Music clips are up

Check them out. The guitar is pretty quiet in the recording, but we sounded much more balanced in real life. At, least, I think we did, but maybe it's just because I was sitting right next to him.

Chamber Music Recital

Last night my duet partner and I played on the student chamber music showcase recital. It was a really long program, with lots of groups playing, so we were glad to be third on the program. We played well and the audience seemed to enjoy it. The recital hall was full, so the applause sounded really loud. It was exciting to play in front of a big audience in an evening recital, with the hall lights dimmed and the stage lights bright. I really liked the pieces we've been working on all year, so I was eager to share them with my friends. Several of the Fellows came to hear our performance. When I get the CD of the recital, I'll try to post the files here so you can hear it.

New Car

We decided to go ahead and buy a car out here, just because trading in our old one to a dealer was a much easier way of getting rid of it than trying to sell it ourselves. We got a Toyota Highlander. It has a third row seat, but isn't any longer than my Passat wagon was, so I should still be able to fit it in the garage and unload groceries with the garage door closed. It's an SUV built on a Camry frame, so it's not as big as a regular SUV, but is a bit higher than a regular car. Audrey can climb in by herself. We got a bluish-gray one (they call it Bluestone Metallic) with a light tan interior. There's plenty of room for stuff in the back when the 3rd row is folded down, and room for 7 people with it up, as long as the people aren't really tall.

We don't have pictures of our car yet, but you can see it on the Toyota website. Maybe when Scott wakes up, he can help me grab a picture off the web.

Wrapping Up

The other day in the car I asked Mary, "What do you think? Should we have another year-long adventure when Audrey's old enough to remember it?"
"Oh, yes!" she said. "It has to be someplace with a Chinatown, though."
"How about China?"
"YEAH!!!!!!!"

Our moving preparations are coming along. We have a box. Not a packed box. Just a box. Scott got a shipment of T-shirts for the Knight kids, and I told him we should probably not throw the box away.

In some ways, it would be easier to start another adventure right after this one. If we have to start over from scratch, I'd rather do it in a new place than start over in an old place. But we are looking forward to getting back to Florida. We have no idea what the future will bring, but if it's more adventure, bring it on!

Memorial Day

The whole gang met a a park for a cookout. There was lots of food, Ultimate Frisbee, a guitar sing-along, and fun relay races. Scott and I made a strawberry-rhubarb pie to bring. It was a big hit. The weather was sunny and warm, but not too hot, just right. We all had a great time.

Happy Anniversary

Scott and I spent a night at the Mill Rose Inn, a beautiful bed and breakfast in Half Moon Bay, to celebrate our 15th anniversary. We had a nice time. We did not take photos.

De Young Museum

The Knights went to the De Young Museum in San Francisco and had a private tour with a museum curator. They saw shiny things and some other neat stuff.

Knights meet the Governator

Today Scott and the gang went on a bus trip to Sacramento, where they met with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. They also had a meeting with the CEO of McClatchy newspaper group. The last time the Knights got a private meeting with a California governor, it was when Ronald Reagan was in office.

Knight Softball

Today was the annual softball game between the Knights and the Stanford Daily staff. At least, it was supposed to be between the two groups. There were so many Knights and so few Daily staffers that we just picked teams and had both on each team. Scott and I both played better than we expected to. Scott hit a triple one time, and I got on base two out of three times at bat, once with the bases loaded! Everybody had a good time, especially the international Fellows who had never played softball before. The whole group took an unplanned lunch break in the middle of the sixth inning. Surprisingly, almost everyone came back to finish the game.

The kids had a great time. There was a stage set up for some kind of performance, so they played on the stage. There was also a small tent building, like a banquet tent, only smaller, so they had fun playing in there. The a capella singers came by to take some publicity photos, so they sang for the kids inside the tent.

The tent was the best place to be. It was sunny, but the breeze made it a chilly day. We had to wrap beach towels around ourselves to keep warm.

Mom H. arrived Thursday night. She enjoyed a campus tour (guided by Scott) on Friday, with lunch and a tour at the Cantor Art Museum. After I left to pick up the kids from school, she and Scott saw the crazy Stanford band performing. The band played some songs around, on and in one of the fountains, so Scott and Mom stopped to listen. Then they went over to Hoover Tower, and soon the band came running up to perform on, around, and in the fountain by the Tower. One trombone player even escorted them up in the elevator to the top of the Tower. Mom is enjoying her visit so far.

Horseback Riding

Today I took Mary and her friend Sydney horseback riding at Webb Ranch. We started out with a short lesson on how to control a horse, and a little practice in the covered lesson ring. Then the instructor and a helper took us out on a one-hour trail ride. We rode past crop fields, where we saw a heron. The trail went up a little hill, and we had to stand up in our stirrups. I don't know the name of that move, but Mary probably remembers it, so I'll have to ask her tomorrow. We got to ride across a little wooden bridge. After the ride, the instructors let the girls feed the horses. They had a great time.

UPDATE: I remembered the standing-up thing is called "two point", I guess because the third point, your rear end, is not touching the saddle. And doesn't Mary look like such a little tiny kid on that horse? It was a pretty small horse, too.

A Little Explanation

Yesterday's post refers to the time, once a century, when the time is 02:03:04 05/06/07. It happened just after 2 in the morning. You could say it also happened just after 2 this afternoon, but if you go by the 24-hour clock, it was 14:03 etc. Not as exciting as Halley's comet, but, hey, it helped me remember the date all day today.

Did you sleep through it?

2:03:04 5/6/07

Film Noir Night

Good food, a house full of friends, and a classic murder movie made for a fun evening. The film was Double Indemnity from 1944.

Sequoia Audubon Trail Hike

Today we met some of the other Fellows for a hike on the Sequoia Audubon Trail, near Pescadero Beach. The highlights were: playing in a driftwood fort other beach visitors had built

climbing a big tree



enjoying the beautiful scenery

and avoiding stinging nettles and poison oak. We saw a huge stick nest that some marsh rat built, and a B-52 flying overhead. Kevin and Carolyn brought bread and cheese and cookies to feast on at the top of the hill before the return trip. The chocolate fairy that follows Andrea and Liz on all their hikes left treats along the trail for the kids. It was a beautiful sunny day, and a little cool, which was nice because we didn't get too hot on the hike. We didn't get to spend much time playing on the beach at the end of the hike, because it was getting late by then, but it was a fun day anyway.

The Calm Before the Storm

We've had a couple of calm weeks here, but it's about to get very busy. The Fellowship has a zillion things planned for May, everything from a family softball game to a bus trip to Sacramento to meet the Governator. I told Scott it's their way of making everyone look forward to getting back to their jobs, so they can finally get a chance to breathe.

Does Music Make You Smarter?

I went to an interesting lecture in the Psychology Department at Stanford today. Glenn Schellenberg from the University of Toronto gave a talk called "Does Music Make You Smarter?" He's been running experiments on this ever since The Mozart Effect study came out.

The first part of his talk was on whether listening to music makes you smarter, a la The Mozart Effect. His hypothesis was that anything that puts you in a positive frame of mind will make you perform a task better. He cited studies showing that college undergraduates who were given a bag of candy or five dollars before a task performed better than students who weren't given treats (The Chocolate Effect?).

In his first experiment to test this hypothesis, he played a Schubert piano piece, which was Track 2 of the CD the original Mozart Effect experimenters used. The subjects scored better on the spatial IQ test, indicating a Schubert Effect. Then he tested a slow, dirge-like piece by Albinoni commonly heard at funerals. The subjects didn't improve their scores, so there was no Albinoni Effect. Maybe only fast, happy music increases spatial IQ. He used four different variations of the same Mozart piano piece: fast-major key, slow-major key, fast-minor key, and slow-minor key. Subjects who heard the fast-major version increased their scores the most, and slow-minor showed no increase.

What if music's not your thing? Schellenberg played a recording of a Stephen King story to test subjects, Mozart to others, and tested them. The same groups switched stimuli at another session. They also reported whether they preferred listening to the music or the story. The ones who liked the story better got a bigger IQ jump after listening to the story, and the ones who liked music got a bigger jump after listening to the music.

But what if you're a 10 or 11 year old kid in England? Another researcher had 8000 schoolkids in Britain listen to three different radio broadcasts before taking an IQ test. One group listened to Mozart, one listened to a popular group, and the third listened to the researcher giving a science lecture. The pop group got a big jump in IQ, and the Mozart and lecture groups didn't increase their scores. So, to 10 and 11 year olds, Mozart is just as boring as a science lecture by an academic researcher.

What if you're a 5 year old in Japan? (You can see, Schellenberg really put the Mozart Effect through its paces.) He had kids in Japan draw pictures before and after a music activity. There were four music activities tested: listening to Mozart, listening to the Albinoni dirge, listening to familiar children's songs, and singing familiar children's songs. Their drawings were compared (by people who didn't know what the experiment was about) and rated on creativity and technical proficiency. Schellenberg also recorded how long the kids drew. Their "scores" went up a little for Mozart, down for Albinoni, and up much more for familiar songs.

So, does listening to music make you smarter? Yes and no, according to Schellenberg. Listening to music you like can help you perform better on an IQ test, just as anything that puts you in a positive frame of mind can help you perform better on many kinds of tasks.

Now, the big question: does taking music lessons make you smarter? And is music special, or do other kinds of lessons make you smarter? Schellenberg advertised for participants in free arts lessons for 6 year olds. The groups took either piano lessons, voice class using the Kodaly method, drama classes, or no lessons. The two music groups both improved their IQ scores by about the same amount, across all the sections of the IQ test, except social skills. The drama group improved in social skills, but not in the "intellectual" IQ subtests. The "no lessons" group showed only the normal development after a year of school.

It was not possible to do a longer-term study, because kids drop out of lessons for various reasons, so you'd have to start with an enormous number of kids to run a study of several years. Schellenberg used questionnaires and statistical analysis to try to find out whether more years of lessons would make you more smarter. He interviewed families with children ages 6 to 12 about music lessons, parental education and family income, and gave the kids IQ tests and looked at their school grades. He found that the kids who took lessons for more years had higher IQs. I asked him whether the music lessons caused the IQs to go up, or if the kids with high IQs tended to stick with lessons for more years. He said you can't really prove which one causes the other, but that he's making a claim, because that's what you do in science, and his claim is that music makes you smarter. He also questioned incoming college students about their music experiences and tested their IQs and found that the smartness you get from music lasts for a long time.

So, there it is: listening to music makes you feel good, if it's music you like, and it can make you temporarily smarter. Music lessons make you permantly smarter. He listed the popular reasons why music might make you smarter, but disagreed with them. I couldn't tell what he thought the reason might be.

Earthquake!

We've been to Yosemite, San Diego, Monterey Bay, we've seen the Pacific Ocean and the Golden Gate Bridge, but now we're really true California residents - we felt an earthquake. Last night the sound of rattling woke me up at 2:45. It sounded like a freight train going by, only louder. And remember, we live right next to the train tracks, so I know what a freight train sounds like. There was another sound in the distance, like highway confusion, maybe horns or sirens. It's hard to tell when you're half asleep. In the morning I asked Scott if he heard the quake, and he had, so I knew I wasn't just dreaming. The kids slept through it. Mary said it must have been the kind that sounds like your dog scratching. I guess they must have talked about earthquakes at school.

The strange thing about this earthquake was when I was looking for news about it online. I googled "earthquake April 18, 2007" and almost every hit was for the Great San Francisco Earthquake of April 18, 1906. Pretty weird, having our first earthquake on the anniversary of The Big One!

Mary's poem

Check out Mary's poem over at Mary's World!

Stanford Community Day

Today was Community Day at Stanford. The university put on a big expo to show off the different departments and activities. We only went for the morning, so we didn't do too many activities, but we were there long enough to hear a band, win a raffle prize, fence with foam swords, row a kayak, putt a golf ball, make sock puppets, paint part of a mural, get a balloon, eat lunch, pop the balloon, and visit one booth at the science section. The Stanford Society of Women Engineers had two activities at their booth: make a puff mobile (car made from paper, straws, LifeSavers, and tape that you try to blow across a table) and build with marshmallows. Mary made a two-story house with an attic. Audrey made hors d'ouvres.

Chamber Music

Today Jeff (the guitar player) and I had our first coaching with Dawn Harms. She's a violinist with the San Francisco Symphony who teaches at Stanford. Jeff and I have been working on a couple of duos since the fall, but haven't been able to get a faculty coach until now. We played the first section of "In the Dragon's Garden" by David Kechley. The piece was inspired by the composer's visit to a Japanese garden and starts out with a dreamy, rippling effect. It was really helpful to have another pair of ears to guide us through the piece. Dawn had a lot of great suggestions to bring out the drama in the piece. We'll work on the next section at our next meeting. We hope to perform the whole thing at the June chamber music recital.

Dawn runs a week-long chamber music camp called Music at Kirkwood during the summer. That's something I'd like to do someday - spend a week in the mountains playing chamber music. Of course, it takes a few days to get used to the altitude, so the wind players always have a hard time breathing at first. It would still be a lot of fun.