I was thrilled to have my paper, entitled “He Ahupuaʻa Ke Mele: The Ahupuaʻa Land Division as a Conceptual Metaphor for Hawaiian Language Composition and Vocal Performance”, published in the journal Ethnomusicology Reivew today. I started it over five and a half years ago in a single 10 hour (or so) writing binge that started at about 2 A.M. on a cold morning in Dunedin, N.Z. After many revisions and much restructuring, and trying to weave western academic theory with a Hawaiian conceptual model (the ahupua‘a) it was finally ready to see the light of day. Mahalo palena ‘ole to…
Enjoying Our Last Five Weeks…
Our family met on Friday evening to discuss our various return options, and we decided to catch a flight out of Dunedin on Saturday, June 28. We’ll spend two days in Sydney, Australia, then head back home to Hawai‘i on June 30. June 29 is my birthday and June 30 is Marie’s, so it will be a nice last present for us before we return home and deal with all of the things that we were able to put off until our return. M?lia wanted us to leave on the 27th so that she didn’t have to perform a hula…
Last Week Of Instruction at Otago
One of the more enjoyable aspects of our semester in Dunedin was the opportunity for me to act as a teaching assistant in the Department of Music. The classes here are structured a bit differently than back home. Monday is the big instructional day, and the class instructor, Shelley Brunt, would lecture on the week’s topic. On Tuesday, small groups of students would make presentations on the week’s set reading, and their fellow students assessed their work. On Wednesday, Shelley and I would split the class in half for tutorials – she would take half to a different room, and…
Seasons Change In Dunedin
This is the first real change of seasons that Marie and M?lia have ever experienced. By US mainland and even Dunedin standards it still has been relatively mild. We’ve had some nights drop below 30F, but by and large the weather has been tolerable. It seems that things will be fairly stable for the next two weeks, then a steep drop in temperature around May 25. We found out that the timing of our trip to Queenstown could not have been better – there was a considerable amount of snow there a few days after we left. The one aspect…
Rain, Snow and Hail In Dunedin
We’ve experienced a preview of winter weather in Dunedin today, with some rain, snow flurries as well as hail. Temperatures have been dropping into the 20s at night and not reaching 40 during the day. The hail was about the size of buckshot and was coming down quite heavily at times. Things are supposed to warm up a bit during the week, but this is certainly a sign of things to come.
Dunedin Notes
While we have been here for just under four months, my mind has already begun to think about making plans for our return to Hawai‘i in late-June or early-July. With the turmoil in the airline industry I don’t want to wait too long before making arrangements. I also need to talk to M?lia’s school here and make sure that everything is in place so that her classes will transfer properly to her school back home, though we know already some classes won’t. Time has certainly flown by here, but I still do have a lot of work to do on…
Queenstown was a blast!
Our family spent three nights and two glorious days in Queenstown (in central Otago, Aotearoa) this weekend. The weather was spectacular – just a bit nippy in the mornings and evenings, but very comfortable all day with no rain (or snow!). We took an Intercity Bus from Dunedin to Queenstown ($19 each way when booked online), with two brief pit stops along the way. It takes just a bit over four hours each way, and the scenery varies between boring (look, more sheep!) to spectacular scenes right out of Lord Of The Rings. I’ll do a full report later; just…
Writing About Writing
I’ve always enjoyed writing, but have always been a “stream-of-consciousness” kind of writer. I’ll sit down with an open word processor document, type, and just go with the flow and see were it takes me. A quick spell-check follows and away it goes. When I wrote my MA thesis (in Hawaiian), I sat down and wrote out each chapter in long marathon sessions. Of course there was a lot of editing, tweaking and additions along the way, but the gist of the chapters and overall structure of the final product was very much like the first drafts. My supervisors were…
Not An April Fools Joke
Tonight’s forecast calls for a low of 40 degrees F, but with 50MPH winds coming it will feel like 22. So much for my trip to the library tonight (or the run for Hokey Pokey ice cream). Our friends in Ireland and my sister in Minnesota may laugh at this, but it will probably be the coldest night my wife and daughter have ever experienced. Fortunately the rest of the week is a little better, but we’re sure that more of this (and worse) is yet to come. Off make some hot chocolate.
Hop On The Magic Bus
My wife and I braved the Dunedin bus system one Sunday and headed toward St. Clair, on the coast. There is a heated, salt-water swimming pool there, but we passed on it for today. Just doing recon for a future day, if there are any warm weekends left.