No, you're not going to get a blog a day as my departure date approaches. There are WAY too many things to do before I shuffle off to Deutschland and way too many drains on my time to spend the hours crafting beautiful little blog entries each day for your entertainment pleasure.
I'm just going to reconnect with all my loyal blogosphere peoples to give you an update on what's been going on.
I just returned from the Society for Ethnomusicology annual conference in Philadelphia. The conference is a great way to see what's going on in the wonderful world of ethnomusicology. I have to say that it's an exciting time for us ethnoids. With the expansion of the availability and accessibility of the all of the world's music, there's so much to study and so many ways of examining and analyzing the music of the world!
It's always great to see the faces and meet the people behind the names that you read in articles and books along the educational trail. What astounds me is how NICE all of these people are! Special shout out goes to Judah M. Cohen from Indiana University. Brilliant scholar and super nice dude.
As far as the klezzical content of the conference, my paper ("Interculturalism and Musical Hybridity in Early Klezmer" -- sounds brainier than it really is) was on a fascinating panel with papers on Andy Statman (by Benjamin Krakauer), and Swedish Klezmer as played by non-Jews (by David Kaminsky). It was a fascinating session, and a priveledge to be associated with some great scholarship!
Now on to the rest. Things have been up and down here. My grandfather passed away a few days before I left for Philadelphia. I'm not quite ready to do an "in memoriam" blog yet. I'll save it for another time, but I will say that he was surrounded by his family, especially at the end, which is the way that we should all go.
My time these days is spent cleaning, packing (well mostly packing, which will then lead to cleaning), writing job and post-doc applications, and soon, writing proposals for other conferences coming up in the new year. Writing job application cover letters and "statements of research" and "statements of teaching" and other such miscellanea is quite time consuming, but must be done, particularly if i want to find a job!
So thus is my life. In 6 days (and about 6 hours), I get on a plane for Europe. December appears as if it's going to be full of travel. I have 2 chunks of 3 or 4 days that I'll have to be out of the apartment I'm renting in Berlin (due to previous bookings for the 'vacation rental' apartment), and I've already got a trip scheduled to Paris to see my favourite band, Gogol Bordello. I'll blog more about that in a couple of weeks.
As for the other time that I need to be out of the apartment, I'm investigating some travel possibilities, looking for affordable getaways. A possibility is to stay in Germany and either visit other friends around the country, or see more of Europe. Some possibilities include Brussels, Stockholm,and Oslo. I know.. Why do the cheapest flights have to be to cold places?
And so, dear readers, this is my final week. Packing up my life in the place that I've called home since 2003, working to try to find some work beyond the Berlin adventure, and seeing friends before I leave. I'll try to blog once more before I leave, but the "Adventures in Klezmer" are close to beginning (although any klezmer is an adventure).
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