All posts by hannahviolin

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

Hiking

The confluence

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Last weekend my parents came to visit. After they got vaccinated, they went on a road trip, first to Phoenix to visit my sister Leslie and her kids, then to some National Parks (Grand Canyon, Arches, Canyonlands), and then took their time driving through Kansas and Missouri to get to me on a weekend when I had days off. Me, days off on weekends, I still can’t quite get used to it!

Anyway, they arrived last Friday just in time for us to watch my sister Carrie play a recital for her doctoral degree at CUNY.  We set up the livestream on the big TV.

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Carrie played a great recital with a wide variety of pieces and we clapped after each piece even though she couldn’t hear us. We were all very proud.

After that, I had one lesson to teach before being done for the weekend, so I did that and then we just hung out, took a walk around the neighborhood, baked a dessert, and eventually got takeout from an Indian/Nepali restaurant, Himalayan Yeti. I hadn’t been impressed with them a few years ago, but Louie randomly got dinner there a month earlier and I loved it, so we did it again. After dinner we watched a movie, Nomadland. I like streaming, but in a way I miss the days of just going to a movie store and picking out the movies: we had to do a lot of research and then sign up for a Hulu account in order to watch the movie. Rental prices are crazy, like $20 for a rental, are you serious?

So, a few years ago when my parents were visiting we had considered visiting Columbia Bottom Conservation Area, where you can visit the Confluence of the Missouri and MIssissippi Rivers. We decided against it at that time and did something else, so we thought this would be a good time to do it: easy social distancing due to not being very popular. It was lightly raining, but nothing you couldn’t walk around in. Right before we were going to leave, I thought of checking the website, and I’m glad I did…the website said that due to the floods in 2019 that:

All the area trails have been damaged and are closed. Conditions are rugged and uneven in many places. Users may hike these trails at their own discretion

AND

The road from parking lot L to the confluence is closed. Area users may park at lot L and hike to the confluence (approx. 1 mile)

This information seemed a bit conflicting to us, and we focused on the bit that said “area users may…hike to the confluence”.

So, off we went! We got to the park and found that yes, some of the roads were closed, but we drove through on in the Subaru on the gravel roads and did pass one or two other cars. The birds were out in full force and that was great to see. We found Parking Lot L and parked, and then realized, that yes, the trail was overgrown with weeds and mud. I don’t think we really realized how much damage there still was from the flooding of 2019, and had assumed the website was being dramatic, after all, it had been nearly two years. Nevermind that those years were during a globalwide pandemic and likely there was little funding given to the cleanup.

We decided we would try to get there and worst case, would just turn around and not see the confluence.

It’s important to note that in the past, one could drive up right to a parking lot and just hop out. We had hiked there in the past as well.

Well, we mostly walked along that road, which was mostly overgrown with weeds. It was pretty amazing to see how quickly a road can turn into nothing…I think it was a two lane road and at times it was less than one lane. We walked through some large puddles and a few muddy places, and we kept thinking we might have to turn around, but kept forging ahead.

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Can you see the sign that says “Bus Parking”? That’s how overgrown things were.

We finally got to a place when the road completely ended, but found a route through a bush where obviously people had gone, and then I went ahead to see if there was a way through, and found that it was easy enough, just a bit of wandering in the woods.

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It may not look like much, but that is the confluence of the Missouri (left) and Mississippi (right) rivers. It was overcast, but you could see a little ripple where they come together, after all those miles and miles. So much of our land and history (and those who came before us, the native Americans as well) are based on these rivers running throughout the country, and it is fascinating to see one turning into the other.

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You can see the little point of land before the rivers converge behind us.

We were pretty proud to have made it out there to the edge, without having a real path to follow! We noticed we weren’t at the official viewing area though, just a little bit of land you could see through. We started heading back and then we did find the original parking area:

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There is a kiosk there with historical information and a blue pole showing the level of various floods over the years. I suspect 2019 will be the highest yet, if they are able to rebuild. I suppose I don’t actually know if 2019 is the highest yet, but I hope they can rebuild and update it. My dad and Louie are standing in what looks like a yard, but it was a parking area with pavement before, and Louie is holding a “Bus Parking” sign.

Then we realized we might as well try to get back out to the original viewing area, so we found our way there.IMG_8095

You can see the concrete was damaged in the flood and there are several downed trees just sitting around.

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It really seems like quite a bit of damage, all caused by water. Seeing this really gave us a greater understanding of the power of water, somehow even more than the Grand Canyon, because this just happened!

Finally we headed back, and knowing what we were hiking through made it easier than the way out.

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If you look carefully into the green, you’ll see a faint blue square. It is a disabled parking sign. Not a great place to park at the moment, though I joked that those weeds could have grown up in a week, knowing how weeds in my own yard work!

Afterwards, we came back and took turns riding my dad’s electric
“trike.”

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I was a little nervous to take it out, but I went around a few blocks and it was actually super fun and exhilarating to ride!

Later we cooked dinner and watched the movie Knives Out.

The next day we went to Louie’s mom’s for brunch. Everybody except Louie’s brother Julian was fully vaccinated, and Julian had gotten his second shot just that morning. We had a lovely meal and then took a long walk around Forest Park. It was a hot day, actually, and we enjoyed seeing all the flowers and such. After that it was time for our weekly “roll call” online zoom meeting with the rest of the family and then dinner. We watched the Oscars after dinner for a bit, but went to bed earlier.

I woke up earlier to teach my class but then my parents didn’t leave until a few hours later. It was great to see them, especially after so long, and I hope I didn’t make them walk too much.

They took two days to drive home but did get home safely.

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My mom taught me what some of the flowers were called: I guess this is the first year I’ve really paid attention to what is coming up. Anyway, the second two above are irises Smile

Have you visited the Confluence?


Random thoughts, Teaching

Patio Furniture

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We ordered some patio furniture a few weeks ago from Overstock.com. It didn’t seem to really be overstocked though, because it said it would be shipped in 6 to 10 weeks! I looked around and found the same furniture at Home Depot, but it cost about $80 more for the set (two chairs, small table) so we decided to just wait it out. Well, we got “lucky” and it only took about a month to get here. I am pleased with it, and think it makes the house look sharper. It’ll also be a nice place for people to hang out outside, whether that is me and Louie, my students, friends, family, whatever.

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We did a lot of organizing and some cleaning yesterday, and between this weeks organizing and last week’s garden extravaganza, I feel like we are starting to get a real hold on the house and its surroundings. The garage is still a bit of a mess, and a few closets here as well, but mostly I know what we have and where it is, and that now includes the garden and landscaping areas. My peas are growing well and grabbing onto their little poles.

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The pictures are from Tuesday, so they’ve grown more since then. We are predicted to possibly get snow on Tuesday, but my understanding is that this should be okay for the peas and the chard also (I have a few tiny chard seedlings popping up), though my flower pots, I’m not sure. I have a few pots with things in them, some of which have some tiny tiny leaves popping up, do I bring them inside where the cat will definitely eat them? That’s a no, but maybe I could put them in the garage. I’ll keep my eyes on the forecast.

Other stuff going on: my parents are visiting next weekend, so I’ve taken Friday afternoon and Saturday morning off from teaching. I basically have a full week ahead though, but getting to the end of April means getting to the end of college classes….there’s only 3 more weeks and then I’ll gain about 9 hours a week back. That will be huge as far as having my days more free. I’ll have my early morning classes until the end of school, and I still regularly teach from 3 to 8 or 8:30 most days with a few morning or earlier students, but having more time during the day means I can relax a bit more and get things done during the week.

Another fun thing we did yesterday was put up a few tiles I wanted to hang in the bathroom. Louie is always hesitant to put things on the walls when it’s a “new” wall (aka dry wall rather that the old plaster with wood paneling on top) so I have to really convince him and let him come around. He agreed that the tiles looked really nice.

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This was one I bought from Etsy awhile back because I thought it reminded me of Muriel and Miles and also matched the color scheme well.

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The walls are light blue, though the photo doesn’t reflect that as well. They are definitely a little bluer in person.

And this little tile: I think it was a gift from Leslie years and years ago and I just never hung it up. I had it sitting on my dresser instead, but this is better.

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You can see it is very small.

I am happy with the little touches I’ve made on the house over the years. I was thinking how Louie’s mom, who lives in a beautifully decorated house, full of art, plants, and other personal touches, once said she wished they had bought a vacation home just so she would have another house to decorate, that once she got hers full of things she loved she kind of wished she could keep going. Of course she moves things around and it’s not always the same (and I also think she was speaking a bit tongue-in-cheek), but I think that idea is what keeps so many people keep redecorating and remodeling: it’s fun to live around new places, and look for new little things to buy and display, isn’t it?

I also feel like we here in my house move a bit slower, and that’s okay too. Maybe it takes a year or move to finally decide where to put a tile, but that just means we are more deliberate people. Smile

I can’t believe two things: 1) my parents are visiting next weekend, after this whole pandemic thing kept them from traveling for a long time and 2) my students are coming back to my house next week. Not all, but some. (It is absolutely their choice.) It will mean real pants, but I think it’ll be really great to see everybody after so long.

Oh, and 3) that snow is predicted for Tuesday. Nothing really big, but still. It’s late April!