What it was in March to mid-April

Doing a bit of catch-up on the blog.  When I last wrote, the North Texas Irish Festival was just beginning, a weekend later than usual due to international cheerleader competitions that overtook the hotels and Fair Park on our usual (first) weekend in March.  This turned out to be a good thing as the previous weekend's weather was wet and cold and miserable, but the weather on the second weekend, especially Saturday, was spectacular - sunny, warm, and people came out by the thousands.

I didn't get back for the Volunteers Picnic but did get the jacket, which has the 35th year's "Texas Grown Irish Roots" design, and LOTS of pockets.

March was the end of my company's fiscal year, so LONG.  Skidded up to the end of it trying to get deals closed, while also balancing everything else, including my role starting a chapter of (ISC)² which is for cybersecurity professionals.  We're slow starting but determined!

Because I was out of town I missed all the St. Patrick's Day parades and such, but I did a bit of cooking.  Unlike make of my friends who did the Irish-American corned beef and cabbage, I did some traditional Irish dishes:

From the top, soda bread (whole wheat and barley) and butter, braised spinach, roasted onion, poached fish with brown butter and caper sauce, and roasted beetroot with a squeeze of lemon.

Below, my dessert - bread-and-butter pudding with dried fruit.

At the end of March, SWAN Day CT's annual event, featuring women artists of all kinds:  musicians, painters, crafters, performers, and women-led bands.  I love to attend it, and this year assisted BiCi Co.'s "Beyond Gender" group to staff an information table.  This group focuses on women, trans, and non-binary persons in the bicycling community to give them a supportive place to meet, learn how to DIY repairs and upgrades to their bikes, and participate in activities with a community.  Of course, I was able to do a little shopping and listen to a lot of music.

Then in early April was DFW Fiber Fest.  Fourteenth year, and they added a day of classes, and had 95(!!!) vendors.  I took classes and did a volunteer shift, and had fun seeing friends and learning things and tried to keep my shopping somewhat moderate.  Among my classes was a new way to do crocheted cables, how to design my own pi shawl, and how to design a top-down sweater to fit me, which makes me happy because I don't like sewing (I still have trouble getting sleeve caps to lie evenly) AND I am a nonstandard shape so most patterns don't fit me well.  Just learning how to deal with horizontal planes in a vertical fabric was worth the time and class fee.

One of my test things in the crochet cables class.

Yes, there can be a LOT of maths in knitting!  But I can make it shaped like ME.

Start of a pi shawl, pre-pattern.  Lace came next.

While there I went to Rover Dramawerks' 365 Women a Year Festival, which features short plays about women who may not have gotten their full due from history.

The schedule was in two parts, and luckily I could go on two nights (DFW Fiber Fest has a great event on Friday night, so I wasn't going to anything else that night!) and see all the plays.  Definitely interesting, although some of the performances were a bit less interesting than others, all the women featured gave you something to think about and maybe research to learn more about them.  My one complaint was that it wasn't always clear from the title and characters who the woman was, so I've suggested they add her name and birth/death dates at the least to next year's programs.

Cybersecurity and Innovation Panels

I've fallen into one of my crazy-busy periods.  In addition to work's various deadlines I've attended three conferences on cybersecurity and privacy; spoken at a local event about one of my first experiences catching a cybercriminal; and I'm preparing to speak on a panel about creativity, invention, and innovation next week at the Connecticut Historical Society and Library:

My specific topic is how makerspaces, such as MakeHartford, contribute.  Since I'm also part of the Nation of Makers overview group, I said I could talk more broadly about the maker movement in Connecticut.

Moving back in time, at The MOuTH's event on "First Things First" I told about the time I caught a cybercriminal - in part because he sent me contact information because he wanted to fly his plane up and take me out on a date!  Sound improbable?  Can't make up facts like that, nobody will believe them.  The stories that have been collected from The MOuTH's events over the years are being turned into a podcast, so you may get to hear it someday.

Then there was the annual Symposium hosted by the University of Connecticut Law Review.  They had done one in 2014 for the 50th anniversary of the decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, and this year's was called "Privacy, Security & Power: The State of Digital Surveillance".  Very interesting, the discussion and perspectives, especially given the changes in Washington right now.

Saturday I helped the Cetacean Society International with a display (and the only sale of the day) at the Amherst Railway Society's annual hobby show.  Sunday I caught up on things before leaving Monday for Washington so that I could attend the ACC Foundation's first Cybersecurity Summit.  A solid and long day of talking to colleagues, attending panel presentations, capped with a lively table exercise.  A couple hundred of the best and liveliest minds storming at once!

That evening I flew to Chicago so that I could speak on a panel the next day in the daylong "Cybersecurity: Protecting Your Clients and Your Firm" continuing legal education program.  In addition to preparing the obligatory materials, I spoke on a panel about what to do if you find there is a breach.

 

In the middle of the day I noticed the New York Times posted an article about securing  home devices which I mentioned during a speaker change because the information can be helpful to small law firms and solo practitioners.  Serendipity!

Music in My Life (an essay)

I have stage fright.  It's part of the reason I am much happier being backstage in the theatre world.  It's also something I want to overcome, at least to some extent, so I have started telling stories.  This involves standing up in front of people, mostly strangers, and talking and not fainting.  There are a lot of storytelling events in the Hartford area - Other People's Stories, The MOuTH, Speak Up, and Syllable Series, where I read the following essay.  The theme for July was "Music" and featured a mini-concert by Bandshes.

Music in My Life

© 2014 Margo Lynn Hablutzel

Music has always been a part of my life, although I am incapable (despite lessons in the standard instruments - piano, flute, violin, and guitar – and some less-standard ones like recorder) to create any myself.  I don’t sing well, and appreciate the fact that when there are a lot of us making “a joyful noise unto the Lord” She doesn’t seem to hear the off notes.  There are times when I can’t even follow a clapping pattern that the rest of the audience seems to reproduce as easily as breathing.  But I enjoy music, have found myself singing in the shower or when alone, and can’t imagine life without my own personal soundtrack.

Most of the rest of my family plays music – classical, jazz, ragtime, Christmas carols which we learn to sing (or approximately so) in languages ranging from English and Spanish to German and Latin and Hawai’ian.  As a child I went to local pubs to hear folksingers and Irish musicians, enjoying a bowl of stew or pint of rootbeer and feeling very grown up because my rootbeer came in a real pint mug, until the owner announced that family hours were over and all underaged persons had to go home.  My brother’s first photography jobs, when he was in junior high, were in those pubs, taking publicity photos of the performers.

My mother also raised us with musical theatre.  A performer from a young age, she could sing and even when I didn’t know the musical itself, I knew the songs, even lesser ones such as “Buckle Down, Winsocki” which I thought was our local NFL team’s other theme song.  As I grew into a theatre rat on my own terms, safely backstage where I didn’t have to remember lines or wear makeup, directors found it odd that I knew the score to musicals but not the book, or script.  Scripts are not on the cast recordings.

I learned about pop in high school and about rock in college.  My mother hated that, calling rock music “noise” and “unmelodic” as if we were twenty years in the past.  I was surprised to find out recently that she liked the Beatles and ABBA.  OK, I’m also a little embarrassed about the ABBA part.  I inherited most of my father’s record collection – although I’m not sure he knows about it – which includes The Rolling Stones and the Who and Lynyrd Skynrd and sometimes I wonder if my mother would enjoy the folkie sounds of The Band.

I’ve sampled most other genres.  There are those with little more than a beat you can dance to; those you can whistle while you work; and the ones that require you to roll down the windows and crank the car stereo and peel out of the parking lot and hope for a long stretch of highway ahead.  I learned that sea shanties are perfect for calming a fussy baby, who luckily doesn’t care how badly you sing as long as you don’t hit too many clinkers.  I’ve looked at how music and art intersect, and music and science, and how people make music out of everything from volcanic eruption patterns to birds sitting on overhead wires.  Music took me abroad, as I accompanied a choir (my Spanish language and herding skills more valued than anything musical) to Argentina and New Zealand.

One of my friends, who is a movie reviewer, jokes about pocket orchestras that are responsible for music in movies when there is no other obvious source, especially when a character seems to have a leit motif.  If you know Anna Russell’s summary of theRing Cycle, she translates that as “signature tune.”  I sometimes wish I had a pocket orchestra, so I don’t have to change a CD, jump over a track, or change radio stations when ads come on.  My pocket orchestra would know my moods and when to change from one genre to another, or would surprise me by following Chumbawumba and Bruce Springsteen with Ravel or Scott Joplin as my brain sometimes does when I am roller skating as a way of blowing some carbon off the plugs when my brain needs a rest.  Music rests my brain.  And music charges my heart, giving me energy, hope, joy.  “Pictures at an Exhibition,” “Yfory”, “Oye Como Va,” “Kiss Me Deadly”, “Young”.  I can’t play a Chopin etude, but I can make one my ringtone.

Some of my family members play or sing professionally, others only for the pleasure of family and friends.  I will always appreciate my aunt, who performed with symphonies and opera house orchestras around the world, assuring me many years ago that audience members are essential to the musicians’ life and my inability to create music of my own was no mar on my personality.  So I’ll happily stay in the audience, appreciate the music, buy CDs, support the musicians, and try to keep my volume down when I cannot help singing along.