Three years ago my wife and son visited Istanbul, staying with friends we met when we were living in L.A. It was part fun, part work. My wife even set up a blog to document the fun of their trip: Henry in Turkey.

The work part has finally paid off: she has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship. She will be teaching at Istanbul University and doing research on sex-trafficking. It’s a phenomenal opportunity for her and for us as a family.

This means we are moving to Istanbul at the end of the summer. We will be there until May or June of 2014. The kids took it well. They felt better once we assured them that: 1) we would be living in an apartment and not a hotel (like in China last summer) and 2) that they would be attending a school with other kids who spoke English.

What am I going to do? Write and blog, of course. There is also the possibility of me working. I’ll be allowed to apply for a work permit.

Before we go, we have to fix a few things in the house in order to rent it out, get our visas, find a school for the kids, find a place to live, buy our plane tickets, pack, etc., etc., etc…thousands of things big and small. Oh, and learn to speak and read Turkish!

But before we get down to business with all of that, my wife and I are indulging ourselves and taking a vacation to Cancun, Mexico. Just us. My in-laws have agreed to watch the kids while we are away. It will be the first vacation we’ve taken without the kids since before the birth of our son.

We’re going to spend several days luxuriating in being languid under the sun, eating good food, seeing Chichen Itza, and snorkeling off La Isla Mujeres. Ahhhh.

They both chuckled. One said just about everything has more cushioning than those.

I talked with one of the salesmen for a bit about my running, any issues/injuries I had. I told him about the tendinitis I had in the Fall and how my heel was starting to feel tight at times. He told me he wasn’t going to call it the dreaded “plantar fasciitis,” but he gave me a few ideas for dealing with the tightness. He examined my Minimus shoes and asked me how I liked them. I told him I was agnostic about minimalism. He looked at my feet, had me balance on each foot, measured my feet, and then brought out several different pairs of shoes.

After trying on a few pairs, including some Asics, I chose the Saucony Kinvara 3s. They felt the best. I’ve done several runs in them and they feel great. My feet feel more comfortable.

I think the Minimus were good for me to help me to start and stick with Good Form Running. But I felt more discomfort in my feet as my runs got longer. I’m not someone who ran cross country or track in high school. So I’ve learned how to run as an adult. I find this to be a big difference when it comes to seeking advice on running. Most runners take it up as an adult as a way to improve their health (like me) or to cross a Marathon off their Bucket List. But if you did it in high school, then you already know about form, choosing shoes, the types of workouts you need to do, and how to deal with injuries, etc.

About two weeks ago (the weekend before the Lansing Marathon), I wore my Kinvaras when I ran the Race for the Place 5K. The race raises money for a very important local organization: MSU Safe Place, “a program that addresses relationship violence and stalking.”

This was only my second race. It was cold, around 35 degrees Fahrenheit. While I was standing with the other runners, waiting to start the race, snow was falling. A couple of us looked up and wondered aloud what the hell we were thinking. One guy remarked that I was wearing shorts. I told him it was Spring dammit.

Then we took off.

I had a great run, setting a PR. Woo-hoo! 21:51.

More importantly, my eight-year-old son ran his first race ever: the Kids Mile. He had a blast. I was so happy for him. In the weeks before he went on a short runs, one with me and one with my wife. He really got into the idea of training for the race.

My sister was in-town with her family for that weekend. They cheered on both Henry and me. She’s been running much longer than me. Shortly after I bought the Kinvara 3s, I saw that they were on sale pretty much everywhere. I asked her what I should do. She said to buy an extra pair, that she often buys an extra pair of her favorite running shoes. The day after the race that’s what I did.

From left to right: old pair of Minimus, new pair of Kinvara 3s from Playmakers, extra pair of Kinvara 3s from Zappos.

When I showed my wife the pair I bought from Zappos she asked, “Can you change the laces?”

“Yeah. But I’m not going to. I like them.”

“O-kay. They’re your shoes….”

One thing about running is that it’s a bit like golf in the fashion department; your shoes are a license to be ridiculous. Besides, when you’re running through the neighborhood, day or especially night, there is no value in not being seen.

Originally, I had signed up to volunteer at least a month and a half ago. But I was never contacted. So I talked to a my friend Julie, who is the Volunteer Coordinator, and she said she couldn’t find me on any of her lists.

I went back to the website on Wednesday and signed up again. (Maybe the computer ate my first signup.) I chose Course Marshal because that’s where the most need was for volunteers. Then I attended a training session on Saturday where I received my instructions.

A lot of work goes into race, especially a marathon. I was glad to do my little part. Even if it was 25 degrees Fahrenheit when I took up my post a little before 8:30am this morning. I was across the street from the entrance to Potter Park Zoo, and near two volunteers, one of whom was working a radio. He’d volunteered at a fluid station last year at the marathon.

Some frantic last-minute adjustments had to be made to the course. The original course was going to use a lot of the Lansing River Trail. But during the last two weeks, we’ve endured several heavy downpours of rain. So much so, that many portions of the river trail are now part of the river.

These are the photos I took near my post.

The river is usually much lower.

Side note: My son’s Spring soccer season was supposed to start two weeks ago. But all of their practices and games have been cancelled due to either rain or soggy-sponge fields.

During the race, I spent most of my time clapping and cheering on the runners, whether they were running the Half-Marathon, Full Marathon, or the Relay. I also received many “thanks” from the runners for volunteering. As usual, the faster the runner, the less clothing they wore. One muscular guy, we’re talking P90X-defined muscles, ran shirtless. It was well after noon before the temperature rose over 40 degrees. Though the sun was out all day, which was a big relief after these gray, rain-soaked weeks.

What was heartening to see were so many runners wearing something Boston-related. Runners really are a community.

When the last runner came my way around 2:30pm, I clapped for her. Then I handed off my vest to the man in the red truck who was slowly tailing her. I walked over to my car, called my wife and told her I was tired and on my way home.

“Partly it’s because composers tend to compose in a certain musical language. They are not going to go back to a melodic style that was current a hundred years ago. We talk about this in the book, but [in the 1930s] contemporary opera composers abandoned the idea of formed melody in favor of a kind of musicalized speech that is much more free form. This has become the default mode for new operas. But the loss of melody means a loss of popular appeal. If you can accept this it’s fine. You can say: We’ll write these kinds of operas and let’s accept a certain part of the audience will really love them, but there won’t be a clamor for them to be repeated because they don’t supply the same kind of pleasure that earlier opera did. That pleasure is an important component — the pleasure of these great melodic arcs sung by marvelous voices.”

“Musicalized speech” is one phrase for it. Another is “shouting random notes.” All popular music uses some form of melody. Unfortunately for the group of opera fans who are like me, melody has been formally deemed incapable of allowing composers to properly evoke the contemporary world in musical form.

The first time I heard Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron in a Met broadcast I felt like the singers, the conductor, and the orchestra were hitting my spine with a baseball bat. So I wrote off Schoenberg.

Several weeks ago I attended the Met HD broadcast of Thomas Ades’ The Tempest. It’s an adaptation of the Shakespeare play. I went out of curiosity. I own a recording of Ades’ Powder Her Face which I’ve only listened to a few times. Ades was interviewed during the broadcast. He seems like a smart, congenial, purposeful fellow who is absolutely sure about the notes he writes. But there isn’t a tune you can hum in either opera. None of the music from The Tempest stuck in my head.

Mozart wrote melodies. Frank Sinatra and Elvis sung melodies. The Beatles and Rolling Stones wrote melodies. Melodies carry you. Melodies stick in your head. Musetta’s Waltz, the Anvil Chorus, or Largo al factotum will get stuck in your head for days or weeks at a time.

People like to revel in a song they love, whether it’s from a musical like Chicago or The Book of Mormon, or artists as varied as Carly Rae Jepson, Katy Perry, Paul McCartney, Michael Jackson, Shakira, Aretha Franklin, Metallica, NIN, or the Black Eyed Peas. Reveling in music gives joy (even when it recounts a painful feeling) and is even cathartic.

When I was much younger I worked and saved my money so that I could put a whole lot of stereo equipment into the 2-door, hatchback Ford Escort I drove. (Ah, the priorities of a 19-year-old….) As soon as the equipment was put in (it was done in two phases, first an amp and a kicker with the help of a friend, then another amp and more powerful speakers with the help of my father), the next question was: WHAT DO WE WANT TO PLAY LOUD?

Then my friends and I went through our musical libraries shoving cassette tape after cassette tape into the deck and playing our favorite music loud. There was a handy feature to keep me from blowing the speakers on the kicker: the tweeters would shut down automatically when it go too loud. Let’s just say that the tweeters cut out frequently. They often cut out during the last minute or two of Guns ‘n Roses’ “Paradise City.” “I WANNA GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!” The stereo was so loud that your ears would be ringing after the music was over. Kind of like being at a concert.

I don’t have a loud car stereo now. (Though it would be handy to drown out the whining and bickering of two small children.) But I think the figurative question I ask myself about a piece of music is this: Do I want to crank it up on my car stereo?

For the likes of Ades, the answer is no. For the likes of Puccini, Verdi, and Social Distortion the answer is yes. If you can’t revel in the pleasure of “great melodic arcs sung by marvelous voices,” then what’s the point?

The iBook and the MacBook each lasted for around five years. (I tend to use things as long as possible. I have an Epson printer/scanner that’s six years old.) The iPods both had their hard drives replaced by me at some point, extending their lives by a year or two. I now have a year-old  iPod Nano. Yeah, I’m kind of hooked on Macs. Though my phone is an Android phone.

The new Mac was my Christmas present. It was an unexpected large expense, though. I was hoping to get one more year out of my old MacBook. I had thought about hictio’s persuasive advice for a Linux laptop. Honestly, for my needs (writing, email, blogging, playing music) I could easily get by with a Linux laptop. The problem is that a large chunk of my music collection is tied to iTunes and my writing files are done using Mariner Write, an excellent word processor with a very small footprint, but which uses a proprietary format.

As far as pictures, there are some passable photo storage programs for Linux. Other than cropping, I don’t use much, if any, of the functionality of iPhoto. So as happy and content as I am with my new very fast, shiny sleek MacBook, I’m making long-term plans to make my content a bit less platform-dependent.

In the short-term, I’m running again. Short distances for now, taking it slow as I work my way back up to where I was before my ankle started bothering me. So far I’ve been able to run without pain.

I also created a new page, China 2012, accessible at the top of the blog. The page contains links to every post I did about my family’s trip to China last summer. That should make it easier for those of you who are new to my blog and want to read about that big adventure.

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday, whichever faith you do (or don’t) belong to, and I wish you a very happy and prosperous New Year.

I’m writing this post on my phone. As cool as it is, using a phone to blog is not a viable long-term solution.

For those of you dreading this week….

It’s that time of the year. When throngs of people jam the malls and the Internet demanding their bargains for their loved ones: Buying Season has officially started. Buy! Buy! Buy!

For those of you looking forward to this week….

The always funny and smart (and sometimes gross) Oatmeal has a great comic about how creativity works for him, and how artistic endeavors are most certainly not created and enjoyed in a vacuum.

As you can see, the museum, designed by architect Zaha Hadid, does not look like anything else in the area.

It was dusk so I apologize for the less than spectacular photos. Besides, I’m no photographer.

Henry really liked the sculpture (Containment I by Roxy Paine) in front of the museum’s entrance.

Entry to the museum is free, though a small donation is suggested. There is far more space and light inside the building than you might think just from looking at it from the outside.

The film and multimedia pieces were the highlights for me. I can’t offer more than a few impressions because kids don’t exactly afford much time to examine and contemplate. We all liked Damien Hirst’s The Kingdom of the Father, even if I think it’s a bit morbid. It’s a beautiful triptych constructed of dead butterflies. I’m wondering how Hirst explained it to his workers, “OK. Here’s the deal. I’m going to need a couple thousand dead butterflies. Blue ones, orange ones, yellow one, you name it. Then I’m going to arrange them…What do you mean you don’t know where to get a couple thousand dead butterflies? That’s not my problem! Just get them for me, already! I have a vision to execute for how beautiful death can be!”

The kids thought the museum looked cool. We even rode the giant elevator a few times because Meredith wanted to.

Meredith also liked the odd corners of the place.

In one corner on the first floor was a small canvas, about one square foot, that was red with a slight orange tint to it. It was shiny. My wife asked our son what he thought of it. He said, “That’s boring!” A middle-aged woman nearby laughed and said something about admiring the honesty of small children. I actually agree with my son on that one particular piece.

Thanks to Orson Welles and his phenomenal movie F for Fake, I often think of this Rudyard Kipling poem, “The Conundrum of the Workshops” when I come across art of dubious integrity, because in a sense all art has to fight for its own integrity. Here are the first two stanzas.

When the flush of a new-born sun fell first on Eden’s green and gold,
Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the mould;
And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart,
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, “It’s pretty, but is it Art?”

Wherefore he called to his wife, and fled to fashion his work anew -
The first of his race who cared a fig for the first, most dread review;
And he left his lore to the use of his sons — and that was a glorious gain
When the Devil chuckled “Is it Art?” in the ear of the branded Cain.

Regardless, an art piece like a square foot canvas of shiny red paint is quite easy to fake. By that I mean, you could reproduce it or several similar to it, and pass them off as having been done by the original artist with far less difficulty than say Rembrandt or Van Gogh. But then we have passed out of the age of the artist as craftsperson and into the age of the artist as conceptualist.

I’m looking forward to going back to the museum, without the kids, so I can linger a bit longer around the art, and then cross the street and chow down on a burger and fries at Five Guys. Yes, there is a Five Guys across the street. Some find this disturbing. I find this comforting. Why? Because what better way to show off the mixing of high and low in much of art from the last four decades than by having a burger joint across the street from a forward-looking art museum?

What a community builds tells you what a community values. Spurred by a large gift from a wealthy art patron, our community has gotten itself a first class art museum.

Are you dreading today or the coming week? Here’s a song for you.

Are you in a great mood? Is everything wonderful? Here’s a song for you.

I went outside to see if I could get a better picture. Shhh, I twied to be vewy kwiet…but I’m not much of an animal tracker. I’m more of a used book sniffer.

The green seed/fertilizer spreader there in the foreground is an old one that doesn’t work. I let my kids fill it with dirt, rocks, twigs, and whatever else they find in the yard and push it around. The pile of branches in the upper right comes from some of the trees in our yard, but mostly from the half-dead trees in the neighbors’ yard behind us.

The deer eventually flashed me their white tails and ran off.

But not before one of them dropped a bunch of poop. There is deer poop all over the yard.

Last week, it was wild turkeys. I took the photo below with my phone. That’s just a handful of the nearly two dozen we watched amble through the yard.

After talking with some people in our neighborhood, we think these turkeys are all part of the same flock that keeps moving through our yards.

We did not encounter deer or turkeys in the backyards of my hometown of Northlake, IL. It was mostly squirrels, robins, with the very rare possum or rabbit.

In fact, my sister once brought home a rabbit. It came free with the cage. Several times, the rabbit got out and I and my parents had to chase the thing around the yard, catch it, and put it back in its pen.

In Shanghai this summer, we encountered cicadas more than any other creature.

Their buzzing was so loud, it drowned out sound of the traffic.

We think a groundhog is still living under our deck. We tried to trap her a few years back and ended up catching a raccoon, which we released. Then a half-dozen little ones appeared and then disappeared. That’s how we found out the groundhog was a she.

This is all to say I’ve had more experience with critters in my six years here in Michigan than I did in all of my life before. It’s definitely Pure Michigan.