A Friend brought up at Quaker Meeting a few months ago the theater term “find your light.” Kaily Hansen and Ruthie Fierbird define it this way: This means you are in the dark on stage and need to step into the light. The only light that follows an actor is the spotlight. When a spotlight…
“Maybe Somebody Else Needs Me” (quote)
Wise words from Bay Area house dancer Lauren Benjamin about entering dance battles: If I feel the drive to do something, I just do it, before I can talk myself out of it. Maybe it’s not always about me. Maybe somebody else needs me to be there at that time. Lauren Benjamin
2024 Intentions: More Stamina, Skate Travel and Video Essays
I don’t tend to set “resolutions” for the New Year, which feels a bit too confining and unrealistic. Instead I do like to set “intentions” to give me direction and motivation. These are more like things I am very interested in and want to explore, but without set quantitative goals or deadlines. So not “I…
Who’s Yehoodi: The Story of a (Mostly) Online Dance Community
Well I finally finished the oral history of Yehoodi.com, a project I started back in May 2023. It’s not perfect, but I think it does a good job of highlighting the many ways that Yehoodi touched people’s lives over the past 25 years. This was the biggest personal writing project I had taken on for…
2023 Highlights: Tokyo Disney, Closing Yehoodi, Skating, Knitting, Baking
Japan Disneyland Bucket List Trip The biggest highlight of the year for me was getting to go on a bucket list trip to Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea last May. Getting to visit the two best Disney theme parks was a dream come true. Of course, I had a lot of other lovely adventures in Tokyo,…
Skate Photo Shoot at 6th Ave
I was honored to be asked to be a subject in this journalism student Tam’s photo essay on skating that she was preparing this month. Tam was so fun to work with, bringing enthusiasm, technical expertise, and flexibility to the shoot. Excited to see her final project. Here’s her pics of me that she shared.
The Joys of Being a Newbie
Yesterday I had the pleasure of being a complete newb at a dance! Okay, maybe not a total newb, but definitely felt out of my depth attempting to lead the waltz at The Great Dickens Christmas Fair.I did fine with my friend Aurelia Santos for the first waltz, which had set sections and moves that…
“For this World” by Walter Rauschenbusch
A member of my Quaker Meeting, Stephanie Rauschenbusch, shared this wonderful poem written by her grandfather Stephanie Rauschenbusch in 1957. It very much speaks to my condition. O God, we thank thee for this universe, our great home; for its vastness and its riches, and for the manifoldness of the life which teams upon it…
Just a Normal Sunday at the 6th Avenue Skating Place
I get to the 6th Avenue Skating Place a little after noon. The spot is already hopping with skaters and music, courtesy of my friend Alex and their very loud bluetooth speaker. A newer skater Cassidy is there and she wants to work on “the Smurf.” So we review that footwork and drill it together….
The Public Universal Friend — a non-binary, Quaker-raised evangelist from the 1700s
I’ve been a Quaker for 26 years and only now learned about the Public Universal Friend. The Public Universal Friend is hard to describe. They are considered by some to be the first transgender evangelist, by others the first American-born woman to lead a religious movement, by others a controversal non-binary preacher during the Revolutionary…