drscott | Square Dance

Misty-rainy evening as one of the first of the Pacific winter storms came through, we went to the square dance our club (ECR) put on, at a venue I've never been to, St. Mark's Episcopal on Colorado Ave. in Palo Alto. Attendance: surprisingly high considering the bad weather; a mixed group of the usual suspects from area gay clubs, older straight dancers from the Sunnyvale Singles, and a few randoms from Stanford and the like.

Michael Levy (aka

sfleatherbear) did a fine job calling, though I lost a few of the calls in his singers because he somehow sings them too well to be distinguished from the rest of the lyrics. Most embarrassing moment: not recognizing his partner

bibliocub while talking to him. While it's true I hadn't seen him since he moved here and he looks a bit different now, it's just more evidence of age-related decline.

Some addenda: we're attending the ECR 'A' class on Thursday nights. We were halfway to being accomplished at Advanced when we stopped making an effort to get 'A' floor time, so we've lost a lot of it. Part of this has to do with competing interests, some is just a decline in interest in square dancing itself. Ten years ago when I began, I was single, had recently moved and knew no one locally, and the club was my social anchor, a weekly community centering, and dances were full of romantic possibilities. Today I have a husband (who I met at ECR) and other competing interests, and the square dance community is older and grayer. Rarely do I meet someone new and interesting. This means I'm smarter, or more jaded, or something; not sure. But like a lot of square dancers, I've drifted toward the edges where we attend when we feel like it, but not compulsively.