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Dance Host
Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches to conceive how others can be in want.
-- Jonathan Swift
Wednesday, October 20, 1999
One year ago: My First Crown
Two years ago: Yay, Lance!
The Savoy Swing Club had an intersession dance Tuesday night, and I signed up to work the front door. Too bad lack of volunteers meant that I had to do so for a full hour! But Carla, who was organizing the thing, had some personal problems that kept her from recruiting and publicising as much as she has in the past. That kept the number of attendees down, too, I think! But hopefully she'll ask for help ahead of time for future events. I did get a few good dances in.
Even though I'm supposed to be learning java at work now, we are also in the the throes of a redesign (again!) so I'm doing the production work that our content director would normally be doing. So be sure and check out the second part of our series on the Dow Theory, written by Arthur Hill and formatted and edited by me. I'd say the market is in a bear market rally today. (ooh, technical analysis jargon!)
Because there was a car fire blocking the bridge that I would normally take on my homeward commute, I drove over to Barnes and Noble, a few blocks away, instead. I finally succumbed to the Lois McMaster Bujold books and bought Cordelia's Honor in paperback, and the recent A Civil Campaign in hardback. The second book has been talked about quite a bit on the Georgette Heyer list, and Bujold apparently pays tribute to Heyer in a lot of places. I've read some early books of Bujold, but I haven't read the Vorkosigan books yet.
But my delaying tactic didn't quite do the job; the bridge traffic was still very slow when I tried to cross. I didn't feel like listening to "Ask the Governor" on public radio (though I do approve of Gary Locke), so I switched to the classical music station. I don't usually listen to them, because ever since they "improved" their transmissions, I don't get good reception at home, or most places in the car! But it was coming in OK tonight. I listened to most of a string quartet, and guessed it was by Sibelius. It turned out to be a different Nordic composer, but I still felt rather smug for getting that close.
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Before going out tonight, I called Jack, to talk about weekend plans and see how he was doing. He wasn't feeling good at all! He had one of his rare headaches and had stayed home from work today. It seems likely that I'll pick up his younger daughter H--- and take her with me to Bellingham on Friday evening.
We had a special project at tonight's Century Ballroom dance. Virginia had organized a "dance host" thing, where folks could put on a sticker that marked them as being willing to dance with beginners. Of course, beginners can already ask anyone they want to dance with, but some people are shy, so this was supposed to give them that extra bit of comfort. Well, so many folks signed up that there weren't enough beginners to dance with! Or at least not ones that were asking us. So we ended up having to do some prospecting.
It was an interesting experience, mostly dancing with strangers and beginners for an hour. It took me right back to when I was first starting to dance, reminding me how tough it is to follow when the lead isn't on the beat, or giving clear signals. I reminded myself, when things got difficult, that the point of all this was to make people feel good about dancing, and rededicated myself to connecting with my partner, no matter what weird stuff we were doing. I hope everyone who normally would have been too shy to dance had someone ask them. I know I pointed dance buddy Joe Ross to one woman who was sitting by a window, after I hadn't seen her dancing, and she seemed to have a good time with him.After the first hour, I took off my sticker and felt free to dance with people that I already knew. One guy asked me to dance (after the woman standing next to me declined because she wasn't warmed up yet, and the music was on the fast side). He said, "It's been a long time since we danced!" "Yes, that's true," said I, smiling. The reason for that is because he's one of a few that would dance with me if I asked, but never asked me! So I gave up asking. But we had a good dance together tonight, which is the main thing.
Tomorrow I'll be back at the Century (that means three nights in a row out dancing!), seeing George Gee. I like the picture on his website! I was looking for entries where I'd mentioned him before, and found the entry where there was someone trolling the swing-seattle chat list. What a weird episode! and of course no one ever heard from that person again. I think that's the best response I've come up with on the perennial "dance clique" topic, though, so I need to bookmark it. I have a few entries where I've covered things that tend to come up over and over, and I like to refer to them in email or discussion forums. The other perennial topic is flame wars and off-topic traffic; I usually refer to "Between Art and Life" for that one (a very early entry!).
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