Leave it up to my fellow dancer friends to think up something that’s equally entertaining and potentially useful.

To my non-Lindy-Hop reader friends… one thing you should know:  In general, it’s a major faux pas to wear high heels when swing dancing.  The follow’s balance tends to be off, the guys are afraid of getting stabbed when doing charlestons, and so on.  In fact, a running joke is that you can identify (and avoid) the total newbies by seeing which women are wearing high heels.  Same thing for blues dancing and blues dancers.

But this creates a bit of a conflict.  Often times blues dancers are avid tango’ers… and occasionally, there are hybrid events which combine the worlds of blues and tango dancing.  In tango, it’s apparently quite customary, even desireable for the follows to be decked out in high heels.

So what to do, other than trudging a very large purse or backpack along with you for a second pair of shoes, not to mention having to miss out on a song just to change shoes?

I’m a member of some of those all-you-can-eat all-you-can-listen-to online music services and I’m constantly amazed at the fun and beautiful music I stumble across.  Once, on a goofy whim, I did a search for the string “Chicken” and found a shockingly cool selection of funk, pop, and jazz songs.  More recently, I did a search on “waltz” since I’ve grown increasingly enamored with this music and dance form.

One of the beautiful songs that cropped up was First Impressions, featured on the album “Appalachia Waltz” with cellist virtuoso Yo-Yo Ma.  You can hear a sample by clicking on the player below and can enjoy other serene and joyful songs and learn more about the album on this Amazon.com page.

This simply-structured and sensitively-performed song packed an emotional punch for me, just as so many other songs have done in the past.  And this got me to thinking:  What is it about the instrumentation and orchestration of songs that moves me… and moves so many millions of others?  I’m not even taking into account lyrics here, which involve a whole different (albeit related) issue.  Just the sounds.

I haven’t had a chance to watch more than the first few minutes of this film, but Waterborne has been generally well-reviewed… and you can watch it for free either below or directly on Google’s site through January 15, 2006.

Rather than spoil even part of the plot, I’ll instead invite you to begin watching it now without preconceptions, with a note that it’s a serious film focusing on characters rather than explosive action.

Like many of you, I read a lot of news and opinion pieces on the Internet and am therefore bombarded by a mixture of dry and rabid facts and opinions.  It can be exausting and frustrating!

That’s why I’m particularly pleased to have found these two useful resources:

The Week Magazine
The Week expertly summarizes information and opinions from leading newspapers and journals around the world into a 30-40 page concise and fascinating overview.  From political news to information about current scientific issues to aggregated theatre and art reviews, this magazine offers a superb opportunity to become familiar with key global debates and concerns.

While you can read many of the articles online, I do recommend that you subscribe to the paper edition.  If you have airline frequent flyer miles, you’ll find that you can get this magazine for just a few hundred milepoints a year—a significant savings over the equivalent monetary subscription charges.  Search for [{your airline} miles magazines].

FactCheck.org
This outstanding FactCheck.org Web site—maintained by the Annenberg School of Communication—and its accompanying e-mail newsletter do a fabulous job delving into the truth of political campaign ads.  Beyond just calling specific claims flatly “true” or “false”, FactCheck evaluates the claims in context and leans neither to the right nor left.  Campaign claims by Democrats, Republicans, and Liberatarians are all scrutinized dispassionately and thoroughly.  It’s a wonderful antidote to the frothing right-wing and left-wing blogs out there which’ll seemingly twist anything to fit their particular agenda.

* * *

Know of any other unbiased and thoughtful resources for understanding world events, politics, and the arts?  I’d love to hear from you!

I finally took the plunge.  After blabbing about moving my blog over to Expression Engine software over a year ago, I’ve finally done it.

So what does it mean to you?  Here’s the skinny on the major new stuff:

• Comments post almost instantaneously.  And even non-members can opt to get e-mail-notified when someone posts a new comment in an entry they’ve replied to.
• No more three-column circus.  Everything’s less cluttered and manically colored now.
• Lots of miscellaneous goodies for “regulars” (see details)

If you’re interested in knowing more about the impetus behind the many, many changes and what it took to achieve them, read on!  But before you do, just one humble request: PLEASE do let me know if anything is clearly not working or looking right. I’d really appreciate it!