In a bit of good news for those who believe that every American, regardless of who they are, has a right to try to live free from harassment and attack, the Senate yesterday passed the Matthew Shepard Act, which, according to the Human Rights Campaign website “updates and expands the federal hate crimes laws to include bias motivated violence based on a victim’s sexual orientation, gender identity, gender, and disability, and provides new resources and tools to assist local law enforcement in prosecuting vicious crimes.” To prevent a possible veto, the Senate has bundled it together with a defense authorization bill and claimed that fighting domestic terrorism in all of its forms is as important fighting it anywhere else.

Republican Senator Larry Craig of Idaho?

He voted against the bill…

Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Sofia
June 2007

We’ve been in Greensboro since Friday afternoon and already Marta has played one concert (more to come on this) and has a chamber performance tomorrow night. I have plenty to blog about, including the conclusion to our Bulgarian odyssey as well as my thoughts (positive, of course) about EMF, several news items as well as a whole bunch of blogs that I need to catch up on.

In the meantime, I wanted to offer a free plug for Panasonic and say that we are really digging our new Lumix camera, which took a number of great pictures this summer, including this one of the golden domes of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Sofia, which is, according to the Rough Guide to Bulgaria, “one of the finest pieces of architecture in the Balkans.”

I would agree with that assessment.

We took a weekend trip into the Rhodope Mountains of southern Bulgaria this past weekend. One of our stops was the delightful village of Shiroka Luka,a postcard perfect example of a genuine Rhodope village. It also happens to be the location of the School of Folk Instruments and Music, dedicated to teaching the traditional music and dance of Bulgaria.

We tried to go into the school only to be met by a rather stern woman who told us that exams were under way and we would not be allowed to enter. I think Marta should have played the “I’m a music professor in America” card to gain access, but she politely kept quiet about our background and we were turned away at the door.

We will definitely return to this remarkable place and when we do, we will make our arrangements to visit the school in advance.

(If you don’t know much about the folk music of Bulgaria, I strongly urge you to pick up a copy of Timothy Rice’s May it Fill Your Soul and if possible, listen to a recording or two. It is a remarkable musical tradition full of virtuosic ornamentation and complex asymmetrical and additive meters.)

I really enjoy cooking. I find that the process is similar to composition in several ways: First, success requires a bit of creativity tempered by a great deal of practice and experience. Second, some meals and recipes come out exceptionally well while others are just lousy. Also, it is very important to have a clear plan and a firm goal in mind. Finally, there are just some ingredients and recipes that I simply do not like and will not use. Serialism and mushrooms are both items on my respective blacklists, though I’m perfectly happy with, and very fond of, dissonance and garlic, both in moderation.

Every year I make a typical “American” meal for Marta’s family. Last year I made chili and apple pie, this year I made meatloaf and apple cobbler. The meal was (fortunately) quite successful and the meatloaf was particularly well received. I had to convince everyone to at least try ketchup as a condiment before turning to the local tomato and pepper spread (lutenitsa) but I have to say that it worked well with the ubiquitous feta cheese that is typical of the cuisine of this region.

I have no idea what to make for the entrée next time, but I do know that I will be making cherry pie for the dessert. If you have a suggestion, (No hamburgers or hot dogs please, they do barbecue and sausage far better than Americans do!) please let me know.

In case you were holding your breath with anticipation, you can now gasp for air as Preslava was voted off of Music Idol last night.

Kitsch is good, in small doses. For example, I really like Cape Cod kitsch, but dislike “Wild West” and Native American kitsch (and if you’ve ever been to Cherokee, North Carolina, you know precisely what I mean!) I’m not a big fan of the Valentine’s Day excess, but actually do quite like the Easter Bunny nonsense.

One of the things I like about our little apartment in Burgas is that when we first moved into the place a few years ago, Marta’s parents left us some shelves in the kitchen filled with a bunch of kitschy items. The coffee mugs are particularly goofy, but they are now an integral part of our annual month living here and I can’t imagine taking them down.

To keep this blog somewhat on course, I will say that occasionally there are one or two bad (or clichéd) ideas that stubbornly manage to remain in my music simply because familiarity had made these passages less objectionable (sort of like dodecaphony.) I wonder if this is what happened to Smetana at the end of Vltava and that perfect (-ly kitschy) authentic cadence that punctuates the end of that piece…

During my time in Bulgaria, I spend quite a bit of time looking out of our apartment window down to the busy street below. While Marta is out doing her research or visiting old friends and I’m left alone, I often find that the window is a great option when I need a diversion from my own work. I find the daily human drama that plays itself out in the chaos below me endlessly fascinating.

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you might remember that an early winter ice storm in the St. Louis area knocked out our power for six full days last December. After our power was restored, I did some complaining about the old power infrastructure in our area and the 55% rate hike imposed by Ameren on their customers in Southern Illinois.

Six months later, I’m having a bit of a laugh at myself as I look out my window at some of the wires strung around our apartment building. The first picture is of a lamp-post across the street and to the left that is moonlighting as an impromptu hub for telephone and cable television wires. The second picture I took this morning is of a young man climbing a rickety ladder to string yet another wire on the lamp-post just a few yards out of my window. The third picture shows a lovely tree just to the right of my window that also carries its own array of wires.

Without going too deeply into social commentary, I find that this industrious and ingenious system provides wonderful insight into the strange duality of this region. Bulgaria is a country of contrasts, on one hand a member of the European Union and on the other a place where the old Balkan tropes manifest themselves in a variety of ways.

Regardless, these pictures make my complaints about Ameren’s old infrastructure seem just a bit silly.

Yesterday evening I had the opportunity to watch Music Idol, the Bulgarian version of American Idol (which is the American version of the British Pop Idol) and came away impressed by how very different it is from the American version. The performers are a bit weaker (not surprising and hardly a slight, given the fact that there are about 295 million more Americans to draw from) but were required to sing a wider range of styles, including (gasp!) opera.

And, in case you were wondering, Nevena should win, I think she was far better than Preslava and Teodor!

We leave Budapest for the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria tomorrow, but Marta and I did have a chance to spend a couple of hours down by the Franz Liszt Academy of Music here in Budapest. As we walked by the front of the building on this 80+ degree day, we could clearly hear the comforting cacophony of practicing floating down to the street through the open windows.

Among the din of scales, etudes, and arpeggios we could clearly discern a pianist practicing the accompaniment to Beethoven’s 3rd cello sonata (Marta was especially happy with that one), assorted arias by a powerful lyric soprano, and an unidentified Baroque work for flute. It is sappy to say, but there is something romantic and special for me whenever I walk by a music school in Europe, especially one as storied and important as this one in a city that has produced many legends.

Further down the square is this wonderfully kinetic statue of a wild-haired and slightly disheveled Liszt playing air piano. We stopped for a few minutes to snap this picture and decided, on a whim, that we’d have lunch at the Pompeii, a pizza joint just to the left of this statue.

We completed the afternoon by stopping at a local music store where I picked up a copy of a Hungarian sight-singing text. You can never have too many and it will certainly provide some new and interesting torture for some future students.