Bach Meets Bluegrass - Happy Easter!

I absolutely agonized over what to post this weekend for Easter. I just couldn't decide. At first I thought I'd do the finale of the st. john passion, or maybe the st. matthew passion, or even part of the B Minor Mass. But none of those pieces really seemed right. Then I thought about Mahler's "Resurrection symphony," but no. Perhaps I wasn't being creative enough. Maybe a gospel arrangement of the Hallelujah Chorus? Nah. I even thought about posting Rimsky-Korsakov's "Russian Easter Overture," if only to commemorate when Dr. strauch nearly got hit on the head by a falling light fixture in Music History. But I realized that what I really wanted to post was my favorite of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos. To me this piece is Pure Joy, which I figured was appropriate enough for Easter. And that is when I stumbled across this, and I knew it was meant to be. Let's just say, I know my audience. :-) Happy Easter!

Good Friday

Ben Brody introduced us to this piece in Music History I and I don't think I've found any other piece that captures the crucifixion quite so well. The Latin translates simply to "For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. "

Classical Music PSA

This is a bit premature but it's Palm sunday and I've got more Easter music than I know what to do with. I just have to share the opening of Bach's "Johannespassion" or auf English "st. John passion." I personally just cannot get over the fact that a group of people can just get together and, with the help of some bits of wood and string and things, make something like this! It just blows my mind.

Herr, unser Herrscher, dessen Ruhm
Lord, our ruler, whose glory
In allen Landen herrlich ist!
is magnificent everywhere!
Zeig uns durch deine Passion,
Show us through your passion,
Dass du, der wahre Gottessohn,
that you , the true son of God,
Zu aller Zeit,
at all times
Auch in der größten Niedrigkeit,
even in the most lowly state,
Verherrlicht worden bist!
are glorified.

songkran

This week is the traditional Thai new year, known as songkran. songkran is a pretty big deal. It's basically a week-long water fight, kind of a way to keep cool during the summer. The nursing dorm is closed all week, so I've moved in to Esther and Rob's place. They're still on tour in the states, but there are plenty of other people around.

Even though songkran officially started on Wednesday, the city began preliminary festivities around Monday. When crossing the Ping River, I was showered by some sprinklers that I can only assume the city installed for the week. In the preceding weeks, stores were selling all manner of water guns. You could not go shopping anywhere without encountering a display of super soakers. My favorite model thus far was a Hello Kitty themed weapon, complete with Hello Kitty backpack for the storage of extra water. There are many of these backpack guns, generally featuring cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse or Winnie the Pooh.  

Tuesday was my first legitimate experience of songkran. I was on my way to get some dinner when I spotted one of the nursing students in a group lurking outside of 7'eleven. They saw me approaching and the student called out "teacher!" excitedly. I had no intention of eating my dinner in soggy clothes, so I skillfully maneuvered around them. I felt a bit bad depriving them of their fun, so on my way back from the restaurant I let them get me. They were actually very polite about it. My student poured a bucket of water over me while saying "sorry! sorry!" and kindly avoided getting my hair or purse wet. My other encounters around Esther and Rob's neighborhood have been similarly tame. 

On Wednesday, I had been planning to go and check out the festivities around the old city, but I awoke to rain and cold temperatures. It had been gradually getting hotter and hotter and the last couple of days had been stifling, but somehow we had another freak rainy day. This is very unusual for this time of year I am told. I have really lucked out on the weather. Last year was one of the hottest summers in living memory in Chiang Mai. Anyhow, a water fight in the rain didn't sound like tons of fun, and I knew that I would have plenty more opportunities to witness the festival. All I usually want to do on rainy days is grab a cup of tea and read a good book, so that's exactly what I did. Maybe it was a bit lame, but I enjoyed my day and I'm apologizing to no one. But today the weather was perfect and I managed to make it down to the moat area and witness the craziness that is songkran. I carefully selected a set of clothes that I didn't mind getting wet in nasty moat water and then joined Vicky and Mai in walking down to the base of operations: sarah's boyfriend's apartment.

The closer we got to the moat, the crazier things got. Not only were there people at random spots on the side of the road, waiting to douse passersby, but there were several pickups driving around with huge jars of water in the back, from which people would make sort of mobile attacks on pedestrians. By the time we made it to our destination, we were already soaked. since Kevin lives right across from the moat, our "base" was right in the thick of it. It ended up being just the three of us for the day, although we ran into a few others. For a while we stationed ourselves in the driveway, where one of the other tenets was maintaining a full barrel of water. We all bought plastic buckets and began to throw water at people from said barrel. People were driving by on motorcycles or in the back of pickup trucks at a snails pace. As far as I can figure out, what most people do for songkran is slowly drive around the moat several times while throwing water at each other and drinking beer. Things were actually a lot tamer than I had expected. I'd been told to go in a group because the drinking can get out of hand, while there were plenty of high spirits (and spirits of other kinds) I never felt like it was out of control. That's not to say it's completely safe. I guess there are plenty of drunk driving accidents during this week. 

After holding down the fort for a while, we decided to walk around a bit. We were attacked mercilessly by other people stationed around the moat. I tried not to think about what was in that of water. As long as you don't think about how unhygienic it is, it really is a lot of fun. It's like the mother of all water fights. In fact, Bangkok broke the Guinness World Record for the largest "water pistol fight." 


Unfortunately I didn't want to risk my camera, so I don't have any photos of songkran in Chiang Mai. You'll just have to imagine rows of people lined up on both sides of a moat, all throwing water at each other using buckets or water guns or whatever. some people even had supplies of ice, which made for some freezing cold showers. People were blaring music out of loudspeakers and there were some live bands along the way. Mai and Vicky stopped at one of these and joined the people moshing in front of the stage. since this type of dancing isn't really my thing and by now I was feeling quite tired, I decided to head off on my own. I walked around a bit more, wanting to get a good feel for the festival. I poked my head in a temple along the way, where there were opportunities to make merit. I'm not sure exactly what was going on. Perhaps some day I will be brave enough to actually initiate a conversation with one of the monks. For now I can only guess and occasionally ask a Thai acquaintance about it. 

I cut my way back across the city and returned home, extremely tired and footsore. On Friday I went out again in the late afternoon, but only briefly. I felt I'd experienced the holiday sufficiently. It was pretty fun, but very tiring. Loy Kratong is still my favorite Thai holiday, but it was nice to have an excuse to walk around the city and cool off a bit. My favorite was encountering little kids waiting  outside their family's small business with their parents. There's something about getting attacked by little kids with super soakers that just makes life better. 


As usual, I can't seem to really describe it adequately, but I think you get the idea. Bangkok Post has some good pictures up if you feel curious. http://www.bangkokpost.com/multimedia/photo/231834/water-fun-begins. 

Jazz PSA

somehow I've gotten stuck on listening to a lot of Maroon 5 lately. I'm not a huge fan of all of their music. Adam Levine's soulful singing can be a little grating at times. But some of their songs just grab you, you know? I was trying to figure out what it was about them that sets them apart from the general blahness of most pop artists and I realized it was the blues influence. You can hear it in their most popular songs. The lead singer uses blues inflection all the time and "sunday morning" is built on a ii-V-I progression.

My point is that the blues has given a lot to American music (huge understatement), so I thought I'd feature a blues master this week: Gene Harris. And since it's summertime here (and super hot again), I found a clip of him playing summertime. Unfortunately, it gets a little out of sync, but I don't know what is hotter, the weather or his playing.

Ode to a Cockroach

I thought I would overcome it with time, but it seems that I have a deeply held irrational fear of cockroaches. The sight of a single cockroach alarms me more than a swarm of bees or a giant spider. I tell myself that they can't hurt me and that I'm being silly, but it's no good. No amount of rationalizing will make me brave enough to approach the critters. They are gross and disgusting and yucky.

Which brings me to yesterday, when both of my English classes were cancelled due to the fact that today is a public holiday. I found myself with a lot of extra time and not much to do. In the course of my boredom, I ran across this gem, a collection of haiku about cats. Yeah, don't ask. Anyhow, I was inspired to write a series of haiku about my experiences with cockroaches in Thailand. I'd never written a haiku before, but I solved that problem by reading a wikihow article. Okay, so they're not legit haiku. The point is, it kept me busy.

My sworn enemy

is brown with icky long legs,

it scuttles around.

Cockroach on the floor.

Me on my desk, throwing things --

limited success.

I will kill it dead

with my shoe on the broomstick.

Crap, where did it go!

Behind the toilet

it waits for me to sit down --

I put on shoes first. 

It goes down the drain.

I put a bowl over top --

the bathroom is wet.

And I even wrote one in spanglish:

La cucaracha

ya no puede caminar

porque yo smasho.

Classical Music PSA

Thank you to Laura for sharing this wonderful Beethoven trio. I am so grateful, I didn't even use an exclamation mark to show my enthusiasm. Here is the third movement.