Tag Archives: reading

Books, Hiking

Snowstorm

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We had a nice ice/snowstorm last week. It started Tuesday night late with ice, then a bit of snow, then a break, and then it starting snowing early Thursday and snowed practically all day. I had off school for my early morning job, and then taught online Wednesday and Thursday. Friday I did go into the college to teach, though I borrowed Louie’s Subaru rather than drive a Corolla.

It was beautiful to watch, and I’m glad we got the snow, but I’ll be glad to see it gone. Today the high is in the 40’s so I’m hoping it makes things easier to get around in and that I can start driving my own car again without concerns.

This weekend has been mostly at home relaxing, but we’ve done some interesting things over the past few weeks. One day we hiked the Lewis and Clark trail–it was after a snow, and there were some icy bits but mostly it was a wonderful day of hiking, and the weather was perfect: sunny and in the 40’s. It’s nice hiking in St Louis in the winter when it’s warm enough, because there are no bugs, and if it’s a scenic hike you get more views.

Quite a lot of the hike was along the Missouri River. It had a lot of ice floes traveling along it.
The hike was about 8.5 miles. This was the map from Louie’s watch. You can make it a 5 miles hike, or shorter if you just do the out and back to the first river overlook (which is very nice) but I have to say, the whole hike is really nice! It isn’t terribly steep overall, and so much of it is along the river that it might be the most scenic hike in the St Louis area.

We also walked around Forest Park a few times and enjoyed the scenery there.

We often park near the World’s Fair Pavilion to start any walks in Forest Park. This was on a cold day after a bit of snow.

We haven’t been out much otherwise, lately. It’s cold and you know, omicron. We’ve eaten out a few times though, at Lily’s Mexican and a place near our house. And last night we got takeout from Himalayan Yeti, which we had almost forgotten about! There are some leftovers for lunch as well.

Cooking wise I’ve made a few delicious soups lately. I might have already told you about the Broccoli Cheddar soup, but I’m not sure. That one we ate with leftover rolls from Union Loafers: I had bought some things from them for Christmas, but froze the dinner rolls as we couldn’t eat it all at the time. I wish they sold them year round.

I also made the potato mushroom soup linked here. I made a few substitutions based on what I had, but I chose it because I had mushrooms and potatoes to use up and we wanted a soup. Highly recommend.

TV wise we’ve been watching 1883 and Euphoria as they come out, we just finished the latest season (or half season?) of Ozark. Last night we watched figure skating and other things on the Olympics.

Books: Non fiction I’m reading a book on the Marquis de Lafayette, Hero of Two Worlds by Mike Duncan and They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South by Stephanie Jones-Rogers. I am slowly working through my nonfiction book stacks.

I also read Beautiful Country by Qian Julie Wang which was a memoir showing a family of Chinese immigrants and their great difficulties living in NYC. Very thought provoking and well written.

Fiction wise: I recently read Mrs. Dalloway for my book club.

Eight Perfect Hours by Lia Louis, a cute romance

The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang. I would have liked this book better if the main character hadn’t been a violinist as I found most of the violin parts to be pretty bad (poorly researched), but the rest of the book to be wonderful.

It’s another week ahead of me, and it looks to be a “normal” week, weather reports look fine, it should be back to work, teaching, getting the spring festival application done, and a few other things. I slept poorly last night worrying about stupid things, and had some weird dreams of trying to get to various gigs in Ohio, but otherwise, no complaints! We are preparing for a performance in late February at the school, which gives us a good direction for the next few weeks of classes.

What have you been up to? Read any good books lately? Goodness knows I don’t actually need any more on my lists, but I’m always up for me.

Teaching

The great rewards debate

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It seems that the question of rewarding children can be a good debate. I finally finished the Alfie Kohn book, “Punished by Rewards” and brought up some of the points tonight at a friend’s house. Most of my friends (many are teachers) swear by stickers and the like for their students (younger). I loved stickers as a child as well!

It seems that it boils down to external motivation versus internal motivation, and how the child needs to move towards being internally motivated in order to learn and grow.

Of course, I am not really internally motivating to practice the violin…though I love the violin, I am still externally motivated to practice. I don’t practice for fun or love of playing, I practice FOR things like a gig, an audition, a recital, or because I am afraid of sounding bad in front of people. I suppose if I’m not internally motivated now to play, I never will be. Then again, I do practice quite a bit…maybe it’s just that I was always shown that practicing was a means to an end? Or perhaps I just don’t love the violin as much as I love other things?

The author used the example of the “Book It” program as a bad program for getting children to read. This was a program from Pizza Hut where children got free pizzas for reading books. I loved reading books as a child, and also loved pizza–this program combined the two! Mr. Kohn suggested that the program didn’t make children want to read, and at most would make children eat too much pizza. I do recall that I always read plenty of books, regardless of the pizza, and hated when I was required to write a summary or something like that. I am definitely internally motivated to read–I read for fun, I read when I am bored, I read to entertain myself, I get lost in books and the time flies by. I don’t need a reason to read, and would probably list it as one of my favorite activities. Then again, I was brought up seeing my parents read all the time and learned from a young age how great reading could be. The pizza was just a bonus!

In any case, the book was thought-provoking, and evidently quite controversial. I will have to try out some of the ideas with my upcoming classes.

Random thought: I am writing a book report of sorts for fun here, and I’m not getting pizza for it (in fact, my trainer would definitely 🙁 upon the idea of pizza). I’m just doing it because I like to blog. Hmmmmm…also no one made me read the book…I read it because it was recommended by a teacher I respect and wanted to learn more about it.

(I guess it boils down to this: no one can motivate you to do something, you have to choose to do it. I think that is true.)