Recent Reflections (or, a late-night stream of conciousness)

If you are writing a paper for an American professor teaching at a school that prefers the UK punctuation style, do you use 'aesthetic' commas (American) or 'logical' commas (UK)? What about quotation marks (the UK uses what we know as apostrophes for quotation and our quotation for quotes made inside the quote--sorry, that's an awful lot of quotes)? Funny thing is, when I tried to go back to using the American quotation and comma rules after having written two papers in the UK style, I was incredibly confused. Quotes look so much more bulky when there's two little apostrophes around each end! Anyway, I ended up using UK--it's what the rest of the class used, anyway.

Self-esteem problems plague everyone; beauty should never be equated with happiness.

Irish traditional music (trad) is passed down from person to person, and just about everyone knows who learned what from whom. I, for instance, am studying fiddle with Connie O'Connell, who played with and learned from Johnny O'Leary and Dennis Murphy, who learned from Padraig O'Keeffe, last of the fiddle masters of Sliabh Luachra, who learned from Tom Billy Murphy. On the other hand, I am studying bodhran with Frank Torpey, who learned from Mel Mercier, who learned from his father, Peadar Mercier, who played with the Chieftains, which came from Ceoltoiri Chualann, organized by Sean O Riada--the man deemed responsible for the revival in trad music which eventually lead to Riverdance (which, funnily enough, Frank Torpey played in). This is not dissimilar to the lines often traced with classical musicians--at Northwestern, I study with Blair Milton, who studied with Joseph Gingold and Galamian, etc.

Fortune Cookies here are very strange: 'Beware of the man with the gleam in his eye; it might just be the sun shining through the hole in his head.' 'Just because you think you are paranoid doesn't mean that someone isn't following you.'

Frequent comment made about the boys who live upstairs: 'They're just like little boys!' The prank call wall is at a current truce, by which I mean I've learned to remember to unplug the phone at night.

Ah, yes, for those of you who didn't know: I have been diagnosed with a virus similar to mono that will last for some unknown amount of time. This means, of course, rest, water, and becoming a lighter sleeper. The first two are fine, but I really can't stand the third when I consider the thickness of the wall between my room and the living room. Or when I turn over--I think my bed springs are dying, if not already dead.

This weekend happens to be the bank holiday weekend known as the 'Halloween Holiday.' Funnily enough, my stand partner in the Cork School of Music asked me if Americans celebrated halloween--we do, but very differently than they do here (which, actually, I'm still not quite sure how they do that). I did find out, courtesy of an email Grainne sent me, how they used to celebrate it with a tea-time favorite, barmbrack (if you're looking for some easy reading, google that one--it explains the halloween tradition that goes along with it. I'd totally copy and paste it in here, but that's called 'plagarism' and we all know that wikipedia isn't what you'd call accurate).

Anyway, back to the holiday weekend. I'm going up to the Killary Adventure Center for some kayaking and some hill-walking (and maybe just some good, old-fashioned rest--thanks mono-like virus). It's located in the Connemarra Gaeltacht, where Irish is the primary language, up in County Clare. I'm actually really excited to go--Clare is a beautiful area.

Sean-nos singing is very popular up in Connemarra. In fact, there are some highly noted (terrible pun, sorry) singers that have come from that area in the past. My sean-nos class is going well--I've learned three songs, and I'm working on a fourth. One of these days I'll post the text, a translation, and a pronunciation. It'll be cool.

Righty, now--my cuppa is empty and I'm finally feeling tired.

Until next time,