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!

As part of the general discourse around cost of living, Julia and I were talking about families sharing housing. This turned into us each writing a post (mine, hers), but is it actually legal for a family to live with housemates? In the places I've checked it seems like yes.

While zoning is complicated and I'm not a lawyer, it looks to me like people commonly describe the situation as both more restrictive and more clear cut than it really is. For example, Tufts University claims:

The cities of Medford, Somerville and Boston (in addition to other cities in the area) have local occupancy ordinances on apartments/houses with non-related persons. Each city has its own ordinance: in Medford, the limit is 3; in Somerville, it is 4; in Boston, it is 4, etc.

As far as I can tell, all three of these are wrong:

The world is divided into plain text and rich text, but I want comfortable text:

• Yes: Lists, links, blockquotes, code blocks, inline code, bold, italics, underlining, headings, simple tables.
• No: Colors, fonts, text sizing, text alignment, images, line spacing.

Let's say I want to send someone a snippet from a blog post. If I paste this into my email client the font family, font size, blockquote styling, and link styling come along:

There's been a lot of discussion over the last month on whether it's still possible to raise kids without being rich. Housing is a big piece of this, and if you need to buy a house where each kid has their own room, yes, that's expensive, but it's also not the only option. We didn't wait to buy a house (or have multiple bedrooms) before having kids, and I think that was the right choice for us.