I have the morning off and I thought, maybe it’s not too late to tell you about our trip to South Carolina.
If you are a long time reader you’ll know this, but I grew up in Clinton, South Carolina, a small town in the upstate of South Carolina, and my parents still live there. Louie and I decided to drive down for Thanksgiving, but to go from Tuesday to Saturday to avoid the worst of the traffic.
We filled up on gas at the gas station right by the big Amoco sign. You can see it was already raining a bit: this theme continued for us on Tuesday. While the morning wasn’t too bad for weather, the afternoon got worse and we basically drove the whole afternoon and evening through heavy rain. The traffic got progressively worse through the day too until after evening and then the last few hours past Asheville things cleared up both weather and traffic. People ask how long the drive is: it can range from 10 hours to much longer. I made it in about 10 hours one time on Christmas Day: no traffic (no trucks!), no stops except for gas. I think it took us a little over 12 on Tuesday, and then you lose an hour for the time change. There’s a very heavy congestion area through Knoxville and then some construction zones on I-40 through the mountains where the road was washed out last year with the horrible flooding.
Anyway, we made it in after 10:00 and chatted with my parents a bit before going to bed.
The next day we all drove in Greenville to do some sightseeing. Schools aren’t out on Wednesdays in that area of the country so it wasn’t very busy and that was nice. We walked around and enjoyed some of the sights.
My mom wanted to sit on this swing because she said it was usually too crowded.
We also went to the BMW museum outside of Greenville. They built the factory in 1992-1994 and it has really changed the area from what it used to be–there is a factory tour you can take on some days but not the day we were there (and you have to sign up in advance anyway.)
This little car was one of my favorites. They had a bunch of older cars as well as some of the very newest models. This car had only three wheels and as you can see, opened in the front. Perhaps not super safe on the highways today.
Anyway, then we headed home on the back roads in order to avoid the Thanksgiving evening traffic.
The next day we prepared a small dinner for four. It was nice!
My dad had just come back from a bike ride, hence the slightly strange outfit.
For some reason the entire jam dish is on my place mat.
The next day we visited a nearby State Historic Site called Musgrove Mill. They have a few trails to hike with signs to read.
It is not too far away, but it wasn’t a State Historic Site until after I had moved away. It was from a Revolutionary War Battle. We also drove by where the first house we lived in Clinton used to be: it was torn down and a new house built in its place: probably the new house is nicer but the old one is brick and I preferred the look of it 🙂
As usual while we were gone, our cats were in good hands with the pet sitter.
A picture of my parents’ home: it’s a geodesic dome that my father built himself. We moved in around 1991.
Anyway, it was a nice visit, very low key, and then we drove back to St Louis on Saturday morning, with mostly pretty good traffic. There was snow in St Louis that day but no problem with the roads, and the snow was all done and cleared by the time we got home. That gave us a day to prepare for the week ahead and get ready.
When I took this picture, I had been sitting on the couch wondering where the cats were and then I heard some heavy breathing behind me!
I got some Christmas decorations set up.
These penguins are new to me this year. They look cute here, but the big one can be a little creepy and seem too large in real life. I’m not sure.
Anyway, now it’s mid December, and Thanksgiving is behind us–I’m glad I finally posted about it, and honestly, that didn’t seem so hard, haha. I just needed some time to sit down with it. I’ve just been stressed out as you know and feeling like a chicken running around. But the end of the year is near, things are winding down, and did you know (did I mention?) I am going to Morocco soon? I have a trip in less than two weeks, and so some of my time has also been spent making sure I have what I need for that, and working on my packing list.
Enjoy your weekend! We are getting some very cold weather!
One thing everybody says musicians do wrong is consider “busy-ness” as a mark of honor. How are you? “Busy” “Good!”
Except it’s not just musicians. It’s Americans. We are all too busy. There are a lot of reasons for that. Some of it is the culture, we feel like we need to stay busy to keep up. We feel like we need to do all of these activities to make sure that our kids are doing all the THINGS that the other kids are doing. Or we need to stay busy for work reasons: if you are a freelancer you stay busy to work more, to make more money. Maybe to buy more stuff, maybe to save more, to save for a rainy day, to save for when you get sick and have to pay for that surgery, that out of pocket bill, that unexpected health emergency, losing a job and the associated insurance, etc. Really all of everybody’s money worries are health care, right? Or is that just in our household?
Maybe you stay busy just to avoid looking directly at the horrors going on in your country. Maybe if you take on more students than ever, more gigs than ever, maybe if you pack your schedule just a little bit fuller you can avoid reading one more news article about the human rights violations in our country, the people being deported who have lived here for decades who are also possibly citizens, the people being murdered on fishing boats, the people being held indefinitely for who knows why, maybe just being brown skinned people who might have overstayed a visa, but also just might be citizens. And in no particular order: the articles about wide spread corruption, the attacks on the press, the freedom of speech, attacks on women, college campuses, reproductive rights, the economic downturn, my friends who have lost their jobs, attacks on trans people and lgbtq rights, the weaponization of the justice department, attacks on vaccines and the dismantling of the CDC and the NIH, the complete corruption of the Supreme Court, and…I could go on.
So maybe when we say we are busy, maybe we are avoiding that. Some of us might be. Are we hiding our heads in the sand? Probably. Do we wish we could do more? Of course we do. But sometimes what that more is is doing what we are already doing: teaching music to kids, one kid at a time. Playing music. I voted, so many times. I’ve made calls. I’ve shown up at protests–and I’ll keep doing what I can of those things, but I think what I can do now is my thing, to touch people, one on one. My students will grow up to be better people because of music, I hope. I hope.
So I’ll just keep being busy. It is the best thing for me. Busy keeps me sane. The best part of having 34 hours of teaching is that when December comes around and some of those students are done (thanks Wash U for being done earlier!) it makes the Christmas season feel a little easier!
We had an absolutely gorgeous fall day on Saturday. The sun was shining, the leaves on the trees were a variety of beautiful colors. I had ONE small thing on my calendar, a two hour morning rehearsal, and then, the day off! I made a corn casserole for a neighborhood event (yes, our neighborhood has events)–we had a chili cook-off, and while I did not enter a chili, I made a side dish. I relaxed in the afternoon, enjoyed my down time. Regular readers know this is a rare occasion.
Now, I also spent some time catching up on emails and a FEW work related things, because being self employed really means work never stops, but I also read a bit and relaxed. And did laundry, and dishes, and such. And then in the late afternoon Louie and I walked over to the little park where the chili cook-off was being held and enjoyed the chilis and the side dishes and the animals (alpacas and turtles and goats and rabbits you could pet!) and chatted with neighbors and his family who also live in our neighborhood.
And then it got dark, because yes, winter is coming and it is now pitch black by 5:30 and then we went home and watched TV for a few hours and it was just simply glorious to be at home and we heard the wind outside and it sounded quite ominous.
And the next day it was cold. Very cold, the radiators were kicking in, and the cats love that, yes, but…what? It was cold, and windy, and the temperatures were in the 30s with “feels like 18” and that seemed not like a glorious fall day at all. And it was overcast, partly sunny, and it was my first day off in a long time, and I wanted to sleep in, but of course I woke up at 7 am because of whatever, hormones, patterns, the state of the world, the dry air. But nonetheless it was still a nice day, and did I practice for my upcoming performances that I am stressed out about? No, I did not.
We went for a long walk around Forest Park, which was pleasant at first until it was very cold and windy, and I did way too much research/brainstorming for a trip next summer, and I read and browsed the internet, and emailed getting things scheduled properly for this week which is a disaster.
And now it is Monday. And it will be a good week. I hope. Maybe. It looks like at least marriage equality will stand!!! So this supreme court may be evil and corrupt, but they aren’t ruined everything!
If you read my last blog post, you know where I’ve been. Working! Work life balance? Not me! Well, a few issues:
First: too many students. I mean, they are great. I have some wonderful students. But seriously, there are too many. I do nothing but teach. Wake up, teach, lunch, teach, teach, dinner, lie in fetal position, repeat. It’s probably too much. Some days I count my money, other days I read, occasionally I practice and head to gigs, or play baroque violin. I did that last weekend, which cut into my teaching and was a nice break. It also rained, finally (we really needed it) and now it’s still raining–I’m not sure if we need it any more, but the rain keeps coming.
Now all the students are sick, so I’ve gotten a short break (hopefully nothing serious!) and I thought, hey let’s do a quick blog and tell people I’m still alive! Probem number two. My laptop computer battery is dying, so it really doesn’t function as a laptop anymore. So that means when I want to use my laptop I need to have it plugged it, if I want to use it for more than 5-10 minutes. Louie can get a new battery and change it for me, or I can get a new laptop, and I’m trying to decide which I want to do. Until then, I am avoiding all computer work at all and just using my phone and iPad to answer emails which means I have not been doing that as much. Because of problem one (remember, two many students), when I’m not teaching I haven’t felt like doing anything else, so that means my email inbox is a bit overwhelming, and it’s been hard to stay up on it.
So things are slipping. Laundry piles up. Washer to dryer, I do that. Dryer to basket, slow. Basket to fold, slow. Other household chores, slow. Car needs gas, avoid driving. We need food, eat less, use pantry. Find other clothes to wear.
We did get the roof fixed. It was (fingers crossed) an easy fix according to one company. Hopefully they were correct, who knows. I am not an expert. If they were wrong, we will find out later. We need to get some trees trimmed and I am slowly working on bids for that. I got some vaccines. Each week there are more appointments, doctors, dentist, eye doctor, hair. Always more things to do! Adulting never ends. Bills, checks to sign, insurance to renew, contractors to call. Emails to answer, student inquiries. Louie power washed the deck and restained it. It looks great, I would never think to do it! We thought we had a squirrel in the attic, it was just mice.
Halloween: candy to buy (check!). Food.
Books to read. Friends, what is that? Friends you see at work! Musicians, we are so lucky, we do what we love AND we work with our friends, isn’t it great? I think to myself, my career has many seasons, and I’m in a busy one. How long can I keep this up…but then I think, what if Louie loses his job, that’s our health insurance. He won’t, he is very needed, currently enrollment is up in his department, his class sizes have doubled. And if he did, well, he’d get another. Or I would find something. Or we would figure it out, we have savings. It’s fine. I could relax. But who would teach all these students?
Augustin Hadelich on Saturday night. We went to see the Symphony in their new, remodeled hall. They spent a ton of money on the renovations.
Miles has decided he only sits on the softest of the softest of seats. Here he is sitting on a furry white pillow on a soft orange chair.
Last week on Monday I bought a pumpkin at Schnucks (the local grocery store.) It was on sale for $3.99 and I thought it would be a nice fall decor. By Thursday morning the squirrels had started eating it. By Saturday morning they had knocked it off. I put it back once. They knocked it off again. I gave up. But other neighbors have pumpkins as decorations, why can’t we??? I guess our squirrels are particularly vicious?
They ate into the middle and then started on the other side. Hope you enjoy your Halloween treat, squirrels.
With fall weather comes radiant heat and kitty cuddles.
Louie went to a workshop at Carleton College in Minnesota and sent me this picture of a pond there. They were deep into fall.
Another Minnesota picture. Our fall may be less dramatic since we had such hot weather so late, I guess we will see if the rain ever stops? I don’t really know how weather works.
Okay, so it’s been busy, I’ve been overwhelmed, but I’ve read, I’m going to book club tonight. We went to the symphony, we have gone to Jazz, we went to our neighborhood’s Oktoberfest celebration. This week we are going to a movie, and passing out candy for Halloween, and going to a party at a neighbor’s house (maybe). November has slightly less craziness for me: in the past month I’ve played 8 weddings and 4 performances with requisite rehearsals and practicing, plus a short recording session, which is probably why I feel so AHHH. And this weekend is another performance, though technically in November, and also another wedding. So yeah. Craziness. Plus teaching, which I’ve missed a few here and there but mostly keeping at it. I might be a little insane, but just as a rich person can always find somebody richer, a musician can always find somebody busier.
And the truth about teaching is: the more I do it, the better I get. EXCEPT when I’m too tired. So, there’s a curve, when it gets worse. But also it gets better. That curve changes day to day and week to week, but it’s interesting. The more people I see, the more patterns I’ll notice, even though I KNOW things, I’ll really know them. It’s hard to explain. But also teaching less means I’m refreshed and can be more present for each student.
Sigh. How is your month? Are you dressing up for Halloween?
Perhaps you were hoping for another Vermont story, but not today.
What’s been going on in my day to day life? Well, the usual, for the most part. Teaching ENTIRELY too many students. This is my most crazy year yet, I have 13 students at the college and a whole bunch at home. I did the math at the beginning of the semester and came up with something like 32-33 actual hours of teaching, which is entirely too many, considering how much other work I do and how much work outside of teaching I do. Things to keep in mind for the future. But hey, we are already something like 5 weeks in, so basically 1/3 of the way through and I’m still breathing!
I had a nice weekend. Friday I finished work at 4 (4!!) and then got to relax a bit before we went out to dinner. After dinner Louie and I came back and watched several episodes of Mr. Robot, our current show. It’s a pretty good one, with four seasons, and I’m told by the internet that they whole show wraps up very well by the end, so that will be very satisfying I imagine. Saturday I got to relax in the morning and then played two weddings. It was another exciting evening of dinner and tv (I know, I know, the late 40’s are just TOO exciting, I know.)
Sunday we went for a bike ride on the Katy Trail with Louie’s brother Julian–we biked from Defiance to Augusta and back, about 16 miles, and then had pizza at the Good News Brewery Company before heading back. It was entirely too hot though, what is with the 85 or more degree weather? We had such lovely fall weather in late August, and now in late September we are having heat…I would love to trade back, is it too late for that?
Louie spent a lot of the weekend figuring out the internet, the wifi had been acting up so he was trying a new router and redoing some things. I did a bunch of laundry. We both had zoom calls with family: mine just to catch up (everybody but my youngest sister attended–she was in Germany and the time zone didn’t seem to work out?) and his to plan a trip in mid-December.
Annoying homeowner things: we realized our roof was leaking, which is probably tornado related, luckily we did manage to get some roofer appointments in the next few weeks for estimates. We have a slate roof, which limits the companies we can use, but they are beyond busy, which means that they may come for an estimate but when they will do the work is anybody’s guess. We are hoping it is a small repair, obviously.
I am distracting myself from the world by planning vacations, haha. We are thinking about next summer already, getting ideas (Japan is what we are thinking, Louie’s idea and after doing a little research, I’m super onboard). And I’m going on a solo trip in December while Louie is teaching a course over winter break. Well, solo but with a small group. I’m taking a trip to Morocco with a small group tour, so I’ve been spending time reading up on Morocco and learning about it. I have wanted to go for several years and last year while he was teaching and I was hanging out at home for nearly two weeks after Christmas doing nothing, I thought, next year I’m doing something on my own. So we talked and I decided to do this on my own. I’m excited! It’s getting closer now, and I have my plane ticket and final payment is soon.
I’ve never done anything quite like this, though I’ve done plenty of music camps and stuff like that where I’ve shown up somewhere I didn’t know anyone before, so I’m not too worried about that, but never to a foreign county, haha. If you’ve been to Morocco and have any tips or suggestions, let me know! I’ve done a lot of research, and I will be on a set tour, but obviously personal suggestions are still good. One thing I’m pretty unsure of is how to pack for the weather: it seems like it’ll be cold in some places and not cold in others, and I’m worried about that. Layers, I guess, as they say. Plenty to worry about, lucky me! You wouldn’t want to run out of things to worry about, would you?
Other things we’ve done recently here: we went to see a play at the St Louis Repertory Theatre, the Cottage. It was very funny and very well done, terrific acting, some wonderful physical comedy, and we just really loved it. We saw the Arianna Quartet perform at UMSL–they had a new second violinist and she blended quite well. They did the Ravel Quartet which is one of my favorites, so I was quite excited that I was free to attend. And we went to see Andrea Gonzalez Caballero play a Guitar Concert at COCA, which is within walking distance of us. She played a terrific program of Spanish favorites one afternoon, and it was absolutely delightful. We ran into friends at both concerts of course, as the classical music scene is small and we know everybody, haha.
I will leave you with this one photo of the cats, Muriel and Miles. They spent most of one morning sleeping on a pair of Louie’s shorts he had left on the bed.
Though our Road Trip really started in Chautauqua, the numbering should start here.
Day 1: Bennington, Vermont
After leaving Chautauqua we headed for the New York Turnpike headed East. One thing to note: since we are from Missouri where nothing is a toll road, we decided to get a transponder to use for the toll roads in the east. I discovered that Illinois has a system you can use called I-pass which also works with EZ pass so I signed up for that and loaded money and they sent me a sticker for the car. I decided to use the Illinois system since we live near Illinois and I thought it might come in handy in the future for possible driving in Illinois as well, but if you are headed east, you should definitely look into something, because there are a lot of toll roads and there are no booths.
But truthfully, we don’t know if our pass worked in New York, and to this day, we still don’t know. More on that later, but anyway. We drove for a few hours to our first stop, the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in Auburn, New York, which is a newer park.
The google directions were a little confusing, so I would recommend actually not using them and probably using directions from the actual site or the NPS app, but that’s what we used, so first we actually ended up at the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged, which is part of the park, but just a closed building.
And another home which Tubman lived in at a later point in her life.
But then we found a better address and found the Visitor’s Center, where there was a friendly cat who lived nearby, so Louie immediately made a new friend.
The park consists of a few places: the home we saw first, which is being restored, and then the visitor’s center and the church next door, which is the church where Tubman went and then was where her funeral was held. It was interesting because the church was just in a residential neighborhood so you parked on a street–it made me wonder how the neighbors felt about all of this! But it probably made their property values better, so hopefully they like that. Or maybe they dislike the traffic.
It was also interesting to see how the parks come into being, meaning, how the parks service takes a place and restores it. The church was in the process of being restored to how it looked before, because it was a little rundown and they want it to look as it was when Tubman went there. And the house she lived in–we peeked inside and could see that it was being restored, and somebody had been redoing the walls, but with NEW plaster and lathe, which, if you know anything about construction, is not how modern construction is done, but IS how old construction is done. So that was quite fascinating.
The rangers onsite were friendly and full of information, as you would expect, even as they were telling us much of the restoration was stalled due to lack of funding–just as the park was founded as a park, they lost funding due to the current administration.
Then we went to the nearby cemetery to see Tubman’s final resting stop.
I have to confess, before this trip I hadn’t been into cemeteries and seeing where people were buried, but somehow this trip I started thinking about how it was kind of fascinating to think about: right here, right under here is where this person might actually BE. Though truthfully they probably aren’t really there and have probably shifted further away over the years, but there is still something to think about it that in the past I hadn’t thought about that much. That their physical bones are there, that they really existed. I don’t know why, but that never interested me before and then it suddenly did.
We were hungry after this so we found a Thai restaurant nearby with a high rating, called Spoon and Fork, so we had a quick lunch there and then kept driving.
We had about 3 1/2 more hours to drive, but once we got off the interstate highway, the drive became more interesting and more scenic. We didn’t enter Vermont until very close to Bennington, though! Once you get to Vermont, there aren’t any billboards, did you know? That’s a state law, evidently.
Our goal for the first night was Bennington, Vermont, and we got there around dinner time. It looked like a really cute New England town, exactly what you might daydream about if you had seen a commercial for a generic New England town. We checked into the Catamount Motel, which was the cheapest highly rated motel I could find, and it was perfect.
We decided to set off on foot for the rest of the evening, so we walked to the downtown area for dinner, and enjoyed food at the Madison Brewing Company.
A Catamount!
A Moose!
We shared a tasting at the Madison Brewing Company and had some good food as well. After dinner we took a walk around the town, which was older than we were used to things being in the US.
And then we had another drink at the Harvest Brewery company before bed.
Day 2: Driving Route 100 to White River Junction, Vermont
We had coffee and muffins in downtown Bennington and did a quick drive by of the Bennington Monument and Robert Frost’s Grave before heading out of town.
We had a little trouble finding Frost’s grave because we entered the cemetery from the wrong entrance. One entrance had terrific signage and it would have been easy but we used the wrong sign. It was a beautiful cemetery either way, and a beautiful morning. The grass was wet and dewy, and the air was cool and crisp. It felt like fall and it was only August 2.
We got in the car and headed towards Wilmington Vermont, where we planned to find Route 100 and drive north on it. It was a scenic route and we planned to drive it and stop where the wind took us. We also had an app called “guide along” we would listen to that might make suggestions. We stopped in Wilmington for a coffee and stroll as well, and ended up buying a beautiful wooden cheese board (small cutting board, basically).
It was probably mid morning by the time we actually got onto Route 100, but whatever. We figured we only had a few actual hours of driving (maybe 3? it was hard to actually figure it out because the route we were planning was not the best/most direct route, but instead the most scenic, so the map would always try to reroute us).
We saw a farmer’s market and stopped, got a loaf of bread and petted some goats.
And we saw our first covered bridge!
This was the longest one in Vermont: you could not drive through it but you could walk across it.
After the bridge we went on a bike ride in Jamaica State Park–we’d brought the bikes so we wanted to make sure to use them!
Back in the car after that and on the road–we came to a screeching halt and turned into a shop called “Grandma Miller’s pie shop.” I said, well I had a Grandma Miller but she didn’t really make pies!
I can never turn down something with rhubarb or strawberry rhubarb though, yum!
Our next big stop was the Vermont Country Store. You guys. You know the place that sends the catalogs, right? And we thought, oh this will be a big tourist trap, and while, yes, it was, it was ALSO a really nice store, well curated, well set up, nicely organized, with good space, and it was a lovely shopping experience. We had a nice time, bought maple syrup, etc. Definitely worth a stop, and then afterwards we had maple cremees which are basically Vermont’s soft service ice cream in a maple flavor, a must try when you are in Vermont.
(You actually go in the back though)
I forget where we took this picture, but it was fun.
Another big stop we made was at the Calvin Coolidge State Historical Site. We visited near closing time so we decided to skip the indoor exhibits and just visit the outdoor exhibits and the cheese factory (FREE CHEESE SAMPLES, and we also bought cheese), and really enjoyed that. It was basically an open air museum, which Louie and I have discovered is one of our favorite kinds of museums.
We got to see where Calvin Coolidge was born, where he lived growing up (basically the same place) and where he was when he was Vice President and then President William Harding died in office, and Coolidge had to take the oath of office and become President of the US–all basically within a few houses of each other. And then we drove a short distance to see where he was buried.
A fairly unassuming grave.
After that, we headed to our hotel for the night, that was a bit of a diversion from Route 100. I found that to get a nice hotel for a decent price we needed to divert, so we headed east to White River Junction to stay at Hotel Coolidge (perhaps fitting?) which was a historic hotel there. We checked into our room and then ate at a nearby restaurant called Tuckerbox which served Turkish food.
We enjoyed the food but had a little snafu with the prices: this was a bit ridiculous: the menus we ordered from had different prices on them that what we were charged (and what were on the website) and then the server said, well, our prices went up and not all the menus reflected the changes, and showed us that some of the menus had the newer prices. Which was like, ummm, okayyyyyy. But it was nearly impossible to prove that OUR menus had had lower prices and honestly, what, you should also believe us, and so we had to pay higher prices that what we thought when we ordered (and again, also higher than what they publish on their website) so we can’t in good conscience recommend the restaurant, because that is really shady. In my opinion. And really put a damper on what was otherwise a perfectly lovely day and evening.
After dinner we took a walk and the weather was lovely, and the town was pretty cute, there were a lot of train tracks and a river and we were really near New Hampshire as well. The Hotel was “historic” which meant that the hallways were big and the hotel was big with a giant bathroom that seem like how did it get added in and you weren’t sure what was going on, but it was nice, and I would recommend it. There was a dedicated parking lot behind the building, sort of inside the block as well, and a Keurig coffee maker in the lobby with free coffee for hotel customers.
That’s where I will end this blog post. Next time, we will continue up Route 100 to Stowe, Vermont, for more cheese and some apple cider, and maybe bears, but maybe not bears.
