All posts by hannahviolin

I am a violinist. I also enjoy running, working out, reading, and hanging with my friends and cat.
Teaching

April Showers

I had to make a decision to cancel my studio’s outdoor recital today due to inclement weather. I do NOT like making decisions like this, but I think it was the right decision as it’s raining and supposed to storm later.

I was looking forward to everybody getting together and playing and hearing each other! But April is just too rainy, I guess…I had organized the date with some other teachers, and we had planned to rent a piano, and it just didn’t work. I guess May would be a better outdoor month. And it was under a pavilion, but really, wooden instruments and storms aren’t a good idea.

Anyway, so that means the day suddenly became free, but then due to a fellow musician’s household getting COVID, I have things to do. I was going to attend the Great Artists Series Concert tonight at Wash U…originally I had planned to give away my ticket, but then when I canceled the recital I was planning to go (we hadn’t given it to anyone yet), and now I am not going after all. A silly day, indeed.

We went to the symphony last night. I didn’t want to go beforehand because I was exhausted: it’s been a rough week for me, with having a medical procedure on Wednesday, taking some days off, ending up with a migraine as well (probably from the dehydration?) and then finally feeling a bit better…I am hopeful this week will be back to normal. In any case, the concert was lovely and wonderful and I’m glad we went: I missed going to concerts during the pandemic, and I’m happy to be back, even though I am surprised by how few wear masks in an enclosed space with so many people! Masks are now optional and it was interesting to see which musicians on stage were wearing masks or not, as well.

This week is the last week of classes at Wash U! I can’t believe how fast the semester has flown by. Of course, I say that NOW, in hindsight, there were definitely times it dragged, or at least felt longer. I’ll be teaching an extra week due to our delayed COVID start (the students were remote the first two weeks, and we could choose whether to teach 1 or 2 of those weeks remote: I chose 1). We had juries yesterday and my students who performed played well.

There are still several weeks left of Kirkwood and I teach at home basically until Norway, but I am getting things ready for summer. My summer lesson questionnaire goes out tomorrow and is due mid-May, and I’m trying to get all the travel set up. I have some time off in August that is still a wild card, and it’s okay not to have everything scheduled, but I’m looking forward to our travels, visiting family (perhaps more of that in August?) and having more time to relax and not getting up QUITE so early.

The cats hanging out together. They were fighting over who got to sit on the grey sweatshirt, but found a way to share briefly.

And yes: I’ll take some new catio pictures soon to share. They love it, though get angry if we are outside while they are stuck in it.

How is your weekend going? Did today’s rain spoil anything for you?

Random thoughts, Teaching

Crunch Time

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This is officially known as “crunch time” in our household. Louie got an email from his job about how “crunch time” was a small but natural part of the year and listed all sorts of ideas on how to maximize your time. In any case, we keep yelling “crunch time” at one another here and there…the issue is perhaps that crunch time seems to run from September to May, but particularly from after Spring Break (late March) to May.

My students: got their festival videos submitted. It was a slog this year, I felt. I’m not sure what I could have done to help more, but I felt like I had to remind people too many times. Oh well! And now there’s a recital in one week, which is great timing for those that just finished their recordings because they really know their stuff and should simply have fun, but for others seems fast after Spring Break.

I’m trying a new system for summer lesson signups, where they fill out a questionnaire with their summer availability and then I fill in the schedule afterwards. In theory this is a great idea, because I’m tired of teaching everyday in the summer all day with weird 30 to 60 minute gaps throughout the day, never enough time to actually do something useful, but enough teaching to feel like I worked all day for the equivalent of 3 to 4 hours pay. So I have a new plan, and hopefully it works out decently.

I worked through the weekend: two services on Good Friday, a lovely Passover dinner afterwards at Louie’s Mom’s house, teaching during the day on Saturday, attending a student recital at Wash U, and then a Saturday Night Easter Vigil (which was lovely, but very long), followed by an early morning wakeup call for three Easter services. I got home around 12:30 and spent the rest of the day wiped out. I even took a nap, which is unusual for me.

This week is stressful because I’ve got a thing on Wednesday for a medical procedure…I won’t go into details, but it’s nothing serious, just that you should make sure you get your annual exams so if there is anything wrong it can get fixed before it’s too late. I’m taking off work a bit, all of Wednesday, part of Thursday or all, Friday morning as well. I feel like it’ll somehow be a vacation which perhaps tells you how exhausted I am. It’s poor timing with the recital this weekend, but I don’t get to choose these things. I’m teaching a little extra today and tomorrow to make up for it, but also just missing some lessons. I built a makeup week into the schedule for the semester for reasons such as this.

I will say that changing up my teaching schedule to a monthly set fee has worked out well, but also been exhausting: I think I have ended up teaching more than ever! I do plan to continue, but in the fall I’m making each semester 1 week shorter, for my mental health. I’ve been feeling pretty run down lately: I am really looking forward to summer and taking some time for myself.

I haven’t even been taking any cat pictures lately! They are enjoying the catio (on the back porch, there’s a screened in place to hang out that they can access from inside, and not actually go outside, but be on a little cat porch) when the weather isn’t too cold, and they love when it’s nice enough to open the window entirely (I’ll try to get a picture of that next time it happens, maybe this week?).

The weather has been blah, overcast, chilly, rainy…I’m ready for warmer weather. I think that the weather is contributing to my general malaise, but it’s also just burnout and feeling underappreciated. Anyway! How is your week?

Teaching

Good Friday AND Passover

What a day it is! Happy Passover to my Jewish friends!

Louie’s mom invited us for Passover tonight, and we are going, but late…because it is also Good Friday and my quartet plays every Good Friday (or at least has for something like 5 years) at the Third Baptist Church in Midtown. They do a music/readings concert and it’s really nice. This year we are playing the third movement of the Smetana Quartet, a new commission by Sasha Johnson Manning named “O Sacred Head”, and then two Chaconnes: Purcell, and the famous one by Bach but arranged for String Quartet (which is a bit of !!!???##%$%#$# to me but is also fun, I guess.) We play at 7 pm if you are interested.

I’m not sure if it is livestreamed, I feel like I can never find any of this stuff out in advance anymore, and it’ll turn out that an event I played at was livestreamed, but that I didn’t know until after the fact. I suppose I could dedicate more time to finding these things out, but since I dedicated 2-3 hours to tracking down students this week and begging them for their festival videos, helping them upload them, watching them, etc, and that’s a normal week for me…but there is a livestream button and it’s worth trying at 7 pm Central if you are interested. It would also be available later IF it was, as the link goes to Facebook.

In any case, my school this morning was closed which meant that instead of getting up super early I got to sleep in a bit and then do a few different things this morning. I’m headed to my first Good Friday service soon, then some teaching, and then the aforementioned Good Friday concert later. Tomorrow is busier, with a class, recital, teaching, and a Saturday Vigil at a church in Illinois (which is just across the Mississippi River from us, can you believe it?). And then Easter Morning starts at 7 am for me, and I’m playing 3 services!

I know that many of my “I love having my weekends free” from the pandemic have been thrown under the bus lately, but do you know how expensive Norway is? Honestly, I’ve stuck with my main scheduling mantra of “turn stuff down that ruins my teaching schedule unless it’s super cool” and that has worked out really well. I had to move students today for our quartet concert, but that fit into “it’s really cool”. I have some lighter weekends ahead as well, and I’m also playing some weddings and such, but it’s nice to see colleagues. You always get used to what you are doing, whether it’s staying at home more, or running around doing a ton of things. The ebb and flow is part of finding balance, and as I tell myself, Holy Week is but once a year.

We went out for dinner last night at a place near our house, and the neighbor’s cat came out to be petted. On our way back, the cat was out front of our house and we said hello again, and then I realized Muriel was staring out the window judging us and looking angry. (No, I’m not anthropomorphizing, I know how she feels!) I felt bad then and hurried inside.

There are six weeks left of the school year. 5 depending on how you count, or 2-3 if you count the college schedule. Summer is almost here…

Random thoughts

Stormy weather

It seems like we’ve been having rain, wind, and storms more often than not. But today we are supposed to have severe storms, and I guess weather forecasting has gotten better than it used to, but it’s still the midwest.

Many things are happening all at once this week: Holy Week, which means extra work services (back at it!), Festival (recordings due Thursday night), along with regular preparing for the end of the year. Louie shared with me an email he got from work about “crunch time” and how the school year follows a certain ebb and flow, and crunch time is the normal part of things…it was all both true and also felt very much “don’t worry about working 80 hours a week this is all fine.”

This Is Fine creator explains the timelessness of his meme - The Verge
Dog in burning restaurant says “THIS IS FINE.”

Nonetheless, I haven’t been too crazy busy. I’m more annoyed by my constant allergies and some personal health matters which I’m not discussing here. I’ll be happy when April 24 is behind me though, as that is the end of a lot of stresses in my personal life as well as the day of the Spring Recital for my private students. And then it’ll be nice when school ends, but I don’t want to wish my life away!

I feel like each semester goes by faster than the last, which I assume means that the next semester will be even faster and soon I’ll be retired. The downside is that I constantly feel like it’s the “end of the semester” and that we are constantly preparing for performances, when I want some time to just relax and work on technical issues my students are having. I suppose I could do less performances, but I don’t think twice a year is too many.

I keep researching parts of my upcoming trips when I have some downtime, as well as reading: I’ve started some Jo Nesbo (reading Bat) as well as waiting for the next Inspector Gamache I need from the library. I did decide to go to Austin as well: I figure I should take full advantage of opportunities and since Louie is going to be there and there’s a hotel room, I should do it. I’m just going part of the week he is gone, but it should be fun (and hot.) I wish the Norway trip were later in the summer honestly, as the summer will feel a bit of a letdown afterwards, but that’s out of my control!

I enjoyed performing on a concert on Sunday afternoon at Washington University. I only played on the first piece and then stayed for the rest of the concert with a colleague. She worried she had guilted me into staying but I said I was happy to do it, that I wanted to be the sort of person who stays when they can.

I recently saw a post online that someone made about networking and attending concerts being work and all of that, and who knows, maybe that is a thing, but I want to the be the sort of person that attends concerts for fun (I already do this) and also to support my fellow musicians, not just for networking reasons. I want people to attend my concerts, so I should do the same, and I feel like statistically if I go , then somebody else will too. That’s all. And did I mention I like music?

I’m rambling now. I blame the sneezing 🙂

Basically I came here to blog and I have little to say. Life is rather repetitious really, each day the same schedule as the week before, waking up early and working late. It’s a rather tough schedule, and I keep trying to decide how long I want to continue it, and what the tradeoffs are.

How’s your April going? Eaten any good recipes lately?

Hiking

Sprint to the Finish

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The semester schedule, especially for college, often just seems like a mad dash from beginning to end. It’s slightly less so for school before college since the semesters are longer, but there’s still that same feeling.

The days are longer, the birds are louder, the air is warmer, it was Spring for a few days, and may be almost there again now.

Life: life is hectic and busy. Louie is completely overworked right now, but his sprint only goes through the end of April. Mine goes longer, but I’m not as overworked. Still time to read, to plan upcoming trips, to relax.

I haven’t felt like getting into the garden yet this year. I’m not sure if I’ll do it or not. I think I’ll probably plant at least a few things, maybe beans and zucchini, but since we’ll be gone I want to time it so that hopefully it’s okay if I wasn’t there the whole time.

It’s been a tough semester, with some work reasons I won’t go into here. I will say: I’ve been working hard on envisioning my own life, what I want the rest of my career to look like, and coming to terms with the fact (probably 20 years late!) that what I see as success and happiness in my career is what matters, not what other people see as success, especially colleagues who may have very different world views. I am not teaching in order to make my students into competition winners or performers, I am teaching because I want them to love playing the violin like I do, but I also know that for most of them, this is one part of their lives, and that’s okay. I want it to be a good part.

The same with performing: I can’t do everything. I have said repeatedly that I’m glad to be doing less, and I’m still playing for sure. I’m saying yes, I’m saying no, making decisions for myself. Do I get feelings of jealousy when I see what other people are getting the opportunity to do? Yes, sometimes. And sometimes those pangs are very fleeting, because then I remind myself, you chose a different path, you had a lovely evening, you played that other job, you already turned that gig down because it conflicted with something, or whatever. You can control your second thought.

Maybe they are just bragging on social media to make themselves feel better anyway, because they are missing something in their life, or because the freelance game is like the Game of Thrones.

Or, maybe they are genuinely happy and sharing because of that, it’s possible! There is room for all of us, their happiness doesn’t take away from mine.

I got new hiking shoes! I am trying a zero drop shoe. I thought that I didn’t need new hiking shoes for the summer and then I realized that my shoes were actually falling apart and worn down. We went on the Lime Kiln trail last weekend, and my calves were working hard on the uphills, but otherwise I loved them. I’ll need to build up those muscles.

New hiking shoes!

My old shoes treated me well: I hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, all over Utah (we did 5 parks in one trip!), Colorado, Missouri, and more. These shoes are more trail runners, so they are lighter, and probably won’t last as long, but the lightness is a nice feature as well. They are the Altra Timp 3 Trail Runners.

You can see my old shoes in these photos: With Louie at Delicate Arch in Arches National Park, me hiking up to Mills Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park, and relaxing by Mills Lake in RMNP on my 40th birthday.

I’ve been reading the Inspector Gamache series of books lately by Louise Penny. I happened into the first one somehow and then have been reading as many as I can. TV wise, we’ve been watching Occupied, which is a Netflix show in which Norway is occupied by Russia for their gas…it really takes on a whole new level watching this show during the current atrocities Russia is committing in Ukraine, but the show is good and making us excited for visiting Norway.

Food wise: we attended a Wine Dinner at the Whittemore House last weekend. It was a pairing of Moroccan food and wines (not Moroccan, but just to pair.) We had a great time. I haven’t been cooking anything super fun lately, just quick dinners to get by, like frozen pizza, fish and roasted vegetables, pasta, that sort of thing. Oh, one favorite recipe lately is Black Pepper Tofu and Eggplant from the Smitten Kitchen.

How are you? How is your April going?

Random thoughts

My Blog, My life

I got a comment on my blog yesterday that I moderated, because I can: I pay for the blog. Someone I didn’t know accused me of being “afraid of Trump signs.” Yes, I mentioned that there were political signs in the area and that led us to not want to spend more money.

I didn’t say what the signs were. You can assume, but you might be missing some: some signs were Trump/Pence. One was a former Trump/Pence sign with the Pence torn off (traitor to the party, right?). There were many confederate flags, and some Let’s Go Brandon signs.

I’m not afraid. But I did not start this fight. I am not the one leaving up divisive political signs or adding to them, long after an election is over. I am not the one who put politics in the middle of a pandemic of a deadly virus that killed AT LEAST 1 million Americans.

So, it boils down to, do I trust eating in a restaurant in an area with people who support an autocratic ex-president who still supports Vladimir Putin, who is currently bombing civilians, (including maternity hospitals) in a sovereign state?

No.

No I do not.

Of course it goes much further as well. I have so many friends and family members who are in the LGBTQ+ community. I know that those signs stand for taking away their rights to simply live as who they are. I know that those friends and family members would not be welcome in these areas. And I want to go places where they are welcome.

Am I afraid? No.

But I have dollars to spend, and one life to live, and what I have, at least, what I still have for now, is choice. I chose to visit an Airbnb in a rural area. I chose to visit some state run natural resources, which I support highly. I chose not to spend any additional money in the neighboring communities, for a variety of reasons, one of which was that we had such a lovely view from our room and had brought food to cook.

Are there lovely people in these places, just as there are lovely people everywhere? I am certain. There are lovely and not lovely people who live everywhere.

You may not know this about me, but I grew up in a small town in South Carolina. I grew up surrounded by confederate flags and Reagan supporters. Don’t assume you know me because I live in a city now.

But, as a traveler, as a human, I have choices. I’m debating visiting Austin with Louie in the summer (he has another conference there), and I think, hmm, do I want to go to Texas? All the guns, all the anti-trans legislature, etc. Plus the heat (my god, the heat!) in June will be annoying. But there are some really interesting looking things there, and I know Austin (and Texas) are full of wonderful people trying to do wonderful things for the world. And Louie has a place to stay because of the conference, so it’s just the cost of the plane ticket and any missed work (which, it’s summer, if I can’t be more flexible in the summer when can I be?)

All this to say: I welcome comments from all readers, but I reserve the right to moderate in any way I see fit, especially for personal attacks.