I have to say it: I hated teaching in person this semester – mostly. Private voice lessons with me wearing a mask and the student wearing a mask were frustrating and almost completely useless. The students were thrilled to be back in person, and OK, it was nice to be able to accompany in real time. But the technical instruction that the students needed was impossible to convey. I took them through their exercises and guessed at what they were doing with their mouths and tongues. I did try to do some hands on physical adjustments in posture and movement but I also wanted to keep my distance. In general, I was not comfortable being in a small room for an hour with someone deliberately exhaling at me. And the students were all incredibly sick with everything else but COVID: strep throat, bronchitis, laryngitis, colds, mono, stuffed noses, coughing, you name it. They called it the Princeton Plague and it got most of the students at one point or another. OK, I didn’t have to sing at all, but my historic trauma with worrying about getting sick, combined with the past 18 months of being conditioned to be afraid of getting sick had me extremely triggered.
At the other extreme, I was teaching Singing American Musical Theatre as a performance class again and it was wonderful.
I was so proud of Solène after she sang Barber’s “Knoxville Summer of 1915” with the Princeton University Orchestra on their March concerts. We had worked on it a lot last fall in preparation for the concerto competition. I loved teaching the piece to such a sensitive and talented singer, sharing all my favorite moments of interpretation and expression. It was actually good vocal practice for Solène as well, focusing on the simple, sweet, childlike quality of the music and text, learning not to overload her voice and do more with less. 
Was it really four years ago that we went to Australia for the International Congress of Voice Teachers and an amazing travel adventure? It was time again for the ICVT meeting, this time in Stockholm. I would present my menopause research and Michael would come along for a Scandinavian tour. 
The other big project that has been going on this winter is the Singing Through Menopause Survey. On Sataloff’s recommendation, I got the survey approved by the Princeton Institutional Review Board and enlisted the help of the Princeton Survey Research Center. Everyone I worked with in both offices was wonderful. After getting feedback from a number of my voice teacher colleagues, I launched the online survey in early March – hard to believe with everything else that was going on then!!! 
I finally decided to make an appointment to see Peggy Baroody again, the singing voice specialist in Sataloff’s office. School is over, the estate work has settled down, I have some more time and energy to devote to this. I have been pretty faithful to the low acid diet since January, and I have been doing the few exercises I got from Peggy and the speech pathologist on that first visit. 
Thankfully, this trip was already planned long ago. Boy did we need to be on a beach in Puerto Rico for Spring Break! I had learned about the small cottage in the low key west coast town of Rincon from my ISPP buddy Jane. It was sort of a project to get there – renting a car and driving almost 4 hours in Saturday afternoon traffic from San Juan to Rincon. 
Michael and I are standing in front of Queensland Conservatorium in Brisbane, Australia, with Mimmi Fulmer on the last day of the 8th International Congress of Voice Teachers. More than a year ago, I had been asked to contribute a chapter on ornamenting Classical and Bel Canto arias to a book edited by Scott Harrison, who teaches at the Queensland Conservatorium. He was also involved with hosting the conference, and he suggested that I give a talk on the material from the chapter.