… fewer deadlines. The last couple weeks I’ve just been feeling so slammed with work, and then I added on working at the polls and volunteering at the Libraries Book sale, and the film fest.
April has already been the cruelest month and we’re only one week in. Late March was kind of mean, too. iSchool advising was March 21-25, and I didn’t really want to start site visits for my practicum students until after that, but a couple of students really wanted to get theirs done, and then since I had so little time left for site visits that first week, they are now extending through April 15. They’re pretty much all virtual now – I only did one in-person one for a student at a school here in Madison, but still, even without the travel time 27 zoom meetings in a 5-day-week is pretty awful.
So what’s all this volunteering and election official-ing and volunteering been like?
The book sale came first. That was fairly light duty – unloading books for a couple hours on Tuesday morning and then taking payments for people’s purchases on Wednesday night. In 2021 we didn’t do this (pandemic), but this year we brought back the big pile of random items found in books, and I got a postcard of this Stanley Mouse cyclops skull G. Dead poster. My brother gave me a full size autographed copy that’s at the back of my clothes closet. I magneted the postcard to the fridge.
The election was not my best – the city schools still can’t be used for polling places (pandemic) so the city clerk’s office is still struggling to find polling places, and we were at a newer university dorm that had either never been used as a polling place before or was very new. Anyways, I got there and it was all locked up. I thought things were going to go OK because I swiped in with my UW ID, but that only got me as far as the vestibule. I called the RA and they were fast asleep. One of my poll workers who got in somehow showed up at that point and let me in. The equipment was locked up in the un-staffed information desk. Long story short we called the clerk’s a few times and eventually got a night custodian to let us in, and he determined that it was OK for us to set up in the Lake Mendota Room, a pretty cushy large meeting room. The polls are supposed to open at 7:00, and we made it by 7:27, and given the site – students – we didn’t actually turn any voters away.
I left my car in a loading zone and when we got the polls up & running, I moved it to a parking spot that I knew I didn’t have the right permit for – and got a $40 ticket after my car had only been there 10 minutes. But I appealed and they took off the charge. Whew.
And, film fest – we went to see the opening movie, Anaïs in Love, on Thursday. Very French.
I volunteered on Saturday night. I went an hour early because they asked for help, so I took off my volunteer shirt and handed in my walkie talkie and went civilian early and joined Mark & Maja and watched most of Aloners, which Mark described as a film fest movie – not going to see it in more commercial venues.
Sunday I volunteered again, at the theater in Memorial Union, which is a lot easier than the AMC 6. Only one cinema so you get the people in and you can relax for a few hours, unlike AMC where there’re 3 cinemas so there’s always something to do. The gossip is that AMC is going to close that theater – with only 6 cinemas I guess it’s not a good money maker for them – so the film fest will need to find some new screens for next year. The Sunday movies were We Feed People about Jose Andres’ World Central Kitchen – directed by Ron Howard, which I didn’t know til just now – I might’ve sneaked in to watch a bit if I had – and Lost Illusions – Balzac.
Last night I went to see the King Crimson documentary, In the Court of the Crimson King: King Crimson at 50. Like the Rolling Stone article says, the dearly departed Bill Rieflin turns out to be the unexpected hero of the film.
Francesca Sundsten, who created a lot of King Crimson graphics, was married to Rieflin, and died almost exactly a year earlier from a different form of cancer. Sundsten designed King Crimson’s 50th anniversary tour poster. We saw it in a Balzac’s coffee shop in Toronto, and I have a small one on my fridge now, the other side from the Mouse postcard. King Crimson was at Molson Amphitheater; we were at TIFF.
September 2019: Posters in Balzac’s coffee. I thought the King Crimson poster must be a historical leftover, but it’s actually happening this week
I do have a few food pics for you:
Challah with whey – I’ve been playing around with Ukrainian desserts and made some ricotta, so had whey – and sourdough discard. It has a great texture – and air bubbles.
Pumpkin scones with maple glaze
Smitten Kitchen sprinkle cookies – and I didn’t burn them this time. Getting used to the new oven
Dorie Greenspan’s spinach pie with Parmesan crumble topping
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Strawberry apricot yogurt – a hit on Insta
And not-food pics:
Cat helping me prepare for the election
Palm Sunday procession seen while walking to volunteer at the film fest. It’s a Lutheran church on campus – good turnout – the parade is probably 2 blocks long