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Merry May

May31

Nothing terribly exciting has been going on, but I have some cheery highlights from this month as May draws to a close. I mentioned in my 2022 in Review that I’d joined the Collegium Musicum, Grinnell’s early music ensemble, this academic year. I have been playing the bass viol (viola da gamba). At the beginning of May, the St. Paul-based Baroque ensemble Flying Forms came to campus to give a concert, as well as a series of lessons, master classes, and workshops for Collegium members. We in the viol ensemble enjoyed a workshop with Flying Forms’ cellist and gambist (that’s the same person), though I did not personally feel very coachable (pretty sure my musical abilities–at least the cello-related ones–peaked around my senior year of high school/first year of college).

The concert on Saturday evening was fun; Flying Forms was joined by a local mezzo-soprano who has been teaching voice at the college but who is moving out of state this summer. The program was a mix of vocal and instrumental pieces. The concert opener was Henry Purcell’s “Music for a While,” which I first encountered thanks to The New York Times’ 5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Baroque Music feature (I already loved Baroque music). My initial parse of the title was parallel to music for a party or music for a birthday. You know, music for a while. But grammatically it’s actually Music, for a while, shall all your cares beguile, which really makes more sense. Anyway, it’s kind of a weird piece, though appropriate to begin a concert, and I don’t think I was the only audience member seized by the urge to laugh by the fifth or sixth repetition of drop (in case you’re wondering, it’s snakes that are dropping).

My favorite part of the concert was the very end, and to explain why, I have to go back. When I was leaving for the performing arts center, I wondered vaguely whether the evening’s program might include Handel’s “Flammende Rose,” a song I like very much. After all, it was a Baroque ensemble performing with a mezzo-soprano. I arrived at the auditorium, found a seat, and opened the program to find that it listed a different one of Handel’s nine German arias. Ah, well. At the end of the concert, I had a feeling there would be an encore; it just felt like the right context for one (fairly intimate concert, the singer’s last local appearance…). The musicians filed back on stage, and the mezzo-soprano announced that the encore would be…”Flammende Rose”! I was delighted. And it was splendid. I came to know this aria through music listening in high school, and it was wonderful to hear it performed live. (A week later I got to tell the mezzo-soprano all of this at a party, but I digress.) Shortly after the concert, there was a reception at the local wine bar, which ended up being more of a small gathering in which I was the only amateur musician. It was a fun time, though.

The following weekend was our concert. The viol ensemble, along with a four-member choir and a countertenor, performed Orlando Gibbons’ “This is the Record of John.” This was my favorite piece we played all year. My parents came to the concert since it’s one of my mother’s favorite musical works too. The countertenor was my student in introductory linguistics a year ago, and he has an amazing voice. At the concert, I also played (in ensembles) a Byrd pavan and galliard and a paven by William Lawes (whom I hadn’t heard of before we got the music). The Lawes was the first piece in which I had to shift on viola da gamba.

About another week later was Commencement. I did not march this year or last (someday!), but I still enjoyed seeing some of my students graduate. The Class of 2023 were first-years when I arrived at Grinnell, so I’d taught some of them in their and my very first semester. Also, three first-year students in that first Intro to Linguistics class I taught eventually declared concentrations in Linguistics, and I taught all three of them this semester–their last–in a sort of capstone class!

This past weekend was the Midwest Morris Ale (an event I have previously mentioned in passing). My friend David and I went to Minnehaha Falls to catch the mass Morris dancing. I recognized a number of people from contra dancing and shape note singing and such, and I got to say hello to a college classmate who dances with one of the sides attending the ale.

Morris dancers at Minnehaha Falls Park

Finally, my brother’s housemate adopted a kitten recently, and I got to meet him! He’s so tiny.

Sleepy kitten on a couch

2022 in Review

Dec31

Happy New Year’s Eve! I am not judging the “goodness” of years anymore, and anyway, you probably don’t come to this blog for news of the world. I’m sure you have at least some idea of what is happening, both good and bad, in various corners of the globe (can a globe have corners?). I hope your winter holidays, breaks, and vacations have been and are filled with warmth, light, and good company.

My 2022 was pretty good. Here is what the year looked like for me:

  • I taught my first three-course semester, including two new classes (Loanword Adaptation and Tone). In the fall, I taught yet another new course (Linguistic Typology). I secured another two years teaching in the Linguistics Concentration at Grinnell.
  • I curated (yes, Mom, curated!) a list of middle grade fantasy novels about fighting injustice for the book discovery website Shepherd.
  • I returned to Northampton, MA for my friend Leland’s very musical wedding. There were a number of linguists and Swarthmore acquaintances in attendance, and the wedding festivities included my first shape note singing since the beginning of the pandemic.
  • In June and July, I spent three weeks in Meudon with Isabelle and Olivier. Isabelle and I caught the Little Prince exhibit at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, and we all went to l’Hôtel de la Marine and l’Aquarium de Paris (including the pop-up Japanese food terrace Hanami).
  • My family canoed and camped in the Boundary Waters again, this time returning to Hog Creek and Perent Lake, and I never got around to blogging about it!
  • My short story “Maghda’s Song” was published in Anathema!
  • In September, I drove to Chicago for a lovely (tasty and literary) weekend with my childhood best friend Hana and her dog Bertie.
  • This fall, I fulfilled my vague ambition of playing in an early music ensemble by joining the Collegium Musicum at Grinnell. I have acquired a rudimentary ability to play the bass viol.
  • Over fall break, I saw Malindo Lo and her Minnesotan editor Andrew Karre at Red Balloon Bookshop and danced to the calling of my original dance teacher from Swarthmore Folkdance Club at Minnesota English Country Dance Weekend.
  • I turned in a new draft of my hopefully-next-novel to my agent!
  • Finally, I had two brushes with fame. First, a photo I took of moon jellies at the Paris aquarium became my most-liked tweet ever (not that that’s saying much), and the president of the aquarium replied to it. Second, the experience encapsulated in this tweet and quote tweet led to my being interviewed by a Wall Street Journal columnist for this piece (I used to have a non-paywalled link, but it seems to have expired).

Happy 2023! Wishing you good health, strong community, and much joy!

A misty morning on Perent Lake

Star of the North: Minnesota English Country Dance Weekend

Nov23

Star of the North is an English country dance weekend held in Minnesota. (What is English country dancing? It’s the kind of social dancing you see in Jane Austen films. That said, the tradition now includes tunes and dances written by contemporary composers and choreographers, and dancing can vary in style and energy, so if you think the dancing in the movies looks slow and staid, well, it’s not necessarily like that.) I may have attended a Star of the North dance or ball back when I was in the Lutheran Volunteer Corps; I can’t quite remember. But certainly I hadn’t gone in recent years. Over the summer, I accidentally discovered that the caller for Star of the North this fall was going to be Joanna Reiner, my very first dance teacher at Swarthmore. Essentially, Joanna taught me to do English country dancing (and Scottish country dancing, but that’s different!). I got very excited, and I think I noted that Star of the North fell on one of the weekends of my fall break so I could actually go if I wanted. Then I promptly forgot about it for months.

When fall break rolled around, it occurred to me to check out who the callers and bands were for the Saturday contra dances at Tapestry Folkdance Center when I’d be in town, and that was when Star of the North burst back onto my radar. It wasn’t too late to register! So I did, just for the Friday evening dance and the Saturday evening ball (no workshops for me). The musicians were Karen Axelrod on piano and Daron Douglas on violin, both eminent in the relevant circles; together they form the duo Foxfire, of which I was already a fan.

Both dances were lovely. All the individual dances were taught rather than just talked through. This was mildly surprising to me, especially at the ball, but it was nice since I hardly ever go English dancing these days and don’t know any dances by heart. Of course, the dances are also called, so with an experienced crowd there are rarely any problems or “very local variations,” as Joanna calls them. It was wonderful to experience Joanna’s teaching and calling again. One of the local dancers told me that he and his wife (both of whom I know through shape note singing, contra, Georgian singing, etc.) think that, in the English country dancing world, Joanna is the best there is. She chose some excellent dances with tunes I like very much (Easter Thursday, Saint Margaret’s Hill, Candles in the Dark), and the musicians were great.

The dance weekend participants were mostly locals, but others had traveled to be there, including one couple I was expecting to see. They’re from Ames, IA, and I met them the first and only time I went to dance camp at Pinewoods, the summer after I graduated from Swarthmore. They’re also Scottish dancers (and the camp we all attended was Harmony of Dance and Song). I didn’t really get a chance to talk to them or explain this at Star of the North, but when the husband and I were partners, I said something to the effect that I thought we’d met once a long time ago, and he was like, Probably! And I said I lived in Iowa too now. There was another, younger, dancer from Iowa who asked me to dance at the ball and said he’d heard from the wife of that couple that I lived in Iowa. He asked where, and I said Grinnell. He asked if there was much dancing there; I said no. At the end of the ball on Saturday, I got to chat with Joanna a bit, and then the young man from Iowa came over, and they both told me about an English dance weekend in Fairfield, IA (where apparently they’ve had shape note singing too?) that was in just a few weeks, right over my birthday. Bare Necessities, the doyen of English country dance bands, was playing (and in fact always plays the Fairfield dance weekend). Joanna and the Iowan said I should go, so when I got back to Iowa I looked it up, but it was, unsurprisingly, sold out. (The Twin Cities couple who think Joanna is the best did go this year, and apparently they’ve already reserved their spots for next year! I think this is a popular weekend.) 

Joanna always had the band play a bit of the tune before teaching each new dance, and at the Saturday ball, when it was time for the last dance, she told us we might recognize the music. Foxfire started to play, and the tune meant nothing to me, but a few other dancers made noises of realization. I still don’t know why Joanna thought we might know this tune in particular. I thought maybe they’d done the dance at the workshop, but it seems not, so maybe it’s just popular? In any case, the dance was Sapphire Sea, and it was a very fine dance–dolphin heys! I also loved the tune, so when I got back to Grinnell, I looked it up: it’s Tom Kruskal’s, by Emily Troll and Amelia Mason. Now I’m…kind of obsessed? I’ve played it on violin and cello already. I looked for recordings of Sapphire Sea online to listen to the music, and I found a good one from a ball that took place not far from Boston. At first, I just listened to the band, but at some point I looked at the video and was like, hey, I know those dancers! That’s par for the course when you have niche hobbies.

A Harpsichord Lecture Recital

May25

Toward the end of April, I attended an unusual concert at Grinnell. Technically speaking, it was a lecture recital, which was not a genre I was familiar with but is basically exactly what it sounds like. The speaker and musician was Dr. Heidi Tsai, a Taiwanese-born keyboardist who lives in France and has taught and performed extensively on both sides of the Pyréneées. (She has a doctorate in historical keyboards–how cool does that sound?) The lecture recital was described thusly on the program: “A Transgenre Tale…from the cross-dressing Abbot François-Timoléon de Choisy (1644-1724) and the celebration of 17th-transcriptions [I think that should say 17th century?] for the harpsichord in France”.

I hadn’t heard of de Choisy before I learned of this event, nor was I familiar with most of the composers on the program (the exceptions were Lully and Couperin). I arrived a bit on the early side, wanting to get a good seat, and at first the audience looked extremely sparse, but the concert hall did fill up. Before Dr. Tsai began her lecture recital, one of Grinnell’s French professors, a specialist in 17th and 18th century French literature, gave an introduction to some of de Choisy’s writings. He focused particularly on Histoire de la marquise-marquis de Banneville, a story about a young marquise who falls in love with a young marquis (and he with her). If I recall correctly, the marquise’s mother has to tell her that her anatomy is actually characteristically male (not sure how the young woman is unaware of this), and at first it appears this might spell the end of her courtship. But affection prevails, the two get married, it turns out the young marquis is also transgender (possibly–I’m not clear on how this is presented in the story). And they have a happy union, enjoying the best of both worlds. So, there’s a lot to unpack there! But I have neither read nor studied this text.

Dr. Tsai then took the stage. The lecture recital consisted of remarks on the life of de Choisy (his upbringing, his relationships with the family of Louis XIV, his female alter egos and cross-dressing adventures), the expectations of 17th century French high society (the harpsichord was the perfect instrument for young women because it didn’t involve contortions of the mouth and face, wild gestures of the arms, or anything placed between the legs!), transpositions of musical works between instruments (e.g. transcriptions for harpsichord), and other background on the composers, instruments, and pieces. I enjoyed the music more than anything else, though the lecture was interesting as well.

Dr. Tsai performed on a double-manual harpsichord that belongs to the college; it was built in the 20th century but modeled on 18th century French instruments. It has a lovely sound! I mean, I love the timbre of the harpsichord. As mentioned above, there were some works by Jean-Baptiste Lully and François Couperin, two French Baroque composers whose music I like very much. Part of the conceit of the concert was that some French composers of the time had written pieces inspired by de Choisy. The theme of crossing over was also realized in the performance of harpsichord transcriptions of music originally composed for different instruments or ensembles. The transcribers were Jean-Henri d’Anglebert, Jean Baptiste Forqueray, and Dr. Tsai herself. Other composers included Jacques-Champion de Chambonnières, René Mesangeau (alternatively Mézangeot?), Louis de Caix d’Hervelois, Jean-Baptiste Barrière, and Antoine Forqueray. Don’t they all sound fancy? (And wasn’t John the Baptist a popular namesake?)

One of the last pieces on the program was Antoine Forqueray’s “Le carillon de Passy” (which for some reason always seems to be paired with “La Latour”? Oh, maybe it’s because they’re part of the same suite in G minor). Dr. Tsai explained that Passy was a tony neighborhood in Paris, and I was thinking to myself, I know, it still is!

The program ended with three pieces by Couperin. The first, “La Régente ou la Minerve,” was familiar, probably because this past year I went through some phases of listening to entire albums of Scott Ross’s recording of the complete harpsichord works of Couperin. The last two pieces were both musettes, that is, works meant to imitate the sound of the small French bagpipe called the musette. And they were certainly imitative! Couperin really leaned into capturing the musette’s drones.

Trip to Northampton

Apr27

At the beginning of the month, I visited Northampton, MA for the second time in my life to attend the wedding of my college friend Leland. It was a quick trip at the tail end of my spring break: I flew into Boston early Friday evening and flew out again early Sunday afternoon. When I arrived in Boston, I met up with another college classmate, Ben, and his fiancée. Ben and I both played cello in the college orchestra (at least until I dropped orchestra for folk dance), and he and Leland played in a Swarthmore-famous string quartet. Ben and his fiancée kindly gave me a ride to Northampton.

On Saturday morning, I walked from my hotel up the road to Tart, a bakery in downtown Northampton, and bought a spinach and feta pastry for breakfast. Actually, outside the wedding festivities, nearly all the food I consumed during my trip came from Tart. I’d been there once on my last trip to the area, and I guess it’s now my modus operandi to glom onto a bakery for all my sustenance needs when I travel for a wedding.

Later in the morning, I walked back up the hill for the wedding ceremony. There was a protest going on outside a bank downtown, and a woman handed me a leaflet, telling me it explained why they were protesting, to wit, to draw attention to banks’ contribution to the climate crisis. The leaflet encouraged me to move my money out of banks and into credit unions and tell my bank why I was doing so. By this time, the woman had moved on, so I couldn’t tell her all my money was already in credit unions and she could give my leaflet to someone else.

First Churches of Northampton, the day after the wedding

The wedding was at First Churches of Northampton. It was a sunny day, if a bit brisk still at the time of the ceremony, and there were a few guests milling about in the yard in front of the church. I recognized some people. I went inside and signed the guestbook. I ran into Leland and gave them a hug. I ventured into the sanctuary, which was high-ceilinged and wide, with two aisles. As I was admiring the space and contemplating where and with whom to sit, I noticed someone I knew standing near me: it was Kristine, a fellow phonologist. As with a number of the other guests, I hadn’t anticipated seeing her, but as soon as I did, it made sense that she was there. We went and found seats in a pew together and listened to the prelude. The organ was at the front of the sanctuary, and the big pipes were painted in dusky Scandinavian colors (that description might only make sense to me).

The processional began, and various family members advanced in sets down the two aisles. While we were looking around, Kristine and I noticed Ivy, another linguist, sitting in the left section of pews, and we all waved. Then it was time to rise for Leland and Bryn’s entrance; the person sitting in front of me shot up and clasped his fist over his heart. Leland and Bryn also processed in parallel down the two aisles.

I heard someone joke afterwards that the ceremony was essentially a concert with some wedding rituals thrown in; there was indeed a lot of music, which was fitting for the couple. First, a crowd of Sacred Harp singers, many of whom I knew or recognized, sang Harmony from The Shenandoah Harmony; Ivy led. The officiant spoke some words about Leland and Bryn and the things they had in common, including the fact that they both really like ringing bells. This provoked laughter from the assembly.

A trio of friends sang the Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei (split across two occasions in the service) from Byrd’s Mass for Three Voices. The second occasion was communion. Later, an octet including Leland’s mother and sister and a couple other people I knew sang a hymn, and toward the end of the service the congregation got to sing Love Divine, All Loves Excelling (the Hyfrydol setting). And the recessional was the Hornpipe from Handel’s Water Music. The bulletin invited us to listen for English change ringing on our way out of the church, and indeed, there were four ringers on handbells outside. I heard more than one person confirm that they were ringing a whole quarter peal (no promises about the accuracy of my change ringing terminology).

I had sort of skipped over the receiving line on my way out of the sanctuary, so later on I went back to greet the newlyweds and their close family. I also said hi to other people I knew, like Ivy (and I met her partner in person for the first time, as opposed to on Zoom). Among the guests were other Swarthmore alumni, folkies, people I met on my first trip to Northampton, and various combinations thereof. There was also Gretchen McCulloch, internet linguist!

Eventually, we migrated around the corner to the Hotel Northampton and into the brick-walled, low-ceilinged Wiggins Tavern for a cocktail reception. I talked to Sophia, the string quartet’s first violinist, and Becky, Lorelei, and Daria, who were Leland’s roommates at the time of my last visit (Becky also went to Swarthmore). A bell ringer and I mutually recognized each other in a hazy sort of way and ultimately concluded we must have met the day I hung out with the band in Boston. While we were talking, Myles, another Swarthmore alum/linguist/singer/bell ringer, etc., came over. Apparently I have this thing where I introduce myself as a linguist and academic to strangers at weddings, and then someone who knows me brings up my novels. Myles and I alluded to my still fledgling attempts to become the next Donna Jo Napoli. He also mentioned that he and I had once met up in Istanbul (we literally found each other in the Hagia Sophia, in fact, though that was after we each knew the other was in the city). A little later, I brought some fruit back to the table where my acquaintances were sitting, and Lorelei laid out the Hamp/Noho divide for us.

Next, we transitioned to the bright and festive ballroom, where Leland and Bryn’s friend Maia served as master of ceremonies. I was seated at a table with Becky and Lorelei, among others. There was also Nicole, yet another Swarthmore alum/singer, etc., who I had run into by accident the last time I was in Northampton and who, on that occasion, had given me a mushroom in a paper bag to deliver to Leland. Then there was Mel, another folkie I’ve known since my Swarthmore days. Plus additional guests with Swarthmore, singing, linguistics, and other connections (sometimes all three). I sometimes (creepily? I hope not) knew more about them than they probably knew about me.

There were multiple brunch buffets with things like eggs Benedict and waffles with strawberries and cream. There was also a very nice playlist on in the background, and every now and then someone at our table would say, Hey, I have this album (that was me), or make a remark about Crowfoot’s flutist, or complain about a singer’s ungrammatical distortion of a line from Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life.” Mel also told me from across the table that they’d read one of my books after finding it in a little free library, and I felt like I’d unlocked an achievement! It was somewhat unclear which book they’d read, but I think we concluded it was Sparkers?

After people had mostly eaten, Maia orchestrated the succession of toasts. We had flutes of champagne to raise in honor of the couple. The parents and grandparents told some amusing stories from Leland and Bryn’s distant and not-so-distant pasts. I think it was also one of them who asked guests to raise their hands if they were Sacred Harp singers, bell ringers, etc. There was a considerable contingent of change ringers in the back of the ballroom, and someone (Maia?) warned everyone else not to approach them unless we wanted a lecture about ringing. The whole string quartet came up to give a toast. At our table, we speculated about whether there would be dancing or not–there was, after all, a small dance floor–but there was none that I witnessed.

I wandered a bit to talk more with Ivy, her partner Gabe, and Kristine, and then after arranging to ride with Nicole to the evening event, I headed back to my hotel. I stopped by Tart to buy a lox and goat cheese sandwich to eat for dinner later (it was excellent).

Early that night, Nicole picked me up, and we drove to the Artifact Cider taproom in nearby Florence for the Shenandoah Harmony singing. Yes, I brought my wicker book all the way from Grinnell for the wedding. It was my first shape note singing since the Before Times. At the cidery, Leland and Bryn were still in their wedding finery while a lot of other people, including me, had dressed down. I drifted over to a table where Ivy, Gabe, Gretchen, and a few others were drinking ciders and eating a sheet pan of nachos.

The singing soon began, and I shared my book with Gabe. Becky gave a very quick lesson on how to deal with the shapes for the non-Sacred Harp singers in attendance (they were definitely in the minority). Despite having owned the book for years, I haven’t sung much out of The Shenandoah Harmony (it’s the newest shape note book), so most of the tunes are unfamiliar to me. A lot of the ones we sang were good! And there were some incredible texts. Like these words from Isaac Watts, in Converse: “I’m tired of visits, modes, and forms / And flatt’ries paid to fellow worms. / Their conversation cloys, / Their vain amours and empty stuff” and “Fly from my thoughts, all human things / And sporting swains, and fighting kings, / And tales of wanton love; / My soul disdains that little snare, / The tangles of Amira’s hair”–I mean, who’s Amira?! Or how about this text by Charles Wesley: “Ah! lovely appearance of death! / What sight upon earth is so fair? / Not all the gay pageants that breathe / Can with a dead body compare. / With solemn delight I survey / The corpse when the spirit is fled, / In love with the beautiful clay, / And longing to lie in its stead.” That’s not one the mainline Protestant hymnals have kept around.

Leland and Bryn circulated a bit during the singing, and when there was a break, I managed to hand-deliver my wedding card to Leland, since I’d failed to find the appropriate place to leave it at the reception. I also talked to Ivy and Gabe about my research and the job market and learned that Gabe went to the same tiny college as the president of Grinnell.

I made plans with Ben & Co. for our journey back to Boston, and then Nicole dropped me back off at my hotel. The next morning, I went back to Tart (third visit!) for breakfast and provisions: I bought a pain au chocolat and a savory biscuit. According to its website, my hotel was not currenty serving breakfast, but I’d discovered on Saturday morning that this was false; there was quite a comprehensive buffet. So I decided to keep my pastries for later and brought some breakfast back to my room. But then, Leland invited me to an originally family-only brunch at their and Bryn’s house. The quartet was going too, so I could just leave for Boston from there. And unexpectedly, I’d have the chance to see Leland one more time.

The former St. John Cantius Church, near Leland and Bryn’s house

I checked out and walked over to Leland and Bryn’s new house. They had, in Leland’s words, a million quiches and a million leftover desserts from the wedding reception, plus oatmeal and fruit. Later, a giant order of amazing-looking pastries arrived. I was kind of sad I’d already eaten breakfast because everything looked really good, but I wasn’t hungry. I sat in the living room with the quartet and partners, as well as Leland and Bryn when they weren’t greeting various relatives. Their extremely cute cats, Lentil and Miso, both brown (or gray?) tabbies, made several appearances.

Soon, it was time to leave for Boston. We did a sort of Minnesota goodbye (you know, first you get up saying it’s time to leave, then you spend at least ten minutes talking in the hall, then you have hugs in the entryway, then you have hugs in the driveway…), and then Ben, his fiancée, Amy (the second violinist), and I hit the road. I had the earliest flight, so they dropped me off at the airport before embarking on their sightseeing and cannoli-acquiring adventure. I ate my pain au chocolat on the sidewalk before heading inside for the airport rigmarole.

So, it was a swift trip, but it was a lovely wedding, and I hope I’ll get to visit again someday, hopefully in even better times.

Iceland, Part I

Aug25

When I was in 7th grade, our social studies teacher, Mrs. Weller, assigned each student in the class a country in the Western hemisphere. Naturally, most of my classmates had Latin American countries, but my assigned country was Iceland. We each had to research our country (remember the CIA World Factbook?), and we did various in-class activities like lining up in order of GDP per capita (Iceland was something of an outlier). The project culminated in a proposal for a business located in our assigned country. It had to make sense in the context of our country, and I think we had to research the local infrastructure and figure out how we were going to get our company off the ground. I recall a lot of ice cream shops in Central America, but I decided to found a whale and bird watching boat tour company. Ever since that middle school project, I had wanted to visit Iceland, though that ambition faded into the background as the years went by.

Ten years ago, my friend Dustin introduced me to the Icelandic band Sigur Rós, of which I’ve been a casual fan ever since. I saw Árstíðir’s viral video of their singing the 13th-century Icelandic hymn “Heyr himna smiður” in a German train station, and I quite like their music too. In grad school, I’m sure I had to read at least one syntax paper by an Icelandic linguist, but I remember basically nothing about it. And a year or so ago I heard Anna Þorvaldsdóttir’s choral composition “Heyr þu oss himnum a” on Minnesota Public Radio and thought it was gorgeous. But I wasn’t expecting to visit Iceland anytime soon until, earlier this year, my parents invited my brother and me to go with them in August.

The trip was planned before the Delta variant surge, and I’m not sure I would recommend international travel right now. But we went on our vacation, and we were fortunate, and the trip was amazing.

Approaching Iceland from the air

We flew out of Minneapolis on a Wednesday evening and landed at Keflavík International Airport at 6:30am on Thursday, flying in over the lacy Icelandic coastline. We took a bus to a bus terminal in Reykjavík, where we met Valur, a friend of a friend and one of the former proprietors of the guesthouse where we would be staying (my parents had stayed there on a previous trip to Iceland). Valur was renting us his car, since rental cars proved to be a very hot commodity in Iceland this summer. We made the short drive to the Minna-Mosfell Guesthouse, in the valley called Mosfellsdalur.

Social Icelandic sheep at the Minna-Mosfell Guesthouse

After a nap and a light lunch, we drove to Þingvellir National Park, on the lake Þingvallavatn (vatn = lake). The park lies in a rift valley where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates are pulling apart at a rate of 2.5cm a year. There is a fault or ridge called Almannagjá (also described as a canyon or ravine) that actually makes it feel like the earth is cleft here.

The rift at Þingvellir

Icelandic law proclaims Þingvellir “a protected national shrine of all Icelanders,” as it was here that the Alþingi, Iceland’s ancient parliament (and indeed the name of its current parliament), met. 

Þingvallakirkja

We walked down and across the meadow through which streams of the Öxará river snaked, toward the 19th-century church Þingvallakirkja and the nearby farmhouse, two of whose five gables constitute the summer residence of the Prime Minister. Both buildings are white with green trim.

Þingvellir

We wandered among some further pools with clear blue water and then headed back up toward the Lögberg, or Law Rock, now marked with an Icelandic flag. This was where the Alþingi met and where the Lawspeaker recited the law from memory, one third of it each summer.

Drekkingarhylur

We continued along the path past the Drekkingarhylur, or Drowning Pool, where over the centuries 18 women were drowned for various crimes. Further on, we climbed up to see Öxarárfoss, a waterfall where the Öxará river flows over the Almannagjá.

From Þingvellir, we drove to Laugarvatn, a little town on the eponymous lake. We were going to have dinner at Lindin, a restaurant there, but we arrived early, so we walked from the lakeside restaurant’s deck toward the water. Here we stumbled upon Vígðalaug, the Blessed Pool, a hot spring-fed pool used for baptisms when Iceland adopted Christianity in 1000 (people didn’t want to be baptized in cold water!). The six bier stones (Líkasteinar) nearby are associated with the last Catholic bishop of Iceland, Jón Arason, and his sons, who were beheaded when Lutheranism was being imposed by Denmark and whose bodies were washed in the pool.

Vígðalaug

Although the sun was shining, it certainly wasn’t hot, so I was surprised to see a windsurfer on the lake, as well as some swimmers farther off. But then I dipped my hand in the water on the beach and realized it was warm; Laugarvatn has hot springs.

Our first dinner in Iceland, and every subsequent meal we ate a restaurant, was delicious. Fish and lamb dishes (including fish and meat soup) dominate menus, and potatoes abound too.

My Arctic char at Lindin

The next morning, we went on a short walk from the guesthouse, greeting the sheep and horses on our way out. (Driving around Iceland, you see many, many horses and sheep, though the latter are usually only in trios or small groups, never flocks, as they roam free in the summer. Cows are rarer but do appear on occasion.) We walked over to Mosfellskirkja, the local church. As we were leaving, a raven was perched on its roof cawing.

Steaming mudpots in the Geysir area

We drove past Þingvallavatn again and on to the Geysir complex, which is well-outfitted for the plentiful tourists like us. We ate excellent sandwiches and cake in the cafeteria and then crossed the road to see the geothermal sights. A thin stream trickled along the path, with periodic signs indicating that the water’s temperature was between 80° and 100° Celsius. Plumes of steam emanated from mudpots, some of which were actually bubbling like cauldrons over the fire.

The geyser Strokkur, in between eruptions

We reached Strokkur, a geyser that’s currently like the Old Faithful of Iceland because it erupts, fountaining water and steam, every 6-8 minutes or so (at least while we were there). Tourists lined up along a rope barrier, phones held at the ready for the next blast. At least once we saw Strokkur erupt twice in quick succession, with the second eruption like an extra hiccup.

A pool

We climbed further up toward other pools. This area feels a lot like parts of Yellowstone, with pools of clear water, blue at their deepest points and rust and white around their lichenous edges. The ground underwater seems to open up into caverns. There was one milky blue steaming pot, though. Up the slope, Alaskan lupines (not a native plant) lined the path, and there were a few purple flowers still in bloom.

A lupine

We walked downhill to reach Geysir, the original geyser, whose pool has a larger surface area than Strokkur’s. Geysir was steaming, but nowadays it’s dormant, so no eruption. The landscape of this whole geothermal area is a little bit unearthly, especially with white steam drifting eerily out of holes in the ground. It’s beautiful and fascinating.

Geysir, the original geyser

Next, we drove to Gullfoss, or Golden Falls, on the Hvítá (White River). From the parking lot, we got our first glimpse of a glacier in the distance. It’s hard for me to identify which one because Iceland has a number of huge glaciers which have named offshoots. We took the path toward the waterfall. It was a sunny day again, the blue sky strewn with fluffy clouds, and in the distance, we could see a patch of rainbow. Then we drew closer and saw the massive waterfall in its deep canyon. The rainbows were spectacular. A gravel path led alongside the canyon toward the upper falls, and part of it was dampened by the heavy mist sprayed up by the huge lower falls.

Gullfoss

From Gullfoss, we drove to Eyrarbakki, a fishing village on the southern coast of Iceland, where we had an early dinner at Rauða Húsið (The Red House–most of the restaurants we ate in looked like houses from the outside, in fact). The restaurant specializes in humar, translated as lobster, but more precisely the Norway lobster (or langoustine). We almost all had the “uplifted” lobster tails, where they prise the meat out of the shell and serve it on top.

My uplifted lobster tails at Rauða Húsið

After dinner, we checked out the “beach,” which was not very beachy, but we saw some washed-up seaweed and a small black crab (dead) on the asphalt.

The next day was Saturday, and we spent it driving to and around the Snæfellsnes peninsula in western Iceland. We took the tunnel under the Hvalfjörður (Whale Fjord) and the bridge over Borgarfjörður, in the mist. We headed first for Stykkishólmur to eat lunch at Narfeyrarstofa, a restaurant which serves local seafood including scallops and blue mussels. It was here that we first encountered Iceland’s unexpected enthusiasm for Doritos; my brother’s fish and chips breading included finely crushed Doritos.

Me and my local scallops with sweet potato and Icelandic barley at Narfeyrarstofa (notice the sheepskin behind me)

After lunch, we walked around the Stykkishólmur harbor and along the causeway to the basalt island Súgandisey. We climbed a steep staircase to the grassy top of the island, where there was an old windlass (I think) once used for hauling kerosene up for the lighthouse. From Súgandisey, we could take in the views of Breiðafjörður and its islands. We could also walk up to the short red lighthouse.

Stykkishólmur harbor with Súgandisey in the background

From Stykkishólmur, we followed the road along the Snæfellsnes coast, passing through tiny towns. We stopped to see Kirkjufell, or Church Mountain, near the town of Grundarfjörður. Kirkjufell is a dramatic, horizontally striated mountain that juts up at the edge of the sea (apparently it was a filming location for Game of Thrones). 

Kirkjufell

Further down the highway, we got out to look at Snæfellsjökull (jökull = glacier), the volcano and glacier at the end of the Snæfellsnes peninsula. There was a flock of elegant Arctic terns flying and screeching on the side of the road. I think I can guess why their name in Icelandic is kría.

Arctic terns in flight

Apparently some people consider Snæfellsjökull one of the world’s spiritual or energy centers. I can’t really speak to that, but our guide on our inland trip a couple of days later told us she feels a very strange energy there.

We curved around the tip of the peninsula and began heading south and southeast. I was paging through the Lonely Planet guidebook, and I noticed the entry on Djúpalónssandur, a black sand beach with rock formations just 2km off the road we were on. I asked if we could go there, and we did! The road toward the coast wasn’t really wide enough for two cars, but at the end of it was a packed parking lot, tour busses, and bathrooms. It was a short walk past a lava field, a blue pool, and a rock arch, with views of Snæfellsjökull to the north, to the stony beach strewn with rusted debris from the 1948 wreck of a British fishing trawler. The guidebook stated that the rock formations here included an elf church and a Kerling, or troll woman, but I never figured out where the elf church was. Djúpalónssandur was pebblier than I expected for a black “sand” beach, but it was picturesque, and it was fun watching the small waves crash on the smoothed rocks that reached the shore.

Djúpalónssandur

Our next stop was Hellnar, on the coast, where there was a hillside café serving cake, among other things. We walked downhill and clambered across rounded stones in shades from pale gray to black toward the Baðstofa sea cave. The cliffs on either side of the open-topped chamber featured incredible rock formations made up of layers or plates of gray stone in different thicknesses that collectively swooped and curved like ocean waves. The sea cave was filled with nesting seagulls and rang with their cries. There was water at the bottom of it, and a hole in the ceiling opened onto the sky and let in the light. It was an amazing spot.

The Baðstofa sea cave at Hellnar

We started up the trail that led from Hellnar to Arnarstapi, the next coastal fishing village. The path led through another lava field; all the Icelandic lava fields we saw consisted of a rubble of dark rocks covered with gray-green moss. There were views of Snæfellsjökull and the knob-topped mountain Stapafell, as well as of sea cliffs and rocky islands dotted with birds. On one of these, my brother and I spotted two birds whose black backs and white stomachs immediately made me think of penguins, but of course they couldn’t be penguins. We thought they were puffins, but on our last day in Iceland, we saw actual puffins, and these birds had looked much larger. Now I wonder if they might’ve been lesser auks, also known as razorbills. In Arnarstapi, we saw the statue of Barður the troll (who was actually half human, one quarter giant, and one quarter troll), who has his own saga.

Walking from Hellnar to Arnarstapi

Continued in Part II!

Conservation of Shadows

May13

I’m still reading collections of short fiction, and the latest one I finished was Yoon Ha Lee’s Conservation of Shadows. I bought Lee’s first novel, Ninefox Gambit, from Small World Books in Venice a few years ago and really liked it. I’ve also read the next book in the Machineries of Empire trilogy, Raven Stratagem, and I regret that I’ve yet to read the third book, Revenant Gun. But the first two installments were enough to make me a Yoon Ha Lee fan, so when I saw Conservation of Shadows on Isabelle’s bookshelf, I knew I wanted to read it.

The short story collection is introduced by Aliette de Bodard, another SFF author I’m a fan of despite having only read a short story or two of hers. (I keep meaning to read some of her longer work. Also, fun fact: I have a trunked novel from before I’d heard of de Bodard in which the main character’s young cousin is named Aliette. I found the name in a French baby names book.)

Conservation of Shadows begins with “Ghostweight,” whose worldbuilding reminded me a bit of the Machineries of Empire trilogy. I read this story slowly. Recently I described Theodora Goss’s In the Forest of Forgetting as not being cerebral or demanding (which was not in any way intended as a slight). Well, I find at least some of Yoon Ha Lee’s stories if not cerebral then certainly demanding. “Ghostweight” was one of those. But the payoff. The ending blew me away. Was every story in the collection going to be this breathtakingly good?!

Then I read the second story, “The Shadow Postulates,” and loved it. I decided after that one that I needed to buy my own copy of the book.

I enjoyed the desert wasteland setting motif in “The Bones of Giants” (is this a motif? I’m trying and failing to put my finger on something I feel this story has in common with some other settings, such as the one in Moira Young’s Dust Lands trilogy). I liked that the protagonists of “Swanwatch” and “The Unstrung Zither” were musician-composers, since I often can’t help writing about music myself. Lee seems to have a thing for guns, and also math (of course), but also language! There were so many references to structural properties of language that were done so well that I kept wondering if Lee had a degree in linguistics as well as in mathematics. Or at the very least some kind of background. In reading interviews, I discovered he has a past as a conlanger, so that explains a lot. I have this urge to say more about the linguistics in Conservation of Shadows; we’ll see if that happen.

I appreciated all the Asian-inspired worldbulding, from the obvious, foregrounded, and central to the more subtle and understated. While I could recognize fictional cognates of Korea, China, and Japan, I learned more about Lee’s inspiration (one naval battle in particular) by reading the story notes, which I also found delightful. In another interview, Lee said he always enjoyed learning more about the author and the story from such notes, so he decided to include his own. This reader liked flipping to the end of the book to read the notes after each story!

Finally, I savored Lee’s excellent writing, which inspired me as I read since I’m currently novel drafting harder than I have in a long time (yay, confinement?) and everything I’m spewing onto the digital page feels like it’s horrible written. So it’s good to read some actual quality writing to remind myself what it looks like, take note of how it’s done, and reassure myself that I will fix the terrible writing in revisions.

The Powers of Music

Apr29

I’ve long enjoyed reading restaurant reviews and recipe articles in The New York Times’ food section, but since much of the world began locking down, there have been no Hungry City reviews of New York’s under-the-radar ethnic food joints or measured evaluations by Pete Wells. Instead, I keep stumbling upon Sam Sifton’s What to Cook newsletter, whose tone of late I feel can be summed up by sometimes you just want to eat meatballs/mac and cheese/insert comfort food here, and you know what, that’s okay, just go ahead and do it. Actually, maybe that goes for all the current food coverage.

Anyway. You thought this post was about music. Sifton has also been appending some non-food recommendations to his newsletters, and on Sunday he asked his readers to please read Alex Ross’s article in The New Yorker on grieving and Brahms. I dutifully clicked on the link (was I procrastinating? I mean, what do you think I was doing reading The New York Times food section in the first place?), and I was intrigued by the subhead about the “enormous sadness” “that glows with understanding” in Brahms. I’m not particularly into Brahms, but as I read the article I had a vague recollection that I liked his first symphony. I started listening to a recording of it, and while I recognized snatches of the first movement, it wasn’t until I got to the fourth movement that I thought, Ah, yes, this. I remembered that grand, noble theme, and I thought I’d studied the symphony in music listening (could we have only paid attention to the fourth movement?!).

While I was taken by Ross’s characterization of Bach as “music’s supreme companion of extreme distress” and Brahms as “the great poet of the ambiguous, in-between, nameless emotions” (including “pervasive wistfulness”), my favorite parts of his article were his quotes from Philip Kennicott’s book Counterpoint: A Memoir of Bach and Mourning (which sounds intriguing too). The first was “I bristle at the idea that music is consoling or has healing power,” and when I read it, I thought, But wait, music is totally consoling! After all, hadn’t I turned to Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 when Osmo Vänskä resigned as director of the Minnesota Orchestra during the 2013 musicians’ lockout and on the morning after the 2016 U.S. presidential election?

But the next quote was, “Music, if anything, makes us raw, more susceptible to pain, nostalgia, and memory.” And this resonated. I don’t think it’s either/or: music can both console and make us more vulnerable, awakening and amplifying latent emotions. It can do one or the other and probably both together. Likely there’s some argument to be made about how music consoles precisely by “guid[ing us] through the complexity of [our] feelings,” as Ross put it.

Something made me remember MILCK‘s EP This Is Not The End and how I’d liked it, and so after Brahms’s Symphony No. 1 I went back to listen to it. I’m listening to it as I write this post too. I don’t know enough about Music These Days to know what genre MILCK sings (okay, Wikipedia says “pop,” which is what I would’ve guessed if pressed), but she’s best known for her song “Quiet,” which has a special place in my heart. I’m capricious in my non-classical (and non-folk/trad) musical tastes, and it usually takes special circumstances for me to like something in the pop/rock sphere. In MILCK’s case, those special circumstances exist (I mean, I saw her on a panel). Most of the time, I’d probably say a bit cynically that the reason pop songs seem to speak to your exact feelings and situation is because their lyrics are so vague as to be applicable to practically any situation, but honestly, when it works, it really does work. Some of the songs on This Is Not The End do that for me, and others I like for other reasons (like maybe they remind me of someone else). Maybe something music does is give us space to settle into complex feelings.

Dangerous Instruments

Feb5

Last Friday I went to the opening reception of the Stewart Gallery exhibit “Dangerous Instruments.” The Stewart Gallery, run by the Grinnell Area Arts Council, is inside the old Stewart library, now the Grinnell Arts Center, next door to the post office. The Arts Council runs all sorts of interesting activities that would probably be worth checking out. There’s even a pipe band. As in Scottish bagpipes. Am I missing my chance to realize my childhood ambition of learning to play the bagpipes? (Am I also missing my chance to learn to play viola da gamba through the Collegium Musicum?)

I digress.

“Dangerous Instruments” featured the creations of Eric McIntyre, hornist, composer, professor of music, and conductor of the Grinnell College orchestra. He built his musical instruments-cum-works of art from excavated pianos, horn bells, saw blades, axe heads, used munitions, bedpans, pitchforks, a tractor fuel pump, a mailbox, gun barrels, and more. Many of them were beautiful (with a certain rustic-ness) and elegant, and some of them literally had teeth.

A Dangerous Piano

The reception was crowded, and I think there was good representation from the ranks of the college orchestra. Gallery visitors were invited to play many of the instruments (gently), using little metal implements, beaters of various types, or giant washers. I tapped tentatively at a few things myself.

The Schlüsselspiel, one of the more melodious instruments

Around 7:00pm, the artist gave a little talk introducing all of his instruments and explaining how he’d made them. He goes to auctions to buy things like the equipment from an old sawmill. He performed on some of the instruments or demonstrated the kinds of sounds they could make. He seemed really interested in different types of resonances and showing how you could pluck or strum the tines of a pitchfork. He’d made a bow out of an old lightning rod and some bicycle part and used it to bow his “mailbox bass.” Honestly, I was not always particularly taken with the sounds these instruments made; they weren’t very musical to me (though I guess music is in the ear of the beholder). But other instruments had more delightful surprises: suspended wrenches and axe heads make surprisingly sweet bell-like sounds.

He also performed on some of the instruments, playing a Saint-Saëns romance on a horn with a bedpan for a bell and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” on a double-belled horn built with the double barrels from an old rifle. He’d composed a piece for horn and these three motorized saw blade-and-bullet casings instruments, each of which made a perpetual tinkling sound.

Change Ringing in Boston and Northampton

Nov6

This blog is 6 years old today, which means it’s my birthday! Anyway, on to the bells.

My fall break in Massachusetts was not entirely devoted to visiting bookstores. I flew into Boston on Saturday evening and spent the night with a close high school friend and her husband. On Sunday morning, I joined Leland and the Boston band for my first close encounter with change ringing. Here’s my non-ringer’s explanation for non-ringers: change ringing is ringing church tower bells with ropes, one ringer to a bell. Change ringing is not melodic, so the ringers aren’t playing a tune. Rather, the bells are rung in different orders/permutations. There are named patterns that consist of a specific set of permutations. Ringers learn these patterns, called methods, so when the conductor calls out a particular method, they know what their bell is supposed to do. It’s physical, mathematical, and very English. I thought I had some esoteric hobbies, but change ringing (like lined-out hymnody!) makes shape note singing look mainstream.

Church of the Advent

On Sunday morning, I first walked through Back Bay to the Church of the Advent. The sidewalks were paved in red brick, and the front steps of most townhouses were festively decorated for autumn/Halloween, with pumpkins and gourds galore (also, you know, the odd fresh grave in a little front garden). Advent is an Episcopalian/Anglican church, and from what I could glean it’s about as close as you can get to Catholic without recognizing the Pope. Veeery high church. When Leland and his partner, also a ringer, arrived, we ascended the narrow spiral staircase to an anteroom that gave onto the ringing room beyond. There were lots of signs about when to be quiet.

We were there for service ringing, that is, bell ringing as the current service was getting out, so the ringers had to wait for the right moment. Then they went into the ringing room; I was invited to come in too, as long as I did not touch or go near any ropes. The first thing the band had to do was ring the tower bells up (so their mouths were up; this is their rest position when ringers are actively using the bells). After this, I went back to the anteroom while different sets of ringers rang different methods on the bells. I picked up some change ringing jargon over the course of the morning (some of which I may get wrong in this post), but I have to admit that all the methods sounded the same to me. It’s kind of beautiful to watch, though, without even seeing the bells: the ringers’ movements are very fluid, and it all looks like this somewhat hypnotizing human machine.

Simon the church cat

After about twenty minutes of ringing, we went downstairs and around the corner for the fellowship hour. Advent has a resident church cat, Simon, who was very sweet! Possibly because he could butter people into sharing treats from the table with him.

Next we walked to Old North Church, of Paul Revere fame (he rang the same bells that the Boston band still rings!), for more service ringing. The ringing room of Old North felt a bit more rustic (all wood and brick), and I perched on the staircase that led to the upper stories of the tower to watch. When the bells rang, the whole tower thrummed. A few methods in, Leland and I went through the door at the top of my steps, climbed another staircase, and then climbed a sort of stair-ladder hybrid to a platform just overlooking the bells. From here, with ear protection, we watched the bells swing up and down as the ringers below handled the ropes for the next pattern.

The bells of Old North

The band rang at Old North for about an hour, and then we all had lunch at the Boston Public Market. I went back to my friend’s place to pick up my stuff and took the T to Cambridge to meet up with Leland again. At his partner’s apartment, we had tea, and then they brought out a set of handbells to try to teach me to ring some changes. The actual ringing technique is different from the technique I’m accustomed to from ringing in handbell choirs; there are two strokes, the way there are with tower bells. This was a little awkward, but much more difficult was trying to ring permutations. They’d given me the two bells that rang “symmetrically,” which was supposed to make the task easier, but as soon as the changes began, I found myself completely lost. It was like my brain had hit a wall; it was actually kind of impressive. We switched from six bells to five, and with only one bell, I was able to keep up a bit better, thinking to myself something like, This time through I ring in position one, this time through in position two…

Soon after the handbell ringing, Leland and I drove to Northampton, where on Monday evening I would get one more dose of change ringing in the tower of Smith College. The tower is not as pretty on the outside and not as atmospheric on the inside as the towers in Boston, but you do get to climb a ladder to reach the ringing room. The group here silenced the bells and rang using a simulator (that is, they were ringing the muted bells, and a computer played bell sounds synchronized to their strokes, because apparently not everyone around the tower loves listening to bell practice). I watched and listened for a bit (Leland gave me some things to keep my ear out for, which made the methods more intelligible), and then Leland gave me a lesson in handling a bell. Conclusion: it’s hard! And that’s just one part of change ringing because then there are all the methods to learn!

Smith tower ringing room (upwards leads to the bells)

Later, I started poking around the shelves underneath the benches against the brick walls of the ringing room. There were stacks of books about ringing. Leland suggested one with anecdotes from the history of change ringing. There was a whole section on women and change ringing, including a rather hilarious excerpt from a letter or somesuch in which the writer said that the tower was one of the few places where men could experience friendship with each other, and with the presence of a woman it just wasn’t the same, so couldn’t women leave men this one thing?

When Leland first explained change ringing to me, years ago, he said that in his experience, when you first encounter it, “either you get it and it instantly seems like the most enjoyable activity imaginable or you don’t and it just sounds totally weird.” I think I rather regrettably fall into the latter category, but I’m glad at least to have seen and heard actual change ringing and to have stood in a tower watching Paul Revere’s bells sound at my feet.