My friend Matt and his wife Deb took videos of me (well, at my request) singing the two songs I sang at tonight's Shanty Sing.

This is me opening up the sing (after the first song that the organizer leads off with). Or about half of my song, anyway:

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This is me singing a similar sort of song to open the second half of the evening. I normally ( Read more... )

I went to New York City last weekend to attend the Half-Moon Sword Ale, as a guest. I do not dance on a sword dance team, but I thought it would be fun to spend a quick weekend in New York City and follow the teams around and join them for the post-Ale singing at a pub in Brooklyn and see some friends. All of these things were, in fact, great fun, ( Read more... )

Some chorus songs that strike my fancy come into my purview fully formed and ready for me to learn and make mine. Sometimes, however, I find I need to make some sort of change before I can feel right and comfortable with the song. In fact, it was epiphanic for me when I realized that songs -- particularly traditional songs, or songs that have ( Read more... )

Through the local Morris Dance community, I do know some cool kids. Teenagers mostly. This means I get to sit at the pub after Morris practice with them sometimes (french fries are on me) and question them like a DA about their lives, and they in turn get to question me about mine. What makes them cool kids, in my estimation, is that they are ( Read more... )

Facebook continues to throw me into the occasional memory tailspin. I'm starting to think that the emotions of your past (particularly your youthful past) do not fade away from lack of use (like, say, remembering the quadratic formula). Instead they just get buried under newer emotions that have actual relevance to your current life. But you can ( Read more... )

Since apparently it is not possible to read something on Facebook without a Facebook account, no matter how I tag it, I am putting the conference report I wrote for my department here. It's long in part because my company paid my whole way this year (which is unusual) and I want them to be sure they got their money's worth.

( Very long report hidden behind a cut tag )

Last night at Border practice I had occasion (not for the first time) to learn that there are passionate Morris dancers of my acquaintance who do not enjoy contra dancing. With that in mind, I want to try to describe how a good contra set, such as I experienced many times last weekend at dance camp, can be like a good Morris side (such as I ( Read more... )

At the LCFD dance camp last weekend in western Massachusetts I had more fun dancing contra than it might be possible to convey to people who have never experienced that particular level of contradance joy. I had more fun dancing contra than I've had since my first year of contradancing (and really the only year I did much contra dance at all, in ( Read more... )

Apparently Macy's now contracts out its credit management to one company, and it contracts out its check approval management to another, and both companies seem to have it as their goal to be sure Macy's not only doesn't sell any merchandise but upsets its customers as well so that they will be uncomfortable returning to the store. I had the most ( Read more... )

This morning a local Morris dancer opened a gelato store at the Mall of America, and lots of the local Morris dancers went out to dance. It was a blast.

Just at the moment of opening I led us all in an improvised song about the store, and the last bits got caught on video.

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