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the healing power of dance
Saturday, August 10 2019
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This morning Ramona barked about something, so I went out to find a strange vehicle in the driveway. When the dogs ran over to see who it was, the driver asked if they were friendly. I said they were. This turned out to be the Hurley dog catcher, and he was visiting to respond to a dog barking complaint lodged last night. According to Gretchen, the dogs had been barking at some unusual utility work that had happened along the road at about 11:00pm last night. The dog catcher was a super nice guy, and pretty much admitted that any dog barking rule is pretty much unenforceable, since it requires the dogs to bark for fifteen minutes continuously, and if they take a five second break, the counter resets. Once he'd determined the dogs were friendly and not prone to much barking, he was satisfied, and the conversation turned to chit chat about how things are at the ASPCA. But the question remained: who had called the dog catcher on us?
Today (after Saturday morning coffee) I went to check on my solar controller via the laboratory Raspberry Pi (which is connected to its 80-foot-long serial cable coming up from the basement), and I was dismayed to see no data was forthcoming. It seemed I'd burned out yet another serial driver chip, this time a Max3232, meaning the problem (whatever it is) isn't from some one batch of faulty driver chips. I did some Google searched to see what the problem might be, but I came up empty. Perhaps that long serial cable is somehow picking up and amplifying electromagnetic transients from electrical storms; I could, I suppose, test that by connecting to a Raspberry Pi that I put near the solar controller.
I have an old remote-controlled boat that I'd like to remove the electronics from and replace with a simple Raspberry-Pi based telepresence system, allowing me to sail it around a large body of water from a laptop. In building the Speakerbot (aka "Disturbatron") system, I amassed all the skills necessary to flip relays and drive servo motors from a Raspberry Pi serving PHP-based website. Some testing revealed that the two electromagnetic devices on the boat required reversible voltages. One was a large DC motor, and that drove the propellor. The other was more like a solenoid, though it would deflect one way with electricity passed through it one way and the other way with it passed through the other way. This controlled the rudder. A little research revealed that both could be controlled by the Raspberry Pi with a single chip called an H-bridge. I even had a dual-inline-pin L298N. Unfortunately, the 9 volt NiCad battery the boat came with could not hold a charge, but it had a relatively-puny 900-milliamp hours of capacity; I'd do much better in the same volume with a Lithium battery. I may or may not get this working before I have my next lake experience this summer.
Today's weather definitely felt late-summeresque. Temperatures were in the 70s, and the insects (in this case, I think it was the general high-pitch din of the crickets) had that late summer sound. I dont really dislike this time of year other than for the yet-colder weather it anticipates. There's actually a feeling of promise and potential that comes with this change in the weather, perhaps from lingering school-schedule conditioning. Though I never much liked going to school, a new school year offered a bit of reset from whatever the previous school year had brought.
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For this evening's date night, the plan for Gretchen and me was to see a showing of the classic 80s movie Dirty Dancing at Hasbrouck House, a high-end inn and wedding venue where they serve things like foie gras (which accounts for why I didn't really know what it is, though I think we went there for something once). Before going to that, we thought we'd try out a pan-Asian restaurant in Stone Ridge called Asia. Gretchen had dined at Asia once before years ago and had found the food so bad that she hasn't returned. Recently, though, she noticed it had good reviews on TripAdvisor, so she thought we should give it another chance.
After parking in Asia's poorly-arranged parking lot, we had trouble finding the restaurant's door. "Where's the... restaurant?" Gretchen asked as we failed to find the door. At this point I was humming, "Heat of the Moment" by the restaurant's namesake 80s band. Eventually we were inside, and I quickly ordered a saketini -- a martini made with gin and sake instead of vermouth. The young waiter lad didn't seem to know too much about what foods contained what dead animals, so a woman who seemed to know her shit commandeered our ordering. We got a curry, a pad thai, and (since the place is pan-Asian) I got a vegan sushi roll built around shitake and avocado. The food was better than Gretchen had remembered from her one other time, though it wasn't amazing. Still, it's nice to know that something similar to Thai food can be had after only a nine and a half mile drive. I should say that I wasn't feeling 100% by this point and only managed to eat a small amount of the main courses before having to stop. Part of the problem was a sense of claustrophobia I felt due to the fact at all the windows nearby had been papered over. This was to keep people from looking in from the parking lot, but I would've liked to be able to look out.
At Hasbrouck House, there was a big white tent set up as if we were going to a wedding, and that was where the movie was to be shown. Evidently movie nights there are free and open to the public, though they probably expect to make their expenses at the snack bar, where one can buy burgers (including the veggie kind), fries, and beer. Neither of us were in the mood to buy anything, so we just sat there and watched the movie. But next time, we'll have to keep that in mind.
I'd never actually seen Dirty Dancing before, and I enjoyed the experience of watching it. Sure, there's lots of dancing (some of it of the dirty kind), but the plot is propelled by something one doesn't see in contemporary movies: an abortion that is a foregone conclusion. Nobody sheds any tears about the fœtus; it's obvious the pregnancy must be terminated, and the question is who will do it and how to raise the money to pay for it1. Along the way, there are a number of delightful details, such as all the kosher products in a kitchen, or the fact that the movie's only evil character is an Ayn Rand evangelist. The takeaway from Dirty Dancing is that all different kinds of people can get along, and that we shouldn't underestimate the healing power of dance, particularly of the dirty sort. Part of the fun was the audience participation, which was a little like (I imagine) a very minor version of what happens at a showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (which I have never watched in its entirety). When, for example, Patrick Swayze's character says, "Nobody puts Baby in a corner," the crowd went nuts. Since Dirty Dancing in the Catskills, there were other opportunities to whoop it up when local places, particularly New Paltz, were named.
A bumble bee on one of the garden's sunflowers.
Oscar in the yard.
Diane in the yard.
The way the sky looked for a period of time today.
1
Dirty Dancing dates to a time when memories of the danger of back-alley abortions were still fresh. Indeed, it's possible that one of the factors in the more recent cinematic turn against abortion is a loss of that collective memory, something it shares with the anti-vax movement.
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