Flutistas

When I'm not obsessing about flute, practicing flute, or working the day job wishing I were practicing flute, I am teaching flute.
I don't have many students. There are myriad reasons why: lack of time, or space, or the sheer amount of energy I put into my students limits my capacity to build a large studio. I am also picky about who I teach.
I see it as my duty to work with high school girls. Not because I want them all to get into fabulous conservatories and become the best flutists to ever live- on the contrary: none of the flutists I teach plan on pursuing flute seriously past high school. I like working with high school girls because it's an important stage of their development, where their intellect is being challenged, they are competitive academically and reaching for the top, but are still emotionally unsure of their power within themselves.
Music is the perfect avenue to teach confidence, emotional range, and analytical thought. Through teaching flute, or more specifically music, my goal is to help these girls step out of themselves, their labels, and their hangups to help them see themselves as capable, as artists. I love seeing my students every week, seeing them develop more fully as flutists and as people.
So when I received the honor as "most inspirational teacher" from one of my students, I was touched to my core. And I blushed tremendously at the assembly.

Flutey or Designy?

I just received a long anticipated shipment of clothing from my favorite prep clothing merchant. As I was showing a couple of coworkers at the design firm what I'd purchased and was eagerly anticipating, they all said different variations of "that's very you," though did not share my enthusiasm for said shirt. When the shirt arrived today, I put it on and was quite excited about the lovely Liberty pattern, but received more of "that shirt looks good on you," which is not quite "I like that shirt." Finally, in a conversation on the balcony, I realized that it's because the shirt is a floral print.
Floral Print is not designy.
Floral Print is flutey.

Here is the shirt:













I am aware that there are specific clothing items that are flutey:
Flute boots, which are disgusting and are popular again
Ethnic shawls, ditto, at least in Santa Fe
Scarves, long and breezy or short and kicky

And now, apparently, floral patterns. My question is, as the aforementioned items are now surging in popularity, is it because of the sheer number of flutists populating the culture at large? Am I now ahead of the "design" curve, or just 20 years behind it, which I guess makes me ahead of it in some fashion cycle sense? Or am I once again just way too cool for all the middle aged designers I work with?

Dutch Baby/Lensbaby

I am in the midst of a love affair with the dutch baby.

Dutch babies are something I remember eating throughout childhood, but I hadn't had one for at least 10 years until last summer, during the Tatum woman bastille day oyster summit genealogy trip.

We were staying at Madge's house, in Manzanita, and the weather was gorgeous. I slept late, and when I managed to drag my raggy bones out of the super comfortable bed overlooking the sparkling Pacific (with ocean breeze), dutch babies were in the oven, ready for the seven of us to eat, complete with just-picked Oregon blueberries and lemon wedges.

Sitting at the huge table, massive picture window in front of me, the Oregon coast alive in all of its riotous glory, dutch babies took on another meaning. They became for me a psychological buoy, quite obviously because of their lovely puffiness when they come out of the oven. They have the comfort of pancakes, but the effortless elegance of "real" cooking, of time taken for a beautiful meal. And they don't sit in your gut, festering for hours, like pancakes sometimes do. Their fleeting puffiness and paper-crisp edges lend beauty to an otherwise mundane combination of flour, eggs, milk, nutmeg and butter. They are a crepe in a reverie.

I made dutch babies Thursday, before Rick's funeral. I made dutch babies again, Sunday, with marionberry preserves, on a cocooning morning over loads of coffee and the New York Times. Here's to my crush on dutch babies.

Conspicuous censorship after the fact doesn't help

I have my Master's degree
I have been playing since I was 10
I went to "good" schools and studied under "good" teachers
I spent money
I spent time
I spent energy
I agonized over every single note
I have played all of these excerpts in an orchestra
I spent my inheritance on a new flute
I have lost relationships over practicing
I have no hobbies
I passed on from this round

Fuck you you fucking fuck.

More apartment love

I love it.
It is so great, my tiny little French apartment.
It holds a strange and wonderful influence over me.

I have always been attracted to the color green. Any shade of it; it holds my attention and soothes my eyes. I have also been known to get a bit excessive with it, painting my living room a dramatic, dark shade of green, buying green bedding, etc. I try to back off of it occasionally, but always return to full adoration of the green.

So when I first saw what is now my apartment, with its kitchen walls painted chartreuse, I fell in love. Green walls that I didn't have to paint. Bright green walls in a sunny room, elevating a tiny kitchen from claustrophic drudgery to artistic pleasure and lovely meals. Lovely green meals.

This weekend I made Orangette's version of Nigella Lawson's pea soup. It was perfect: soothing after a very emotional week at work, yet optimistic in its anticipation of spring and, because it was the first meal made in the lovely new place, celebratory of this new stage of my life. We drank a Macon with it and had some heavy handed yet satisfying goat cheese bruschetta. After dinner, some chocolate from Boulder made a fleeting appearance.

Yesterday, after a very difficult day at the office, and a hard and fast run after to work it all through, I made guacamole and sat at my lovely high-top table drinking a Widmer hef and plowing through an entire avacado's worth of guacamole. It wasn't until I'd finished that I realized, with the exception of the copious amount of coffee I've brewed, everything I've made in the apartment from scratch has been green.

I've got to turn things around tonight. I won't even use parsley, I promise.