Sam as he ever was...

Author: Sam Hamm (Page 1 of 2)

I am a tech educator and software developer based in Seattle. I also spent eight years as a music professor.

Mavis Ana Ng Pancakes: 2019-2025

“Little Dog, Oh My God!” was a song I made up and would sing to her:

She’s the little dog,
“Oh my god!”
She’s the little dog,
“Oh my god!”
“I don’t know what to do, so I think I’ll jump and dance!”

“Oh my god” was her signature expression, often expressed as the abbreviated OMG. Or OMFG… she had a bit of a potty-mouth. Mavis was somewhat nervous all her life, although that did mellow as she aged.

It’s a Tuesday night (28 Jan) as I start writing this. Finally got it wrapped on Thursday 6 Feb, as this has been difficult to plug through. I knew it was going to take some time to work through this post. Mavis passed away on a Saturday night (25 Jan) approaching two weeks ago. I’ve needed some time to process and recover before I could begin to write about her…

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Site updates

Updates are ongoing through this weekend. Beyond some content updates, the highlights:

  • I deleted my Twitter account a couple of months ago, and I am now on BlueSky, and the links on this site now reflect that. If you’re not outright rejecting Elon Musk’s racist shittification of the world, you are tacitly empowering it and enabling it. Leave that toxic Russian bot misinformation hellscape of Twitter. Be sure: your favorite content providers will follow you. They need you more than you need them, and there’s more avenues than ever to support them directly.
  • In that same vein, I also removed my Instagram link from this site, and I fully expect to entirely divest from the Zuckerberg universe before long. I simply cannot abide the oligarchs bending the knee to Cheato. It’s a revolting concession to a revolting person.
  • I hope you’ll continually reconsider your consumption of media, and engagement on social media, so as to be sure that your values are expressed by your actions. Eschew the mindless garbage, cheap laughs, and doomscrolling that we’ve grown accustomed to in the past decade or two. Now is now. Choose your now. Be kind. Reject hate.

Always remember: if you are not paying for it, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT.

The end of 17 silent-ish months

My most recent post on this blog was 17 months ago today. It vaguely referenced some recent goings on and also teased upcoming changes. Two of those items deserve followup:

New furry family members (one who will be permanent and two who are temporary)

The new family member is our cat Barnacle, and there is so much I can say about him. And I will in detail, eventually. Truly, he was a heart transplant for us after losing BuddyCat. And then there is the whole ordeal (a few months later) and adventure of his broken leg and recovery. That could be its own blog, really. And… probably should be based on how much we learned. I will fill in here eventually.

The “temporary” ones were his litter brothers (Curly and Starfish), who we fostered until finding a home for them. They’re doing great. Again, there could be a lot of follow-up, and probably will be.

A “thinking about it” becoming “getting a plan underway” toward moving somewhere that we can have more space and more quiet

That happened, too. We moved from West Seattle to the west side of Puget Sound, and have been residents of Kitsap County for more than a year. Zero regrets about the move. And, as with Barnacle, numerous untold tales about it all. I’ll work on the backfill.

Otherwise, in the time since that last post:

  • I’ve been through the beginning and ending of a one-year contract job. Which means, oh joy of joys, I am on the jobsearch again.
  • We’ve added another feline family member, Asta. She’s Barnacle’s half-sister: same mom, almost certainly a different dad.
  • There’s more. It’ll come.

Vagueposting: The past few weeks

Lots going on in my world, but I am not too inclined to get into details in this venue at the moment. I’ll leave a few breadcrumbs nonetheless. Starting in the last week-ish of May there has been:

  • A weekend trip to the coast
  • A family medical emergency (was quite scary initially but turned out OK)
  • New furry family members (one who will be permanent and two who are temporary)
  • An unfortunate outcome on a job application that I thought I had nailed
  • A friend in town I haven’t seen for a long long time; visiting with him was a load of fun
  • A “thinking about it” becoming “getting a plan underway” toward moving somewhere that we can have more space and more quiet

See? It’s been busy.

And here we go

Vague-posting a bit here, but I want to mark the day without getting into details at the moment.

When I moved to Seattle in 2014, my musical life and personality was figuratively stored away in a little box. It was a necessary compartmentalization to facilitate some major life and career changes.

I knew I had to completely let go of the past to live in the present and prepare a new future. So I just put it away. I tried taking it back out on a few occasions, but it was never the right time, and didn’t feel right. It made me sad for what I missed from the past.

In recent months there has been a scratching noise coming from that box, like something trying to escape. It’s been getting more intense.

I had a conversation with a friend this morning that led to me creating some blank staff paper this afternoon.

This conversation was not a singular or first manifestation of this re-emergence of my musical side. I had a conversation with a different friend a few days ago about her own similar path in this regard, and how that has been going for her. I have also started playing in a local brass band.

Hell, even getting this site redone, and this blog space fired up, is part of that entire mental shift of getting back to being a creator again.

Things are happening. I think the use for that box is coming to a close.

Shooting in our neighborhood last night

This all happened within a block-ish or so of our house. We were just returning from an outing when it happened, so, fortunately, we missed hearing the gunshots and got home before the police swarmed in and traffic got messy.

The shooting was in a playground with kids in it at the time. Some reports suggest an argument or fight, others suggest a drug deal gone bad. Knowing nothing factual but my own experience living here, I think the former is more plausible, and the second is a dog-whistle.

https://westseattleblog.com/2023/05/shooting-investigation-at-alki/

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/man-shot-killed-near-alki-beach-in-west-seattle/

This was the first warm and nice Saturday night of the lead-up to summer, so this does not bode well for the months ahead. The area where we live has become louder and more unhinged on weekends in recent years.

Used to be: Teenagers drinking and partying around bonfires while lo-riders cruise the beach strip. I have zero problem with that.

Becoming: Guys in luxury vehicles shooting each other and all-night motorcycle racing. It’s becoming concerning.

Seattle PD has a Twitter feed of incidents, and there were nearly two dozen other calls to the neighborhood (say, 6-7 block radius) that were not related to this shooting. It was a wild night.

My friend Jason’s album release!

Album cover for "Start It!" by Jason Mingledorff
Bandcamp link here!

I’ve had the good fortune of knowing and playing with a lot of outstanding musicians over the years, and one of them, my friend Jason Mingledorff from undergrad years at Alabama who is now based in New Orleans, released his first solo album today.

He’s had a career of being in bands (such as Grammy-winning New Orleans Nightcrawlers, plus Dr. John’s band, Papa Grows Funk, St. Paul and the Broken Bones, Galactic, and many others), but not leading a band of his own. That has changed in a big way!

The album kicks. It slaps. It is 🔥. It’s jazz with an aroma of funky NOLA stank, and is both cerebral and visceral. Jason is a monster sax player, the tunes are excellent, and the whole thing sounds like a million bucks. Congrats to him!

Maybe I’ll write up a review of this album at some point. There’s some really interesting things in there.

7:20am

I woke up this morning (no alarm; I almost never use one), stretched and opened my eyes. “What is it, like 7:20?” I thought.

It was. It was exactly 7:20.

This happens to me a lot, where I wake up, mentally guess the time, and hit it right on the nose. This is the third time in the past few days that has happened.

As a musician, has my sense of time become that expansive?

Obviously, light (or lack of it) in the room can be a clue to a general time, but that marker moves, too, especially here in the Pacific Northwest where we are entering that part of year with amazing long twilights in the evenings.

The only explanation: I am an android whose internal chronometer occasionally leaks into my conscious thought. Guess I need a new gasket or something.

Constraints inspire creativity

My tweet that was a response to this tweet about the origin of Dr. Seuss’s “The Cat in the Hat”

I am a big believer in using constraints to inspire creativity. I once had a composition teacher tell me “To be more creative, define problems for yourself, and then solve them.”

In other words, use the truth of “necessity is the mother of invention” in a deliberate way.

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