It’s all a blur (which worked for Monet).

Three weeks is it, since my last post? Well, my apologies, friends; I’ve been remiss. But busily remiss, and that may redeem. In the first of those weeks I got a modest amount of new recording and interviewing done, to bring my tally up to:

Instruments	Musicians	Taksims	They Analyze	I'll Analyze
Ud	4	16	13	3
Kanun	5	13	6	7
Tanbur	5	21	13	8
Kemençe	5	8	1	7
Ney	4	13	8	5
Y. Tanbur	4	11	10	1
Violin	3	4	1	3
Clarinet	1	1	0	1
Voice	1	1	0	1
Totals	30*	88	52	36

(*Two persons performed on two different instruments each, so there are 30 performers even though this adds up to 32.)

So, thanks to the very talented and thoughtful Ahmet T. on ney and Anyes A. on kanun for bumping me up there a bit, and for giving much to think about from our interviews. Although I am pretty sure I'll be making a few more recordings, I finally feel that I am approaching done-ness on the data gathering front.

The more recent two weeks have been exciting in two respects. One is that my mom had a successful brain surgery and thereby has less cancer in her body than she did before, which I think we might all celebrate, and the physical therapists are hopeful about her recovering fine motor control of her left arm and hand, so thanks doctors, nurses, anaesthesiologists, and physical therapists in Santa Barbara and around the world for doing all your good work! And big kisses to mom, of course, to aid in her recovery. Mwah!

The other font of excitement is the arrival of many friends from abroad, first and foremost my girlfriend (if we may use that word at our age), Dr. Andrea Fishman, lately of Evanston, Illinois.

Here we are again, in case you'd forgotten what we look like. Nice to be together again after lo, these 9 months apart. Haven't yet had too much alone time as yet - which we plan to remedy by way of a trip up the Black Sea coast, soon - because we've been joyously hosting/tour-guiding a pretty constant flow of out-of-town guests - Rami and Richard and Susan and Marina and David and Paddy, and I hear Michael's in town but haven't seen him yet and all the food makes us fat and the walking in this heat (up to 41 C/106 F) makes us thin and the blur of music (listening, mostly, but did arrange and play a gig with Andrea and Rami and Bob B. at Molly's Café last week) and ud makers (from which a great buying of ud-s has ensued) and 3,000 + years of historical doo-dahs and boat tours and more food... whew! Yeah - mighty nice times, but also a wee bit tiring. Thanks, Rami, for bringing the scotch.

So that's what condition our condition is in. I hear California is declaring bankruptcy and discreetly asking if Obama wants to buy the joint - I'm picturing Schwartzenegger in tie-dye holding up a finger in front of the legislature saying "I need a miracle." Hmm. (And they don't really want me to pay back those student loans, do they?)

Anyway, about seven more weeks here before I return, possibly to a brand-new Wall Mart University of Pepsifornia, Santa Budweiser campus. Let's wish each other luck - bye bye and buy bonds. And while we're at it, Happy Birthday United States of America! They say the first 233 years are the hardest - hang in there!