instead of eight, so we did. I didn't love playing it (couldn't figure out where my fingers were), but then I tried the other guy's mandolin while he played mine, and I did like his. But mine is still the best. I need to practice, but I am slowly getting better at the dozen or so songs that we always work on. We heard a train pass by while we were playing, and then afterwards when I was walking back to my car, I heard one in the distance. When Travalon got home, I said the one that went north by our house would come south tonight, and a little while later we did hear it pass by. That's a lot of train action today!

Speaking of trains, here are some screenshots of graffiti from videos posted on social media:

Travalon says he got some good photos today, so watch for those tomorrow.

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Amazing Drum Lesson, Odyssey Movie, and Small Moldy Jam Session

 

Yesterday was so, so hot. The church where Travalon and I go to Mass was having a festival, but we couldn't bring ourselves to check it out for even a few minutes after Mass; instead, we went home and sat in air conditioning. I felt like a slug and was kind of down, but on the way to my drum lesson we stopped by the mini rail yard off Fair Oaks, and we saw some graffiti.

The lesson was going to be taught by a woman from Brazil who runs an all-woman samba group. We students got there, but the "real" drummers had a lesson before us, and it was running late, so we had time to chat. One of my fellow students knows a lot about graffiti and even told me where to get supplies. I'm not planning to paint any train cars anytime soon, except maybe model train cars. Then we had the lesson, and the woman teaching it barely said a word, maybe because she doesn't speak much English. We started an infectious groove, and then she would come over and show us how she wanted us to change it up. We drummed for a solid hour, and at first I thought, "I can't do this!" but then the endorphins must have kicked in, and I was flying high. My FitBit said I did "sport" for almost an hour. Oh yeah, both before and after the lesson, I said, "Obrigada" to her, which is Portuguese for "thanks," and both times she gave me a big hug.

After getting cleaned up, I met Famie and the red-headed flute player at a Thai restaurant for dinner. We almost had to leave before getting our food, but they brought it out with enough time for us to eat for ten minutes, since the movie had so many previews. (I brought half my curry squash with tofu home, and even though it sat in the hot car for three hours, I had it for lunch today and feel fine.) Then we went to see The Odyssey. It is a very long movie with a lot of violence, but the story is much deeper than what I remembered from reading it in high school. At that time I thought Odysseus was very clever and resourceful, but now I realize he was a jerk who got himself into situations and then destroyed other people's peace to get himself out of them. For example, I felt VERY sorry for the cyclops, who was just minding his own business, making cheese. At the end of the movie, Odysseus surveys the carnage and realizes how many lives he has destroyed by being so stupid, so at least he had an epiphany. Don't even get me started on Agamemnon, who sacrificed his daughter to the gods for success in battle and then was shocked that his wife killed him when he got home. And I'm not sure why the haters were complaining about a black woman playing Helen of Troy, since she is gorgeous, or a trans man playing a youthful guard who was sacrificed by Odysseus. Most of the actors seemed perfect for their parts. I liked how Agamemnon looked kind of like Darth Vader, but then when he talked, he sounded like a loser, because he was a loser. Who sacrifices his own daughter? They didn't show this in the movie, but he also brought another woman home with him, so can you really blame his wife for killing him?

Today was still very hot, so I only went for a walk in the morning and then stayed inside until going to a small Moldy Jam group at the house of the guy who had his ukulele in the pouch of his guitar case that one time. It was going to be a small group, and there was a woman who was coming, then she wasn't, then she was. There are two women who have similar names, and I thought this was the woman who is a lot, if you know what I mean, but it was a different woman who is much pleasanter. The host had a washtub bass that he had lent to someone two years ago and then couldn't remember who he lent it to, and then two days ago it appeared on his front lawn. He played it on a song, then the really good mandolinist who had the terrible saw accident with his fingers a while back (but is recovered now) played it, and then the other woman played it. Only the guy playing guitar and I didn't try it. I brought both Mandy and the violin but only played fiddle, but it's okay because Mandy will gets lots of love at Choro tomorrow night. The host played guitar, ukulele, and concertina accordion, and the other woman brought a guitar and a fiddle but mostly played different sizes of recorders. Then she told a story and I realized she was Katzooks's sister! I haven't seen Katzooks in ages, and it's been decades since I had seen her sister, until I'd seen her recently at small Moldy Jam groups. Isn't that crazy? What a small world it is!

Tonight Travalon watched videos of British steam locomotives (one was called Capricorn, and another looked like a double-decker locomotive), but yesterday while I was hanging out with the ladies, he went to Mazomanie and took more photos of train art.

I think he has some more photos on his good camera so that's something to look forward to tomorrow.

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Forward on Fire

 

I apologize in advance to those of you who like photos, because this post will not have any. I also realize that I forgot a very important point about the Mallards game on Thursday night, that it was Bring Everything But the Dog Night. Not that many people brought pets, but I heard someone had a rabbit, and we saw a cat, a three-legged goat, a black sheep, and a baby calf, and we even got to pet raccoons! Oh, and of course someone brought a dog.

I also failed to mention that during pagode practice we heard a train horn. I knew the train tracks ran right behind the Quadra, so I asked if the back door was open, thinking I'd go out to watch it. The leader said, "It shouldn't be," but she checked it and it was unlocked, so she locked it. People asked me, "How did you know?" but I just wanted to see the train. However, it was so loud inside that I would have gone deaf if I'd been outside. Still, it feels like God talking to me in trains again, like I'm on the right track studying all this Brazilian music (Samba, choro, and now pagode) and doing Portuguese on DuoLingo. Are we going to end up in Brazil someday? Right now it's all just a lot of fun.

This morning Travalon and I met Tiffy for coffee, then he went down to the Union Terrace while we just hung out on the roof of her sister's apartment building, had lunch sitting outside at the Globe (where I saw one of our faculty members), got bubble tea, and went back to the roof. When Travalon returned, we went to Breese Stevens Field to watch the Forward soccer team, who are having a really good year. I was getting a bit alarmed because the Flock, the ardent fans who sing and play drums, were not gathering, so I googled it and they had disbanded. But then people did show up, playing drums, waving flags, and shooting off pink smoke as they sang songs with complex lyrics like, "Oh, Madison, Madison, Madison, Madison," and, "Forward, Forward, Forward." We sat near the Flock, so in the first half we could barely see it when they got a goal. In the second half we did see their goal clearly, but then for some reason Naples FC got to take a penalty shot, and those are so hard for the goalie to stop, so they had a point. There was a ton of stoppage time because of injuries, but then the Forward scored again in stoppage time! So they won 3-1! This is the seventh game in a row they haven't lost, but some were ties so they didn't win seven in a row. Still, their record is really good this year. 

A bunch of people from the Shamrock Club were down at the Union Terrace listening to the New Dubliners, but Tiffy was tired, Travalon was tired, and my FitBit had a low battery because I kept forgetting to charge it. Famie said the New Dubliners are not like the old ones, so I assumed that meant they didn't play trad music, and indeed I found a video online, and they played rock. Travalon was slightly more interested, but not enough to go see them (and he'd spent quite a bit of time at the Terrace already today), and I was not interested at all, so we just came home. I'm not one of those people who is going to love everything automatically just because it came from Ireland. I do really love traditional Celtic art and traditional Irish music, and I'm intrigued by the language, but not everyone in Ireland is into the old stuff, which is fine! I'm just not that into the new stuff.

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Mallards Game and Pagode Practice

 

Yesterday I had a really strange day. I was working from home when suddenly the internet stopped working, so I texted Travalon, and he confirmed that there was an outage. I couldn't just go to my own office to work, so I messaged my boss, who said I could go to the coworking space I had worked in the day before. I thought about it, but the day was so nice and I was feeling so sniffly that I just took half a day of personal time. This was probably due to the road construction I complained about on my last post. At first they said the internet would come back at 1:30, but then it was 5:30, and then it was 10:30. When Travalon came home from work, we went to the Culver Springs Natural Area. Here are some photos.

We hadn't been to a Mallards game yet this year, and the happy hour on the Terrace was canceled due to the police killing here in town, so while everyone else was at the vigil for the victim, we watched baseball. I had an infused drink, forgetting that they slow down time and baseball is already so slow that time seems suspended, so it was a very meditative game for me, although the Mallards did keep hitting three-run homers. In the end they won something like 14-2. Here are photos.

This guy was batting 1000 because he had one at-bat and hit a three-run homer. 

They have this stuff over the bleachers now, I guess to block out sun? And at night they light it up.

Here is a video of that.

Oops, this is out of order, but before that we went to a place in De Forest where train cars are parked, and we saw some graffiti.

And then, still before the game, we went to my future parking lot and saw more graffiti.

And here are a couple of Wisconsin and Southern engines.

And here are some screenshots I got off a couple of videos of local trains posted on social media. I recognize a lot of this graffiti, but now I'm wondering... is 4AL "for a laugh" or "for all locations"? Both are represented on the same train!

Today I was supposed to work on campus and give blood, but I felt sniffly again and canceled the blood donation, since they won't let you give when you're under the weather, and that was the only reason I was going to go to campus. Oh, and also to make sure my plants were okay, and to check for a book someone was waiting for. In the evening I went to the pagode jam again, and this time there were nine of us, which seemed like a better number than the large group last time. I am the weak link, but I still had fun, especially playing the drums with the deep bass notes. I brought the mandolin but never cracked her out. A lot of the group are in the real Handphibians, and they were supposed to play tomorrow at the Atwood Fest, but the whole festival has been canceled because of the shooting. Bummer, I was hoping to check it out tomorrow. I don't understand the facts around the shooting enough yet to have an opinion; it's always bad when cops execute people of color when you feel like they could totally de-escalate if it were a white person, but I've also heard the person was armed and had wounded one of the cops. But then I've also heard the guy was on the ground and they shot him point-blank in the back of the head, so that doesn't sound like self-defense on the part of the cops but rather vengeance. All I know is the system has got to change because entirely too many people of color end up dead at the hands of cops. I read something recently that said liberals believe the law should treat everyone equally, so they try to appeal to fairness with conservatives, but it's a lost cause because conservatives believe the law should protect high-status groups and bind low-status ones, never bind high-status groups or protect low-status ones. Which I guess if you want to be that horrible, that's your right, but then quit saying how Christian you are. Jesus totally taught that everyone is equal in the eyes of God, so they should be equal in the eyes of the law too.

While I was at pagode, Travalon went out on the dock and took sunset photos. Here's my favorite.

When I came home, the moon was big and bright, so I brought my telescope out to look at it. I would get it in view, but then when I tried to focus, I'd lose it again. Travalon came out and took a photo.

Honestly, this is probably as good as it would have been looking through the telescope. 

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