It's Not Just a Rental Instrument

I'm in Cleveland this week for a VSA (Violin Society of America) convention.  It's a competition year, so I brought my latest violin for judging, and it's always nice to spend time with others in the same business.  I've gotten to catch up with people I don't see often, and even made a few new friends and contacts.  I'm enjoying myself a great deal.


This year I also had the opportunity to give a talk!  It went well, although it was on the first day of the convention before some of the people I knew had arrived, and there are talks happening concurrently this year, so some people had to miss mine who wanted to go.


But it was a good talk and I got many good questions afterward.  The best part was to discover other people with shops like my own in different parts of the country; smaller shops where they care more about relationships and music than they do about profit and growth.  I was approached several times in the following days by people who liked what I had to say, and told me they run their businesses with the same philosophy.  They were pleased not to feel alone.


So here, if you are interested, is a slightly edited version of my talk.  The original had more than 60 slides and some graphs and I can't include most of them here, but trust me, they were awesome.  My regular readers may be bored by the more nuts and bolts descriptions of our business, but I wanted to include them for my colleagues who missed the talk.  (There are some things of more general interest if you skim past the contract stuff.)




IT'S NOT JUST A RENTAL INSTRUMENT



Korinthia A. Klein
Korinthian Violins, Milwaukee WI
VSA Nov 2016



My name is Korinthia Klein and I run a small violin shop in Milwaukee WI.



I come at this business from many angles: as a player, a teacher, a parent, and a luthier.

I began playing violin in public school in Michigan, switched to viola in high school and majored in that instrument at the Ohio State University, and I still play today with a group called Festival City Symphony.  

I got my diploma in lutherie from the New World School of Violin Making in the year 2000 and then worked for several years doing repair work at Classical Strings in downtown Milwaukee where I learned repair and setup.



Kitchen Accomplished! (Before and After Photos)

The kitchen is DONE!

I cleared it out back in July, demolition began in mid-August, and on November 1st the final bits and pieces were completed.  The new kitchen works so much better it's unbelievable.  Plus it's beautiful and it finally matches the rest of the house.  I love it.  I love it and I am beyond glad we did it.  (We can't really afford food to put in it now, but never mind that...)

Some general design choices that worked out well:

Elelction Time

Like many, this presidential election has left me stunned.  I have apologized to my children for the behavior of the so-called adults involved.  All our children deserve better than what we have seen over the past year, and probably better than what's to come.

I have numerous thoughts about the many troubling aspects of recent politics, but most of them would just be rehashing observations everyone is all too familiar with.  Other people have written at length about the grotesque absurdities we've witnessed, so there's no need to restate them here.  What I would like to talk about are a couple of key points I think could use more consideration going forward, regardless of the results of this election.

Halloween 2016

I do like living in a neighborhood that has fun with Halloween.  Tons of people out for trick-or-treat, the Pumpkin Pavilion event, and I don't think anyplace in the country has anything as cool as Zombie Hill.  They outdid themselves this year:

Mona the Scorpion!

 
Mona is amazing.  She made her costume almost completely unassisted this year.  She did all the sewing on the machine including the zipper.  She watched me do parts of Quinn's costume (since there were useful similarities) and then copied what I did where it worked, and came up with her own ideas where it didn't.  The only thing I helped with was occasionally unjamming the sewing machine when it acted up, and I hand stitched on all the extra legs for her torso while she was at school to save her a little time.

Honestly, she did a much better job of creating a scorpion costume than I would have.  Her attention to detail is impressive, and she did many things in a way I wouldn't have tried that worked beautifully.

Quinn the Lobster!

Check out my son the lobster!

I gave myself a head start on Halloween costumes this year because I knew I wouldn't have a lot of time in October, but then it turns out I only needed to make one costume.

Which Part of the Moment?

Recently I've been pondering the idea of "living in the moment."  The phrase sounds virtuous in its simplicity, but I'm not finding it all that simple.

Parts of it I get.  When I look at each of my children and am occasionally overwhelmed with how fast it's all going by, I try very hard to really look at them.  I want to be present and appreciate who they are at that specific time.  When I'm at a concert I try to clear my mind as best I can of the flutter of mental distractions that vie for my attention so I can truly hear the music as it's happening.  When I practice I know I need to focus in order to be productive.  When I snuggle up against my husband at night, I know not to take such basic comforts for granted.

I've even learned to accept living in the moment when it involves pain.  Occasionally I suffer debilitating headaches, and I've found the best thing to do is not to resist.  When I took birthing classes before having Aden I remember the instructor refusing to use the word pain to talk about labor, preferring to tell her pregnant and nervous pupils that it was merely "an interesting sensation."  That, frankly, is disingenuous at best, but there is something to it.  If you don't have a choice about being in pain, fighting it adds to its intensity.  Better to relax and find it "an interesting sensation" if possible.

So I see the value of "living in the moment."  The problem I'm having is that the phrase seems to imply that there is only one thing in that moment.  What if the moment is multi-faceted?  What if living in the moment is about reflecting on the past or planning for the future?  What about all the choices you might have to make about what living in the moment actually means?