Less than two weeks ago, I was in New Orleans for a conference. I didn't spend a lot of time outside -- it was too swelteringly hot for this child of the North -- but I did stroll around the French Quarter and enjoy beignets at Café du Monde. Since my hotel was right at the bottom of Canal Street, I had noticed the many palm trees that lined that avenue and remarked that they seemed so perfectly uniform as to look almost fake. Now those palm trees are lying in the gutters, just another minor obstacle to the looters who are swarming the flooded streets in the wake of the hurricane.
This was only my second trip to the Crescent City, the first being about 5 years ago during a brief time period when my sister called it home. I wasn't particularly looking forward to it (Come on! New Orleans in August?) and frankly, I was glad to leave. The trees and lakes of the Twin Cities never looked so inviting as when my plane approached the airport just before sunset, and as I stepped out of the plane into the deliciously cool air (about 25 degrees cooler!) I thanked my stars I don't live in New Orleans.
I am still thanking my stars I don't live in New Orleans, but I'm grateful I made the trip. I'm grateful I emerged from the air-conditioning long enough to stroll along the river and take in the charm of the French Quarter. Surely, it will never be the same again.
I'm one of those strange people who like filling out forms and surveys that you get in the mail, so I was delighted to receive this interview meme (my first ever official meme!) from thenisaid.
Interview questions:
1. How did you and your husband meet?
I met Dan at hotel restaurant at a brunch, where some family friends were trying to fix me up with his best friend. It was sort of When Harry Met Sally-ish.
2. What was the coolest thing you ever did?
Well, once I got stuck for about an hour on a chair lift at the local ski slope and had to be evacuated by sliding off the chair lift onto a seat-like contraption hanging from a rope which was flung over the cable and dangling 30 feet or so above the ground. Oh wait. That's the coldest thing I ever did. (Really, my butt was frozen solid after sitting so long on that metal chair in the frigid air of a Minnesota winter, waiting to be rescued.)
The coolest thing I ever did is a lot harder to choose. I guess I'll say it was the 1992 hillwalking trip I took while I was living in Scotland. This is the one where I hiked 10 miles from the Dalwhinnie train station (=middle of nowhere) carrying a heavy backpack which was borrowed from someone much bigger than me, and therefore didn't fit properly (=great pain in shoulders), stayed in a bothy (=abandoned shack used as shelter while camping) which had just been treated with Creosote (=major high headache from the fumes) and spent four days climbing the local munros (=mountains over 3000ft -- spectacular views) with three guys I hardly knew (=wouldn't you like to know!!). It was one of those experiences where you spend much of the time tired, sore, and stinky, wondering frequently if you were insane when you decided to do this, but which afterwards become the coolest thing you ever did. Life is like that sometimes.
3. What do you remember most about learning to drive?
My dad making me stop and start on a steep hill (it was a manual transmission car).
4. What do you do when you're worried?
Well, my biggest worry time is at night when I am trying to fall asleep. I tell myself that there is absolutely nothing I can do about X (whatever I am worried about) in the middle of the night. Now is the time for sleep, and I can worry about X in the morning. It will still be there. If necessary, I will get up and write it down, just to convince myself it will still be there in the morning and that I won't "forget" to worry about it later. Believe it or not, this usually works. Apparently, I'm very convincing.
5. How did you get into dancing?
Sheer luck, mostly. For most of myself I was convinced that I was completely uninterested in dancing. Growing up, I scorned the girls who took tap, jazz and ballet after school. I nearly got in a fist fight with a little boy who "accused me" (well that's how I saw it!) of being in the ballet class.
In 1989-1990 I studied at the University of Edinburgh, and during the Freshers Week, they had a societies fair where all the clubs and societies at the university had information tables. For some reason the table for the New Scotland Country Dance Society caught my eye, and for some other reason, I decided to go along to their introductory night and try out this Scottish country dancing. I guess I thought it might be an interesting way to experience an aspect of Scottish culture. I was hooked immediately, and now I am a Scottish dance fanatic. I'm not sure why I took to it the way I did, but I have a couple of theories. I'll save them for a separate posting, though.
If you'd like me "interview" you, leave me a comment.
Clearly blogging has not figured prominently in my summer activities, but dancing has. A lot of people look at me funny when I tell them I just got back from vacation and they say, "oh really? Where did you go?" and I say "I went to dance camp!"
Okay, it has actually been almost a whole month since my summer vacation, but it has taken me most of that time to come to terms with the fact that it is over for another year. I'm homesick for Pinewoods.
Pinewoods is a traditional dance and music camp located in Plymouth, Massachusetts. It was originally founded in 1919 as a girl scout camp, but included English country and Morris dance in its program since the earliest years. By the 1930s, it had switched over completely to being an adult dance camp. These days it is operated by a partnership of organizations devoted to folk/ethnic/traditional music and dance: The Folk Arts Center of New England, and Country Dance Society, Boston Centre and the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society Boston Branch.
As far as I know, Pinewoods is the only permanent camp in the country, maybe the world, that is specifically designed for folk dance. The setting is 25 acres of pine forest located between two small lakes. There are four dance pavilions, open-sided buildings with huge wooden dance floors uninterrupted by pillars. The two larger pavilions feature stages and amplification systems for music. The camp house offers a cozy place to gather indoors, with its big stone fireplace, book-lined walls, and plenty more space for dancing. It also has a wonderful porch overlooking the waterfront on Long Pond, with its swimming area (complete with a floating dock you can swim out to) and canoes and kayaks you can take out for a paddle any time you feel like it. The accommodations are mostly in two-person cabins, or larger cabins divided into two-person rooms. They don't have indoor plumbing, but they do have electricity, and some have porches. The communal bathrooms have "real" plumbing and decent showers.
The Royal Scottish Country Dance Society Boston Branch runs two Scottish dance sessions at Pinewoods every year. If you go to both, as my husband I have for the past three years, they make up a full week of dance nirvana. You start with the wonderful facilities I've described above, then you add a full staff of top notch musicians and teachers, and you get something that is even better than the sum of its parts. And I haven't yet mentioned the excellent food, the wonderful parties, social dances, and other special events planned by the organizers, and the fun people.
What's a day like at Pinewoods? Well, it starts with the piper, who acts as the camp alarm clock. You wake to the strains of the bagpipes in the air (or in the case of the makeshift pipe band some of the campers put together this year, the straining of the bagpipes in the air). After a tasty breakfast, there are two hour & a half long dance sessions with your choice among several different classes for each session. After lunch there are two more sessions. Classes are available for every level of experience, plus there are classes especially for those who want to work on technique and those who just want to do social dances. There are also classes on highland and Scottish step dancing, a class for musicians, and this year they even had yoga. After dinner every night there is a social dance, followed most evenings by a theme party of some kind. There are some people who are up well into the wee hours every night. It is amazing how quickly the ears learn to shut out the sound of bagpipes at 7am, which seemed so impossible to sleep through on the first morning!
As you can see, it is pretty easy to exhaust yourself -- you can literally spend 9 hours a day dancing if you have the stamina. But one of the great things about Pinewoods is that you don't have to. If you need to take a break, you can always opt for swimming and sunning on the dock, relaxing on the camp house porch with a book, or just taking a nap.
If I had to name one thing that really makes Pinewoods special, though, it would be the music. No question about it. The musical staff are outstanding, and when you are at Pinewoods, you can almost always hear music from somewhere -- pianos, fiddles, accordians, whistles, and oh yes, bagpipes. There is music to wake you, live music for every dance class, people jamming for fun, someone practicing a tune they learned in class or just playing for the sheer joy of it.
I could go on and on (as if I haven't already). I'm obviously a Pinewoods addict. So, if you hang around me much, don't be surprised to hear me start yet another story about my summer vacation: "This one time, at dance camp . . ."