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My DMA project is about outreach. I had not envisioned so many bumps along the road… say for example, some members of the NEC staff not e-mailing me back. Well, thank goodness Angela Beeching is always there to help me out, from the best constructive and critical criticism of my bio and resume to recommending good reading material.

She turned me on to Eric Booth and I’m impressed. Everyone should check it out — watch it, streaming the audio, or download the mp3 on WGBH (Boston’s classical station).

http://forum.wgbh.org/wgbh/forum.php?lecture_id=3588

I just watched this documentary on hulu.com. I highly recommend it.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/49577/the-times-of-harvey-milk

I first learned about Harvey Milk a few months ago on NPR. Just like NPR — always being sensible, discussing the issues surrounding Prop. 8 and also giving us Bay Area people some history. Then that movie came out. Then today I was bored and stumbled upon this documentary.

It’s a beautiful story, full of hope and change. It reminds us how we always need great leaders to look up to and powerful role models to learn from. Sound familiar?

Milk is a piece of San Franciscan history that I hope will always live on. Prop. 8 is just for now. If Milk and his supporters were able to overturn something on the scale of Prop. 6 (watch the documentary), we should be able to make that next best decision to allow for the natural progression of rights and liberties to all people.

Thank you, Harvey Milk, for making our world a better place.

I don’t have a TV (or a microwave). At some point I’ll buy a TV probably, but I can live happily ever after without the microwave.

Anyways, I love Frontline, and I’m glad I can watch it on my computer. I just watched both parts of “Bush’s War”. Everyone should watch more Frontline:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/view/

I love learning about the complexity of issues; at the same time… AGHAHGAHGG!!!!!!!!

I guess traveling is a bit hard on the body. At the very least, Jet Blue never hassles me about bringing my guitar on board and it’s just about the only time I can watch Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” and Andrew Zimmern’s “Bizarre Foods” on the Travel Channel.

Speaking of food, I love my tea. I don’t care for those aromatherapy Teavana hyped-up yoga antioxidant spicy candlelight spiritual fuity zesty spiritual teas. They never impress.

Instead, I’m talking about the stuff of my childhood — things like Taiwanese oolong. That’s where the depth, aroma, and complexity are for me. And the aftertaste just melts me away.

As I brew my pot I’m also re-seasoning my 14-inch cast iron wok. There will be a dinner party on Saturday, and I need to make sure my babies are ready for action.

http://www.classicalguitarblog.net/2008/12/an-interview-with-steve-lin-pt/

Classical Guitar Blog, hosted by Chris Davis

http://www.classicalguitarblog.net/2008/12/an-interview-with-steve-lin/

Wow. I mean, wow. I’m sitting at a computer terminal with easy-to-access electrical outlets. Right in front of me is a touch screen menu. Order anything from sandwiches to dessert to beer, and swipe your card. Way too cool. Too bad everything is in airport prices.

This is a beautiful terminal–it’s kinda welcoming in its expansiveness, a bit like NYC, I guess. Of course, that’s just a cityboy’s opinion.

So I’m on the road again, driving up and down New England. After driving up and down the west coast in October, I can easily shrug off 3 hours of driving.

This time I’m going between Bates College (Lewiston, ME), Boston, New Haven (CT), and Westport (CT). Tonight I get to go back to Boston.

I hate my rental car, this piece of junk Dodge Caliber. However, I was surprised to find Sirius satellite radio in the car. Cool. At some point I settled on the right wing radio. That lasted a couple of days, before I couldn’t stand it anymore. A cool component was one of the guys taking calls from conservatives and challenging them to make sense. Then I flipped to the left, which only lasted a couple of hours, after which I had to go back to the right.

The entire thing was like a circus — very obnoxious, very loud, often lacking in stuff that made sense or lacking in things that I though would be good for a honest discourse. There was always the comedy channel, which I’m always fond of.

But after flipping around for a bit longer, I heard the voice of Terry Gross, host of NPR’s “Fresh Air”. And what a breath of fresh air to listen to NPR again (I didn’t find it on the first pass). I practically live with NPR when I drive around in California, so I feel like I’ve been reunited.

Yesterday I went to Mamoun’s. Today I went back for lunch. Ah… fantastic, cheap, good ol’ times.

Last night I went with my friend Jerry (getting English PhD at Yale) to Bar. Got a pitcher of the AmBar, then a medium red + mozzarella pizza with half mashed potatoes and half basil + green peppers. I never had the mashed potato topping when I was at Yale basically because I wasn’t a big fan of tubers. But that changed gradually (and totally — after the last girl I was with).

Now it just makes sense — dough + cheese + tomato sauce + potato, baked in a rocket hot oven. Delicious. The beer was a bit disappointing — I thought it was a bit unbalanced, leaning on the sweet side, though it had faint taste of port. Who cares though — I’m still a fan of Bar.

It was great to see Jerry again — we always had a great time hanging out when I went to school here. After 3 years, I’m finding that we have even more in common and have some pretty cool conversations.

We spent the night watching a Taiwanese film “Ocean Point No. 7″ (my translation). I’m not sure how a Taiwan-Taiwanese person would have reacted to it, but I thought it was hilarious. The characters were caricatures of Taiwanese people. One of the most beautiful things of the movie was having a Japanese character/story on top of the Mandarin and Taiwanese stories. It’s a unique aspect of Taiwanese culture.

It could have been a great movie, except the last parts of it …. which suuuuucked. Total let down. But then again, I hate that cheesey, nostalgic, self-loathing, wallowing-in-melancholy Taiwanese pop. (I hear some of the Taiwanese love Taiwan even more after watching this movie — understandable.) Don’t worry — if you think I ruined the ending for you, I didn’t. Most people could have seen it coming from a mile away.

All I’ve been reading in the last few years were music papers, music theories, music teaching methods, music outreach literature, music blah blah blah. With so much music, a part of my brain always goes numb, withering like a tree that can’t get enough sunlight because a bigger tree has cast it into the shadow. Going to Yale was good for me because I took Italian and calculus, which kept the music tumor at bay. Going back to NEC for my DMA was like going off the meds and the chemo, but before long I had Boston GuitarFest and Boston Guitar Project to keep my mind active and my curiosity rampant.

But still, the stuff I was reading was just music.

I get my book reviews from 2 places, mainly. NPR and the Daily Show. Occasionally there’s Leno and Letterman too. Thank goodness for Jon Stewart bringing Toobin on to promote “The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court”. Admittedly, my brain hurt for the first few pages — I was never too fond of American history or derivative of it. Law is always daunting, though I’m always glad when I get a chance to understand it, regardless of how absurd or reasonable it might seem. But because of the things I’ve done in the past few years and the recent election, I’m finding myself more and more curious about the political and historical currents in America.

The book read like a novel. The justices grew on me like the protagonists and antagonists in a good story. I think learning about the complexities and the intricacies of that secret world, along with some of the cases the rulings discussed in the book, has revitalized my brain.

One night, I was about half way through the book when I turned off the lights and went to bed. I had a strange dream — I dreamed I was a lawyer. I didn’t play the guitar anymore. And it was an oddly stressful morning when I woke up. But what a fantastic book.