Some years ago the  students at Penn State were up in arms. Administration offices there were buried under a snowfall of petitions demanding that  injustice be righted and opportunity be made equal for all. There would be no campus peace until their demands were met for…more ballroom dancing classes!

In arms is just where they should be, too. In one another’s arms. On the dance floor. Doing our national dance, the Fox Trot.

I have been out of sorts ever since I was pushed off the floor by people who thought that dancing was some kind of rhythmic sand box play, a  solo performance that you did in the presence of someone else but not necessarily with them.

This sort of thing was great if you thought that social dancing was a metaphor for auto-erotic  self-expression; an aerobic exercise you did in street clothes; or a diligent working-out of your own salvation in a musical environment so deafening that it suppressed thought, let alone conversation.

Social dancing is more than that.

We don’t want to come off too metaphysical and heavy here, but ballroom dancing is a metaphor, too. It‘s a sweet rendering of all the ritual relationships between a man and a woman raised to the level of an art we can all learn. It’s also great fun.

Yes, Charlie, dancing can be learned. It’s always baffled me that men who spent hours as youngsters practicing the elegant and expressive  motions of shortstops or open field runners claim they can’t dance. The problem is not that they have no sense of balance or rhythm, the problem is that they’ve never practiced.

Some of us never had that problem. Our parents knew that being able to dance  might be more important to us as adults than being able to play soccer ( which also develops grace and balance.) They dragged us by the ears to dancing  class. This was not necessarily fun but Miss Loomis, our dancing teacher, tried to make it so with silly games and “party” dances like the Hokey Pokey.

After a year or two dancing class seemed to improve, although you were careful not to admit it. For one thing the boys stopped being shorter than the girls, and we began to understand that it was  nice to hold a girl we “liked.”  Not too close, of course. Cheek-to-cheek dancing was discouraged by the Loomises of our world who would sweep up to an offending couple and gently pry them apart with the admonition,

“Always leave room for the angels.”

Of course women have to learn to dance, too. They are not born natural dancers. This is a story they have floated to make men feel like inferior clods. One of the worst things you can hear is the lady sweetly saying, “I’ll just follow  your lead.” Very flattering, I suppose, but a preamble to dancing disaster. If your dancing partner has not learned the dance you had better just lead  her back  to her seat.

In the days when people of all ages danced, and danced together, there was a wonderful occasion called the “Tea Dance.” After work, or after shopping, people would meet in elegant hotel dining rooms for a drink,  a little food, and some dancing  to the quiet music of a trio or quartet. It was a pleasant interlude before the commuter trudged home and the dinner rush began..

The tea dance was a place for a first date, a getting-to-know-you chat, a mild flirtation, or a dance with the daughter who had just told you she had met  someone special. More than one soldier or sailor said good-bye to his own someone special at a tea dance, before dashing off to the train that would take him to the ship that would take him far away.

I don’t think there is any tea dancing in Tucson, but it would seem a natural for one of our major resorts. I’m almost certain that there is no place to go for dinner and dancing.

In some ways we’ve always been a pretty good  dance town. There has always been a determined group of country swing dancers, and places to do that. High school and college students are beginning to swing (in the nicest possible way, of course) and  couples are learning to give new meaning to togetherness with that most elegant of social dances, the Argentine Tango.

Come on, Tucson,  shall we waltz ? One …two… three, One …two… three

An article in yesterday’s Arizona Daily Star reported that the Federal Trade Commission is going to cast a questioning eye at bloggers who boost commercial products without full disclosure of any received compensation. Full article here.

Jimmy Petrol has a funny riff on this story over at Fueled By Petrol

One paragraph in the Star story was especially interesting:

“If the FTC’s guidelines are approved, bloggers — defined loosely as anyone writing a personal journal online — would have to back up claims and disclose compensation. The FTC could order violators to stop and pay restitution to customers, and the Justice Department could sue for civil penalties.”

In the context of the article this seems to say that bloggers who boost a product would have to investigate the performance of the product advertised and pay restitution to customers for whom the product didn’t work.

Meanwhile over in the land of dead tree journalism we regularly see quarter- page ads for ‘miracle’ pills like the one that appeared recently in the Star that promised to flood my elderly brain with oxygen. We know the Star was paid for the space. But is the product safe and effective? Has the Star investigated?

Shall we call the FTC?

The Santa Claus Lesson

The old man had been an actor all his life and that was a rare thing. What was rare was that he’d never done anything else. He’d never sold shoes, never waited tables while he was “at liberty,” never driven a cab.

Unlike some of his pals he hadn’t hung around New York waiting for a big part; never waited to be ‘discovered’ by some critic or producer who would pick him out of the crowd as Broadway’s newest star. He simply went wherever the work was.

As a young man he was told it wasn’t clever career management to leave the center of the theatrical world and go careening around the sticks with some wandering repertory company. Why not pick up some cash waiting tables and bet on the big break?

He’d think about that for a moment and say, “Given the chance I’d rather just go acting.” And that’s what he did, moving across the country to wherever there was work for a journeyman performer with a decent wardrobe and the knack for learning his part quickly.

When acting jobs weren’t available he’d direct. He’d go wherever there was a little theatre, community group, or church pageant that needed to be put in order. He taught acting at a museum theatre school, and acted in radio soap operas. But whatever he did he was always a creature of the theatre, a man for whom the practice of his craft was more important than the conditions under which he practiced it, or the fame of the place he did his work.

He lived in a Volkswagen van in the parking lot of a Texas theatre one boiling hot summer because he wanted, he needed, to “go acting.”

As the years rolled by and the casting calls became less frequent he had pretty much decided that he was no longer “at liberty” but simply retired. And that was why, the Christmas season of his seventy-second year, he took a job as a department store Santa Claus. It was another chance to go acting.

He was glad of the work but now the old actor had a problem. He’d been doing a favor for a lady friend and the new job would mean he’d have to stop doing that favor.

The lady had a son, a rising star in the banking business. A nice enough ‘kid,’ as the old actor always called him, but as articulate as a barrel of hair when facing any group greater than one. The actor had volunteered to be the kid’s speech coach and over the weeks a polite distance between the two grew into the closeness of mutual affection.

The young man was sad to think the actor’s new job would interrupt their sessions together, but he was happy for the old man. The job was a nice Christmas present.

“So what’s the part, Coach?”

“It’s a character part. I’m going to do Santa Claus at Bulloch’s department store.”

The kid was well and truly knocked down by this. He was embarrassed for the old actor; at his taking what seemed like a humiliating end-of-the-road job.

“How can you do that?” he asked. “You’ve spent your entire life as an actor, you’ve never driven a cab or waited on tables, or sold socks …and now you’re going to play Santa in a department store?”

“Ah, kid, it’s a pretty good job. Costume and makeup are provided and I get a private green room. Think of that! Besides, there are no lines to learn, I’m only on for about a half-hour at a time and I get one free meal a day in the employee cafeteria. Best of all, I’m making better than Equity minimum.”

“Well, I think it’s humiliating,” said the kid, who didn’t realize until that moment how much he loved the old man.

“It’s humiliating to think that someone like you who’s worked in the theatre with some of our finest actors has to play a department store Santa. Good Lord! Imagine stuffing a pillow in your costume, wearing those awful fake patent leather boots, the phony beard and …and… that ridiculous red suit! How can you do that?”

The old actor thought about this for a while, just a little hurt that the kid was raining on his parade.

“You know, I want to give you a little advice. There’s a lesson to be learned here that’ll do you more good in the long run than anything I can teach you about speaking in some bank board room. It’s advice about life, and it’s just as good for bankers as it is for actors. It’s all about what you call that ridiculous red suit.”

The old actor leaned into the young man until they were practically nose to nose and in a sotto voce growl said…

“Listen, kid, if you want to play Santa Claus, you gotta wear the red suit.”
…………………………………………
The old actor died two years after the Santa Claus gig, his last chance to go acting. The young man is the vice president of a Southern California bank.