Not Allowed to Take the Bus After Dark

What a day! This morning I got to sleep in until 8 am and had a leisurely breakfast with Sara made up of tea and toast. Megan picked me up at 10:30 and we drove to Lake Michigan so I could see it in the daylight. I saw it that one night I spent in Chicago and last night after dark, but I had never actually seen how you can’t see to the other side of the lake. Megan told me it was seventy miles to the other side and that you can go out in the middle of the lake and feel like you’re in the middle of the ocean because you can’t see any land. Imagine that! Looking at her in the car, I can’t put my finger on exactly why, but she looks older. She looks and acts like an adult. When did that happen?

If I did a quote of the day, this would be it: “I don’t do poop.” Thanks for that goes to Megan as she was explaining her experience working as a speech pathologist in the hospital. Cracked me up.

So after she picked me up, Megan drove me down to the park and I took pictures, it was so much fun! Then we walked around Marquette’s campus and looked at a chapel from the 14 hundreds Joan of Arc supposedly touched. My love of Christian history went wild on that one. Megan showed me where she used to live and we drove through the Historic Third District. For those who know Portland, think the Pearl District. By that point, both of us were really hungry so we went to her apartment for lunch. My sister is a very good cook. While we ate on her balcony, I told her about the cookie dough post and she retorted in relation to her never letting me have any cookie dough that I could make my own. She was never very sympathetic in that department.

Megan dropped me off at the art museum before she headed to work, it’s the art museum you see in all the pictures of Milwaukee with the giant wing span and yes, it is that cool. I took lots of pictures inside and then proceeded to wear myself out walking through the exhibits. It took me several hours. At one point, I turned a corner and saw a painting then proceeded to jump up and down a bit and cover my mouth. Eagerly, I hurried up to it and I was right- it was a genuine painting by Claude Monet. I had seen an exhibit of his work when I was in high school but it was still exiting. They also had a copy of the “The Kiss” sculpture and a Rouse. They EVEN had some icons I got very exited about and a gallery of Georgia O’Keeffe though I didn’t see anything of hers I particularly liked. I felt like I was walking through a physical expression of my art appreciation class from college because they had a lot of the modern stuff there as well such as furniture and exhibits the viewer literally enters into.

When I wore myself out from walking around there, I headed down Wisconsin Avenue for dinner finding a used bookstore on my way. This was one of the coolest bookstores I’ve been in. It was two floors of books that just seemed to keep going and going. Some of the bookshelves were tilting this way and that and I have no idea if they have EVER weeded through their bookshelves, it’s one of the most eclectic selections I have come across. They even had a whole section on Vietnam War fiction. One of the coolest things was that their religion section took up a great deal of room on the first floor so I found a volume by Robert Benson who i have very much enjoyed before, “Boundaries” for my spiritual direction library, and another book of writings about the soul’s journey which I also thought would be good to read and then place in my spiritual direction library.

Dinner took me quite a while to find but I finally settled on the the Jame Hawke’s Pub right on the the Milwaukee River. I sat at a table with the river flowing past and ordered beer and a fish fry-Milwaukee classics I am told. When I got back to where I’m staying, Ian, Sara, and I went into the hot tub. It felt so good to be in the hot water after all that walking around.

Milwaukee, I am told by Ian and Megan, is one of the most segregated cities in the U.S. After my experiences with the Diversity conference and my time with the editorial board where the emphasis was on togetherness and unity in our differences, to be in a city where differences divide and separate, i’ts a startling contrast. As I was trying to locate a bus stop for the #10 to catch back to Ian and Sara’s tonight, a black man asked me what I was looking for and he pointed me to the right one, To whoever you are, thank you. Thank you for holding out that hand of help and kindness to let me know that skin colors are not dividers, attitudes are.

P.S. I’m not allowed to take the bus after dark. Ian, Sara, and Megan all say so.

365-09 #149