I'm really excited that contra dance weekends are starting up again, and I just got back from playing with Amy and Audrey for the first time in three years. I'm also seeing a lot of weekends struggling with registration, however, and choosing between going ahead with a small crowd or cancelling.

Talking to people, in person and online, the big issue seems to be masking. Dancing in a mask is less fun and more tiring, and many people would rather stay home than dance for many hours masked. Weekends that don't require masks are not really a "control group" for ones that do, being different in a lot of ways, but that they are seeing strong attendance is evidence in this direction.

Most weekends that require masks don't require testing: I think it should be the other way around. Consider requiring daily testing, on arrival at the hall, instead of mandatory masking:

I think someone just tried to phish my Facebook account, including a fake video of a FB friend. Here's the conversation:

In another debatably educational application of my rhythm stage setup, Nora really likes playing with my bass pedals. She especially likes them when I have them set in a particular way:

• When you tap them they make a noise

• When you tap them with a consistent beat they make them more complex noise.

• If your beat isn't consistent enough they go back to the simpler noise until your tempo is clear again.

Here's a demo:

This has me wondering whether some sort of toy like this could be good at teaching kids a sense of consistent rhythm? The initial noise is enough to make the toy fun, but then if you can be consistent enough you get something more fun. You could probably start with Somewhat relaxed threshold for "consistent enough", and then tighten it over time as they got better?

In thinking about what sort of covid policies a dance organization should have I see two main plausible goals:

1. Be responsible: don't appreciably increase harm to non-attendees.

2. Reflect the preferences of your community.

On #1, this was why I thought dances should shut down initially in March 2020. Our government was not well prepared for covid and initially we needed to be figuring out for ourselves what was safe. With vaccination generally available, plus updated guidance and regulations, however, most other things have fully resumed without requiring masks or vaccination. At this point, I don't think #1 is key consideration.

The standard ("transverse") flute has pretty terrible ergonomics: your arms are way out to the side. Most woodwinds use a much more natural playing position where the arms are comfortably in front of you, including some ("end-blown") flutes. In the case of the flute, however, this gives a pretty different sound. Could we give up on the simple cylindrical design of the flute to get some thing that sounds like a transverse flute and plays like a transverse flute but is more ergonomic?

Yes! By putting a bend in the head joint it's possible to do just that. This is a common configuration for bass flutes and lower:

Jupiter JBF1100E bass flute

I just got home from calling my first family dance, the one I wrote about preparing for last week. I think it went well, but it also reminded me why I had stopped calling. The problem is that calling just makes me very anxious, because you're only one wrong word from messing up the dance for a lot of people. I know it's not that serious, and when I do mess up I can recover and get things back on track fine, but it's just not something I enjoy very much. Calling a family dance does have less of this effect on me than calling an evening dance for adults, and I'd still call another family dance if the alternative was not having one, but I'd still prefer not to call if there's anyone well-suited available.

In this case I ended up calling mostly because there aren't that many people who are really good at both family dances and regular contra dances, and the people we asked weren't available. Bringing someone in just to call a 1hr family dance before the regular dance isn't so practical, so I called the family dance and someone else called the evening dance.

Here's the program I did, with thoughts: