Good-bye to the Oughts

While the past year has been good, I must admit that I’m in com­plete agree­ment with those like Time Mag­a­zine, who dubbed the first 10 years of 2000 as The Decade from Hell. It was a decade that belonged to Bush, whose ascen­dancy to the White House I have often said was the worst sin­gle event in US His­tory. It was for us, a great leap into the unknown, leav­ing the city of Boston and the coun­try of our births. It was def­i­nitely scary in the begin­ning, but we’ve slowly climbed back, at least in terms of our finances, to where we were when we left, more or less. We dodged much of the hous­ing bub­ble, and although Pam and I both saw time out of the work force, I sus­pect that would have been just as bad (or worse) if we had stayed.

After the elec­tion of Obama, many peo­ple have asked us if we were con­sid­er­ing return­ing to the US. After all, we were ‘Bush Dodgers’, accord­ing to some. Well, the ridicu­lous debate on Health Care reform had us con­stantly shak­ing our heads in bewil­der­ment. The fact that the US still fails to acknowl­edge health care as a human right (like the ones of reli­gion and guns that they extoll so often), is some­thing we’ll never under­stand. The lack of acknowl­edge­ment that the pro­lif­er­a­tion of guns is caus­ing more and more vio­lence and death through­out Amer­ica is also baf­fling to us. When­ever we see peo­ple being inter­viewed on the US evening news con­stantly refer to God, their belief in reli­gion and other mag­i­cal think­ing also seems fur­ther and fur­ther from us. Nope, we’re not going back to all of that.

Good-bye to 2009, Then

Look­ing back on just this year, I do have some events that I’ll remem­ber fondly. Here’s a brief list:

1. The Con­cert of works for and by Dutch com­poser Louis Andriessen for his 70^th birth­day. Back in April, I got to see and hear him (and one of his works), as he rem­i­nisced about per­for­mances by air­port run­ways and mused that the bass line in Bach Chorale Pre­ludes is “like a cow moo­ing, inter­rupt­ing chirp­ing birds”.
2. Rid­ing the brand spank­ing new Canada­Line all day on my Birth­day, and play­ing Foursquare (and ‘tourist in my own town’) as I went all the way from the south of Rich­mond to North Van­cou­ver with­out burn­ing any gaso­line (not count­ing the fuel on the Seabus).
3. Actu­ally not one but sev­eral fun and stim­u­lat­ing Mee­tups for blog­gers, graphic design­ers and Social Media folks. Sev­eral were at Caeli’s Pub, which has become one of the most pop­u­lar social watering-holes in town.
4. An after-hours tour of the newly-renovated Arc­tic Ocean exhibit of the Van­cou­ver Aquar­ium as part of the local chap­ter of the Inter­ac­tion Design Asso­ci­a­tion (IXDA)
5. Excel­lent meals at Provence at Mari­na­side, a tea (thanks to Tiny Bites) at the Fish House in Stan­ley Park and this past week, a warm­ing Hot Pot (Shabu Shabu) at a new Korean Restau­rant, Dae Bak Bön Ga, on 4^th Avenue in Kitsilano.
6. The Inau­gu­ra­tion of Barack Obama (of course)
7. Bar­Cam­p­Van­cou­ver, which was a blast this year at Dis­cov­ery Parks.
8. Help­ing to run and par­tic­i­pate in UXCam­p­Van­cou­ver, the first User Expe­ri­ence ‘uncon­fer­ence’ in the Van­cou­ver area. Many thanks to Karen Parker for pro­vid­ing the lead­er­ship and guid­ance. Next year, it will be even big­ger and bet­ter. This was, per­haps, the big high­light of the year for me.

And a few sad losses:

1. The loss of Work­space, a mar­velous public/private space that hosted many great techie get-togethers. It was the clos­est thing to a ‘par­lor’ that the Geek Scene in Van­cou­ver had. I’m hop­ing that another will come, but some­times these things take time to replace.
2. The clos­ing of a bunch of restau­rants: Chow (which I reviewed in this blog), O Thai (which was replaced by another Thai restau­rant in the same spot that is decid­edly poorer), The Fish Café (on 4^th Avenue in Kit­si­lano), and a few oth­ers that I for­get at the moment (maybe for that rea­son, they should have closed).

When I look back on 2009, I know that I will sadly have to note that it was the year that Becca Ham­mann died (see pre­vi­ous entry), and it will be some time before I am used to that fact.

I also note the birth of many babies by friends and rel­a­tives, and once again, our orchid is blooming.

My next post, will be about next year. Oh look: the clock says that it’s here already. Well, come in, 2010. Make your­self at home.

In Memoriam

I’ve been think­ing about this post for a long time, and it’s prob­a­bly the hard­est one I’ve ever had to write. The world lost some­one last week. She wasn’t famous, but she was impor­tant. Her name was Rebecca Hammann.

Rebecca, or Becca, as she pre­ferred to be called, will be missed by many peo­ple; I’m clearly not alone. There has been an offi­cial obit­u­ary, and there will be memo­r­ial ser­vices, although I doubt I can attend them. I can’t even begin to sum up a per­son who I haven’t been in touch with on a reg­u­lar basis for a cou­ple of decades; I didn’t know her as an adult as well as I did when she and I were young. I can say that know­ing that we will not meet again seems just as painful as it would have been if we had seen each other regularly.

We met, back in the late 1970s, at a sum­mer pro­gram called The Walden School, a 5-week pro­gram for kids 9–18 who were inter­ested in music, and in par­tic­u­lar, music com­po­si­tion. The Walden School, as it’s web site says, was and is ‘an artist colony for young musi­cians’. The name of the place is from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, which sug­gested an affin­ity with the New Eng­land Tran­scen­den­tal­ists, as well as the idea of retreat to art within nature. More recently, when I served on the Board of Direc­tors for the School, we wres­tled with a phrase that sum­ma­rized their approach, which was that at Walden, one could study music as if it were a lan­guage. You learned to under­stand it, as well as ‘speak’ it. As part of their train­ing, all of the stu­dents com­pose, and just about every­thing that they write is per­formed by a com­bi­na­tion of other stu­dents, fac­ulty, and pro­fes­sional per­form­ers in res­i­dence. When Becca and I were stu­dents, the pro­gram was held in Ver­mont, but since then it has moved to New Hamp­shire. I recently learned with pride, that dur­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion in New York where a cur­rent Walden stu­dent was receiv­ing an award, it was referred to as ‘the renowned Walden School’.

Here’s what the obit­u­ary won’t tell you: Becky (as she was called back then) was no aver­age stu­dent. She had an extra­or­di­nary mind. She was a fine per­former, but not as excep­tional as she was a com­poser. At the time, we were both study­ing the opus 11 piano works of Arnold Schoen­berg. In par­tic­u­lar, the first of those three pieces, we real­ized, was the musi­cal equiv­a­lent of a Hirschfeld car­i­ca­ture, where instead of pick­ing out ‘Ninas’, one could find tens, per­haps hun­dreds of instances of a 3-note cell: b,g-sharp,g-natural — a falling minor third fol­lowed by a half step. In fact, Schoenberg’s piece of early atonal­ity is not so much hid­ing these cells, but like a body, it is almost entirely com­posed of them. Some of the stu­dents wrote a few pieces based on this method of tight con­struc­tion. As an assign­ment, Becky wrote a con­cen­trated gem of a piano piece that I can still play back in my mind. It also was based on a three-note cell, but her’s was c,b-natural,f-sharp, a ris­ing major sev­enth fol­lowed by a falling fourth. The drama of that ini­tial leap, fol­lowed by the smaller leap down, was fol­lowed by a bril­liant inver­sion of the first 3 notes: a,b-flat,e — a falling major sev­enth fol­lowed by a ris­ing aug­mented fourth. Those first 6 notes dis­played her unique sense of musi­cal drama and bal­ance, and along with the finely crafted and dra­matic pas­sages that fol­lowed them, won her a BMI (Broad­cast Music Incor­po­rated) prize at the age of 15. The usual age for win­ning a prize like that is per­haps mid-twenties. Sev­eral of my teach­ers, Pulitzer prize win­ners and now-famous com­posers won a BMI prize when they were older than she was, and many of them didn’t win one at all. I hope to be able to post or point to an online record­ing of the piece. The cas­sette record­ing I had of it is long lost.

Becca and I stayed in touch, mainly via spo­radic let­ters, on and off until I went away to col­lege. I know that she pur­sued a life in teach­ing, beat back breast can­cer, and adopted an adorable child in China who is named Lucy. Those items one can find in her obit­u­ary. What it does not tell you is that she remained extra­or­di­nary — How could she not be? She had her seizure while teach­ing Sci­ence class. Despite the fact that she could no longer teach, she insisted in com­ing back in to see her class. She brought with her the images from her MRIs that indi­cated the tumor. I believe that she also met with each of her for­mer stu­dents to talk about what death was, how it was a part of liv­ing, etc. In essence, she turned her ill­ness and prog­no­sis into a vehi­cle for learn­ing. Frankly, I’m in awe of such courage and clear-headedness.

The obit­u­ary also men­tions that when she learned of her diag­no­sis, she imme­di­ately wrote President-Elect Barack Obama. In fact, her seizure struck just 2 days after the elec­tion. Here is an excerpt from her online diary:

TUESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2009 5:15 PM, CST

When I first found out about the return of my can­cer and that it was ter­mi­nal, one of my first thoughts was to write a let­ter to Obama. Remem­ber, all this began the day after the elec­tion. So I did write one, telling him to use his lead­er­ship to get us to make hard deci­sions. “Your task is daunt­ing. It is not some­thing you can do alone. You will need to con­vince the peo­ple of this coun­try and in this world that they need to and can change. If any­one can do this, it is you. In a cul­ture of lies and con­ve­nience and ease, you have the abil­ity to say the truth clearly and, I hope, the peo­ple of this coun­try have the will­ing­ness to hear your words.”

I wanted VERY badly for him to read the let­ter, but every­one knows how hard it is to get a let­ter to the Pres­i­dent him­self. My sis­ter and her hus­band gave it to some­one who gave it to some­one who gave it to his per­sonal sec­re­tary, the per­son who decides what papers go across his desk. Pretty darned close.

Then today, I got a let­ter from Obama. It was beau­ti­ful. It feels incred­i­bly good to know he heard me.

Rather than link to her let­ter and his reply (which are online else­where), I’d like to pro­vide them here:

Dear President-Elect Obama,

For the last year or so I have felt as if the world was falling apart. Our sys­tem is based on buy­ing more than we need, more cheaply than the true costs. We believe that we deserve com­fort and ease and mate­r­ial things that our Earth can not afford to give us. That is why I hoped so much that you would be elected. You bring hope and true lead­er­ship to this coun­try and this world. There is a chance, now, for my two-year-old daugh­ter to live in a world of beauty and love instead of the chaos and greed I had begun to imag­ine for her.

She is a glo­ri­ous child, full of life and love and humor and she alone is worth chang­ing the world for. You must not fal­ter. I know in my head that there are mil­lions of chil­dren to pro­tect; even adults who have cre­ated this mess are wor­thy. But I must ask you for her in par­tic ular. The day after your elec­tion I learned that I do not have much time. A seven-year-old can­cer has spread to my lungs and brain and will pre­vent me from tak­ing part in the changes that must occur. So I am beg­ging you to lead this world with all your heart and mind, to not take the easy path and to never let the rest of us take it either. This is a lot to ask of you, I know. Our entire par­a­digm must shift. Our deci­sions have been based on mate­r­ial pos­ses­sions and com­forts. Even mine. I just decided a few weeks ago to try to live with­out my own car. I real­ized that I must be part of the solu­tion now before it is too late. But my tiny real­iza­tion must be mag­ni­fied a mil­lion times if it is to save our beau­ti­ful Earth. Our lives must change. We sim­ply can not sus­tain what we are cur­rently doing.

My hope is that you are hon­est and coura­geous enough to lead us in the direc­tion we must go. You have two beau­ti­ful daugh­ters your­self. You know there isn’t a moment to lose.
But your task is daunt­ing. It is not some thing you can do alone. You will need to con­vince the peo­ple of this coun­try and in this world that they need to and can change. If any one can do this, it is you. In a cul­ture of lies and con­ve­nience and ease, you have the abil­ity to say the truth clearly and, I hope, the peo­ple of this coun­try have the will­ing­ness to hear your words. The changes we must make will require almost over­whelm­ing amounts of courage and hope — and that is what you inspire in us.

My dar­ling Lucy can do with­out most of what we have grown accus­tomed to — the mate­r­ial pos­ses­sions and the com­forts. But she needs a healthy Earth and a thought­ful self-sacrificing humankind will­ing to act for our future gen­er­a­tions no mat­ter how difficult.

Please, from the bot­tom of my heart, don’t give up this fight. If you could meet my daugh­ter Lucy, you would know why you can not. And there are mil­lions of Lucys in this world.

Sin­cerely,
Rebecca Hammann

Obama’s reply:

Dear Rebecca,

Thank you for the let ter that you wrote to me on behalf of your daugh­ter. I was moved by your sense of hope and purpose.

You described what makes Lucy unique and glo­ri­ous, and then ended by say­ing that “there are mil­lions of Lucys in this world.” I was struck by the seem­ing con­tra­dic­tion, but of course it’s true — we all know that there are hun­dreds of mil­lions of chil­dren, and yet each is unique.

Just like you, I try every day to build a bet­ter world for my daugh­ters, and to make sure they are ready to enjoy it — that their per­son­al­i­ties are shaped by love, knowl­edge, com­pas­sion, a sense of honor, and the free spirit that my mother always nur­tured in me. While I can’t imag­ine the anguish you feel know­ing that Lucy will grow up with out you, I am pro­foundly hon­ored to be part of the hope that buoys you today.

You are right to be hope­ful, because our chil­dren face a future of lim­it­less pos­si­bil­ity. We know that a sus­tain­able way of life is essen­tial to our chil­dren and grand chil­dren. But beyond that, the quest for sus­tain­abil­ity that you described with such elo­quence and pas­sion is inte­gral as well, because it is a pow­er­ful uni­fier, moti­vat­ing peo­ples and nations to act in con­cert so that all may ben­e­fit.
I have every con­fi­dence that your daugh­ter will grow up to be a part of this, liv­ing out the prin­ci­ples that have moti­vated you and which will live on within her. My heart tells me Lucy will play a part in cre­at­ing the change you and I seek. My faith tells me that you will be smil­ing down on us the whole time.

Sin­cerely,
Barack Obama

With Becca’s death last week, two phrases come to my mind. The first is Shake­speare, from King Lear, when he mourns Cordelia: “Thou’lt come no more, / Never, never, never, never, never.” I will never again hear her unmis­tak­able voice, never again take in those gray-blue eyes, never again kiss her (we kissed once; I thought there would be more but that one was the first and last), she’ll never see the sketches I made of a Sym­phony that included her name (or at least the let­ters E-B-E-C-C-A) worked into it in sev­eral sec­tions. We’ll never have a reunion where we laugh over my youth­ful crush on her (and how one day she finally wrote me a let­ter telling me to lighten up, that I was becom­ing a bit of a pain).

The other is a phrase from one of the Eng­lish trans­la­tions I read of the Tao Te Ching: “The Tao is the mys­te­ri­ous female.” Like many young girls, Becca talked softly and mum­bled. Rather than ask her to say a phrase again, the awk­ward, pim­ply ado­les­cent that I was, I would just guess at what she had said. This, plus the com­plex work­ings of her mind, made her a great mys­tery to me, and one can’t but help but love a mys­te­ri­ous female.

Finally, as a last word, I wanted to include one other entry in Becca’s online diary, which also dis­plays, for lack of a bet­ter word, just how extra­or­di­nary she was, to the end:

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2008 1:25 PM, CST

This whole expe­ri­ence is pro­foundly dif­fer­ent than I would have ever expected. I feel over­whelm­ingly lucky. There is so much good­ness around me. I have to say I’ve been kind of down on humans as a species for a while. When we just go about their busi­ness, we take too much from our Earth and each other. We are so often self­ish and cruel. But when faced with chal­lenge, human beings are a glo­ri­ous thing. We are full of love and strength. Any­thing is pos­si­ble. The thoughts and love com­ing from all of you just proves this. Thank you for shar­ing your thoughts and feel­ings with me!

And it seems clear that this whole expe­ri­ence isn’t really about me. It is about the chal­lenge. The thing that makes us rise up and be what we ought to be. I see those around me do this every­day and it fills my heart with hope. Not for the amount of time I may or may not have, but for all of us.

Becca

Summer in the City

It’s been a while since I’ve writ­ten any­thing, mainly because I always feel the need to take a lit­tle time off in the sum­mer, par­tic­u­larly since this sum­mer weather has been so spec­tac­u­larly good. True, it has been a lit­tle warm, and even on some days, down­right hot. Still, that hasn’t kept us from get­ting out and enjoy­ing the city, vis­it­ing with friends, tak­ing long walks along False Creek, and even a few out­ings with the car.

An Inti­mate Evening with Hummingbird604 and Some Exotic Potent Potables

It was one of those hot nights in Down­town Van­cou­ver when we went out one of the evenings a cou­ple of weeks ago. Rather than try and escape the heat (as any sane per­son would do), we embraced it. We climbed the stair­case to the third floor of The Net­work Hub, one of the shared office space and social incu­ba­tors in town on West Hast­ings and Richards, a cou­ple of blocks away from Water­front Sta­tion. Hummingbird604 (AKA Raul to those who know him), hosted a small group of friends and blog­gers to try out some inter­est­ing new bev­er­ages from China. When we arrived, we were greeted by Christy Nguyen and Minna Van of Urban­bella Mar­ket­ing Group. To go with the liq­uids, they had already begun to put out some Chi­nese food (which was help­ful to see how the liq­uids might go with dif­fer­ent dishes).

The 15 or so of us dug in and chat­ted as we were try­ing to keep cool. I was happy to see plenty of friends, includ­ing Gus (and Russ), Tanya (with her new fiancé, Barry), Degan, Erica and John.

So what were we try­ing? There were three dif­fer­ent items. First, there was a red wine, a saki (or rice wine) and a whiskey, which we could try straight up as well as a mixer in a sort of lemon­ade (which was per­fect for a hot night). I opted imme­di­ately for the most unusual (at least for me) thing to try first: the whiskey, straight up from a shot glass. This is not because I wanted to get drunk fast, but because I tend to be a bit of a purist when it comes to liquor, and love Single-malt Scotch. I was also intrigued, because this whiskey , called Chu Yeh Ching Chiew, was, as an accom­pa­ny­ing infor­ma­tion card put it:

…a spe­cial ancient liquor made from tra­di­tional Chi­nese herbal recipe. It has (a) trans­par­ent golden and slightly green colour, and intense flo­ral herbal aro­mas of dried apri­cot. It’s off dry with a hint of anise and packs a lengthy finish.

What this infor­ma­tion does not include (and which the name and pic­tures on the bot­tle do), is that this is alco­hol fer­mented from bam­boo shoots. I tried it and was impressed. To me, it had the strength of an Irish Whiskey, but the fin­ish was exotic; with a bit of gin­seng, and per­haps another spice. Here’s what the bot­tle looked like:

Here’s my own photo of the bottle:

The com­pany who pro­vided it is Hi-Bridge Con­sult­ing, although as I men­tioned, Urban Bella was the Pub­lic Rela­tions firm who arranged for the tast­ing. I have to say that this prod­uct, with some repack­ag­ing, and per­haps a new, Eng­lish name, could do extremely well. They also offered it in a lemon­ade mixer, which wasn’t as inter­est­ing (but did prove that it could be a fine mixer), but I have to say that straight up, it is a very impres­sive drink. I pro­pose that they call it, Bam­boo Mist, and put it in a dis­tinc­tive, frosted bot­tle with bam­boo brush style let­ter­ing on the label (and keep the bam­boo leaf art as well). Mar­ket it to upscale liquor stores and put it in the sec­tion that has other drinks strongly asso­ci­ated with a coun­try (like Jame­son Whiskey, Aqua­vit, Midori or per­haps Sabra). I real­ize that some of those are liqueurs, but hope­fully you can see where I’m going with this. In addi­tion, there’s the whole sus­tain­abil­ity angle, since bam­boo is one of the world’s most sus­tain­able nat­ural resources (it grows in a vari­ety of places like a weed). Many peo­ple in North Amer­ica have floors and fur­ni­ture made of bam­boo. It makes excel­lent cut­ting boards. If you don’t use a lot of nasty chem­i­cals, it also can pro­duce won­der­ful, earth-friendly and silky fab­ric. One of my all-time-favourite T-shirts is a long-sleeved green­ish cocoa one that feels an awful lot like silk. It is also wash­able and wicks per­spi­ra­tion well. To have a whisky from the same mate­r­ial seems a nat­ural for a mar­ket­ing cam­paign that not only plays off the exotic sound of liquor from ancient Chi­nese bam­boo groves, but also of a whisky that ecology-minded folks can love as well. Are you lis­ten­ing, Hi-Bridge?

There was also a less impres­sive Sake (Sake from China? Well, OK) which did have a strange, thick, almost choco­late taste and con­sis­tency, and an extremely undis­tin­guished Caber­net Sauvi­gnon (sorry), but the Chu Yeh Ching Chiew (although the name doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue for those who don’t speak Chi­nese) made the evening, which in addi­tion to friends, imbib­ing and talk, also included some appro­pri­ate Chi­nese food to nib­ble on.

Another Evening

As I men­tioned, Pam and I have been tak­ing lots of walks after din­ner (mainly to walk off the meal — we have been eat­ing so well lately!) One time we actu­ally drove some­where, how­ever, was a trip down to Rich­mond for the famous Night Mar­ket. It’s an open air mar­ket in an indus­trial park, far from every­where, but you feel as if you’ve gone fur­ther. Besides the booths of every­thing from socks from Korea and iPod/iPhone acces­sories from China, there are the food booths. Oh. My. I really do love street food, and this was no excep­tion. In addi­tion to some fan­tas­tic squid, cooked up on the flames right in front of us:

I also got a ridicu­lously fun (and silly) spi­ral of a fried potato, driz­zled with a hot and sweet chili sauce. Truly a won­der­ful blend of ‘carny’ food and Thai-style spices. As you can see, I was grin­ning like a kid. I think I’m really get­ting psy­ched for our trip to South­east Asia that we’re just start­ing to plan for next year:

A Summer Full of People

Up until recently, many of the pho­tos I’ve been tak­ing this past cou­ple of months have been of nature; flow­ers, birds, the for­est, etc.

Then, Van­cou­ver went all gre­gar­i­ous on us. The fact is, when the days are as beau­ti­ful and com­fort­able as they have been, you just have to get out, and every­body else has the same idea. So this month has been a series of fes­ti­vals, mee­tups, twee­t­ups (think impromptu get-together flash-mob via web mes­sag­ing), BBQs and gen­eral get-togethers.

A cou­ple of weeks ago was Car-Free Van­cou­ver day, in which sev­eral sec­tions of the city blocked off areas to auto­mo­bile traf­fic and ven­dors (and oth­ers) set up booths. Pam and I went up and down a large sec­tion of Main Street, but didn’t get to the other streets that were par­tic­i­pat­ing, includ­ing Com­mer­cial Drive (where the move­ment started) and a large swath of Den­man. We saw every­thing from Tai Chi:

to crowds and bal­loons nearly as far as the eye could see:

Then, this past week­end, it was the Greek fes­ti­val, which took over a stretch of Broad­way to the east of us. It was an enor­mous crowd, and Pam and I chowed down on Souvlaki…

…and Baklava (Pam opted for a lemon pound-cake with almonds called Samali, after a Ugan­dan friend she has of the same name). I learned that my name in Greek is NTABINT (although pho­net­i­cally it’s spelled ∆ABI∆ ). We also real­ized that this sec­tion of the city was full of great lit­tle Greek restau­rants and delis, so now we know where to get the best pita and treats like Koura­bi­ethes (sugar cook­ies), Kataifi (Baklava with shred­ded dough) and the nearly unpro­nounce­able but deli­cious Galak­to­boureko Rolla (Phyllo stuffed with custard).

Last night was the Meetup of all Mee­tups at the Ceilis Irish Pub down­town. A com­bi­na­tion of the Third Tues­day Meetup, The Van­cou­ver Sales Per­for­mance Meetup, Van­cou­ver Blogger’s Meetup, Real Estate Tech­nol­ogy Meetup, Young Pro­fes­sion­als Meetup, Word­Press Meetup and the Van­cou­ver Entre­pre­neur Meetup Group all made for a huge crowd on the rooftop:

I was glad to see a lot of friends and fel­low Van­cou­ver blog­gers there, includ­ing Raul, Tanya, Mon­ica and Shane:

One fun part of this meetup was that there were door prizes, and by pure luck, I won one! Dig­i­tal Smart Homes pro­vided a Kanto Zed iPod Speaker sys­tem, and I’m hav­ing fun unbox­ing it today! Thanks, guys!

See, it wasn’t just a month of flow­ers, birds and trees…

A Musical Mystery

There are a cou­ple of iPhone apps called Shazam and Lis­ten that iden­tify music by hold­ing up the phone to take in the sound as it’s being played or repro­duced, but they’re pretty much lim­ited to songs on the radio. Some ren­di­tions of music don’t lend them­selves to that method of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. For exam­ple, a friend of Pam recently got a music box. It had been in their fam­ily for a long time, and it played a tune that she didn’t rec­og­nize. Her back­ground is Scot­tish, and although we didn’t rec­og­nize the tune, it has a vaguely folk-song sound to it, and at one part, I even detected a ‘Scot­tish Snap’, which is the dis­tinc­tive rhyth­mic pat­tern of a short note fol­lowed by a longer one (after sev­eral of the usual long-short, long-short pat­terns). Here’s what the music box sounds like. I let it play the tune twice:

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Any idea what this melody is? I’m guess­ing it’s a Scot­tish folk song, but it might pos­si­bly be a pop­u­lar tune from years ago.