Wandering & Pondering

I’d like to welcome you to my long awaited blog.  Here, I’m going to jibber jabber about a variety of subjects that interest me.  Hopefully they will interest you as well.

To start out with, I’ll be discussing my main hobby of Lindy Hop.  In addition to dancing, I’ve been involved with this community in a number of different roles now for over 10 years.

I also have about 10 years of event planning and management experience, so I will probably talk a bit about the few dance events that I attend and help organize every year.

My love of the dance also lead to my passion for vintage jazz; the kind of music played in the early half of the 20th century. Although I also have a personal attachment to soul and R & B music from the other half.  I may even mention the little I know of alternative/college rock from the early to mid-90’s that I picked up as a college DJ.

I also love the city I live in, Washington, DC, and I hope to post a few things about it.  While I do work for the government in the day time as a low level bureaucrat, my interests mostly relate to the city’s historical heritage and current social dynamics.  Hopefully this will also allow me to explore the inner armchair urban planner in me.

I guess the common link through most of my interests is people and how they relate to each other.  Because of that, I’ve been learning quite a bit about intercultural communication and conflict negotiation in the past few years.

I think this ties in nicely to my love of the study of history. I got a degree in History too many years ago because I liked to learn about people’s stories. Not just the great leaders and wars ( although that’s how I got sucked into it) but how ordinary people lived in extraordinary times;  especially how they were affected by grand events and what roles they played in them.

I think all these experiences is what led me to write a 70 page paper about the development of the modern Lindy Hop community.  I never bothered to publish it anywhere because I ended up disagreeing with my own conclusions after I finished it.  However, there’s enough material in there to chop up and post as little bits on this blog, so there won’t be a lack of material to start at least.

Whether you agree or disagree with me I hope that you at least you enjoy yourself as you procrastinate here.

Jerry