All posts by hannahviolin

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

Arkansas Travelers: Two Nights in Little Rock

A few years ago we spent a long weekend in Eureka Springs and had a great time, so when I started thinking about post-COVID vaccine trips, I thought of Arkansas. I wanted to go somewhere not too far away, and somewhere that wouldn’t be overwhelmingly busy with tourists, as I knew the more famous places would be slammed with people eager to travel.

I decided to put together an 8 night road trip for Louie and I that hit the best of Arkansas, or at least, 4 different areas for two nights each.

So, we started with two nights in Little Rock, the state capital. I booked an airbnb in downtown for these leg of the trip. We left on a Saturday morning and headed south.

It’s about a 5 1/2 hour drive to Little Rock, and most of it is on state highways. It was interesting to see the little towns along the way and watch the landscape go by.

We stopped at a McDonalds in Arkansas for a late lunch, and were surprised that we couldn’t eat inside the restaurant. (We actually failed to notice that they were closed inside and were about to sit down and eat and they had to tell us that we couldn’t, which was mildly embarrassing). Missouri has been so “open” this whole time with few restrictions and it was odd to think that a neighboring state had some. That being said, few people were wearing masks, including people going into that same McDonalds, so it’s not like Arkansas was doing things better, just different.

Anyway, we got to our airbnb at 3 to check in but due to a mix up had to wait a little longer. We walked over to a nearby coffee shop in the SOMA area called Community Bakery and sat outside to enjoy some coffee and cookies.

The SOMA area was a 5 minute walk from our airbnb, and SOMA just means South Main Street. It was a few blocks with a bunch of restaurants and a few other things to do, and was really cute. We walked around a bit after our coffee and then went to check into our place.

We were staying in a little apartment in a house with a shared kitchen and other shared spaces, but with private areas. It worked out really well and the hostess actually wasn’t even around for the rest of our stay, so we had the place to ourselves at a cheaper rate!

We walked down to the river next, and took an hour or more just looking around, taking pictures, and getting a sense of Little Rock.

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There is a park called Riverfront Park right down by the River which has art and playgrounds and other cool stuff to do and look at. You can also bike or walk along the Arkansas River Trail which is a much longer trail.

We had dinner reservations for a place called Brave New Restaurant, so after awhile we cleaned up and headed there. This wasn’t our first dinner out after getting vaccinated, but it was our first fancy dinner, and I was really looking forward to it! Though it was a bit chilly we sat outside on the patio overlooking the Arkansas River. It was absolutely beautiful as the sun went down!

The food was excellent too: oysters, salad, trout…it was all delicious and well prepared. The chef, Peter Brave, kept coming around to check on all of the diners and make sure we were enjoying our food. We loved the meal and would eat there again!

The next morning we decided to grab coffee and breakfast at the Community Bakery and then go to hike up Pinnacle Mountain at Pinnacle Mountain State Park.

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We had a little trouble finding the right parking lot at first due to Google not being as helpful as we needed, but we eventually found the West Summit Trail Trailhead with plenty of time to beat the crowds.

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It was a lovely trail, for awhile, until it just turned into some rock scrambling!

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The rock scrambling part (unpictured) was terrifying to a point, and I had to sit down for awhile. I didn’t think I could finish and Louie went ahead without me, but after collecting myself and resting I decided to forge ahead and made it to the top!

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After hiking, we went back to the SOMA area for lunch and went to a wonderful place called the Root Cafe. We just beat a large crowd, but were told it would be 40 to 50 minutes on our food anyway! This ended up being wrong, and we were eating within 20 minutes. I had a delicious banh mi tofu sandwich and Louie had a mushroom burger.

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After lunch we decided to visit the Historic Arkansas Museum (called the HAM). It was okay, and sort of interesting, with old houses outside and some indoor displays, but I was hoping for a bit more on the actual history of Arkansas for general knowledge about the state and the area, and it was piecemeal. It was partly our fault for not doing the call in cell phone tour, but I’m not that interested in going to a museum and using my cell phone… I want to be in the moment at the museum, experiencing and reading stuff, and honestly, I use my phone for taking pictures and it can be tricky going back and forth. In any case, one of the more interesting things to me was that the old houses were actually there from the start of the museum in the 1930’s and the museum itself kept them from being torn down!

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We walked over the Bill Clinton Presidential Library after that. We knew it was closed due to COVID but wanted to see the grounds and the building anyway, and there was plenty to do outside, some gardens, wetlands(so many turtles!!), and artwork area. It was a really cool building and I’m sorry we didn’t get to see inside!

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The Heifer International Headquarters are there too, but there didn’t seem to be anything we could do there at this time either.

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We walked across that bridge and considered looking at the other side as the map indicated a trail, but it didn’t look very welcoming so we turned back.

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Our next stop was a brewery near our airbnb called Stone’s Throw Brewery. We got a nice sampler and sat outside enjoying the gorgeous weather: it was in the 70s!

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We went back to the SOMA area for dinner to Mockingbird Bar and Tacos. It was tasty and we enjoyed sitting outside relaxing.

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The next morning we left our airbnb and had one more stop in Little Rock before heading to Hot Springs, the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site.

The Visitor’s Center was only allowing a certain number of people in at once, so we got a time to come back, and went to see the outside stuff first. There’s the high school where the Little Rock 9 attended school and some other places around, a gas station where the media used the payphone (it’s so funny to remember that we didn’t all used to have phones all the time!) and a bench where one of the 9 sat waiting for everybody and some other stuff. It’s a very moving and emotional place to visit, and it really makes you think about Civil Rights, how much things have changed yet how much things stay the same.

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The museum was great (though the COVID protocols of limited people and giving times to come back meant that we were all clumped together going one way in the museum, when otherwise we might have naturally spread out more to avoid being clumped together!) and definitely worth a visit.

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After the NPS site we got lunch at Three Fold Noodles and Dumpling. Louie wanted to stop by the Clinton Library again to look at a little island we had skipped the day before, but I didn’t want to walk in the sand so we split up.

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The grounds were beautiful and there was a display of various globes which seemed to have something to do with Charlotte, NC initially rather than Little Rock so I assume it was a visiting exhibit in some way.

Anyway, Louie said the island was pretty much flooded out (I think from two years ago, likely?) and so then we hit the road for Hot Springs! If you have Little Rock questions, be sure to let me know!

Random thoughts

End of School

School’s out! I survived the year of teaching before school classes! It hasn’t hit me yet that I don’t have to wake up at 5:45 am again until September, but it will once…I don’t have to wake up so early.

For those reading, my studio recital on Sunday went really well. It was hot but no rain in sight, and occasionally a lovely breeze. Most people seemed to be happy to be there and had a good time. I’m SO glad I took a risk and did the recital outside, and I may do it again in the future because I personally thought it was fun. It might not have been the serious musical experience one gets inside, what with all the extra noises from people, sirens, and helicopters, but it was still a good performance opportunity.

Today is my last day of work for a week, yay! We are hitting the road for a bit and taking the week off to do so. When I get back I have a bunch of new students, some for only the summer and one or two who might be long term. I’m doing a fair amount of teaching this summer, which I hope I don’t regret. June will end up being pretty busy between this trip, a weekend camping trip, seeing an opera, and doing two online teaching seminars before we leave again to visit my sister and her family in western New York. It’s so wonderful to be able to travel again and go to restaurants and teach students in person. I hope as more and more get vaccinated that our COVID numbers really go down: there are still 1000 people dying a day, and that is ridiculous with the efficacy of the vaccine. Get vaccinated or wear a mask, please!

I have had to say goodbye to a few students this year. It was probably my biggest graduating “class” yet, with 4 high school seniors, two college seniors, and one grad student. I also am leaving Lindenwood University so I will miss some of those students too, and a few others moved away this year as well. (This is also why I’ve been taking some new ones!).

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The cats are really enjoying their catio. Louie put a little cat door on it too, so that it can be open while the air conditioning is on inside. It has taken them some time to get used to the cat door though.

I will say, it’s been weird getting ready to leave town. We haven’t gone anywhere in ages…I suppose we don’t travel that much, compared to many…but I’m really looking forward to getting out of town. I know we traveled some last summer when others didn’t, but I hadn’t spent a night not at my house since we got back from our camping trip last August. I’m excited to see somewhere new!

Random thoughts

Recital Day!

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Today is my first in-person studio recital since before the pandemic! I booked a pavilion at Tower Grover Park, and I am looking forward to having 22 kids and their families come and play and watch. Hopefully it goes well enough…naturally I’m a bit nervous about the details, and perhaps more so what with worrying about COVID and how it will all work out. The weather looks good: hot, but no rain. I think it’ll be a lot of fun for the students. If it goes well I will likely make this an annual event.

Life has been gradually changing to more “normal.” Last year for my birthday Louie’s mom gave a me a gift card to my choice of two restaurants, The Crossing or Acero. I didn’t want to use it for takeout, so we decided to go Friday night. (It was busy: I made the reservations over a week in advance because the weekend I first wanted was booked up). I highly recommend going to The Crossing for a special occasion dinner. The food and the service was fantastic. It was kind of odd being in a restaurant again, and just sitting and ordering food and eating and such, but it was wonderful. I’m so grateful to all the scientists who developed the COVID vaccine, and grateful to have gotten my vaccine and all of that. It was worth it for that buttery four course dinner. I had goat cheese and beet salad, tagliotelle with trumpet mushrooms, halibut, and fried strawberry pie. They also brought out a baked blue cheese spread with little toasted breads, and regular bread service which was so buttery it resembled a croissant.

Yesterday I taught and played a wedding. I don’t think I have any more weddings on the books right now, believe it or not. I don’t mind though I’m sure a few will pop up over the summer. I’ve been lucky enough to have more than enough teaching to keep me busy, and I’ve got a garden to tend to and other things to do on the weekends.

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This was the peas a week ago or so. And now the lettuce on the ground is ready to harvest, in fact we ate a small salad of it yesterday, and the peas are another 6 inches taller and starting to flower.

You can see it is a constant battle in my yard against the weeds. I didn’t know we should be cutting back the raspberry bushes either (I am such a novice gardener!) so they are encroaching: after this summer we’ll prune them way back. And the grass is mostly clover and violets and they keep encroaching. We’ve had so much rain, and this picture was right after days of it, so lush and green! When I was younger I didn’t know cities were so lush and green.

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I was really excited about the flowering until I realized that might mean the peas are ready while we are on vacation. We are going to Arkansas for a week right after school is done, and I’m worried we’ll miss the ideal time for peas. Oh well, it can’t be helped, I’m not changing the trip for the peas. Hopefully we won’t miss them all.

Random: awhile back my mom got a bunch of old slides put into digital forms and sorted them into albums. There was an album called “Hannah’s Childhood” and I decided to have it made into a photo book. This is a delightful collection of old photos of me and my family.

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The last week of school is coming up, and I’m ready. It’s been a tough year for everybody, kids, parents, teachers, other people, and I think it’ll be a good summer. It often feels like the pandemic is over here. It’s not, but we are so fortunate in this country to have such excellent vaccines widely available! (The pandemic will be over when the performing arts have opened back up normally, and not until then.)

May be an image of 2 people, including Jill Frey, child, people standing, people sitting and indoor

(I didn’t know what it meant at first to have a vaccine be 95 percent effective: at first glance it might seem that means you have a 5 percent chance of catching COVID. But that’s not what it means. Your chance of getting COVID is 95 percent lower with the vaccine, and may be as low at .04 percent chance of getting it.)

(I should probably stop with the parentheses.)

Teaching

Near the End of the Hardest School Year Ever

Two more weeks of school! I have 8 more early mornings to get up for, and then I’m done with my before school job until the fall.

I remember finding out about this job opening and thinking about applying while we were in Yellowstone last summer. I wondered if I could manage to survive getting up so early.

The fall wasn’t so bad, because it was just teaching from my home, but once we went back in person in January, some of those mornings were really rough. Between getting up at 5:40 am or so, and then having to go out in the freezing cold and spend 5 to 10 minutes cleaning off my car, there were definitely mornings where I swore I’d quit after this one year.

But then the mornings got lighter and warmer, and over time I’ve completely changed my sleep patterns…if I sleep in on the weekends until 8 it feels amazing and decadent, and I usually go to sleep around 10 and it’s wonderful…and did I mention the mornings got lighter and warmer?

And then my students have learned, and I’ve gotten more connected to them, and I got my vaccine earlier because of this job (and getting the vaccine was the biggest thing that happened, of course) and one of them wrote a really wonderful poem about her love for the violin. Basically, I have really grown to love the job DESPITE the early hours, and I plan to continue next year, assuming they’ll have me.

I did decide to resign from Lindenwood University however. I felt like I just had too much on my plate, and something had to go. It’s the farthest drive and the lowest paid of my work, and I decided it made the most sense to leave. I am sad to leave a few students but confident somebody will come in and teach them well in the future, as there are always more good teachers around looking for work. I will still have too much going on in the fall, I’m sure, and I’ll have to be careful not to accept too much weekend work for my sanity, but not having to deal with that commute as well will be helpful on Mondays.

I took a walk with a friend the other day and we were talking about teaching, and how the pandemic has changed our feelings about teaching. I’ve always taught, and mostly because it was a good way to make some extra money, and then because it was something people wanted me to do, but I feel like the pandemic really made me realize that I’m actually really making a connection with all of these students, and in a way I just didn’t really pay attention to enough before. I’m always a little slow to pick up on emotional, human, things…

When the pandemic started and all of my playing jobs went away, all I had was my teaching. And seeing those students every week was a great thing, and I felt my connection to the world through them, and I have realized that these families absolutely kept me afloat during this time, but I think I did the same for them. We held onto that connection, both musically and human, and that was one of the things that held us together during this time. Nobody cared that I wasn’t playing the violin for money, and all of the jobs and friendly colleagues that I enjoyed playing with, that all disappeared entirely, but my teaching stayed, and kept me going.

I also find that, for many students, the more I put into the lessons and the relationship, the more I get back. So it’s a worthy endeavor.

I was watching a seminar the other day online and the speaker was talking about radical empathy, and having radical empathy towards our students and their families. I have operated under this philosophy for the most part, without giving it that name. I have thought of it as “allowing myself to be taken advantage of”…and while yes, I do charge them for no-shows and set up firm payment policies and such, when they come to me with a sob story I usually cave and offer them an extra lesson, particularly if I know they’ve been having a hard time or if they don’t ask for very much from me. And now I have a name for it, “radical empathy” and I like it. It makes what I saw as a negative trait in myself into a positive.

And I also got another thing from that seminar, or maybe another one I watched the same day, which is that it is okay if my students aren’t superstar students, that we don’t all have to have the same goals for our students. I do want my students to be good violinists, but yes, I do want to have them be good humans, and perhaps that is more important. I don’t think that people can only learn to be a good human through music lessons, but it is one way to learn a lot of wonderful life lessons, and I would far rather my students be caring and loving people than be winning this or that competition at a young age. The world needs more loving and caring people. There can never be too many!

Now, this is not to pat myself on the back and say, go you, for being such an awesome person. But to say, if another teacher is reading especially, that not all of the students will learn the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto by the time they graduate high school, but hopefully all of the students will look back on their time with you and have some behavior from you that they will model into their adulthood, and that it’s okay if your students aren’t the best violinists in their city, as long as you are giving them the best you can.

I’ve had parents of students tell me I need to yell at their child more to practice. That’s just not something I’m ever going to do. I will ask them about practice, I will suggest they practice more, I will challenge them to do so, I will ask what are the things holding them back or what are their excuses, but I will not yell at them! There are violin teachers who will, I’m sure, but that’s not me, and I don’t think anybody should.

Anyway, this is a sort of rambling blog post about teaching and stuff, but to sum it up: it’s been a wonderful and busy year. I’ve pushed my students the best I could for what they needed this year, and so many have done better than I could have ever imagined, but I am equally proud of them all for making it through.

Hiking

The Confluence, Then and Now

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I was looking through old pictures and found some from a previous visit to the confluence (2015). I blogged about visiting the confluence (of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers) the other weekend with my parents and how there was a ton of flood damage.

Here’s a picture from two weekends ago:

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And this is a different angle of the same kiosk, you can see the pole is there which showed the height of flooding in 1993.

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You can see there was a parking lot and such, none of that is visible, it is all covered with mud and plants now.

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Here is a selfie I took before—you can see there is a metal bar in the background.

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Another picture of the viewing deck of the confluence in the past. Look in the background at the trees—that’s the last bit of land before the confluence actually happens.

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This is a different view, but it’s the same platform. The metal bars are totally gone. When we there recently we didn’t even notice they were missing, but now I see it.

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My mom standing on the platform surrounded by flood wreckage.

And now, two similar pictures of the actual confluence:

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Can you tell which is which? Probably only because the bottom one is from the summer and the upper one is from the winter. So the first one is from the other week, and the second one (directly above) is a picture of the confluence from 2015.

I found all of this to be really interesting, and I’m glad I was able to find these photos from 2015 (it was a bit of a search!).

(and Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!)

Cat, Gardening

around the Yard

This is the year I’ve really noticed what flowers are in the backyard. For whatever reason (free weekends, spending the whole year at home due to the pandemic, getting older) I’ve been way more away of flowers and such this year, and it’s been fun watching our plants bloom.

There are a ton of irises in the yard, and I’ve learned that likely I need to divide them all, which seems like a daunting task, but means in a few months I can just get started on it, and learn as I go, which has been my gardening motto. (If anybody reading this wants to come help, let me know!)

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I’m enjoying watching them bloom. How have I missed this the past 6 years? Probably because May was completely full of gigs, but this year, I’m busy busy and making enough $ but not working as much on the weekends.

I hear a lot about the restaurant worker shortage and how it’s caused by the Pandemic Unemployment Insurance, but I wonder how many folks are just done working weekends? I guess we’ll see what happens. I am not done working them, but I’m done working so many of them.

The big news this week is that Louie built a small “catio” in the back. He took the window in his office, which previously had no screen and therefore could only be opened a few inches, and built it out so the cats can enjoy fresh air.

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Since these pictures were taken he added a little more soft padding for them to sit on. They love the catio and have spent hours each day there.

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My peas are growing well and will likely soon be at the tops of the poles. The poles are likely too short so then they will grow back down or around, or we’ll see.

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I’m planning to plant beans this weekend. I might plant them this afternoon because the weekend looks rainy, so I could just get them in the ground. I have to a do a little weeding first. I may also plant a row of beets. I’m thinking a row of beets, a row of beans, and then in another two weeks, another row of beans, and maybe another two weeks after that, or something. I also have some mixed lettuce and swiss chard coming up, not pictured.

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These are growing in the back, amongst the irises (I think), raspberries, and probably some sort of weed that needs to be pulled. There are still pretty wild parts of the yard, and the back corner has raspberry plants interspersed with ivy which is a little bit of an issue, I think. Perhaps less of an issue that the honeysuckle tree next to the garage though, but not everything can be fixed at once!

I had leftover blueberries in the freezer still, from last summer, so I made the second blueberry rhubarb crisp of the season. It was delicious. I recommend Talenti Madagascar Vanilla Bean Gelato for a topping. And I like to call it “blubarb crisp.”

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Workwise: I started teaching at home two weeks ago and it’s going well. I have 3 to 4 students coming in person on most days, and otherwise I’m still online, and it’s going just fine. It’s wonderful to see the students and really hear them, and it reminds me how to teach in person (play with them, duets, clapping in time, interrupting right away because they’ll hear you in time, all of that) and then I go right back online and have to do that, so it’s been a great mental challenge, doing both. I have 22 students playing on the recital in a few weeks, so we are preparing for the performance. It will hopefully still be done in an hour or less. I also am switching to a set monthly tuition starting in August and I told everybody this at the beginning of May. I think it’ll work out really well, and will help my budget as well as I can have a more regular idea of what to expect each month.

Anyway, Louie is off on a short weekend trip to visit his dad, so I’d better help him get on the way. I’m not sure the cats will survive without him since they are so used to us both being around all the time.