"If you can..."

Tonight I went to see the Mensah brothers perform. They are percussionists, dancers, and singers from a small village in Ghana, though through music they've been able to move to the U.S. and teach at the University of Colorado. African music isn't my favorite - I prefer afro-cuban music: samba, rumba, latin jazz. Nonetheless it was quite fun and inspiring to watch them perform. Their sense of music is so different than traditional western music, and in my opinion, a lot more fun. Plus I appreciate it their music because I see it as the grandfather of the music that I'm really interested in.

They play because its fun and they have fun because they are playing. It's easy to imagine them at their home in Ghana, playing with their family and friends. They probably didn't have much other than music, but that was all that they needed.

They were selling t-shirts and cd's after the show, just like all other musicians. But, they said during the concert that the money that they make of off sales is donated to an orphanage in Ghana. Pretty cool.

They also said that they bring Americans to Ghana for a month in the summer to learn to dance sing, and drum. As they said, "If you can move your legs, you can dance; if you can talk, you can sing; and if you can move your arms, you can drum."

20th century digital boy

Inari and I have re-entered the 20th century. We now have internet at home. Its not exactly anything to brag about though, as the only connection available to us is dial-up. I'm not sure why people even bothered with internet back in the day. Dial up is sooo slow. I'm not yet sure why we're bothering with it either. It does allow me to do some things at home that I'd rather not do at work - like blogging, buying plane tickets, checking my bank account, etc. Now when I'm at work I can focus on work. At the same time, the slow connection basically guarantees that my work won't follow me home very often and that I won't spend too much time surfing.

I was really hoping that I'd be able to use skype via a modem, but so far I'm not having any luck. I've read on some forums that it works for some people. We'll keep trying.

Oregon

It's been a busy couple of months. My research is really starting to gain some momentum. Today I started writing the first paper for my thesis (three are required). It's been quite fun; I've been doing quite a bit of detective work and feel that I've stumbled across some interesting observations. I still have quite a bit of work to do, but I'm getting there (wherever there might be).

Two weekends ago I was in Portland to present my work at the Northwest Glaciology Meeting. It was a pretty good meeting but I didn't get as much feedback as I might have liked. Anyway, I guess meetings aren't about getting feedback, they're about schmoozing. I enjoyed this meeting more than other meetings that I've been to because I feel like I'm starting to know a lot of people in glaciology and have lots of people to catch up with.


Since the meeting was in Portland I was able to stay with friends Jason and Elvira, who had moved there two weeks earlier. Despite their lack of knowledge about Portland, they were great tour guides. We did a little road trip around Mt. Hood and back down the Columbia River Gorge. Its a pretty area - reminds me a bit of parts of New Zealand. And the trees are so big! Well, at least compared to the tiny black spruce outside our cabin.