Hello dear friends, I just want to drop in here to express my gratitude for the love and support we have received from you all. We have been buoyed up by your kind words shared in person, over the phone and through letters, cards and texts. It has been just over ten weeks since our dear little boy was taken from us, and it hasn’t gotten any easier. The pain is very similar to what I felt when my mom died nearly 16 years ago, but there is something profoundly singular about this loss.

I am grateful to each of you who have opened up to me about your own experiences with loss and grief. I thank you for confiding in me and I hope that one day I will be able to provide solace to someone else like you did for me. Kindness and compassion should never be rare commodities.

I would also like to thank those of you who contributed to our nascent project, Creative Heartbeats. We were able to incorporate last month and have applied for 501c3 status. We are currently redesigning my website and building a new one for Creative Heartbeats. These will be up and running soon.

One other thing I would like to share with you is that my proposal for an 8-week adult violin class for returning students was approved. The first class will be tomorrow, Tuesday 2/4 at 7:00pm in the Auditorium of the Berkeley Adult School. The class is called “Rediscovering the Violin: A Class for Returning Players.” I can’t help but feel that it won’t just be my students who will be rediscovering the violin.