Monday, September 12, 2011

More posts coming....

Just a quick explanation as to why there've been no posts recently. First, I've been completely swamped with my cross-country move, moving into my new place, and of course my new job doing marine biology at the New England Aquarium. The second reason is much more exciting, though: I'm finally making progress on my book. Books, actually; I'm writing two simultaneously (well, three, actually, but trying to focus on two). It's going incredibly well and I'm churning out a chapter almost every evening, but the downside is that I haven't had time to keep up the blog.

But I've still got some stuff I'd love to post - updates on Afrobrazil, my trip to Germany for the Bloco X rehearsal, some updates from Rio, and my completely nirvana experience at California Brazil Camp.

But for now I'm pretty busy on the Bay of Fundy, working my rather bizarre project to try to collect respiratory vapor from North Atlantic right whales. Suffice to say it is a military-funded research project involving twenty 2-gallon containers of Hawaiian Fruit Punch, 40 yards of puffy white bridal veil, several pairs of nylon stockings, and a 32' carbon-fiber pole on a 28' boat that is insanely motoring into excited courtship groups of 6 or more right whales at a time, every one of which is bigger than our boat and every one of which is rolling around like a maniac at the surface.

(In a nutshell, when a friend at camp asked me "How close do you get to the whales?" my answer was "I have to jump out of the way" and I was not exaggerating. in fact... special thanks to the adult female yesterday who, just as she was about to roll directly into our boat, gave us a careful look with one eye and thoughtfully tucked her right pectoral flipper to her side rather than bash us off the boat with it as had been about to happen. Or maybe she was just trying to protect her flipper, I don't know. Anyway, thanks, and thanks for the two blow samples too, sweetie, we love you, you're beautiful!)

But we were stuck onshore today by high wind, and will be fogged in for probably 2 or 3 days coming up, so I'm hoping to get some blog posts up soon. Plus get some time on pandeiro again, freshly inspired by Brian Rice's class at camp.

In the meantime, happy drumming to all.