Earthquake in Tokyo!

I was peacefully sleeping and suddenly I was woken up by my bed rocking from side to side. When it stopped, I said to my roommate Sunghee, "Was that an earthquake?" "Uh-huh," she answered. "OK," I said.

Then it started back up again. "It's lasting a long time," Sunghee said. "Well, they do build their buildings to sway here," I replied.

When it was over, I got up, grabbed my phone & tweeted "earthquake in Tokyo!" which generated an entire thread of Facebook comments, including a link to the USGS page earthquake we felt. It was a 5.3!

What's funny is that there was apparently there was a 4.9 last night at about 11:45pm, but none of us felt it.

This morning, I realized that over the years, I have spent approx 14 weeks in Japan. I've lived in California for 8 years, but I've felt more earthquakes in Japan than I have in California.

But, whenever I talk to people who live Back East, they always ask me, "Aren't you afraid of the earthquakes?" I always say, "Um, no. I'd rather have earthquakes that happen occasionally than the guaranteed-every-year tornadoes and blizzards. Plus, there are earthquakes in the Midwest, too!

ps. Cheryl posted about last night's Tokyo earthquake over at the Sonos-in-Japan-2009 blog.

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Guerilla Handbell Strikeforce

This has been going around the internet today, so I had to post it here, too.

The "Improv Everywhere" group staged a "Guerilla Handbell Strikeforce".

For our latest mission, a 13-member handbell choir provided some unexpected accompaniment for a Salvation Army bell ringer on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan.

Check out the video at the link above!

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Sonos blog: "Three Little Pigs in Japan"

I created a new blog post on the Sonos in Japan 2009 blog:

Three Little Pigs in Japan

ADDENDUM: My friend Nahomi posted a video of the show! I link to it in an addendum post over at the Sonos blog.

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Karaoke in Japan for Marquise's Birthday

A bunch of us went out to sing Karaoke in Shinkjuku (a section of Tokyo) for Marquise's birthday last night. Joel apparently got video.

Read all about it at the Sonos-in-Japan-2009 blog!

I'll have to figure out a suitable revenge....

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Bell-Ringing with the Muppets

Gail Berg sent this link to the Handbell-L, and it was so cute, I figured I'd share.



Enjoy!!

ps. Don't forget to check out the Sonos in Japan 2009 blog to read all about our adventures in Japan! Our first concert is today & we are excited!!

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Irrashaimase!

Welcome to Japan! Sonos, party of 15, has landed at the Osaka-Kansai airport, gone through Immigration, gathered all the luggage, and gone through Customs.

We met our host, Tamamura-san, outside, loaded up the bus and now are merrily on our way to the Hotel New Archaic in Amagasaki, between Osaka & Kobe.

We have a day off tomorrow & the remaining 3 people (Joel Gingrich, PL Grove, & Brian Houston) will arrive tomorrow night.

I probably won't be posting to this blog much for the next 2 weeks, because I'll be posting to the Sonos in Japan 2009 blog: http://sonos-in-japan-2009.blogspot.com so come read all about our adventures there!!

After a 10-hour flight from SFO-NRT, a 3-hour layover, a 2-hour flight from NRT-KIX, and finally an hour-long bus ride to the hotel, I am beat! (but excited about this tour!)

-Michèle (from my mobile phone)

Sakura at SFO!!

Hey! My classmate Sakura is on our flight to Tokyo! Sakura was in my Musicianship class at De Anza. Small world, isn't it?

(also: our Musicianship professor is going to Japan on Sunday!)

-Michèle (from my mobile phone @ SFO)

Because it's COOL!

I posted a few times about how Sonos was working on a DVD. We were actually working on 2 of them - and the first is now ready!! It's called "Ringing Up" and the blurb says:

Sonos leads you through music of three worlds: Europe, Asia and America. With stunning virtuosity this contemporary ensemble performs the famous Bach Toccata in D Minor, Gershwin's beloved Porgy and Bess, James Meredith's groundbreaking Kodo Tryptich and Smirti, his hauntingly intense elegy on the bombing of the World Trade Center with cellist Emil Miland, and more.

Here are a couple of excerpts from the DVD:

First is Edward MacDowell's "To a Humming Bird".

And here is James Meredith's "Smirti" with cellist Emil Miland.

I would have embedded the YouTube videos, but Humming Bird's width wouldn't behave when I tried it, so just click on the linkies, m'kay?

The DVD is available on Amazon -- the page says it's encoded for Region 1 (US & Canada), but I confirmed with Jim that that is incorrect; it is Region 0 (worldwide). We're working on getting the Amazon page fixed.

ps. I haven't seen the whole thing yet, but I understand that I have a lot of "face time" in it. It's probably a combination of the fact that I played flute on a couple of the pieces, plus my hair color makes me stand out even when I'm not the center of attention (*gasp!*), but when Kevin saw the video at the Rio Theater in Santa Cruz last week, he said to me, "The videographer must really like you!" LOL!

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Cow Tipping

Cabeza de Vaca was son of Teresa Cabeza de Vaca y de Zurita. In 16th century documents, his name appeared as "Alvar nuñez cabeça de vaca". Cabeza de Vaca means "head of cow". This surname was granted to his mother's family in the 13th century, when his ancestor Martin Alhaja aided a Christian army attacking Moors by leaving a cow's head to point out a secret mountain pass for their use.

--Wikipedia, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca

I hope in some measure to convey to Your Majesty not merely a report of positions and distances, flora and fauna, but of the customs of the numerous, barbarous people I talked with and dwelt among, as well as any other matters I could hear of or observe.

--Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, The Relation


Maybe it's because I'm a feminist, but one of the first things that stood out to me when reading Norton's (and later Wikipedia's) biographical information on Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was the fact that he uses his mother's family name rather than his father's family name. In fact, Norton never tells us his father's family name (neither does Wikipedia, for that matter). I understand that De Vaca is proud of his family heritage, but it still seems like an usual thing to do -- usually the mother's family name is preserved in middle names or in ways other than the primary surname. (OTOH, I am not conversant in 16th-century Spanish naming conventions, so maybe this is no big deal.)

While I may be a feminist (though not completely fluent in Feminist Theory), I am definitely not a cultural anthropologist, despite a lifetime love of National Geographic. However, there were a few passages in our assigned reading (excerpts from De Vaca's "The Relation") that made me think that the Native peoples De Vaca traveled among may have either been matriarchal, or at least had matriarchal aspects to their culture.

One such passage that made my femmy-sense tingle was:

When a daughter marries, she must take everything her husband kills in hunting or catches in fishing to the house of her father, without daring to eat or to withhold any part of it, and the husband gets provided by female carrier from his father-in-law's house. Neither the bride's father nor mother may enter the son-in-law's house after the marriage, nor he theirs; and this holds for the children of the respective couples. If a man and his in-laws should chance to be walking so they would meet, they turn silently aside from each other . . . . The woman, however, is free to fraternize with the parents and relatives of her husband.

The reasons this caught my attention relate to the different treatment of the husband and wife in this scenario:

1) She is allowed to go back to her parents' house, and she is allowed to "fraternize" with her husband's parents, while he is not allowed to associate with hers. (We are not told whether he is allowed to socialize with his own parents);
2) The husband must give up all that he catches to be later given an allowance of meat/fish/whatever delivered "by female carrier"; and
3) Could it be that, instead of bringing her husband's catch to her father, she's really bringing them to her mother?

As I said, I am not a cultural anthropologist, so I may be way off-base, but I still think it's an interesting way to look at this narrative.

ADDENDUM: In class today, we talked about Estaban, a "companion" of De Vaca. I put "companion" in quotes because Estaban was a Moroccan slave in Narvaez's expedition who ended up shipwrecked along with De Vaca - you can see him in the picture up there at the top of this post. There is some new scholarship that proposes that Estaban ended up the real leader of De Vaca's group, which Dr. Scott said was in a new book (which I saw in earlier Google searches, but can't find right now - I'll post it if I find it - Here it is!!). Today I came across this interesting page about Estaban. Here's an excerpt:

In the spring of the year 1539, a tall black man lay mortally wounded by Zuni arrows in the village of Hawikuh, in what is today northwestern New Mexico. If he prayed in his last breaths, he surely addressed God as "Allah." How did a Muslim come to visit—and die in—New Mexico in the early 16th century? I had never come across such a figure during my university history studies in the United States, nor had I read of him in French history books at the lycée in Casablanca, Morocco, where I grew up. I heard of him only quite recently, by accident.

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In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue...

Of Española, Paria, and the other lands, I never think without weeping. I believed that their example would have been to the profit of others; on the contrary, they are in an exhausted state; although they are not dead, the infirmity is incurable or very extensive; let him who brought them to this state come now with the remedy if he can or if he knows it; in destruction, everyone is an adept.

-Christopher Columbus, from Letter to Ferdinand and Isabella Regarding the Fourth Voyage [Jamaica, July 7, 1503]

So Columbus said, somebody show me the sunset and somebody did and he set sail for it,
And he discovered America and they put him in jail for it,
And the fetters gave him welts,
And they named America after somebody else.

~Ogden Nash, Columbus

I find myself at something of a loss as to what to write about Christopher Columbus. He is such a controversial figure. When I was a child, we learned that he believed that the earth was round when everyone else thought it was flat (because he saw a butterfly on an orange), and that he discovered America (but thought it was India). There was very little mention of the Natives, other than as almost "extras" in a play. I think it would be fair to say that's a very simplistic presentation.

Today, it seems that children are taught more cultural context from both the European side and the Native American side. All in all, I think that's a good thing. However, I remain morbidly fascinated by the negative reactions I see to teaching the greater historical context of Columbus (and many other historical figures). It's as if they take it personally - any attempt to provide context is seen as an attack on America, and thus on them.

Take this blog post as an example. The author is commenting on a news story:

Kolowith’s students learn about the explorer’s significance, but they also come away with a more nuanced picture of Columbus than the noble discoverer often portrayed in pop culture and legend.

["Nuanced," you say? Is that what we are calling it today? Back in my day, they called it, "Libtard-Commie agenda-driven indoctrination of the youth in order to destroy America and her culture." But, I guess that was too many words for the kids coming out of such institutes of lower learning and had to be condensed to "nuanced."]

Why such vitriol?!? How does presenting more historical context "destroy America and her culture"?!? Why does the author seem to feel so threatened??

Our reading this week was two excerpts from letters written by Christopher Columbus, one from his first voyage and one from his fourth (and last). What struck me as most interesting was the change in tone between the two letters.


The first letter has a much more positive "feel" to it with Columbus doing his best to put the expedition in the best light possible. He was writing to the people who had financed the voyage - Ferdinand & Isabella of Spain - and wanted to make sure they felt like they had gotten a good return on their investment. He has to admit that they didn't find any big cities or spices or gold, but manages to convey a sense of wonder with the new (to him) land.

The second letter, written in Jamaica in 1503, during his fourth and final voyage, has a much more somber tone. Columbus has seen all his work be either destroyed or turned against him -- colonies he set up have failed, or have rebelled against his authority. He was sent back to Spain in chains, disgraced and full of despair. Norton says that his "woes were accompanied by nearly delusional periods as [he] underwent a virtual breakdown."

I can easily believe that when I read his words: "Weep for me, whoever has charity, truth, and justice."

ADDENDUM: During class today, Dr. Scott mentioned that he was peeved with Norton because of how it presented the biographical material for Columbus, completely ignoring any of the current controversies & uncertainties surrounding his birth and his role in the slave trade. I said, "Join the club; I've been peeved at Norton for weeks!"

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