Tonight I went to see what I thought was a performance, but was actually more of a forum, on Tuvan throatsingers who happen to be female, rather than male. The particular group, on tour in the United States now, and sponsored here by a number of things associated with the University of Washington, is called Tuva Kyzy.

I have seen throat singers before, and, although I haven’t listened to a great amount of it, I’ve heard more than your average American. I’ve seen Genghis Blues, and read Tuva or Bust. The panel of speakers, in fact, included Ralph Leighton, who joined Richard Feynman in the search for information about an obscure bit of Central Asia in the 1980s. Feynman, I think, was quite the character, and Leighton didn’t seem too dull either, although he didn’t do much of the talking. Speaker number two was a master’s candidate who did the translating for the Tuva Kyzy women, and was persuaded to try his hand at throat singing, to provide a comparison male voice.

Third speaker was a woman named Kira Van Deusen, who apparently spends her time translating Central Asian and Siberian folklore, and retelling it orally, as they would in Asia, just in English. She talked about some of the things that Tuvan women do, besides throat singing, that are assumed to be male occupations, but which the women are perfectly capable of, like slaughtering sheep. I found her story of a friend’s elderly mother killing and butchering a sheep (on the apartment balcony, no less), quite interesting, since when I was in that part of the world I had my own sheep slaughtering experience. My sheep was butchered by a leathery old Buryat (Buryatia is next to Tuva) man on the shore of Lake Baikal, but the technique was entirely the same. A slit in the chest of the sheep, then a hand stuck in to squeeze the heart and cut off the blood.

I went up to Ms. Van Deusen at the end and told her my story, which includes drinking fresh sheep blood from teacups. She recalled the first time she had drunk blood in such a situation — reindeer blood in Chukotka. I bought her translation of the epic she had told an excerpt from, entitled Woman of Steel, and a cd which says ‘GEN-DOS’ on it. The man in charge of the merchandise described it as ‘throat singing and punk.’ It doesn’t seem overly punk, certainly not in the way Gogol Bordello or Leningrad are punk, but it is fusion music and not unenjoyable.

Although it was not a concert by Tuva Kyzy, they did sing a little, just enough to mess with my head. Throat singing itself is a strange noise, and I have seen male throat singers perform before and found myself not entirely able to connect the noises with the origin. I couldn’t tell who was making which noise. In this case, the women were demonstrating different styles of throat singing, so it was obvious they were making the noise. But, it’s such an odd noise! You remember the pepsi (or was it coke?) commericial where the little curly headed girl goes up the bar and asks for pepsi, except it is dubbed in with a deep, growly male voice? And they give her the drink, and she says ‘thank you!’ in her cute little girl voice. Hearing these women was like that, except the throat singing is really them, not anything dubbed in.

Snow day!

Today my alarm went off at 7, and I woke up happy, because last night it snowed! As I may have mentioned before, this makes Alaskans 700% happier, if they are somewhere beyond their home state and suddenly the weather does something familiar.

I decided I wanted to get some pictures of all the beautiful fluff (all inch and a half of it) in the morning, while the light was good. Clear blue sky.

I bounced out of bed and woke up one of my housemates. She was deep in a dream about kicking people’s asses in a bar, and initially confused when I burst into her room to say ‘Wake up! It’s sooo pretty outside! I want to go take pictures. You should be my model! Umm.. but if you want to sleep, that’s cool too. I’ll go pee, and you can get up or go back to sleep.’

She got up. Housemate number two was also up, vaccilating about going to work. We quickly determined the buses were on snow routes, and generally very delayed. So we all got bundled up and went outside. The sun was not up yet, and the temperature was a crisp 27F, which, for Seattle, is practically the start of a new ice age. We bounced down the street in the cool predawn glow, and watched a few cars slide by.

Sunshine started to hit the trees as we got to a nearby park. The light was beautiful, and all three of us ran around snapping photos, lobbing the occasional puff of snow at each other, and laughing like little kids. We swung on the swings, and petted a passing dog, a little spaniel shivering in his funny little red dog coat. We went down the slides in the playground, which, despite being only six feet high, were slick with snow, shooting us down and into the powder below. Best of all was the spiral slide. Next we spent some time on the merry-go-round, clutching cameras and trying not to slide off with the centrifugal force.

Then we went to Top Pot, where the big donut on the roof is now a powdered donut, for coffee, hot chocolate, tea, and a few old-fashioned donuts. Everyone agreed it was the best morning ever, and all before ten o’clock!

Now the day continues sunny, and return of boyfriend from China is imminent (although he’s only coming back for bit). I’m counting the minutes — he should be going through customs now — and planning to watch Master and Commander, you know, as research for work.

Sometimes I’m so incredibly bad at getting things done. I had the best and most orderly plans for the day, even woke up early, but was treacherously struck down for several hours by a terrible thought.