Making his mark on the Met...

What an exciting week for Allen! On Tuesday evening, the musical instruments department celebrated not only the launch of their year-long Martin Guitar exhibit but also the re-installation of the African and Indian cases in the non-Western gallery. 

Allen has been working for months to choose the objects in the cases, come up with the appropriate label descriptions, and go through all the machinations that go with putting an exhibit together. Not for nothing, there is actually quite a lot of manual labor (cleaning the cases, preparing the object mounts, running around like a looney trying to get it all done in time, etc).

This case features instruments from Africa with Anthropomorphic decoration

This Ogboni drum belonged to secret societies among Yoruba of West Africa and are increasingly rare in the 21st century. 

Tablas are on display again! This case is about court music in India and the accompaniment of song and dance.

Allen wrote these labels, and he made the audio guide stops last summer so you can hear his voice as you look at his display cases!

Most of these new cases are still only partially installed, so there will be more instruments in them in the months to come!

Oh, and the guitar exhibit was very excellent as well. It tells the story of Martin through his guitars; how his American style guitars showed influence from both German and Spanish styles. Music nerds will certainly rejoice in this exhibit.

Roots of the "American Guitar" in the 19th Century

Also, Allen was written up in the Society for Ethnomusicology's journal this week for winning the Charles Seeger Prize for the most distinguished student paper presented at last year's conference.

Commentaries on the paper noted that it offers a “behind-the-scenes look at the impact of the increasing demand for tablās on makers and on the making of the instrument from craftsmen who may spend hours with their customer as they finish an instrument to those who participate in wholesale manufacturing. Based on fieldwork in India with both makers and customers, this paper also demonstrates a keen awareness of theories of globalization and commoditization, as well as an ethical concern for not revealing trade secrets of his collaborators.” 

2013: A big year for the Rodas - extra long blog post.....

Hey Awesome People.

Apologies in advance, this is going to be an extremely photo heavy post. But we were taking stock and realized that  2013 was a really big year for the Roda clan... so we thought we'd write up a little "year-in-review" to make up for all the posts we intended to do this year but got caught up doing other things. (Oops). We obviously weren't able to recount everything we did this year, but tried our best to show-and-tell some of the big highlights.

Monthly Highlights

January

Waikiki Beach

We rang in the end last year and the beginning of this year in Hawaii. We went down to visit our buddy Ben, who was finishing up a Masters degree at the University of Hawaii and used it as an excuse to get in a little R&R before our last semesters of grad school.

Surf's up on Christmas

Christmas Luau

Walked through Mordor via lava tubes on the Big Island

And had fun visiting our other friends Anna, Ben, Kerry and their families

January also saw the passing of Nikki's grandmother, Millie Candelore. She was perhaps the most amazing woman of her generation and we won't relay all of her stories here, but it is worth sharing just how awesome she was.

She grew up in Iowa where she learned to play saxophone. She moved to Mexico where she got a job performing on a cruise ship.  That took her to Alaska, Hawaii, Japan, and ultimately Australia.  She spent 2 years in Australia traveling around picking up odd jobs here and there and playing her saxophone. From there she got a job on a boat heading to Europe (stopping in Singapore and Mumbai on the way). She did all of this in the late 1940s!

In Europe, she met Nikki's grandfather, Dante, got married and raised 4 beautiful children. She took them on epic adventures driving through Turkey in a VW bus, camping at ski resorts, and the stories go on (ask Nikki's Dad for more next time you get the chance). Eventually she moved back to the US and set up a real estate business in San Diego, where she continued to work improving properties well into her 80s. She had an infectious smile, could sniff out a bargain better than anyone, and will always be remembered for her independent spirit and strong will. She was an amazing person who was so kind and loving. We will miss her tremendously.

February

Nikki welcoming everyone to the 2nd annual A2 DataDive

Claire and Nikki, partners in crime

Nikki successfully pulled off the 2nd annual A2 DataDive at the University of Michigan and Allen got a renewal of his fellowship at the Met. In February, we were still living in separate cities then, and it was a sad, cold time, but at least Allen was able to visit for Valentine's day.

On the upside, Nikki's interview process gave her a chance to go back to San Francisco and visit friends!

Wonderful to see the friendly faces of Lettie, Evan, and Munaf again

March

The Candelores took the Rodas to Panamá!  

Tropical Paradise

Happy family all together

Traditional folkloric dancing of Panama

Watching boats go through the locks on the canal

View of Panama City

It turns out that both of our families have deep connections to Panama. Nikki's mother is, of course, Panamanian and the daughter of the Panamanian Ambassador to the United Nations. Allen's grandmother is a graduate of Balboa high school in the canal zone and her grandfather was sent by the United States to explore the land at some point in the second half of the 1800's. More recently, however, Allen's mother spent formative years of her childhood in the canal zone when her father was stationed there after World War II. She hadn't been back since she was 6 years old.

The house Jane lived in during her time in Panama

Highlights included finding Allen's mother's childhood home based off of a vague address and an old photo, meeting Scarlet and Jovito Nikki's mother's cousins, and spending lots of time at the Beach and in the Rainforest. And we can't forget the amazing wine we discovered - seriously, we (apparently) have a winery in Spain!

Obviously a future pilgrimage to Spain is in order

April -

"The best Offense is a good Defense" - words of wisdom.

In April, Allen defended his dissertation and there was much celebrating as he officially became Dr. Roda! He got a lot of positive feedback on the ideas he presented at his defense and more importantly, he was given some great feedback on how he can convert his dissertation into a book!

Allen with his defense committee: 

Jim Kippen, Tejaswini Ganti, Allen, Martin Daughtry, and Fred Myers

May

The season for Graduations!

Nikki receiving the Student Impact Award at graduation

In May, our family received the highest honor imaginable. The University of Michigan created the Nikki Candelore Roda Student Impact Award. Needless to say, it was epic. We posted about Nikki's graduation here, so click for more photos, the amazing video, and Allen's write up of the event.

So many good times with amazing friends in Michigan!

And least we forget, Allen also graduated from NYU a few days later and there were plenty more photo ops - click here to see them!

Proud parents of a newly minted Doctor

In May, we also had a wonderful visit from Hamsa and Danika, our friends from India, and finally got to meet baby Ellora - and she was so Ellorable!!!!

Happy Family!

Our favorite pastime - playing bridge!

And best of all, by May we knew that Nikki would be returning to NY for a job in User Experience and Interaction Design at Goldman Sachs and Allen would be staying at the Met in the Musical Instruments department .... and that meant we could be together again! (It's always better when we're together.)

June

Having both graduated, we decided to celebrate with a little Michigan staycation before Nikki had to start at training at Goldman.  So we went back to A2 and had a blast with ALL OF THE FRIENDS and enjoyed just how awesome Michigan summers can be. We enjoyed beer gardens, played games, went canoeing and took a trip to Cedar Point - which has the scariest roller coasters in America!

The glorious rides of Cedar Point

Packing our bags... we're ready to go...

Then we moved to the city and began the epic apartment hunt.

On July 1st, the Met began to stay open 7 days a week, which meant that taking friends around on Mondays, when the museum was closed, was going to come to an end. So we took the Calendores around for a fun day of looking at art, laughing, and being silly.

Life impersonates art... and Mom is a good sport

July

View of downtown Manhattan, where Nikki works

Nikki officially started training at Goldman.

The Audio guide updates that Allen had been working on at The Metropolitan Museum of Art went live. So now if you get the audio guide at the Met, you will hear Allen's voice on the guide.  Here is a link to the videos that he shot in the South Asia gallery of the Islamic Art department. If you scroll down you can choose more of the videos.

http://www.metmuseum.org/metmedia/video/collections/mi/bhojpuri-folk-song-from-uttar-pradesh

In July, Allen also went to a conference at Oxford which you can read about here.

We also celebrated the 4th with our friends, Jennie and John and their absolutely spectacular view of fireworks over the city.

August

In August we moved in to our new home in Harlem. Yay!  Our new home is on the top floor of a brownstone, it has more space than we have had in a long time (including a second bedroom and half bath.... wink, wink, nudge nudge - come visit!)

One of the best things about our new neighborhood is that we are super close to our good friends Serena and Ben and their super cute baby, Julius!

Yeah for super friend neighbors!

We were also visited by good friends Gina and Ben and Nikki finished training! Her office threw a pretty kickin' party for Indian Independence day celebration and it was fun to be able to share our experiences of India with her coworkers.

Jai ho!

September

Cool customer, Ms. Chloe

We adopted a cat named Chloe in September. She had been living with the former tenant of our current apartment, but couldn't go with her to the next apartment, so we decided to take care of her. She needed someone who was going to be home more, and importantly, wouldn't lock her out of the bedroom because they were still allergic to her. Unfortunately, we realized that she needed more attention than we could give her so we found her a new home. She is much happier and has brought a lot of happiness to her new dad.

Nikki also officially started working with her new team. She is an interaction designer and is working to help make internal software more user-friendly, by interviewing the users and making design recommendations based on their feedback.

Allen also joined a new class of fellows at the Met, which was very exciting. Lots of new friends!

And we had a few fun September visitors including Sarah, Anit, and their baby Amara!

October

October is always awesome. Especially in New York when the leaves change color and the temperature cools a little, but is still pleasant.  The month also began with Met receiving an electric guitar from Paul Reed Smith. We got to hang out with Ricky Skaggs, John McLaughlin, and Tony McManus!

 Ricky Skaggs and Paul Reed Smith

This year we celebrated Allen's birthday with a Housewarming/Birthday/Halloween party. Our friends Jeremy and Jessie also invited us to a Halloween Party at Kickstarter!  It was super-fun.

November

At this year's Society for Ethnomusicology annual conference, Allen received the Charles Seeger Prize for Best Student Paper at the previous year's meeting.  Yay! If you want to read the paper, here's a link

For Thanksgiving this year, we went down to North Carolina early so we could take my Dad to a Duke basketball game at Cameron Indoor Stadium.  It was a very exciting (and I am not just talking about the complete and total lack of handicapped accessible seating areas for visitors). Duke was supposed to cream Vermont, but it ended up being a really close game! With 5 seconds to go, the good guys were only up by 1 and Vermont had the ball. Fortunately they didn't get the shot off in time and we won!

Go Duke!

 Hanging out with the Williams clan! So grown up since the last time we saw you all

Perhaps the best part of that trip, however, was that we got to spend time with our cousins the Williams family and all of their beautiful children as well as my Uncle John, Aunt Peggy, and Aunt Susie. On the way home from Raleigh we stopped by Wake Forest so Nikki could take a little walk on the Quad!

Go Deacs!

From there we went up to Asheville where we hung out with the South Carolina Bradys and the Kentucky Rodas. Lots of little ones running around the house makes for an exciting and fun-filled week.

The Roda and Brady clans

December - Winter Fun Times!

Another treat from working at the Met was that we got to hang out with Tony Trishka and Steve Martin when they came to perform at the museum.

Allen's "selfie" (you can see him in the mirror)

We also went back to A2 to visit friends again and had so much fun - even though it literally dumped snow on us every day we were there :)

Are we gonna make it?

Icicles in Nikki's hair from the cold

At Christmas, we had a relaxed week with the Candelores and their good friend Naomi doing jigsaw puzzles and recharging our batteries after what has been a VERY exciting year.

Merry Christmas!

The doctors of the house (Allison, Darek, and Allen) doing an anatomy puzzle

And last but not least, we celebrated our celebrating our 5th Anniversary on New Year's Eve of 2013. To celebrate, we went going to Ken Metzner's 80th Birthday party. It was so nice of him to spend his 75th birthday at our wedding, so we were thrilled to spend our anniversary at his birthday party!!!!

Happy Birthday Ken!

To many more adventures and many more years to come!

If you've made it this far - I applaud you, dear readers. We had a lot of stories to share and we've been horrible about documenting the last year... but hopefully you get a feel for what has been keeping us busy.

We wish you and your families a very happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year! And see you all in 2014!