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Unfortunately I don’t have serial numbers for either one, but here’s the most detailed description I can give of them:

• Amati G (Turkish) clarinet, Albert/Oehler system. Two months old. I THINK the serial number is 5244, but that’s just from memory. It’s in a hardshell plastic case, with the pivot missing from the left hand hinge. The most distinguishing characteristic is that I’d sanded the inside of the cup in the bell (where the lower joint gets inserted), and instead of being black, there are red streaks visible. Also, the left hand G#/C# key (which plays concert D#/A#) squeaks noticeably. This instrument has been my inspiration and joy for the last two months (since I bought it) and it’s devastating to have lost it.Case lining is red. It has two barrels, an Amati mouthpiece with Rovner (black vinyl) ligature. There was a four-reed case inside, with Barre-Mec #1 reeds (could be a Rico in there too).

• Eb (sopranino) clarinet, also Albert system. In a tiny wooden case (about 16”x4”x4”) covered in whatever that fake leather stuff is) with yellow foam pieced together as dividers between the pieces. There was a two-reed case with (I believe) La Voz reeds, and a small box of cork grease.

Please pass this information along to friends, especially musician friends who might find themselves in music stores.

Thank you very much, Peter Jaques 415-867-9260 or 574-5829

I’ll perhaps write about my actual time in Istanbul soon, but for now I’m gonna lay low.

“The folks at Open Voting Foundation got their hands on a Diebold AccuVote TS touchscreen voting machine. They took it apart (pictures here), and found the most serious security flaw ever discovered in this machine. A single switch is all that is required to cause the machine to boot an unverified external flash instead of the builtin verified EEPROM.”

For those baffled by jargon: it’s really easy, by flipping one switch and inserting a single chip, to start up one of these machines with any program you like. The implication is that it would be very easy to commit massive voter fraud, by making a program that looks like the real thing, but (for example) tallies a Bush vote instead of a Kerry vote, say, half the time. Also from the article: “This model does not produce a voter verified paper trail so there is no way to check if the voter’s choices are accurately reflected in the tabulation.”

Jerks.

Hmm to summarize the last two weeks:

Our time in Vranje (Serbia) was great. We met a very sweet cab driver, Dalibor, who became our fairy godfather, along with his lady Sanja. (There’s a strange gender error somewhere in that sentence, I’m certain.) They translated for us, took us all over town (& back & forth to Vranjska Banja, where we stayed mostly), & even set up a TV appearance for Slavic Soul Party (our friends we were kickin it with there). Somehow, and they couldn’t explain it either, in this town where very few people seem to work (and certainly not those under 35), everyone seems to have both lots of free time & some disposable income. See, Communism worked!

SSP invited me to join them in working with Demiran Cerimovic’s band, Vranjski Biseri (Pearls of Vranje), which was a great experience. I worked mostly with Demiran & another trumpeter (an older guy who used to be in Ekrem Sajdic’s band) & it was wonderful to get the transmission so directly. Both of these guys have tapped into something powerful & deep in their playing, and in their demeanor. They were incredibly generous & open with their information & music. I think my most profound lesson was in relaxed, focused playing at incredible volumes. These guys play so incredibly loudly (of course with dynamics, but their mezzoforte blasts the Menazeri’s fff ten time zones away) & yet with such ease & grace. Menazeri take warning: we’re gettin louder, and softer, if I have my way. I can recommend a good source for earplugs if you wannem. ;)

Then Aliah & I took the incredibly slow overnight train from Nish to Istanbul. Spent a couple of days traipsing, drinking tea under the Galata Bridge (I didn’t realize, last time I was here, that you even COULD go under the bridge; now I see it’s one of the most beautiful places in the city). Saw three clarinet players in the first three hours here. After a few days we moved into her uncle’s friend’s apartment, while he’s in England. (He’s been due to arrive back since last Saturday, and still no sign of him, so I’m still there.) It’s a nice pad in Osmanbey, near Taksim.

As I said, Aliah’s moved on to the goat-lands queasily close to the Afghan border. Since she left, I’ve been running around with my friend and fellow klarnetçi Sammy, stalking Selim Sesler, an amazing Rom clarinetist who Sammy studies with. I’ve been trying to get a lesson for 10 days or so now, and tomorrow’s supposed to be the day. Inşallah. Also just met violinist Hüsnü and his dancer-wife Rehan and hope to study with Hüsnü as well. Days have been kinda slow & introspective, with occasional wanderings into the neighborhoods I’ve never heard of; evenings filled with rakı and Selim’s clarinet.

All the time includes missing all of y’all…

My friends Matt Moran & the whole Slavic Soul Party crew from New York were there too, as well as Sol (the guy who runs Amnesia in San Francisco) and his lady, Shiva. SSP has something of an in with a few of the bands, notably Vranjski Biseri (Pearls of Vranje), led by Demiran C^erimovic`. These guys are my new favorites. I got to see them play for tables of revelers a couple of times in our hotel's restaurant. Demiran has such a calm, classy, deeply expressive way about him, in both his playing & bearing. He fielded the outrightly haughty & condescending attitude of the table patrons with humor & grace. One guy actually picked Demiran up (he's tiny) & hoisted him onto his shoulders *while Demiran was playing*. If you can't imagine being bounced around while playing the trumpet, well I'll say it wouldn't be easy. I won't elaborate all his antics, but I gawked at his rudeness at least 50 times over the weekend. Yet all the players were eminently graceful & unfazed.

More importantly, though: even in these adverse circumstances, Demiran's playing was so soulful & effortless. I have a new concept of the trumpet now. The music issuing from his horn had all the spiritual content of a Sufi's ney and yet all the ecstatic open-heartedness of, well, a brass band. I need to spend some time in the presence of this. I tried to approach Demiran to ask for some lessons, but my Srpski wasn't up to the task at all. But then Matt rode to my rescue: SSP are spending a few days working with Vranjski Biseri in their hometown of Vranjska Banja, and Matt invited me today to join them! So the next few days I hope to be immersed with a master who inspires me so deeply I can hardly express it. I'll let you know how that turns out....

Hmm otherwise not too much to report. Got serenaded on the Frankfurt subway by some Romanian musicians (who tried to chat Aliah up in Spanish--happens all the time, even though she's Iranian). Here in Vranje we've already found a favorite cab driver (our motel is 2km out of town) who loves brass bands & has promised me some great recordings. Our bus from Surdulica to Vranje was chased down by our favorite waiter from the hotel, bearing our passports. Unfortunately his cab driver was demanding 10 euros for the 8 km chase. The entire bus was in an uproar over the extortionist fare, but unjustly aimed their outrage at our friend, who slinked away with our uncomprehending underpayment of 200 dinars (about 2.50 euros). I'll just mail him the rest, but I sure hope he didn't have to walk home or anything.

Ok that's all for now. Lots of love from a land that feels safer than anywhere I've ever been, 10 km from the border of Kosovo.

This is absolutely insane, and fighting it is a tremendous financial burden on her new family. She needs help. Please donate to help cover her legal costs if possible.

[Newly retired] General Newbold wrote, "I now regret that I did not more openly challenge those who were determined to invade a country whose actions were peripheral to the real threat — Al Qaeda."

This man was the top military operations officer before his retirement. (Quoted from "Third Retired General Wants Rumsfeld Out.")

From the New York Times:

• Third Retired General Wants Rumsfeld Out (Apr. 10, 2006)
• More Retired Generals Call for Rumsfeld's Resignation (Apr. 14, 2006)
• The Rummy Mutiny (Apr. 15, 2006)

By the way, I know it doesn’t look very good yet on Internet Explorer on Windows (lines above & below links—like on this page actually—and misaligned boxes). IE’s actually pretty difficult to code for. Any web designers out there wanna take a look at it & help me get it working?

In the meantime, feel free to use a browser that respects established standards (ahem), such as the free (& also more secure) Firefox.

As Ariel Sharon exits Israel's political scene, few Palestinians are mourning him. Americans may struggle to grasp why, since, according to President Bush, Sharon is a man of peace who courageously removed Jewish settlements. Yet in vacating Gaza last summer, Israel was only leaving a territory illegally occupied for 38 years. Moreover, Sharon was handsomely rewarded with U.S. tolerance for expanding far more cherished West Bank settlements. Sharon is now hailed as an elder statesman and wise "realist" who holds the key to Middle East peace. But what did Sharon ever accomplish that did not entail destruction for the Palestinians and other Arabs?

Implacably opposed to the Palestinians, he saw them not as human beings, but as obstacles in the path of the Zionist project to take over their country, and to replace native Christian and Muslim Palestinians with immigrant Jews. So he fought throughout his life to demolish them as a people with national rights. As a young commander in 1953, his elite unit "101" attacked the Palestinian village of Qibya, killing 69 sleeping villagers. In 1955, he perpetrated a massacre of Negev Bedouin to disperse them to Sinai. His brutality against the Palestinian refugees in Gaza in the 1970s was widely feared. I remember my shock at seeing his empty house in Jerusalem's Old City, bought after 1967 solely to assert Jewish claims to the city and provoke Palestinian resentment. As agriculture minister from 1977 to '81, he doubled the number of Jewish colonies in the occupied territories on land stolen from Palestinians.

But perhaps the most lasting and bloody monument to his campaign of eradicating the Palestinians was the 1982 Lebanon invasion. As Israel's defense minister, Sharon instigated the assault on Beirut, leaving 20,000 Palestinians and Lebanese dead, routing the PLO and causing the expulsion of its leader, Yasser Arafat. Shortly afterward, Sharon's army facilitated the notorious Sabra and Shatila camps massacre, which killed approximately 2,000 Palestinians. He never relinquished this destructive momentum. In the '90s, he oversaw the biggest settlement drive in occupied territory since '67. In 2000, his provocative visit to the Aqsa compound in Jerusalem ignited the second intifada, an outgrowth of Israel's unrelenting colonization of Palestinian land during the "Oslo peace process" and Palestinians' resulting sense of betrayal.

Becoming Israel's prime minister in February 2001, he set about grinding Palestinian aspirations for freedom into the dust. He declared an end to negotiations with Arafat, whom he campaigned to delegitimize and then imprison in his Ramallah compound until the latter's death. To demolish Palestinian state-building efforts, Sharon's army invaded Ramallah in 2002 and destroyed Palestinian Authority institutions and infrastructure. Attacks on other Palestinian cities and assassinations of Palestinians who resisted his plans have continued ever since.

Anyone who visits the Palestinian territories today must be shocked by the hardship that Palestinians endure. The Israeli occupation, oppressive enough under Sharon's predecessors, is infinitely worse now. Illegal settlements and barriers surround every town, crippling the movement of people and goods. This ghettoization has now been set in stone, by the concrete barrier wall transecting the West Bank. A fearsome structure, allegedly to prevent terrorism, in fact it is gobbling up more Palestinian land, and is designed to end all hopes of Palestinian statehood. Who can make a state out of a collection of ghettoes?

Had he continued, Sharon planned to so demoralize Palestinians that they would accept whatever he offered them. This was to annex the West Bank land on Israel's side of the wall, leaving the rest -- 40 percent to 50 percent -- to the Palestinians, with Jerusalem, as Israel's alleged "eternal capital" effectively removed from the equation. If Palestinians found this too little, they could expand into Jordan and those in Gaza into Egypt, not by formal agreement with those states, of course, but by the force of population pressure. This or some version of it was Sharon's vision for ending the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, misguidedly greeted by Western politicians as evidence of his wisdom. What happens now is unknown.

Israelis will miss Sharon because he entrenched them in the land of others. But if he earns his place in history, it will be for his sleight of hand in making the world believe that the butcher had become a statesman.