It's been six years since I last wrote on my blog but because I'm going on a decently long trip to Asia I'm going to try to get back into it..more to follow...

Another sabbatical update!

Well, its been a long time since I last updated this blog, but my sabbatical work has continued. Right now I am in a Caribou coffee shop, from which I can see a sparkling Lake Geneva. I have spent the last few days here - thanks to generous friends who let me use their beautiful condo. The book continues to evolve. Since I last wrote, I have completed three video recording sessions and have done the rough editing for that part. My students and I had a great time during the recording sessions - and I learned a lot. The challenge will be to be more selective with the video excerpts I have and then write the commentary before I record the voice-over for the video in June. That may well be the most difficult part - fitting everything together! As far as writing, I got three more chapters done this week - these were the most difficult ones and I am glad they are written..of course edits will follow, but it is so much easier to edit than to write it in the first place!

While the sabbatical project is going well, I am also in the midst of a kitchen remodel. This is something I have needed/wanted to do for a while, but never seemed to have the time to get to, so when I arrived back home from my time down south I decided to look into it. I have learned a lot on that front as well. I am in the waiting-for-the-cabinets portion and demo should start sometime in the next several weeks, subject to lots of things I can't control!! It has been fun and time-consuming as well, but a nice change.

I had a wonderful trip down south after the month of writing in South Carolina with time spent in Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky and Ohio, visiting former students and friends. The other amazing aspect of this sabbatical is the removal of a layer of stress that is easy to lose perspective on when one is in the midst of a busy, structured schedule! I am loving the flexibility and opportunity to even read a book, since I have time to do that!! So I am treasuring every moment of this sabbatical and am gratefully aware of the blessing it is!

I hope you - dear reader - are in the midst of a joyful season!

Walking on the Beach!!

Well, I'm a little late for my weekly blog update.....so I thought I better do it tonight before I am on the road again!!
Last Friday, I had my last day of writing in Lexington, South Carolina...I had set a specific goal to finish a certain portion of the book that will have a video connection and also complete an outline of the video snippets and the accompanying narration. I am happy to report that I did reach those goals. There is still quite a bit more to do in the next few months - more specific preparations for the video shoot in mid-March and several more chapters to write, but I am excited for the progress that has been made..

On Friday afternoon, my friends, Curtis and Lois Funk arrived in Lexington and we had a lovely couple days seeing the area around Columbia and visiting with a former music education student who is teaching less than an hour away. I packed and cleaned the condo and we took off for Hilton Head Island on Sunday afternoon. It was an interesting drive, as the area of South Carolina south of Columbia is referred to as the Low Country and you can feel it change - the vegetation is different - lots of Spanish moss hanging from the trees and lots of water visible in the low lying land along with more humidity in the air!

Since arriving, we have had a wonderful week! We took Monday to explore the island and walk on the beach (the Atlantic Ocean beach!) in the warm temperatures. Tuesday we took an hour boat trip to Daufuskie Island - a fascinating place. Early on, in this country's history it was made up of plantations with slaves. After the Civil War, the slaves were freed, and because the island plantation owners could not afford to pay for labor they sold their land to the freed slaves and left the island. With no bridges and little contact with the outside world, they made their living by fishing and farming. Isolation allowed them to maintain their culture and language, which is called Gullah. The Gullah people originated in Angola in West Africa and have many rich traditions and folklore. We drove around the island on a golf cart and saw lots of historical churches, schools, and cemetaries; few of the roads are paved and it is quite an undeveloped place in terms of commerce (one) or places to eat (two). It was a great day and to top it off, the whole trip was free because we sat and listened to a pitch about a timeshare company on Monday! That presentation was actually quite informative and fairly low pressured and we were able to go to Daufuskie without cost, as a result!!

Wednesday, we went to Charleston and had a great day - it was sunny and in the low 70s. We ate at a great barbeque place called Sticky Fingers - highly recommended!!! And then we walked around the old town and went on a carriage ride and heard a lot of early US History stories. Even though I was there earlier in the month, I got to see other places I didn't go to on my first visit so it was a fun day!! Today, we decided we needed a little down time so we stayed on Hilton Head, took a walk in our area and then went down to the beach and walked for over an hour - it was in the high 70's; I had sandals and capris on and walked barefoot on the sand for a while with the fairly comfortable water lapping at my toes!! I now have some color on my face to show for it! Tomorrow the plan is to go to Savannah - about an hour away - and see the old city. We leave on Sunday and head south to Florida... more later on that...

I have felt so blessed this last month - it has been a great mix of work and play and I am so grateful for this opportunity! Thank you for reading this - I hope you have some joy in your heart, as well!

Update #3

I am now in the final week of my time in Lexington, SC... I arrived back "home" last night after a wonderful, long weekend in North Carolina. I drove to Chapel Hill to visit Matt and Rebekah Carlson, former students and good friends. They had a baby just before Christmas and I was blessed to meet little Ingrid. I have never held a 4-week baby before..she is so adorable and already has a great variety of facial expressions!! We spent lots of time talking and had some amazing food! (Chapel Hill has some wonderful places to eat!!). On Sunday afternoon I made the short drive to Cary and spent time with the Tom, Elly and Jennifer Streeter. We had a great time as well and I had a wonderful and much-needed massage with Jennifer. It was a refreshing weekend!

I made good progress with my writing last week..The big picture, as well as little details, continue to come to me and I completed what I consider to be one of my most challenging chapters. My primary goal for my time here is to complete the chapters that will have a video component to them so I can construct the script and organize the recording, which is scheduled for mid-March. On that front, I am almost done, with just one more chapter to write this week, so I am thankful for what I have been able to finish. It was interesting to me that even while I was driving home last evening, little ideas came to me - things that I need to include in the book, so I imagine these ideas will continue to emerge as I continue to get away from it and come back to it...This has been an interesting process and one that I have enjoyed. I am so grateful for the time to do this!!

I will update again before I leave here and head to Hilton Head for a week with some friends for a little R&R. I hope you have a good week!

At the End of Week Two..

For having no "normal" agenda, it is amazing how full a week can be!! I am just slightly over halfway finished with my time in this lovely place, focused on my writing...

So this week, I had some struggles with losing my focus and being blocked in my writing. In those moments, I was able to focus on reading, which allowed me some productivity, as it was reading I needed to do. I read some fascinating material on how we learn musical skills, thanks to a former Illinois professor, Daniel Kohut. I found a good deal of resonance with many of his ideas. And then I read Shinichi Suzuki's Nurtured By Love, which is the story of how the Suzuki method of teaching was developed. It was quite a moving book, and helpful for me, since all I really knew about the Suzuki method was the endless repetitions of "Twinkle, Twinkle..." :-)

I did make some progress on writing, but it was Friday, where some really important things really came together. I was pretty frustrated and finally, I was walking around this place, and I started praying out loud, reminding the Lord that He had called me to this project and I needed his help because I was really stuck (some of you know the story how this whole book project came out of a sense of the Lord's guidance at the beginning of this whole process). Anyway, it was maybe 20 minutes later that I was writing the section about 2-mallets and all of a sudden the whole organization of my material became quite clear and because of that I was able to make sense of the organization of what I was writing at the time. I started furiously writing and after about an hour, I stopped and realized that a whole lot had come into place.. I know this sounds ridiculously vague, but the details would bore you and the bottom line was that I was ecstatic, because there was a whole lot of material that I couldn't figure out how to organize and it all just came together! After dinner, I continued to write until about 10pm and put it away with a great deal of satisfaction and thankfulness!!

Along with that wonderful experience, the weekend was fabulous. On Saturday morning I headed north to Hickory, North Carolina to visit a good friend who teaches at Lenoir-Rhyne College. He has been going through some really tough times, so it was good to sit and talk with him and enjoy the beautiful day - and eat some local barbeque!! Mmmmm..

Then today, I visited the Church of the Apostles in downtown Columbia where Chip Edgar is the rector. I first met Chip in my music appreciation class and he was quite the character (which is why I remembered him). Later, he became a priest in the Episcopal Church, and ministered in Wheaton for a time. They left for South Carolina 7 years ago and it was the friend I had lunch with two weeks ago who reminded me he was here - even though she couldn't remember his name! So I found him online and went this morning! The service was very uplifting and lunch with the family was so fun...I really appreciated being with Chip and Beth and their kids - it was a good time.

The day finished with a visit to one of my first percussion majors (who graduated in the mid-70's). He and his family are in Augusta, GA - less than an hour away from where I am staying. He teaches percussion at UGA and marching band at a big high school outside of Augusta. We had a wonderful conversation over dinner, catching up on 35 years of life! It was a fabulous way to end the weekend! I continue to be thankful for these moments which have allowed me to connect with friends in the midst of the very solitary work I am doing during the week. I am blessed!!

Since tomorrow is a holiday and since I was given a free pass to see the Biltmore House in Asheville, NC, I'm going to drive north and take my extended weekend. I really, really like this idea of just working during the week and having the weekend off!

Thanks for reading! I hope you have a great week!

At the End of the first Week

I have had a wonderful and productive week here in Lexington, SC. Never having written a book before, I wondered how I would respond to the daunting task of actually sitting down and writing a book, but I started by making a file for all of the chapters I already had a sense of (which was added to during the week as my mind became completely focused on marimba pedagogy). I managed to write two chapters completely from scratch and I edited another chapter based on something I had written to a former student on how to wrap marimba mallets several years ago and I also made good progress editing an article I wrote for the Journal of Percussion Pedagogy in 2008. So it has been an amazing week - and I have enjoyed it a great deal. There were several days when I didn't even go outside because I was so into what I was doing, but by the end of the week, I started to relax a bit and give myself some down time.

I drove to Charleston, SC - a two-hour drive - on Saturday and spent a lovely day there. I had never been there and it was fun to walk along the water in the older part of the town. The weather was gorgeous - around 70 degrees and completely sunny. I walked quite a ways and took lots of great pictures - unfortunately I didn't bring the cable that will get my pictures from my camera to this blog, so that will have to come later. It was neat to see the style of Charleston - different kinds of homes, in a variety of colors on quite narrow streets - some of them cobblestone. I walked past a French Hugenot Church and heard the guide (who was leading a small group of people in a carriage pulled by a horse) that this particular church was the last French Hugenot congregation in the country. It was a beautiful church and just down the road from an old Episcopal Church that had several cemetaries, where there were graves from the 1700's!! I found the section of Church Street that was the inspiration for "Catfish Row" in the Dubose Heyward story "Porgy" (this story later became the basis for George Gershwin's opera "Porgy and Bess"). I also wandered through the market place but didn't find anything I had to buy. A quick stop at Whole Foods and Trader Joes on the way out of town (all TJ's and Whole Foods are at least 100 miles away from where I am staying!) made a perfect end to a wonderful day.

After attending a non-denominational church this morning, I decided to take advantage of another beautiful day and walked a couple miles on the dam. There is an almost 2-mile dam on Lake Murray - a very large area lake (I was told it has almost 500 miles of shoreline with all the inlets and fingers on the lake), and there is a nice wide path for the "dam walkers," people who walk or run this stretch along the lake. I went halfway - one mile - and then turned around. It was a great time!

Then I came home, did some cleaning and a load of laundry, and then some baking and cooking during the Denver-Eagles game. After that I realized that I had a completely non-work weekend - a Sabbath - that I rarely get during the school year!! So my goal is to continue to work diligently during the week and explore on the weekends! What a novel idea!!

School starts tomorrow and there is a part of me that is going to miss my students and my teaching, but the other part is delighted to have this wonderful opportunity!

On sabbatical..

Well, I usually write on my blog when I am traveling somewhere and this is no exception. But the difference is that I am currently in South Carolina - in Lexington - staying in a friend's condo and I will be here for about a month, writing a book on marimba pedagogy....essentially a book on how to teach marimba to everyone from a beginner to a college student! It will cover a wide variety of topics beyond the obvious mallet technique and will reflect what I have learned from my many years of teaching! I am excited to do this!!

I came south for a couple reasons - to get away from the distractions that home, friends and the familiar provide and it doesn't hurt that it is warmer down here - though winter has not really been nasty up north yet. It was 63 here today and it will get cooler one of these days, but for now I am enjoying the change of scenery and warm weather. I arrived yesterday and my hosts left today. I spent the afternoon driving around and becoming more familiar with the area (after my hosts drove me around last evening). I learn the lay of the land faster when I drive myself and try to find those places that I saw as a passenger.

Tonight (New Years Eve) I am "home," listening to Prairie Home Companion as I write this blog. I am now fully aware that while I have done my grocery shopping and put things away that I am indeed here by myself! My good-ole introverted self will adjust to this and my intent is to start my work on Monday. Its interesting because I often spend my New Years Eve alone - praying and thinking about the past year and will likely do so later tonight. I have a great deal to be thankful for!

I'll sign off for now and will try to post a couple times a week...I think I can do this since it will be a very different kind of writing.

To all who read this, I hope you have a blessed 2012!

Sunset on the Indian Ocean from a favorite restaurant!

Notice the dhou - an old style ship - off to the right as it crosses the path of the sun in the following pictures.

Economics and Eating

Perhaps the first shock upon arriving in Zanzibar was the money: the Tanzanian shilling is the currency and there are about 1400 of them to a US dollar!! So a bottle of coke or a 1.5 liter of water (which we bought everyday) was 1,500 to 2,000 shillings; an hour of internet 2,500 shillings; a typical dinner 10,000 to 20,000 shillings...it took a little while to get used to this!! The tour guide for our spice tour, who is in his mid-30's, told us that when he was a boy, the rate of exchange was 5 Tanzanian shillings to the dollar and now it is 1,400! Quite a devaluation... So while the numbers are huge, when you stop to figure it out, most things are pretty inexpensive comparatively.

As for the food, the first day we arrived we had a traditional Swahili meal – mostly rice and curry dishes (Zanzibari curry is a little different than Indian curry-not quite as spicy). Each morning for breakfast, there was fruit juice – the most intriguing and one of my favorites was an avocado/passion fruit combination which was really tasty and very unique; we had slices of papaya and other fresh fruit as well.

Because of the many influences on the island (Indian, Arabic and Swahili), the food is quite varied. The most common foods are “chips,” also known as french fries...it is difficult to get through a day without them because they are served with so many dishes. Rice is also used a lot; I ate vegetable curry for the majority of my lunches – mostly to get more vegetables in my diet and to avoid the fries, which were delicious, but not something I wanted to eat every day.

One evening part of our group had a meal in a home; it was a traditional meal that would be served during Ramadan, after an entire day of fasting (it was not Ramadan when we were there, but the food was what one would eat for the special meals of the year – much like our Thanksgiving feasts). We ate really well – everything was eaten with the right hand (no utensils), sitting on the floor. We had a delicious grilled kingfish, chicken with a curry sauce, naan and another type of bread, a potato filled with beef that was really tasty, several banana-type dishes and a couple other things unlike anything I have ever eaten. It was incredible!

Stone Town and the Indian Ocean seen from above

Religious Tolerance and No Need for an Alarm..

Zanzibar is an island in the Indian Ocean, about 25 miles off the coast of Tanzania. The population of the island as a whole is just over a million people. Swahili is the official language; Arabic is also spoken and those involved with tourism speak English.

As we learned in our East African History class, the Arab influence goes back to 900 when trading between Zanzibar and Oman began; in 1697 the Omani flag was flown over the island of Zanzibar after the overthrow of the Portuguese. Thus, it is not difficult to understand why Zanzibar is 97% Muslim. In Zanzibar Town one hears the call to prayer from the 50 or so mosques five times each day. The first call was shortly after 5am so it served as a wake-up call for us, although I did manage to sleep through the earliest call as well as the bells of the Anglican Cathedral one morning! (I was really tired!!)

In addition to the many mosques, the religious diversity of Zanzibar Town is reflected in the presence of one Anglican Church; a Roman Catholic Church built by the French and modeled after the Catholic Cathedral in Marseille, France (the same architect designed both) and 4 Hindu temples. Also, we attended an evangelical indigenous church on the 2nd Sunday we were there (with some marvelous singing, I might add!). It should be noted that the Anglican church – and the hostel connected to it that we stayed in are on the grounds of the previous slave market in Zanzibar Town, so there are many visitors each day to see these sites from that perspective.

Speaking of slavery, it was a sobering reminder to learn about the slave trade from the perspective of the African culture: being there, seeing the sites and learning about that part of Africa's history. For many years, Zanzibar was the primary center for trading slaves. Slaves were traded right along with cloves and ivory. It was also eye-opening for me to hear of the slave trade with India, the Middle East and Europe, as most of my knowledge has been of the American slave trade. The depth of man's inhumanity to man is a heart-wrenching part of the history of Africa...

Houses of Worship in Zanzibar Town

The double steeples of the Catholic Church in Stone Town with one of the many minarets at the top of the mosque off to the right.

The top of one of the Hindu temples in Stone Town.

The Anglican Cathedral of Zanzibar on the site of the former slave market.

A reminder of the active slave trade in Zanzibar; these two sculptures are in the shadow of the Anglican Cathedral.

The "Obama Tree"

When people would ask us where we were from and when we said "Chicago," they immediately said "Obama." Barack Obama is a very well known and loved person in Zanzibar - no doubt throughout Africa as well. Well the "Obama Tree" is a tourist attraction in Stone Town. It was told to us that many people would gather and express support for Obama under this tree prior to the election.

You may not be able to see it clearly, but the red paint says, "Zanzibar 4 Obama."

The tourist part of Stone Town

Zanzibar is definitely a tourist destination. While there are numerous fancy resorts scattered around the island, there are some beautiful hotels on or near the waterfront in Zanzibar Town/Stone Town. Below is a sampling of the nicest hotels in town.

That is the Indian Ocean through the door!

The streets (alleys) of Stone Town

Walking through Stone Town can be quite an experience. It is not unusual to share a narrow alley way with other walkers, a motorcycle and a bike. These pictures give you a feel for the non-tourist area of Stone Town where we regularly walked.

The doors of Stone Town

One of the first things readily noticed in Stone Town is the doors...many are ordinary but many are simply full of artistic detail and unique style. Here are a few examples..

Zanzibar: Arrival and First Impressions

After two overnight flights (Chicago to London; 9 hours hanging out in Heathrow airport; then London to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania), our descent into Dar was one of the first noticeable features: descending from extreme cold temperatures of the upper atmosphere into lower altitude, the humidity was so intense that it was not possible to even see out of the windows because of the extreme condensation. Once on the ground, walking out of the airplane into the terminal was a shock: the new reality of heat and humidity hit me in the face (and lungs) immediately! We had to wait for an hour or so to catch our 15 minute flight to Zanzibar – on a small plane! Once on the island of Zanzibar our group was met; our luggage was quickly loaded and before we knew it, we were in Zanzibar Town, and more specifically, the old quarter, known as Stone Town. Richard Burton, an early British explorer described Stone Town in 1857, “The streets are, as they should be under such a sky, deep and winding alleys, hardly twenty-feet broad, and travelers compare them to the threads of a tangled skein.”

After getting to our hostel, adjacent to and operated by the staff of the Anglican Church/Diocese, we settled into our rooms, had a traditional Swahili lunch and took a walking tour of Stone Town to get our bearings (and to keep us awake to help with our jet lag). We learned that there are just a couple main streets (these are paved and form a somewhat incomplete triangle around Stone Town), so if we get lost and can get to one of these we could find our way home (a theory which has already been proven in my case...). The most beautiful part of Stone Town is the ocean front – the Indian Ocean, that is...the water is beautiful, there are some beautiful gardens, the old Sultan's Palace and some other historical buildings. Sunsets on the Indian Ocean are really gorgeous! Getting to the ocean is the challenge! There is a maze of narrow alley-ways which are shared by pedestrians, motorcycles and bikes. Only slightly larger alleys/”streets” also include cars. Some of these alley-ways are paved, though small rocks and sand are everywhere so you have to watch where you are walking.

As the term, Stone Town suggests, many of the buildings are two or three stories and built of stone; there are several distinct kinds of doors: rounded arches and doors with more ornate wooden carving although there are a lot of ordinary looking doors as well. Many buildings have wide double doors that open to reveal endless numbers of shops with everyone calling after you to come in and take a look. These are in addition to the large market off of one of the main streets where you can get every kind of fish, meat, poultry, vegetable, fruit, clothing and many other things.

It is not difficult to realize I am in a predominantly Muslim culture: many women are fully covered in black, polyester-like burkas; some with scarves over their heads, some women with just tiny slits to see, even young girls wear veils. Apparently there has been a move toward a little more decorative aspect in recent years, as I often see women with brightly-colored scarves on their heads and some with overlays of bright colors, even some with sparkly trim. The non-Muslim women wear more African-like clothing. It is a little difficult to discern at times, as there is a wide continuum of more strict to less strict followers of Islam and the Africans, but regardless, it is a colorful and fascinating place to people-watch. Some men don traditional Muslim clothing, but more often they are dressed more casually, even wearing jeans. The disconnect between the gender's clothing is notable, especially when one considers the heat and humidity. It sparks my righteous anger to see the women having to wear, what I consider, oppressive clothing, but that is a subject for another time...

Vancouver, here I come...

The pictures that follow are from a trip that I took to Vancouver, Canada in August, 2009. I flew to Seattle, took the bus to Vancouver, spent a week with friends in the Vancouver area, including a trip to Whistler, then drove with my friends back to Illinois, via Vancouver Island, the Oregon coast and across the plains.. The following pictures are in reverse order from my experience, but they are pretty nonetheless... I post them now as I think about the upcoming Olympic Games in Vancouver..it is pretty cool to think that those mountains around Whistler that I bravely took the cable car up to will soon be populated with some of the best winter athletes in the world!

Cannon Beach (Oregon coast)

More of the Oregon coast