Yesterday topped out at 96 °F with humidity in the 60% range. Thunderstorms popped up in the region. It was essentially too hot to do much of anything.
So of course we had things that had to be accomplished. We wound up getting back from Greeneville about 1330. There was a contra dance last night in Jonesborough that kept calling Gloria’s name. We had sandwiches at 1700, in a semblance of dinner and drove to Jonesborough.
I wound up at the gate, as usual, managed to more or less stumble through the first, very basic, dance with Gloria as my partner. After that, she had more offers to dance than she could accept in one evening.
The hall was packed, probably to the point of illegality. A local church group delivered about 20 people for a more or less private lesson. ETSU is back in session. Students from there and from many of the private colleges in the region filtered in all evening.
I enjoy the physical dance but have so much trouble hearing over the crowd noise that it is exhausting to be on the dance floor. I don’t see that difficulty ever going away. At the most severe expression it is terribly isolating. Everyone else seems to be carrying on conversations and I find myself entirely outside any group, trying to listen without success.
VA recognizes the presence of tinnitus and hearing loss as service connected. I don’t know if they will acknowledge further damage/loss and increase my compensation or not. I have a primary care appointment this month; I’ll bring it up.
There were large fans in the corners of the dance floor to keep some air circulation going. People, dripping sweat, migrated onto the floor and off again at the next dance.
The band, Coffee Zombie, has somewhat of a Klezmer sound. Again, the crowd noise interfered with my ability to hear what I want to listen to.
Looking at the weather forecast, it appears that my plans to grill dinner tomorrow are likely to be washed out. The prediction is for a 90% chance of rain. That doesn’t mix well with a charcoal grill. The odds are better today, 40% probability of rain today increasing to 80% tonight. I have our dinner entrees defrosting in a cast iron skillet on the stovetop. The heat transference from entrée to pan to air works pretty well to thaw things quickly.
Gloria decided that we should leave the dance at set break after sustaining some insult to one foot and one shoulder at the hands of over-aggressive dancers attempting figures that they lack mechanical competency to perform. She was also concerned about crowding on the dance floor. I’d hoped to dance with her after the set break but it didn’t work out that way.
I’m concerned about the practice of bringing in youth groups for semi-instruction before a dance, resulting in a pool of proto-dancers with no other experience at these dances. Between the poorly trained pool and the over-crowding, I’m concerned that it may degrade the quality of this dance community. On the other hand, I could be completely wrong.
Labor Day looms, the 2012 election campaign also looms. Labor has no friends in this race.
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