This calls for celebration ...

Since my last post, I have received positive news that I can share …

I passed my written comprehensive doctoral exam! 

This exam was such a monster, and I am so happy to have this portion behind me. My next portion is on March 25th, the Oral Exam. My father says, “you have the gift of gab, so you will be fine!” 

The next weeks will be spent preparing for things I might have to argue or talk about - piano, language, conducting, poetry, song, opera, chamber music. I can live happily if I get to put more studying into these matters.

I saw Charity, my maid-of-honor, on Friday, for a celebratory glass of wine on my way home teaching in Ithaca. And today, my newest batch of Nespresso pods arrived. 

(Heaven in a small cup).

Things are looking up.

Compromise

My opera schedule changed a little yesterday, making a trip back to Rochester (in order to play a church service) impossible. 

I quickly got my "support system" in order and found a substitute. And perhaps the best part is that Zheng gets to stay with me until Monday night, and then we will drive back to Rochester together. 

He was completely amiable about the adjustment, and is driving here now. So at the moment, I'm doing a small blog entry, getting my espresso on, and studying Grout (I've made great headway with studying and TERMS the past two days!).

PHOTO: A "vintage" phone at my great hotel. 

Walking the streets on a snowy morning

I love snow. I have always loved it as a kid. I love its ability to quiet the world. It brings reverence to an irreverent world. People move a little slower, avoiding virginal white patches that are yet untrodden. Yet, we only have one word for it. 

Rounding the bend of my fourth winter in the "Great White North," I'm not sick of the winters yet. Zheng is still fascinated by them, because his first American snow was with me. I have a good mind to purchase a couple-sled or some kind of small tobbagan. 

In walking to one of my Syracuse "holy of holies," Cafe Kubal, I was properly bundled for the cold. Including my "eskimo" hooded, long, down-insulated camel-colored winter coat. It's warm. It matches my skin tone (and my boots) and it has been with me throuugh terrible weather in Ann Arbor, Rochester, Syracuse, New York City, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Lancaster, Washington, DC, Beijing, and Shanghai. I will wear this coat until it is really time to retire it (I think it is with me for the long haul.).

Yet, I saw two people on my walk here that made *that* face, tthe face that says, "Oh my god, look at her hood!!"

Whatever. I'll let you be the judge. Maybe, like the article I've pasted below, we should have different words for "cold" and "warm." 

For now, I am having espresso, watching the flakes fall. And enjoying what's left of a quiet morning before six hours of rehearsal today. All photos are from my phone, and not filtered or altered in any way. -- KDY

This is from David Robson's article in the Washington Post:

"Anthropologist Franz Boas didn’t mean to spark a century-long argument. Traveling through the icy wastes of Baffin Island in northern Canada during the 1880s, Boas simply wanted to study the life of the local Inuit people, joining their sleigh rides, trading caribou skins and learning their folklore. As he wrote proudly to his fiancee, “I am now truly like an Eskimo. . . . I scarcely eat any European foodstuffs any longer but am living entirely on seal meat.” He was particularly intrigued by their language, noting the elaborate terms used to describe the frozen landscape: “aqilokoq” for “softly falling snow” and “piegnartoq” for “the snow [that is] good for driving sled,” to name just two."