The hippest beer ever

At the jazz institute I work for, we got a call in early 2005 from the North Coast Brewing Company in California. They explained that they wanted to create a new Belgian style ale. In discussing what to call it, the conversation at the brewing company apparently went in the direction of Belgian monks. Their Vice President is a huge jazz fan and soon made the connection between Belgium's monks and jazz's Monk - Thelonious Monk. So they called our institute, wanting to team up. The result is Brother Thelonious, a new beer that will be launched this coming Thursday! For every case of Brother Thelonious sold, North Coast Brewing Company will make a donation to our institute. How hip is that?!

So I'm flying out to Los Angeles later this week to help with the launch event. There will be celebrities, VIPs, and great jazz. I'm very excited - can't wait to taste what a Brother Thelonious ale tastes like! You can see the beautiful label and read more about the beer by visiting http://www.northcoastbrewing.com/brother.htm.

In other news, I judged Solo & Ensemble festival this past Saturday. I listened to middle and high school students play the flute from 8:30am to 5:30pm. Whew! As I mentioned to some family members, the bell curve is very apparent in these types of situations: the majority are average players, a few are completely unprepared, and a few are absolutely exceptional. You live for those 3 or 4 (out of, what, 50?) that walk in completely prepared, rehearsed, and ready to knock your socks off. Every player receives written comments from the judge on a variety of areas, and then an overall rating. The difficulty for me is that the festival organizers encourage the judges to use only a portion of the ratings available. In theory, you are to use ratings of I through V, with I the highest and V the lowest. In reality, however, you're really only supposed to use a I or a II. You can use a III for those that are completely unprepared, but then you have to prepare yourself for insane parents that will publicly confront you (I've seen this on two occasions!) and question your education, background, and authority. Ugh. So a little more than half get I's while the rest get II's. This means that those that knock your socks off get a I alongside those that tried hard but didn't quite succeed. Is this the music education equivalent of inflated grades?

Joel and I enjoyed a beautiful day yesterday in Greenbrier State Park in Maryland, north of Frederick. He spent 3 1/2 hours mountain biking while I ran errands. It was an absolutely perfect day: sunny, in the 70s, light breeze, striking blue sky. I tried to appreciate each minute of it!

Last Thursday I went to French Wine Thursday with friends. This is a fun series put on by a division of the French Embassy. They have weekly events at different restaurants around DC, where the host restaurant's chef prepares 5 or 6 different hors d'oeurves to pair with 5 or 6 different French wines. They also give you a brief lecture about the region from which the wine developed and why each wine goes well with each sample. The first event I went to featured champagne at a sushi restaurant in Adams Morgan. Then we did a red wine (I forget which one) at an American bistro near 14th and U Streets. This time it was at Butterfield 9, a very expensive "modern American" restaurant downtown. I tried several things for the first time: quail eggs, fried goat cheese, and ostrich meat. The quail egg gave me the willies, but everything else was excellent. The pairing of wines with the appropriate food is so creative and such a distinct talent! Can't wait for the next one.

CHEERS!

New Orleans, post-Katrina

In February, I coordinated and managed a week-long education tour to the Mississippi Gulf Coast and New Orleans for the jazz organization I work for. The tour was eye-opening in so many aspects. We had already gone to the Gulf Coast the year before, so we knew about the region, but this latest tour was AFTER Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Six months afterward, in fact. What we saw shocked all of us on the tour. Here is what I wrote a week later to family:

I've been trying to find some time to write about our New Orleans tour, partly because it will be therapeutic to me, and partly because I really want people to know what it's like. The media for some reason glosses over the real deal. Just today, cnn.com had an article that talked about how although some parts of New Orleans are in ruins, much of the city is getting back to normal. Really? We drove all around the city, through dozens of neighborhoods north, south, east, and west, and it looks like a war zone. The entire region looks like a war zone. What's normal about that?

While we were in the Mississippi Gulf Coast/New Orleans region for 6 days, a description of the first 2 days will epitomize our experiences. This first email will talk about our first day in the region.

Flying in to New Orleans, I looked out the airplane window and I saw lots of brown landscape with the occasional blue tarp/roof. It pretty much looked like what I expected. No big deal at that point.

My co-worker and I got off the plane, rented a car, and realized we had 4 hours before the musicians arrived. So we asked around for the nearest mall. We found one in Metairie. I ate my first beignets (yummy yummy!), shopped a little (of course), and then we went to lunch. The first sign that things weren't quite right was that every restaurant and shop had a Help Wanted sign. Later in the week we would discover that most French Quarter restaurants were closing around 8pm because of lack of staff. I guess when 3 out of 4 residents flee the area, the remaining 25% have to take on the extra work.

A few hours later, most of our crew had landed so we started the 90 minute drive east to Biloxi, where we would stay for two nights. As we drove from the airport through Metairie, towards the city of New Orleans, we saw more and more blue tarps on roofs. Then we saw fences down. Then we saw abandoned cars. As we drove north of New Orleans (we wouldn't be IN the city until 2 days later) we started seeing water lines on all of the houses. There were holes in roofs where, one guesses, people hacked their way out of their attics to escape the rising flood waters. Then, just east of the city, we came upon an area that was a ghost town. For miles. About 20 miles of ghost town along I-10. There were Home Depots, a Sam's Club, super markets, fast food restaurants, dozens of apartment buildings and neighborhoods, ALL DESERTED. Most of the windows were broken out. Burnt out cars. And mounds of trash. It was like a Stephen King book. Imagine driving from Bridgeton to, what, Wentzville? [in the St. Louis area] and seeing nothing but destruction. There were buildings burnt to the ground, abandoned cars, clothing, trash bags, shoes, papers, dead trees. FOR TWENTY MILES. At least. And that was just what we could see right along I-10.

There were lots of contractor pick-up trucks driving along the interstate. Some looked like established companies, others looked like they had just gone in to business. It seems like a very popular and profitable business to be in right now in that region. There were roofing signs everywhere, and I think a lot of their "supplies" came from abandoned houses.

We crossed the I-10 bridge that goes over the east side of Lake Pontchartrain. Several sections of the bridge were brand new, since half of the bridge was destroyed by Katrina. On the east end of the bridge we saw our first inland boats. There are - still - lots of boats in fields. We saw shrimp boats and sail boats tossed on their sides, just sitting in forests and fields, like it was the most natural thing to do.

By early evening we arrived in Biloxi. We knew Biloxi had been devastated and we were staying in one of just a few hotels that had reopened (the Imperial Palace hotel & casino). After checking in, we all decided to meet for dinner at the buffet restaurant in the hotel. My colleague went to check on the wait. There was a two hour wait and a line that wrapped around the restaurant and through the casino. I thought, I know this hotel is big, but are all of these people staying here? We quickly discovered that the answer was no. It turned out that the hotel was the only place to eat in the city.

We decided to drive around the city to find what we thought would be a quick bite to eat. Many traffic lights were out. We drove through several abandoned neighborhoods, many that had trailers parked in front of where a house once was. We drove down to Route 90 by the coast, where we remembered most restaurants could be found. It was completely dark. Street signs were nowhere to be found, traffic lights were out, a bridge was out. When we visited a year ago, this was a bustling town. Now, there was nothing.

After turning onto Route 90, I looked to my right and asked "what's that big mound?" I slowed down and everyone peered out their windows into the darkness. Suddenly it occurred to me that it wasn't a hill, or an old apartment building, or an abandoned restaurant. It was a barge. There was a barge three blocks inland, right next to the road. The next day we drove past it again and we discovered several bulldozers on top. They were breaking it down - removing it chunk by chunk - rather than trying to somehow tow it back to sea.

We eventually found a Super Wal-Mart several miles north of the city, away from the water, and ate there. The store was packed for a Sunday night. We later learned that it was the most profitable Wal-Mart in the country, most likely because it was the only thing open. Wal-Mart has the funds to reopen and recruit workers, and we were thankful for them that night.

To paraphrase Steve Martin in "The Jerk," that first day felt like 3 days. We saw so much, and we had just arrived. The most shocking thing wasn't the destruction itself - I realize what hurricanes can do - but the sheer magnitude of the destruction and that this is SIX MONTHS later. We weren't seeing this six days or six weeks later. This is half a year later. That's some storm.

First Blog

So Joel suggested that I start a blog, and I asked him why. He said I could write about what I do, such as my adventures last night. Hmmm, I thought. Last night consisted of my going to two different Georgetown bars with friends and drinking 7 cocktails over 6 hours. How exciting is that?! It was pretty fun for me, but I'm not sure how exciting that would be to friends and family across the country that would read this. (but if you're in the DC area, you need to at least try Mie N Yu in G'town for the fun, chi-chi atmosphere - $10 martinis and banana hummus - mmmm!).

So then I thought I could just write about my work with the jazz institute I work for. If I name names, I could get in trouble, but I do have some pretty good stories, even after working there for just under 2 years. I travel on average about once every month or two - this month I'm going to LA for the launch of 'Brother Thelonious' beer and next month I'll return to LA for a special 'Bebop to Hip-hop' school program.

Anyhoo, I hope family will check back on occasion to see what I've been up to. It's hard to stay in touch, even with email, so I'm hopeful this will be a step in the right direction. Here's what's coming up in the next few months:

1. Flute Society of Washington parlor recital tomorrow

2. judging Solo & Ensemble festival in Virginia next week (9 hours of listening to middle school and high school flutists.....9 hours straight!! but we do get paid)

3. French Wine Society wine tasting in downtown DC next week

4. 'Brother Thelonious' beer launch in LA on April 27 (Mom's birthday!)

5. 'Bebop to Hip-hop' school program in LA in May

6. our brand new Mini Cooper arrives in late May (yay!)

7. the Institute's having a Carnegie Hall event in June

8. Joel and I go to Paris and Barcelona for 10 days in July to celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary and also our 10th year of 'togetherness' (even bigger YAY!!!!!!)

9. Joel and Dad cycle the Katy Trail in Missouri in August (glad they're the ones riding over two days in muggy 90 degree heat and not me)

10. National Flute Association convention in Pittsburgh in August

11. Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition gala weekend at the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian, and the White House in September (part of which falls on my birthday--again)

12. family reunion at a beach house in Delaware in September (yay!!)

Oh - if you're interested in Joel's blog, where he writes about his adventures in cycling, check his page out at http://dcmountainbiker.blogspot.com.

CHEERS!!