I play for contra dances, and a core part of our culture is that we always have live music. It's not that live music is categorically better: if you ran a test where you put down a curtain in front of the musicians and secretly played a live recording from a great band playing for the same dance it would probably go really well. Instead, we insist on live music because that's the kind of culture we're trying to build, one where the performers are part of the community, where anyone can start playing for dancing, and where the music grows and changes with the culture.

Other groups went different ways. The late 1940s explosion in square dancing happened in part because of technological progress: it was now practical to record a band once and play it back millions of times to support dancing all over the country. Callers would buy a sound system, including a record player, and all they needed was some dancers and a hall. This let modern square dancing grow enormously.

Contra dance took a different path, coming through the 70s folk revival with a strong commitment to live music. Musicians were drawn to the dance form, and dancers learned to play. With regular opportunities to perform, they learned to adapt playing to support the dancing. As the choreography and musical sensibilities changed over the years, the live tradition could change with it. I love what bands are doing now, and if you compare hall recordings to decades ago it's impressive how much the genre has matured and flourished.

Our family has half a Honda Fit, and it's great! Reliable, pretty good mileage, holds our family of five plus a vacation's worth of luggage, seats fold flat for when I'm bringing sound equipment to dances. It would be nice, though, to be able to seat more than five people.

None of the options are very good: you pay a lot for a sixth seat, not just in price but in size and fuel economy. What I've wanted for years, though, is a six door car: the same height and width as a hatchback, with three rows of seats. All three rows would go in front of the rear axle, unlike a station wagon, so you have plenty of room for luggage and no one is sitting in the crumple zone. And you could fold both sets of rear seats flat, to get a really great cargo area when you needed that.

I had a very hard time getting LLMs to draw what I had in mind (they're stubbornly convinced, like most people, that cars do not have six doors) but I did eventually get Gemini to draw me a Fit Stretch:

I hear people talking about "skyrocketing" rents, with the idea that rent is going up quickly. This isn't my impression of what's happening, and when I look at the data it's not what I see either. Instead, rents are too high, and they were rising quickly pre-covid, but recently they've been stable in real terms.

Here's the data I know best, the price of a 2br that I calculate on my Boston Rent Map:

Someone asked me which contra dance bands and callers played the most major gigs in 2025, which reminded me that I hadn't put out my annual post yet! Here's what I have, drawing from the big spreadsheet that backs TryContra Events.

In 2025 we were up to 142 events, which is an increase of 9% from 2024 (131), and above pre-pandemic numbers. New events included Chain Reaction (Maine dance weekend), Galhala (women's dance weekend), and On to the Next (one-day queer-normative dance event). Additionally, a few events returned for the first time since the pandemic (ex: Lava Meltdown).

For bands, River Road and Countercurrent continue to be very popular, with the Dam Beavers edging out Playing with Fyre for third. For callers it's Will Mentor, Alex Deis-Lauby, and Lisa Greenleaf, which is the first time a Millenial has made it into the top two. This is also a larger trend: in 2024 there was only one Millennial (still Alex) in the top ten and in 2023 there were zero; in 2025 there were three (Michael Karcher and Lindsey Dono in addition to Alex). While bands don't have generations the same way individuals do, bands definitely skew younger: in something like seven of the top ten bands the median member is Millennial or younger.

When listing bands and callers, my goal is to count ones with at least two big bookings, operationalized as events with at least 9hr of contra dancing. Ties are broken randomly (no longer alphabetically!) Let me know if I've missed anything?

Bands

River Road	13
Countercurrent	11
The Dam Beavers	10
Playing with Fyre	8
Toss the Possum	7
Kingfisher	6
The Engine Room	6
The Stringrays	5
Supertrad	5
Stomp Rocket	5
Wild Asparagus	5
Topspin	4
The Free Raisins	4
Northwoods	4
Stove Dragon	4
The Mean Lids	3
Red Case Band	3
Spintuition	3
Turnip the Beet	3
Hot Coffee Breakdown	3
Thunderwing	3
Raven & Goose	3
Good Company	3
Joyride	3
The Gaslight Tinkers	3
Chimney Swift	2
The Moving Violations	2
The Syncopaths	2
The Latter Day Lizards	2
Lighthouse	2
Root System	2
Contraforce	2
Sugar River Band	2
The Berea Castoffs	2
The Fiddle Hellions	2
Lift Ticket	2
The Buzz Band	2
The Faux Paws	2
Nova	2

Callers

Will Mentor	17
Alex Deis-Lauby	14
Lisa Greenleaf	14
Gaye Fifer	13
Michael Karcher	11
Lindsey Dono	10
Seth Tepfer	10
Steve Zakon-Anderson	8
Bob Isaacs	7
Darlene Underwood	7
Terry Doyle	6
Adina Gordon	6
George Marshall	5
Sue Rosen	5
Cis Hinkle	5
Mary Wesley	5
Rick Mohr	5
Koren Wake	4
Wendy Graham	4
Jeremy Korr	4
Luke Donforth	4
Susan Petrick	4
Dereck Kalish	3
Warren Doyle	3
Angela DeCarlis	3
Jacqui Grennan	3
Maia McCormick	3
Emily Rush	3
Lyss Adkins	3
Janine Smith	3
Devin Pohly	3
Claire Takemori	3
Qwill Duvall	2
Frannie Marr	2
Bev Bernbaum	2
Janet Shepherd	2
Diane Silver	2
Chris Bischoff	2
Ben Sachs-Hamilton	2
Timothy Klein	2
Kenny Greer	2
Isaac Banner	2
Susan Kevra	2

When you sell stock [1] you pay capital gains tax, but there's no tax if you donate the stock directly. Under a bunch of assumptions, someone donating $10k could likely increase their donations by ~$1k by donating stock. This applies to all 501(c) organizations, such as regular 501(c)3 non-profits, but also 501(c)4s such as advocacy groups.

In the US, when something becomes more valuable and you sell it you need to pay tax proportional to the gains. [2] This gets complicated based on how much other income you have (which determines your tax bracket for marginal income), how long you've held it (which determines whether this is long-term vs short-term capital gains), and where you live (many states and some municipalities add additional tax). Some example cases:

I like writing retrospectives for things I'm involved in, especially if I'm likely to be involved in them in the future: it's a good place to set thoughts down so I can find them again, link materials I'm likely to want, and collect feedback from others (but also: fill out the feedback survey!). As a bonus, they can be useful to other people who are doing similar things.

I've written ones band tours, failed attempts to limit covid spread, and dance weekends; Saturday night I ran the music for the 2025 Boston Secular Solstice, so here's another one!