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 70th 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 Bon Ga, on 4th 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 4th 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.

Happy Thanksgiving to the US

While here in Canada we celebrated our Thanksgiving back on October 12th, this one is ‘the big one’ that we hear about from the South. With that in mind, I thought I’d send a little bit of Beethovenian Good Will (by way of the Muppets) your way, my American friends and family:

(Thanks to Brenda Cadman of October 17 Media for finding this. )

I haven’t been blogging much this month (maybe it’s the rain — 22 days of it this month!, maybe it’s the time of year — very busy). I will make a serious effort to get something more substantial here this coming week. In the meantime…

Seid umschlungen, Millionen!
Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt!

Be embraced, you millions!
This kiss for the whole world!

Louis Andriessen and Passover Seders

Louis Andriessen at 70

Years ago I discovered a stunning and monumental work for Chorus and Orchestra called De Staat (which translates to The State or in this case, ‘The Republic’ based on Plato’s Republic).  If you haven’t heard it (and I strongly recommend checking out a recording), it’s kind of like Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, but with the volume, heart-pounding repetitions and unisonic craggy lines of force taken to 11 (as Spinal Tap would put it). It made a big impression on me, even though I only heard it on recordings, and I even remember using a bit of it in a lecture I gave about the tools and techniques that a composer can use to manipulate the subjective perception of time.  The Dutch composer Louis Andriessen wrote it, and in some ways it has become, like Stravinsky’s Rite,  one of those big, iconic pieces in music history where audiences got to feel not so much a tide turning as a tidal wave crashing upon them. To give you an idea of some of the power of this work, listen to this bit near the beginning where sections of the orchestra pound away until (in a style not unlike contemporary cinema) they get spliced right on to a vista that opens up:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Now imagine a piece for large orchestra and chorus that does this kind of thing for over a half hour with no break. Sections build, crash, and coalesce, like tectonic plates crunching. It’s huge, exhausting, and I would imagine, shattering. As you’d expect, De Staat doesn’t get played very often, but I hope some day to hear it live.

Big orchestra or not, I was thrilled that last week, Andriessen was here, in Vancouver, as part of a world tour, celebrating his 70th Birthday and as part of the Music on Main series. The Turning Point Ensemble, one of Vancouver’s few New Music ensembles, played at Heritage Hall, a distinctive old building on Main. Andriessen’s Zilver, which he wrote in 1994 was last on the program, set up by a series of works by other composers, some of them present in the hall (and a piece by Andriessen’s father, Hendrik, which was a charming, if somewhat out-of-place 19th century-sounding Intermezzo for flute and harp).  Of all the works leading up to Zilver, I liked best David Lang’s Sweet Air, dedicated to Andriessen on his 60th Birthday. Lang won a Pulitzer last year for his Little Match Girl Passion, a setting of Hans Christian Anderson’s story set as a work for singers and orchestra (like Bach’s St. Matthew Passion). It is indeed sweet, and floats along, spinning out endless variations on this opening set of repeating patterns:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

While I don’t have a recording of Zilver (and have never heard it), it was a lot of fun, and full of all sorts of interruptions and collisions of one layer of instruments with another. We also had the treat of Andriessen telling a few funny stories before the performance, alikening the organ’s pedal parts in Bach’s Chorale Preludes to little duets between birds being interrupted by a cow mooing, and how he once performed in a ‘Left-Wing’ Ensemble called ‘Perseverance’ that made the unfortunate choice of setting up their free outdoor concert near the flight path of planes coming in for a landing at a nearby airport, where the interruptions here were a lot bigger than a mooing cow. He was wearing a fedora and raincoat, and seemed to be having as much fun as the rest of us were.  I hope we’ll get 30 more years, at least, of music and stories from this merry agitator from the Netherlands.

Seders in Vancouver, Detroit and Washington D.C.

Last night we hosted a small (3-person) Seder for Pam, her friend Heather, and me, technically on the second night of Passover. I cooked the some of the usual fare: the mortar-symbolic Charoset, which is sort of chutney of chopped apples, mixed nuts, a little honey, cinnamon and red wine, and tzimmes (lots of variation here, but basically it’s sweet carrots with some prunes, and other items – sometimes even with meat). The centrepiece of the meal was a small leg of lamb (or was it the leg of a small lamb?). I roasted it with some rosemary and it came out OK, but I’m still not satisfied with how I cook lamb and need to work on getting a foolproof technique that doesn’t produce meat that’s either rubbery or dried out and greasy.

I found out that the night before (in addition to my parents and other relatives having their Seder in Detroit), there was a Seder at the White House. I was frankly surprised and pleased that Obama would do such a thing, especially as he is the first President to ever host a Seder. The holiday celebrates the end of a period of slavery in the Old Testament, so the parallels between the the Emancipation of American Slaves and the Exodus of Jewish Slaves from Egypt was something that I hope was not lost on the people around the table. Having extended the hand of friendship toward the Muslim world last week in Turkey and preparing to participate in the typical Christian activities this weekend (Attending Church Services on Sunday, the Easter Egg hunt on the White House Lawn, etc.), the Obamas were a class act to include the Jewish holiday as well.

Happy New Year! What if 2008 was a Hoax?

I’m going to start the new year with some thoughts about 2009, which I like more than last year for one trivial reason already: it’s far easier to type. But before that, one final reflection on 2008: On the evening news, a reporter asked some people on the street this question: If you had to describe 2008 in a word, what would that word be? Most (but not all) gave words with negative connotations. I remember some responses, including ‘challenging’, ‘difficult’, and ‘unfortunate’. I’m not sure what my answer would have been. On the one hand, lots of bad stuff happened last year, but on the other, the US elected the first African-American President and it was not all bad for me, personally. Matt Harding, the guy who was behind the Internet viral video Where in the Hell is Matt claims that his beautiful dancing trip and Internet video was actually an elaborate hoax. I’d like to join with him, and actually suggest that all of last year was just a hoax, too.

All except for the bit about Obama getting elected and a bunch of other things, that is.

Happy Solstice, and Wassail!

The snow is still coming down as I write this, at past midnight. It has been snowing since mid-day and shows no sign of letting up. Pam and I decided we would celebrate both this unusual (for Vancouver, anyway) weather, as well as the Winter Solstice (which I blogged about back on the 9th of this month) by going out into the weather, embracing the whiteness that is enveloping our city.
We took a route that had been cited in the Secret Lantern Society’s Winter Solstice Lantern Festival web site, from the Laurel Street overpass (that lets you go from 7th Avenue all the way down to the False Creek seawall). The scene was one of those magical winter nights, when everything is transformed by the falling snow and Christmas lights:

At the end of our walk, we ended up joining some of the other Solstice Celebrants on Granville Island. Here’s a video that I took of some of our trip. The Flip camera did a fair job with the dim light. I exported the video, converted it to DV format and edited it in iMovie:

We returned home to a feast of roast chicken (I had roasted it just before we left), mashed yams and cabbage cooked with double-smoked sausage. We were hungry, and tired, but the food and a little red wine hit the spot.
The only thing we didn’t have was actual Wassail, but I did find a recipe online at The Accidental Hedonist:

Wassail
2 pints and 1/4 cup brown ale (winter ale and scottish ale will also suffice)
3-4 cinnamon sticks
4 cloves
Zest from 1/2 lemon
4 apples
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1 cup port
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground all spice
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large sauce pan, pour in 2 pints of ale. Add the cinnamon sticks, lemon zest and cloves and bring to a simmer over low heat.

Take an apple, and score it with a knife around the circumference of the apple. Place in a baking dish. Repeat this step for all of the apples. Cover with one cup of brown sugar, 1/4 cup of ale, and all of the port. Cover baking dish and place in oven, cooking for 30 minutes.

While apples are baking, place remaining sugar and spices into the sauce pan, ensuring it’s well mixed.

When apples are done baking, place entire contents of baking dish into sauce pan. Allow to cook over a low heat for another 30-40 minutes.

Serve hot, one-two ladles into your favorite mug.

Serves 6-8

Here’s to the beginning of Winter, but at the same time, the start of the Earth’s journey back to longer days ahead of us.