Nice article about the NorthStar Cafe, PortTango, and Tango Mucha Labia in the latest Portland Monthly. Cool.

Now if I can just survive tonight's NorthStar gig and then make it through the rest of the week, it will be time for...school vacation! Very cool.

Changes afoot on the school front. Maybe cool.

One day one of my violin students and I discovered that we both love farming and now we always have interesting farming-related discussions as he's getting his violin out of the case. Beekeeping, turkeys, hazelnut bushes...I often wish that Portland had a 4H club. It's really what he needs.

After school break he has offered to bring me some [dead, and I hope, cleaned... probably, since he knows my ridiculous non-mouser story] squirrel for me to try. Apparently the red squirrels are no good for eating, but the gray squirrels are "delicious". I am a tad nervous about this.

Sometimes when I can't play something on the violin, I pretend I can, and then I can. This works for students, too. The change in posture sometimes unwinds enough tension to make striking changes in technique. It works the other way, too. When my students learn to stand and play the instrument with beautiful posture, they play better, and that makes them more confident, and that improves their posture, and they play better...so on. It's so amazing and wonderful that it works both ways.

Being on vacation from school for a week made time for 3 or 4 hours of violin practice each day. I always feel so fantastic afterwards, whether it's the posture or breathing or remyelination. Life is so much better with that much violin in it. My life so rarely has it these days, though. I'm thinking about how to change that, because all of a sudden I feel human again, and am making technical progress for the first time in ages. I know what I need to do to improve my technique, but now I need serious mileage. Back at school today I wonder: how do I get that time back?