Greenwood DanceManners are of more importance than laws.... Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. Monday, October 23, 2000 I overslept this morning, or turned off my alarm when it started buzzing. I managed to get Jack up at five fifteen instead of the four-thirty time he'd requested, but he showered and left for Bellingham in good time. I hope he wasn't late for work! He didn't say he was, anyway. The site seemed slow at work today. Is it the new design? (How horrible that would be!) Or maybe it's just net weirdness. We are crying out for more bandwidth due to trafic growth, but the phone company, ISP, and so on, all move exceedingly slowly. I've already suggested to Chip that if it takes this long to get our pipe expanded, we should order the next expansion now, before we need it.
Since the Century Ballroom moved a dance night from Monday to Sunday the other week, there was a slot open. So the Savoy Swing Club decided to run a dance on Mondays, all-volunteer, at a dance hall up in Greenwood. I missed the first week, so I wanted to go tonight. I'd been to this place before, when I mistook the location of classes I was taking with Theo and Viola. It's Sonny Newman's dance hall, a reasonably-sized place up above some marginal retail stores on 85th. It was quiet at first, with not that many people there. A few minutes after eight, someone started teaching a lesson; they needed a follow, so I stood up. The teacher might have been a bit inexperienced, since the lesson was a bit disorganized and fragmented. It seemed to just fade away after a few minutes and I think we were all relieved. My buddy Joe Ross was the dj for the night. I really enjoyed what he played! I had good dances with Gavin and Jeremy among others, and new partner Titus. I asked him where he'd been dancing, since I hadn't seen him before that I recalled. He said he had been to the Century (but I never met him there) and the Russian Center, where I haven't been in too long. He was great fun! I found out later that he'd been to the Paul Overton and Sharon Ashe Workshop down in Portland the other week, and it showed! Great connection and a spirit of play! The only slight drawback for the evening: someone whom I haven't danced with in about a year and a half asked me to dance. I said yes, and I think I shouldn't have. I thought we'd mutually, silently, agreed to ignore each other, but I think the small numbers at the dance made him decide to break the truce. He's improved over the last time, but he still does grip his partner's hand very tightly, and I don't think our styles mesh very well. We danced twice, and I sat out the number the third time he asked me. Ah, well... This problem of refusing a dance with someone you don't want to dance with is tricky! You can always say no -- if you are certain you never want to dance with that person again, you don't even need to give an excuse.
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