FLICKR pictures

I haven't written much about the hiking trip yet, but I finally got all my pictures uploaded. They can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kp_kyak/sets/72157617798644085/

If you're patient, my next task is actually labeling them all, so they make some sense.

Obsessions

I'm a strange person. For many reasons, but one of them is the way I treat new things. If I download some new music on iTunes, say the semester of choir music, I almost instantly become very attached to one of the pieces. I listen to it multiple times in a row, multiple times a day, for a few weeks. Then I've worn it out and go on to a new thing.

The thing could be a book, a piece of music, a musical artist or composer, a food, a blog, or a tv show. Recently some of these obsessions have been the song Popular from Wicked (music), Unicornis Captivatur by Ola Gjeilo (music), chocolate milkshakes, Hungry Monkey by Matthew Amster-Burton (book - but his blog Roots and Grubs is a previous obsession), and The Girl Who Ate Everything by Robyn Lee (blog).

The music obsessions are the easiest and are usually cured with $.99 on iTunes and about 4-8 listens per day, usually on the bus. The blogs are the hardest because I can spend whole weekends going through archived posts. The book obsessions are odd, because usually I'll only read the book once, but then I'll reference it a lot and tell other people about it. Or, in the case of Hungry Monkey, I read it, then cook from it, tell people about it, AND watch all the press about it. (Tonight I made Yeasted Waffles with candied bacon a la Joy the Baker)

But one of the interesting side effects of this is that encountering the obsession at a later date brings back strong memories of the time of the obsession. Hearing Stan Rogers or Da Vinci's Notebook brings me back to my dorm room in college, Gordon Lightfoot and the Cambridge Singers remind me of my parents' house, and Kate Rusby of spring break in 2004 wandering around Europe. Nachos and ice cream sundaes are spring semester Senior year of college. Madeleine L'Engle with the spring of Junior year of High School when I read 30 of her books in a month for a "research project" at school.

So that's a little insight into me...

Outrage followed by childish grins

So there's a news story in the Minnesota papers that's made it to national news. I first noticed it last week before it was such a big deal.

The basis of the story is this. There's a 13 year old boy in a town called Sleepy Eye, MN who has Hodgkin's lymphoma. His story was in the paper last week because he and his family are refusing chemotherapy. Chemo which would rid him of cancer with 85-90% liklihood. Without it, his doctors predict he will die within five years. Last week the court decided it was medical negligence and ruled that yesterday he get a chest x-ray. He got it and the cancer is back to the level it was before he got his single chemo treatment. Today they had a court hearing to determine what to do. BUT...he didn't show up. And he and his mom are missing. (Which is why this is a national case now...)

From the Star Tribune article: "Anthony Hauser said he last spoke to his wife about 4 p.m. Monday as he milked cows at the family farm near Sleepy Eye. He said his wife told him she was going to leave and "That's all you need to know.""

So now there's a warrant for the mom's arrest in any state and the prosecuter is working to see if he can get the dad put in jail until the child is found. The judge also found the mom in contempt of court and has ordered the boy to be put into a foster home as soon as he's found where he will get medical treatment. "County officials had "kind of suspected this would happen,""

I read some of the court transcripts last week which fascinated me in a way. The boy is one of eight children in a Catholic household, but his family also subscribes to the belief that natural medicine will cure all.

This wouldn't be quite so bad if it seemed like the boy was educated to the point where he would seem to understand the decision he's making...BUT that is not the fact. Unfortunately he's one of the people that gives "home-schooling" a bad name. From a Star Tribune opinion piece: "When tested by his teacher for entrance into a charter school, according to court documents, Daniel, who had been home-schooled, could not identify the following word: "The." "

More info from the Star Tribune.

So hopefully the boy will be found and he'll get his treatment and learn to make decisions for himself.

BUT I want to end this on a happy note, so I'll send you off to watch this clip of a incredibly functional family. Matthew Amster-Burton is a fun food writer who became a stay at home dad when his daughter Iris was born. He has a new book out called "Hungry Monkey: A Food-Loving Father's Quest to Raise an Adventurous Eater." The book is fun, fast, and full of stories and recipes. Matthew and Iris were on CBS' Early Show this morning. Check out the clip on his blog.

Foreign Language Help

I'm currently doing research that involves online communities and multiple languages. As part of this, I'm analyzing some exceedingly popular languages (Spanish, German, Japanese...) as well as some less studied communities (Volapuk, Ukrainian, Esperanto).

The idea is that we're doing some basic text processing. To reduce the amount of time this takes and the value of the analysis, we're wanting to exclude a standard list of stop words. These are words, in English, such as in to a and the that, etc. (Examples in English, German, French) While I can find these for most European languages and have learned of other languages (Japanese, Chinese) don't really have a concept of stop words in their language.

While I've found stop word lists for most of the languages, I'm stumped on three languages: Esperanto, Volapuk, Ukrainian, and Bengali. Any insights would be appreciated.

Still slacking...more eye candy

So I'm still bad about posting, but I know some of you check everyday for posts, so here's a picture. My travel and life should calm down in a week, so hopefully I'll post about my trips and migraines and many other things that Simon and I have been brainstorming. (Click for higher resolution photos.)

Panorama of the canyon at Coyote Gulch (on the way out)

Panorama of basecamp: Everyone is lounging around reading except for Charles and Reid who are cooking dinner. Apologies to Andy W. because in this panorama his head got squished.

Back from my break

I've been out of town for several weeks, first in Boston at CHI, the big conference in my field and for the past two weeks in Southern Utah on a backpacking trip with friends.

Hopefully I'll get pictures and stories up soon, but here are some previews.

At the ocean with my cousin and two of his kids in Groton, CTLooking down to the Escalante River and Stevens Natural ArchAndy is a cavemanBen is going on a hikeReid, our fearless trip leader

The Magical Interwebs

So the internet is this cool thing. You can talk to people online, or as my mom would say "talk" to people online, and write letters, and download music, and record the minutiae of your life. Pretty fast and advanced and you can save shipping costs on purchases, right?

Wrong. I decided to buy the Eric Whitacre Concert Download. It's an online download. I didn't buy it on Friday or Sunday cause I hadn't decided if I wanted to buy it yet. It's $15, I'm a soon-to-be-poor grad student. I went online yesterday to buy it and noticed something strange. The price was listed as $15 plus shipping and handling. That's odd, I thought to myself, why would they charge shipping on an online download.

The total cost for me will be $18.98. $3 shipping and $.98 tax. So. There are people that will address an envelope (at my church) and then mail it to me with a card in it. The card will have a code that I have to go type in on a website to get my download.

I told this to Ben and he came up with a good analogy: "It's like I respond to an email with a paper letter, that I mail, and then they respond via email." WHAT? Bizarre. I think I'll call them tomorrow and see if I can stop by the office with $16 in hand in exchange for a magic code...

A scattered musical post

This weekend I went to several musical events around town. I went to the VocalEssence Community Sing with Eric Whitacre, the English Soireé by soloists at church, and the open rehearsal for the Eric Whitacre Extravaganza.

Usually if I love listening to a piece, I love singing a piece. The opposite is not always true. There are a number of pieces that I love singing, but they aren't great listening pieces. I love music. Being surrounded by it and participating in the joy it provides. In my singing days I've enjoyed singing pieces from Pachelbel, Bach, Britten, Tavener, Duruflé, Schwartz, Swayne, etc. Whitacre is different (in a good way). Here's what the Pioneer Press had to say "Teenagers are shouting from the balconies. The sellout crowd is on its feet, roaring its approval. The handsome young star stands center stage, pumping his fist, caught up in the excitement. You're at ... a choral concert at Minneapolis' Orchestra Hall."

For those of you who are more visual, here's the image. I described him to my dad as looking "kindof like a surfer dude." Let's just say there's a reason why many of the women at the Friday event had brought their cameras. (A reason he also plays to by expressing that there's a reason he writes for SATB and not TTBB, etc. He is married and has a son though...in case you wondered.)

Image from vocalessence

Whitacre burst onto the music scene in the 90s. By the time I encountered his music in 2002, he had made a name for himself in both the choral and band worlds. His music has a unique sound. He uses tonal clusters liberally and enjoys very textured lines. His work is mostly not-sacred, but conveys feelings that many sacred pieces convey.
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I just got off the phone with my dad and I think I've figured out how to word this. There are two primary types of music that give me goosebumps. (I'll reserve the right to get goosebumps to other music as well.)

First is perfectly harmonious and resolved sections of pieces. The most recent example that I can think of is the last page of Hymn to the Creator of Light by John Rutter. (It's the only Rutter piece I've ever heard that doesn't sound like Rutter.) This is also the vibe I get from She's Always a Woman or Down to the River to Pray by the King's Singers. Exquisitely executed simple harmonies that appeal to the "pretty music" side of me. As I write I think of more examples: Ubi Caritas by Duruflé.

Second is music that conveys power and commands respect. My dad brought up the example of the countertenor in the top line of Henryk Góreck's Totus Tuus, about 2.5 minutes in. This is the raw power that is conveyed in much of Whitacre's work, be it a piece talking about love, Leonardo da Vinci, or the death of a child. The tonal clusters and clashing sound waves help to build the angst within the power and portray conviction.

I don't feel as if I am really able to explain this in words. If there's enough interest, I could make a cd that I think would be able to write my post much better than me.
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One of the really fun things in getting to sing with Whitacre at the Friday event and watching him at the open rehearsal was seeing him conduct his own music. I'd sung it before, but with other conductors. As Philip mentioned, it's unusual these days for a composer to be able to conduct and Whitacre does it with ease and elegence. On Friday we started off with Lux Aurumque and sang the firs two measures without music about ten times before he stopped us and laughed, saying that he should have brought more than the 4 songs he'd planned for the 1.5 hours. I love the talent in this town. He's very expressive and conducts almost all his pieces without music. His movements are like those of a dancer. My dad picked up on this by just looking at the still photos.

Images from vocalessence

Enough eye candy folks!
Some music is available on his myspace page and he also has a facebook page with most of the music from his techno-opera based on manga featuring kickboxing angels.
In summary: Eric Whitacre rocks and goosebump music is awesome.

A bonus prize for making it to the end of this scrambled post. Maria Jette sings in my church choir. She was one of the soloists on Saturday night, having rushed over from the Prairie Home Companion taping in downtown Minneapolis, where she sang Air on a G String. Not exactly your grandmother's Bach.

Happy Picture Post

I was going to write about some people I currently detest. (People in the news not in real life.) Then I got too down, and decided to post travel pictures instead. (But if you would like to read about tolerating the intolerant, please take a look at this sermon. Yes, I post a large amount of sermons given that most of my 4 readers don't go to church, but I find that my ministers put a lot of time and intellectual thought into their sermons and I feel that you, my readers would appreciate that.)

When I went to Chicago last month, I spent over 16 hours (with power) on the train. I could only work on my paper submission for so long, so I spent some time organizing my pictures and pulling out favorites. Here are six pictures from my travels, proving that I travel to places other than Europe.I never tire of this image from Florence, Italy. I've posted it before, but I think it's my favorite travel picture to date. Great memories of lots of gelato with Rachel and some amusing incidents with my Italian. Namely that in trying to buy bus tickets I ended up buying two parking spots for one hour at the train station in Lugano, Switzerland. In 2004, I studied in England and got 4 weeks off over Easter to review for exams and travel. My roommate was also studying abroad in France so I went to visit her in Grenoble and then we flew up to London to tour the UK for a week. This was taken by her bus stop on the way to the University of Grenoble. I love the alps!
May Day (Ascension Day) at St. John's College Cambridge. The choir was supposed to sing from the tower, but the rain and hail made that unsafe, so they sang from the yard. All the children from the school were all around the courtyard with parents and tourists. Quite a festive occasion, made more so with the great white and red robes.
This is from a class trip to Mexico in 2003. We were studying the role of women in the Zapatista community and traveled to Oaxaca and Chiapas. This lady was part of a women's weaving cooperative about an hour from Oaxaca city. The coop was called Las Mujeres De Vida Nueva.
Sometimes I even travel when injured. This was my current state when Mom was visiting California this past summer. My equipment that week ranged from crutches and aircast to cam walker boot and cane. We couldn't miss the opportunity to visit Monterey and take cheesy injured Katie pictures.

Misread Headline of the day

I read a lot of headlines on a daily basis (NY Times, Star Tribune, NPR, Slashdot, etc) and I often miss a letter or read something incorrectly. I thought it would be funny to post them

I read: Bacon Restored to Glamour of Vaudeville Days
I imagined an article about how bacon is in, as it once was. I was a little confused as to the tie between bacon and Vaudeville. Then I read it again.

Actual Title: Beacon Restored to Glamour of Vaudeville Days
A theatre is restored. Way less confusing and funny.