The last I wrote about Girls Rock! Camp, I was longing for involvment, but I had missed the volunteer deadline.  Tonight, I am burning CDs for Girls Rock Campers and putting the final touches on bio sheets about rockin’ female bassists.  How did I get here?

Thankfully, my co-worker let me know that the camp was short volunteers.  I ended up applying again, and tomorrow, I will be teaching my first bass guitar class!

My experience with teaching music is very limited. Although I’ve taken lots of music classes in my formative years, my approach to making music is very DIY and I rely heavily on ear training. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little nervous about tomorrow.

Thankfully, my teaching partner is a seasoned Girls Rock! Camp bass teacher in addition to being both the Volunteer Coordinator and the co-founder of Girls Rock! Camp.  I think that I will be just fine with teaching.

Today at orientation, I found out that Girls Rock! Camp will include a Women in Rock history class and a Body Image workshop.  I am extremely excited about these classes and I hope to sit in on them–it would be tremendous to see young girls gain confidence and see their self-esteem connected to their abilities and character, and not the way they look. Girls Rock! has gone so far to discourage its volunteers from complimenting a camper on their cute clothes or cute hairstyle, preferring that we save our compliments for the music instruction room.

As a teen, I was interested in the Riot Grrrl movement and third wave feminism; looking at popular culture today, it’s almost as if those movements never happened.  Did the movement begin and end with these girls, now women in their 30s and 40s?  Nowadays, we talk about body image and feminism, but the conversation is shallow; it’s as if the male hegemony has co-opted the language of Girl Power and twisted it to fit its own purposes.  You can be a successful musician, so long as you’re still sexy; you can be “One of the Boys,” as long as you have gigantic knockers.  Budding feminist teens used to idolize Courtney Love and Kim Gordon; now they have the inferiority of Lady Gaga and Katy Perry.

Thankfully, Girls Rock! camps are starting all over the country–it is my sincere desire that the trend towards lip-service feminism be reversed.  Rock on!

This isn’t exactly timely, since Father’s Day was almost a week ago. But I rarely talk about my dad. It’s not that I don’t love him; it’s that he’s a constant, a phlegmatic and inoffensive part of my life. (Which just goes to show that I like to complain a lot, I guess.)

When I was small, I was called “Daddy’s Girl.” I was always sitting on his knee, showing him things I drew and making fun of his Darth Vader drawings that suspiciously looked like a guy wearing black paper bags on his head and feet. I thought my dad was hilarious.  Apparently I told my mom that she could pick my future husband, “Because you picked a funny one!” I couldn’t get enough of my dad’s jokes as a tot, but when I got older, he was less funny and more the recipient of the Mr. Corny award.

My Dad is a sensitive guy. He lost his job when I was 10, and he took it very hard. It was years before he found something he enjoyed again. But I remember that he would always try to do special things for us, even when he didn’t have any money; it would usually be little snacks. Merienda is highly valued in the Filipino (and Spanish) cultures, and he tried to make sure we had something to eat after school.

When I started teaching myself to play the guitar, my mom was very pessimistic that I would ever learn the instrument. In contrast, my dad was very encouraging. He would often come home with little guitar-related trinkets: chord/lyric books of popular songs, guitar picks, capos. Soon enough, I was playing and singing, and doing it pretty well.

After shopping, even for necessities, my mom would usually half-jokingly exclaim at the register “Now you’d better give me good grades because I bought ________ for you!” But when my dad would give gifts, it was unconditionally. I suppose balance is necessary in everything. My mom taught us duty and consequence; my dad, giving without expecting anything in return.

It’s weird to think that my parents are only a few years from being bona fide senior citizens. Sometimes I worry about them; that they won’t be able to provide for themselves in their old age; that they’ll have to keep working despite failing health; that they won’t have the services they need to keep them healthy on Guam. Sometimes I wish I could go back; in fact, I’m planning on going back in the next few years if everything goes as planned.  In the meantime, I’m thankful my brothers are still there to take care of them.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been thinking of a new place to live. I signed up for school recently, and pending receiving financial aid, I will be attending in the fall. That has gotten me thinking about moving into a much smaller space–one that won’t likely house my myriad arts & crafts supplies and musical equipment. Rather than get rid of these things that encourage creativity (and let’s be honest, facilitate my sanity), why not rent a small art studio where I can work?

It’s important to me that the space be dedicated to art and free from distraction. No internet. No television. No animals. And frankly, no husband. As much as I enjoy his company, when he’s around, I tend to think of his well-being more than I think of myself–keeping him entertained and doldrum-free tends to take precedence over my productivity.

Well, after two weeks of laying hardwood floors, moving in supplies and furniture, designing and building a work station, and figuring out an ideal configuration, my studio is finally complete. Welcome to Studio 206. Fitting that it’s the Seattle area code.

I’m looking forward to hosting a few arts/crafts parties there.

The Red Door

Pulled the old Chameleon sofa out of storage… and put up a few Mark Weaver prints

The Work Space

My Double

The Mis-matched Floors!

I missed the volunteer deadline for this year, but next year, I’m volunteering to be a music instructor. I only wish I found out about this camp sooner!

One of my co-workers volunteered at Girls Rock! Camp Seattle last year, and in a few weeks, she’ll be doing it again. The more I found out about the camp, the more I felt it was something I can really get behind. Their mission statement:

Girls Rock! Seattle is a non-profit organization (fiscally sponsored by Reel Grrls) dedicated to building positive self-esteem in girls and encouraging creative expression through music. Our music education programs provide girls with an opportunity to participate in an environment that fosters leadership, encourages social change, and cultivates a supportive community of female peers and mentors.

As an aimless teenager, music helped me find myself. I remember being a shy, awkward kid, not knowing how to relate to my peers. While music didn’t exactly free me from my shortcomings, it gave me passion–it gave me purpose. I was far from being a musical prodigy, but the fact that I could teach myself to play the guitar (and subsequently, drums and bass) and sing with confidence made me feel like I had a place in the scheme of things.

Confidence in one’s own abilities. That’s what Girls Rock! Camp seems to promise girls in their formative years. I think that’s a wonderful thing to encourage, especially with so many conflicting messages out there.

But I’ll try to be good.

I recently added Roger Ebert to my Twitterfeed. I guess I never really thought of him as a writer; I thought of him just as someone who had two very important thumbs as far as Hollywood was concerned.

So I’m amazed by how well-written his blog is. He is an interesting guy, with a genuine intellectual gift. Today I was guilt-tripped by his blog post “The Quest for Frisson.” If there’s anyone this applies to, it’s me. This is a great read, and I highly recommend that you click through.

The French word frisson describes something English has no better word for: a brief intense reaction, usually a feeling of excitement, recognition, or terror. It’s often accompanied by a physical shudder, but not so much when you’re web surfing.

You know how it happens. You’re clicking here or clicking there, and suddenly you have the OMG moment. In recent days, for example, I felt frissons when learning that Gary Coleman had died, that most of the spilled oil was underwater, that Joe McGinness had moved in next to the Palins, that a group of priests’ mistresses had started their own Facebook group…

This is my internet experience: to fill the empty spaces, I get online. I obsessively check my Facebook account for notifications. I read dumb, vapid articles on celebrity gossip and electronic gadgets.

Basically, I fill up my day with things which ultimately do not matter.

And somewhere along the way, art is lost. Where are the contemplative thoughts that once permeated my journals? Oh, why bother–a blurb on Facebook is easier. A tweet reaches a broader audience than my personal blog. And hell, writing multiple paragraphs of coherent thought is just so exhausting.

That has been my mantra for far too long. I’m going to add “SLOW DOWN” to my 30th year project. Read more. Write more. Take classes. Challenge myself. Do what doesn’t come naturally.

And most importantly, Quit Facebook.

Facebook was essentially the love of my life and the bane of my existence. Some days it would bring a smile to my face; others, I would bemoan the fact that Facebook was boring me to tears.

There’s nothing better than breaking up with a bipolar partner. I hope to spend more time with this blog, which through the years has been a faithful confidant, a supportive partner for the last 11 odd years.

And this time I mean it.

Ballard Urban Picnic via My Ballard

Before I forget, this Saturday is the Ballard Urban Picnic in Ballard Commons Park. Street food, beer garden, and live music? Yes please–sign me up.

Last night, I had the opportunity to dine at Canlis restaurant, one of Seattle’s most celebrated restaurants. Ordinarily, I would have been priced out–for a three course dinner for two, you would expect to pay at least $100, $200 or more with wine pairings.

I was lucky enough to be dining in a small group, so I was able to try a few bites of each appetizer, entree, and several different desserts.

Enjoy the phoos of artfully prepared food–and if you have a chance to participate in restaurant week, I highly recommend it!

Here are some shots I took today; enjoy!

"History of My Blog" by Hugh MacLeod @ Gaping Void.

Sometime during my college years, people stopped calling their webpages “online journals” and started calling them “blogs.” This perplexed me, because whereas most professional bloggers parlayed their writing skills into a focused effort to write about their blog’s subject matter in their own voices, it seemed like for most personal bloggers, the content remained unchanged.

I began to wonder (and still wonder to this day): am I blogging, or am I journaling?

Most people say they’re basically the same thing–including LinuxJournal’s article, but they also point out that most blogs are just me-too commentaries written to drive up traffic through timeliness. This doesn’t really apply to me–I’m hardly a news insider and rarely report on current events in a timely manner. I also don’t think that I’m “journaling,” per se. In the past, I have journaled, rambling on about my daily activities, attempting to wax eloquent with poetry, giving my peanut-gallery responses to politics and current events.

I’ve concluded that I loosely define blogging as this: personal voice internet writing that goes beyond self-interest. This is why I admire personal blogs such as Toni’s pinkstar.org and Leila’s Little Black Dress Project. While they are clearly accounts of the goings-on of everyday life, there is something about their posts that engage the reader to react in some way, whether it be to craft, ride a bike, or put on that little black dress, get out there, and socialize. Both blogs also feature writing styles that escape tedium and sparkle with clarity.

Someday I hope to be as focused.