The End of Our Homeschooling Journey

I've been absolutely horrible at blogging since the summer. No excuses other than finding other things to fill my time.

So catching up a bit....

Summer in Dublin was a wonderful experience. We walked all over the city and saw sights we never would have thought to see on a short vacation trip. We spent many days hiking the cliffs of Howth or from Bray to Greystones and took two trips up to Belfast and Giant's Causeway. Haley was fabulous in Riverdance and she loved performing the show and the people she worked with. She loved playing the music and the spaces where she was able to improvise a bit. She enjoyed meeting and making friends with her co-workers. She had her first taste of a real social life with nights out, a few dates, and hanging with friends. I was glad to be there and meet the people she will be touring with for six months beginning in January. Our last week in Killarney was my favorite time. The beginning of the week was sunny and a bit warmer than Dublin. I am not a city-person so preferred the green and the mountains.

While in Dublin, Haley began her final semester of high school and, about halfway through the run, her dual enrollment courses started so she was working hard to meet school deadlines, go to work each evening, and have some time to enjoy the experiences Dublin had to offer. Once we got home from Ireland, eighteen hours later we were on a plane headed to California for a festival with accordion player John Whelan. When we got home from that a day later, we drove to Baltimore, MD for a weekend of music creativity with a new ensemble she is looking forward to working with. A week later, we spent three weeks on the road, driving from NC to Vermont for a tour with Quinn Bachand then south to Philadelphia to visit family, then New York and back to Philadelphia for two gigs with Mick Moloney and friends then home for the month of November.

All the while, she kept up with school on the road. She finished up her final two weeks of dual enrollment courses while putting together and touring A Christmas Celtic S*journ in Boston, MA. My hard-working girl graduated high school in December with a 4.0 GPA and 42 college credits.

She had planned to complete her Associates degree by the time she graduated high school (originally planned for May 2020) by taking the rest of the college courses in Spring 2020 but with the opportunity to tour for six months as fiddler for the 25th Anniversary North American Tour of Riverd*nce, we decided she would graduate early and enjoy tour without the additional pressure of college courses. This provided her the opportunity to determine how much free time she will have for coursework while touring as she transfers to University of North Carolina-Wilmington to earn a Bachelor's degree in International Studies with a concentration in Arts and Literature in the fall. The online degree program will allow her to continue doing what she loves--touring with her music--while completing a degree. All her community college credits will transfer so she is 1/3 through college.

Haley began the 25th Anniversary North American tour in Montreal in January right after New Years and everything was going amazingly well. The company flew her to Dublin, Ireland for a week in February to do their 25th Anniversary shows at the 3Arena, one of which they filmed for movie theaters. Mid-March had her performing at Radio City Music Hall when the coronavirus turned the world sideways. Her daddy and I had flown up for a week to be with her in NYC but by the 3rd day of shows, the company decided to cancel the rest of the tour and we brought her home to North Carolina where we've been quarantined since. (We did go out that first weekend to see Haley on the big screen for the Riverd*nce movie premier then returned to our solitary lives.)

Haley has been keeping herself busy learning Irish, coming up with music projects for herself, practicing, exercising, cooking/baking, blogging, reading, and drawing. Just waiting to see what is going to happen...

Mondays Off...Dublin, Ireland (Post #1)

With Haley performing in Riverdance eight shows per week, we are limited to staying in or close to Dublin city seven days a week. We spend our mornings working out, taking long walks in either Merrion Square or St. Stephen's Green, studying the Irish language, shopping, exploring new neighborhoods, and visiting various sites within walking distance like the National Museum of Ireland and the Irish Traditional Music Archives. We tend to walk between 6-9 miles per day.

Haley has Mondays off. Our plan is to use these days to the best of our ability to explore further afield, visit with friends, or find other more time consuming adventures here in the city.


Monday #1
We spent our first Monday staying in Dublin. We visited the National Gallery of Ireland. Two wings of the gallery were closed for renovation/repair which left us able to view a lot of Renaissance babies and saints or print art (most of which was absolutely incredible). We loved learning how the process of print art worked in the early-mid 1900's. From the Gallery, we walked to Raneagh. The route Google Maps took us was beautiful with big trees and beautiful old homes.


The walk was long and the weather varied from partly sunny to drizzling rain but no matter, we enjoyed every moment of it. We had lunch planned with friends at The Garden of Vegan restaurant. We arrived a little early and were a bit chilly, so we tucked into a little coffee shop for a quick tea and delicious little vegan cakes. The flavors available for the cakes were difficult to chose between so we picked two, almond berry and lime, then shared them both.

Our lunch with Deirdre and Brenda was delicious. So much fun chatting with them. We weren't quite finished talking so we walked together to a the Cake Cafe, a cute, little restaurant tucked away behind a bookstore with both indoor and outdoor seating and lovely, funky decor.


Haley and I only drank tea because we were full from our lunch and earlier tea shop treats but we made plans to return the following week to give their vegan cakes a try (and we were not disappointed by the way...their vegan chocolate brownies were delicious).


We walked back to town a different, and much shorter, way than we had taken to get there then went to meet a few of Haley's fellow Riverdance co-stars to see the movie Rocketman. What a fabulous movie though it did make me feel a little old to remember seeing most of the happenings (and those costumes worn by Elton John) when they occurred.

Monday #2
Haley's 17th Birthday just happened to fall on her day off and Daddy came over to Ireland for the week to see us and help us celebrate. Haley decided she'd like to head to the North for her birthday so I booked a rental car for two days and a hotel room for two nights in Belfast. We headed to the airport to pick up our rental car right after the show on Sunday night and drove to Belfast.

The next morning we rose early...not an easy task when twice throughout the night (1:48am and 3am) some drunk guy was banging on our door, not saying anything when asked what he wanted, and there was another dude in the hallway with him which all freaked us out. Security handled it and supposedly he just had the wrong room but still, not a fun full night's sleep. We walked to Oh!Donuts...the absolutely best vegan donuts on the island. Haley and I knew about the place from our visit last October so it was her birthday dessert request.

We drove up further north to see a few sights we had not yet gotten around to seeing on previous trips.

Our first stop was Carrick-A-Rede rope bridge. The northern coast is absolutely beautiful! We all walked across the rope bridge and explored the island on the other side then took the longest walk possible back around to the car.

 It was a short drive from there to Giant's Causeway. With the purchase of your ticket, they provide a little recording device that queues on at various spots along the walk telling you about the sights or little stories about Finn McCool and the legends of the making of the causeway. We walked around on the stones then hiked up the mountain to and took the high road back to the visitor's center. The hike was amazing...weather perfect and the sights fabulous. Haley and I definitely would love to go again someday.

Giant's Causeway from the high path.

We drove back to Belfast and ate birthday dinner at Jumon, a fabulous vegetarian/vegan Asian fusion restaurant. All meals are vegetarian with vegan options. Their food is delicious. We each enjoyed our dishes but they have chips with tofu and kimchi that are out of this world!

We had a much better night's sleep then drove back to Dublin Tuesday morning. Daddy was able to see Haley perform in one more Riverdance show Tuesday night before flying back home on Wednesday.

Preparation

Being the mother of a musician has been a wild ride.

Since moving to North Carolina last year, Haley and I have spent more time away from home than at home. We've traveled all over the United States from Washington all the way down the west coast to Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Massachusetts, to Canada, and overseas to Thailand and Ireland. She has performed in festivals, competitions, homes, pubs, and other venues.

Now we are preparing to head to Ireland for the summer where Haley will be the fiddler for Riverd*nce. Preparing to be away from home for a little over three months is not easy.

We have both sorted through clothes, narrowed down choices, then weeded out even more until we had what will fit in our suitcases. Haley has researched vegan food options and I have researched places we'd like to visit on off time: art museums, historic museums, Irish music museums, parks, pubs, and sights.

She's also been practicing. She's determined and loves the music so she enjoys it immensely. She is very excited and looking forward to the first show on June 11th!

Check out our other blog www.theversatilevegans.com  to learn how we manage to stay vegan on the road!

March Madness 2019... in videos

I decided to do this post with videos of some of Haley's favorite moments of the month....

March started at North Texas Irish Festival with her trio, Shared Madness. Two fun days of music performances then hours and hours of tunes into the early morning hours each night.

 

 The following weekend we drove up to New Jersey for a soloist gig with composer/conductor Johan de Meij and the New Jersey Wind Symphony. Johan arranged a collection of Riverdance pieces composed by Bill Whelan who came to see the performance.

 

On our way back home to North Carolina, she had a gig at The Inn at Little Washington in Little Washington, VA with accordion player Sean McComisky.




 We had a quick week at home then flew to Jackson Mississippi for Celtic Fest Mississippi. So many great tune players at the festival. Haley performed with the Máirtín de Cogain Project, with Don Penzien as a duo, as part of the ceili band, then until 4-5am each night in sessions.


 

Haley has some exciting thing coming up in the next few months-- including the release of a brand new duo CD with multi-instrumentalist Quinn Bachand with a CD release tour in May. She has also been contracted as the fiddler for Riverdance all summer in Dublin, Ireland!

Life on the Road

It seems the busier Haley gets, the less I blog.

We've spent the last two months on three different continents and been home exactly one week. Right after the New Year, Haley and I took off for Boston where she had her first gig of the year with Joey Abarta and Keith Murphy. From Boston we drove to New York to fly to Thailand where we visited the Mercy Centre again.

It was so nice to see the children now a year and a half later. Haley enjoyed hanging out with them, watching their music and dance lessons, and giving some lessons to the children attending the kindergarten. We met the Little Birds, young people who have grown too old for the Mercy Centre but are HIV positive and need the support they can provide each other. Haley, along with musicians Mick Moloney, Donie Carroll, and Brenda Castles also performed in a session nine nights of our two week stay in a session at Scruffy Murphy's Pub. Bangkok is an interesting city and we had many adventures.

After our Thailand trip, we fly home for a week then flew back to New York and off to Ireland for another two weeks. Haley was selected to compete in the Sean O'Riada Gold Medal competition. She did not win the competition but enjoyed the event immensely. The event organizers really encouraged the fiddlers competing to get to know one another and made it a community building event. The other fiddlers were each amazing in their own way and it was a treat to hear them all perform.

After the competition, we traveled around the country visiting different cities and Haley participated in Irish sessions with various musicians nearly every night...one night she and our host in Ennis, Bob, participated in four sessions (almost 8 hours of music)! She has decided she needs to spend more time in Ireland absorbing the music and the culture and this has helped her make some decisions about her future...at least the next few years.

We really enjoyed visiting Connemara for the first time and Haley was honored to be invited to record for a very exciting project that will be released in the United States this coming winter...sorry to be so mysterious but don't want to spoil the surprise. We definitely would love to return to Connemara and explore it when the weather is a bit warmer.

We flew back to NY from Ireland and, due to an impending storm, headed straight for Montreal where we got snowed in for a day then picked up Haley's musician friend, Quinn, and drove north a bit to a recording study where the two of them are working on a new album.

Some exciting stuff happening for my girl!

Homeschooling When You're Hardly Ever Home...

One might wonder how Haley possibly finds any time for school with all her musical travels. One key is online schooling. For the past year and a half, Haley has been doing dual enrollment courses online through the local community college. She started when we were in New Jersey and has continued this past semester by transferring to the local community college here in North Carolina. (One benefit of moving to NC was free dual enrollment for high school students.)

After a busy summer of travel, including another year of Studio2Stage this time as a member of the staff, Haley spent two weeks at the end of September touring down the west coast from Seattle, WA to Tucson, AZ with accordion master, John Whelan.  The key for Haley in getting schoolwork completed on time is working hard and getting ahead in her subjects prior to leaving home. This is easier to do in subjects where the professor keeps all weeks open rather than opening the course week by week. She was helped a bit by Hurricane Florence. The hurricane came through our area the weekend before we were due to fly out to Seattle and caused us to be evacuated and shut the college down for three weeks. Haley had planned to get ahead on schoolwork before the tour but with everything pushed back three weeks, she was even more ahead than she originally planned. During the tour, days were spent on the road traveling from one town to another and nights were spent performing. Haley did school in the car using her phone as a hot spot and any time off was for  school work.

We spent a few days at home following the tour then traveled to Midlothian, TX for O'Flaherty's Irish Music Retreat. Haley was invited to attend. She performed in a couple concerts and played music for the dancers at the ceili. Again, school was fit in whenever she had a free moment though there weren't many free moments between classes, workshops, rehearsals, meals, and performances.

We flew from Texas to Boston, MA then from there to Ireland. Between flights and on planes, she worked on her subjects. She downloaded chapters of textbooks prior to boarding planes so she could read and take notes then did any online quizzes or writing whenever she could fit it in. She had a bit more down time in Ireland because she didn't have any gigs.

We never really adjusted to the time difference...just slept until late morning then stayed up until the wee hours at sessions most nights. We visited friends, ate some delicious vegan food, Haley played lots of music, and we did some touring of Belfast, including the Titanic Museum.

Haley took 1st at the Fiddler of Dooney Competition competing in the senior age group, the first American to do so in 50 years! The local news did a nice story on her (link here) and had her come in to play a bit for the morning show.

After Ireland, Haley spent two days recording with her Shared Madness trio for a CD project they have in the works then we had a quick trip to New York City where she was invited to perform at the Irish Arts Center by Bill Whelan. She had a long day of rehearsals/creating the program then two nights of  shows. After the rehearsal day, we were supposed to drive to White Plains to spend the night with her fiddle mentor but an unexpected snow storm caused huge travel delays, accidents, and fallen trees all over the city. We got stuck in the city for the night but the Irish Arts Center staff were fabulous finding us a place to stay. Haley had a blast working with the other talented musicians and even went out on their one morning off to play more tunes with Alan and his friend. I think she never gets enough of Irish music.

After NYC, we've had time at home for the holidays. We spent Thanksgiving with the Richardson clan then took a quick trip to NJ to see the boys. Haley spent her weeks writing term papers, taking exams, and finished up the last of her fall semester courses today.

She's registered for next semester but looking forward to a few weeks to have time to work on her writing, learn her new classical assignments, do some drawing, and get ahead on her vegan blog (www.theversatilevegans.com)

March Madness 2018...or Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

After enjoying some quiet weeks at home...okay, not quite quiet...we sold our home in preparation to move 500 miles south and spent the weeks cleaning out, donating and selling unwanted items, packing, and moving wanted items into storage.

Let me start again.

After enjoying a few weeks at home following the Christmas Sojourn, Haley and I began St. Patrick's Month (yes, for Irish musicians it is a month not a day) a little early with a trip to Charleston, SC for a couple nice gigs. We met some new friends, musicians and non-musicians alike, and enjoyed the beautiful weather. We took a train down and flew home, only to fly a couple days later to Dallas, TX for the North Texas Irish Festival.

This was our first trip to the North Texas festival and Haley was scheduled to perform with her guitarist friend, Don Penzien, whose band, Gailfean, with Haley's fiddle teacher, Brian Conway, and accordion friend, John Whelan, was scheduled to perform as well. When we arrived Friday afternoon, we learned that a snow storm had stranded Brian in New York City, so they asked Haley to fill in for him with Gailfean. There was a bit of rehearsing and set building then performances for her to do and others she wanted to see with an Irish session thrown in here and there. Haley's friend, Sarah, and her family who we'd met in Laredo about three years ago came up and Sarah danced with Haley and Don for a set.  It was a busy couple days. The festival was well run and well attended and the people were wonderful.

I just love this photo of Haley with John Whelan. They have so much fun playing together!!

Here's a little video of the fun...




A week after arriving home from Texas, we were flying off again. This time to New Orleans. Haley's classical violin teacher is living in New Orleans this year for her husband's work. Haley was so excited to have a couple days to spend with Madi. We did some sight seeing, rode the street cars, ate some delicious food and in the evenings Haley gave a solo house concert one night and taught a fiddle workshop the next.

Teaching a fiddle workshop

This woman actually had an autograph from a 7 year old Haley!!

Our friend, Steve, and his wife, Sandy, along with a wonderful singer/dancer Noel showed up on Friday to drive us first to pick up Don and Megan (the other 2/3 of Haley's trio Shared Madness) then on to Lafayette, LA for the Celtic Bayou Festival..more fun, performances, a ceili, sessions, and some awesome cajun music.

Celtic Bayou ceili band

Session fun!

Haley and Noel sharing a laugh!

Shared Madness!

From the festival in Lafayette, we dropped Megan at the airport so she could get back home to her sweet, little girl. We then drove to Tuscaloosa, AL where Haley and Don played a house concert at our dear friend, Jil's home.

The following morning Steve, Don, and Noel drove us to Atlanta, GA so Haley and I could fly back to NJ for a concert with Andy Lamy's Hudson-Shannon Line sponsored by the NJ Symphony. A huge winter storm was forecast for the evening of the concert and the entire next day.

The snow held off for concert night but during rehearsal and the show, I was receiving messages about cancelled and rescheduled flights until finally all flights out of Newark airport were cancelled the following morning. I looked for a train and found they were cancelled as well. Haley needed to be in Greensboro, NC the next day (Weds) to rehearse for TEDx Greensboro on Thursday.

A bit panicked I messaged Don and Steve who had dropped us off in Atlanta and driven to Don's home in NC near Greensboro. Steve, bless him, offered to drive up and take us back to NC but after some searching, I discovered I could drive north and west away from the storm track to the airport in Albany, NY to fly out. Don and Megan booked us new flights and reserved us a car from Newark airport and after the program, Mike (who had hosted us the previous night), drove us to Newark airport where we picked up the car and drove 3.5 hours through the night to Albany. We arrived around 2am, took showers in a hotel room, dropped the car off at the airport, and boarded our 5am flight. We did not sleep for 48 hours but we made it in time for the rehearsal.

Immediately after their performance in Greensboro, hit the road again, back to Tuscaloosa for a night at Jil's then off the following morning for a lovely house concert in Pass Christian, MS with the Máirtín de Cógáin Project.

House concert rehearsal

The next morning back on the road again to Jackson, MS for CelticFest Mississippi. Haley had a really busy day playing sets every other hour, either as a duo with Don or with the Project.

She then played for the ceili that night in the first hour and last hour (because there was no way she was going to pass on the chance to play with her friends who were playing last). We got in the car after the ceili where she and Sean McComisky took out their instruments and played all the way back to the hotel. They all took a little break while they decided where to set up a session then began playing music and kept playing music until 5:30am. Musicians called it a night here and there until by about 3am only Haley, Alan, and Sean remained. Haley and Sean played one set of jigs that lasted 1 hour 20 min. At some point during that time, Alan broke a string on his bouzouki, left for about 20 minutes, came back with a guitar, and joined them again.

Here's a little sample of the music....



From Mississippi Celtic Fest, we drove back to New Orleans to spend the night with Noel before our flight home early Monday morning. It was a whirlwind tour but Haley had a blast and is looking forward to the next time!