Frankie Manning, the Tony-award winning Father of Lindy Hop, died yesterday at the age of 94. May he rest in peace. The LA Times wrote a wonderful obituary for him, as did the New York Times.

I got the opportunity to take dance classes from him and listen to him tell stories at Swing Camp Catalina, a yearly event (now defunct) hosted by Pasadena Ballroom Dance Association. The sisters who run PBDA taught me how to dance. They were also the ones who brought Frankie out of retirement in 1986 to help teach Lindy Hop around the world, giving all of us dancers a chance to meet him, learn to dance from him, and hear his tales. Frankie connected me to history all the way back to the invention of Lindy Hop and, as such, I felt I could be a part of that history myself, simply by carrying on the dance.

Frankie is also bound up with my earliest memories of falling in love with my husband. On the boat to Catalina for our first Swing Camp together, my then-boyfriend gave me a card that indicated his intention to one day propose to me. I’ll never forget the thrill of feeling lightheaded while bouncing over the waves, snuggled next to him, on the way to dancing together at the historic Catalina Casino Ballroom.

Even if you don’t know who Frankie Manning was, you’ve been thrilled by his work. Remember that Gap Khaki ad from 1998? Those lifts and throws (called “aerials”) were invented by Frankie Manning. Well into his 80s, Frankie could still do a lot of these moves.

Here’s a clip of Frankie dancing with the joy I always saw in him and that he transferred to everyone he met. (Frankie is the first man you see dancing, the one with the mechanic’s hat.)

Goodbye, Frankie, and thank you so much for everything.

I need a break from the internet. I’m sure the tubes will do fine without me for a while.

Kaos War: A new MMORPG now in beta.

Bigstage: Take 3 photos of yourself and make yourself a 3D graphic avatar.

Gametrainer: Pay someone $30/hour to make you a better game player. They promise they won’t laugh. (Seriously, they do.) But they don’t promise to credit that $30 to a fitness trainer to make up for it later.

Pixie: Simple site designer. Not sure if this will work with self-hosted Wordpress blogs or not.

Project Wonderful: Advertise your website or your blog. Wordpress.com blogs not eligible (I tried).

Lush Bath Bombs: This one’s for the ladies out there. These look like so much fun! I want some for my birthday!

Mecanbe: Set your goals and let the world watch you acheive them.

September 11 attacks
This is, of course, the big one for our generation — so far. (I wasn’t alive when JFK, RFK, and King were assassinated.) I live on the West Coast so I was sleeping. When the phone rang, I heard my Dad, who lives on the East Coast, talking on the answering machine telling me to call him. Since my Dad always calls at “oh-dark-thirty” to make sure he catches me at home, I rolled over and went back to sleep. (He was calling after the first plane hit.) Fifteen minutes later, he called again. (Second plane.) I couldn’t hear what he’d said so I just rolled my eyes at his determination. Five more minutes and I heard another friend’s voice talking into the answering machine and I thought, “WTF?” When I answered it, my friend said, simply, “Turn on the television. Turn it on right now.” If he elaborated I was too sleepy to understand the magnitude of what he was saying, so I turned on the TV. I had only just gotten my head around what had happened, what I was seeing, while my friend was telling me what he knew, when I interrupted him to say, “One of the buildings is collapsing. One of the towers is completely falling down.” Now it was my friend’s turn to disbelieve.

Challenger shuttle disaster
I came back from class to the all-female floor of my dorm to find everyone in hysterics. I didn’t even make it to my own dorm room, but was pulled into the first room off the stairway upon hearing the news. Since I had been in class all morning, I believe I heard about it almost an hour after it had happened, but I kept watching the video loops of the explosion on the news. I think I was hoping that each time it played it would end differently.

Hurricane Katrina
Having grown up in Florida, I had been keeping an eye on the hurricane’s path to make sure it stayed away from my family so I turned on the TV first thing in the morning. These are two things I never do: watch news on TV and watch TV in the morning. However, I was concerned about this storm very much. My husband came home from the grocery store to find me nearly in tears in front of the television. I was appalled and angry and aghast that what I was watching could actually happen in America. How could our government let us down in such catastrophic fashion? I was depressed for days.

Reagan assassination attempt
I had just come home from school to turn on my traditional fare of Leave It To Beaver and Gilligan’s Island reruns. I’m now embarrassed to admit that I cried when Dan Rather reported him dead.

John Lennon’s death
Can you believe that the Brits didn’t have this one? I would’ve chalked it up to their list being more politically focused, but they had Princess Diana’s death on their meme, which I’ve excluded. As to where I was? No earthly idea.

Kurt Cobain’s death
I was listening to the radio while on my way to the airport to pick up a friend who was coming to visit me. He’s a Baby Boomer. Instead of hugging my friend whom I hadn’t seen in a few years, I was so distraught that my first action upon seeing him was to give him a huge heave backwards and yell, “You killed him! You Boomers killed him!” Of course, having been on the plane, he had no idea what the hell I was talking about.

I now tag the following five bloggers:

• Ess
• Matticus
• Kestrel
• Big Bear Butt
• Two and a Half Orcs

]]> http://www.gamedame.net/i-still-miss-gram/feed/ 1 http://www.gamedame.net/getting-knitty-with-it/ http://www.gamedame.net/getting-knitty-with-it/#comments Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:57:17 +0000 Game Dame http://gamedame.wordpress.com/?p=397 My new laptop was getting all grody in my backpack. I would clean the nice shiny black surface and then after putting it in the backpack it would come out all smudgy. The backpack is old and goodness knows what’s flaking off on the innards of it. But it was an expensive Eddie Bauer pack and I didn’t want to spend money on something to tote the laptop in when in all other respects, this is a dang nice backpack. The solution? Slip the laptop into something that will keep the smudges off of it while in the pack. Buy it? No flippin way. I did some measurements and used my late mother-in-law’s extra yarn (she loved blue) to knit up a nice little sleeve for the laptop. Remember, it doesn’t have to function for anything but as a jacket in the pack…

Laptop sleeve album

1. I’m tired of having insomnia. (Irony intended.)
2. I miss writing my thoughts on this blog.
3. I don’t know the difference between being compulsive and being disciplined. The things I want to do somehow I’m too “lazy” or “undisciplined” to do. Yet compulsive behaviors in opposite directions come easy. Why can’t I take my devotion to something negative and aim it at something positive?
4. I’m tired of taking anti-depressants and blood pressure meds because I’m so anxious all the time. I want off the meds.
5. I admire Hooved Shaman immensely. Most people will never understand what a courageous thing he’s trying to do.
6. I miss dancing the Lindy Hop with my husband.
7. I miss riding my bike.
8. I miss swimming.
9. I miss seeing sunrises and sunsets.
10. I miss the wind blowing through my hair.
11. I miss wearing short skirts.
12. I miss connecting with my friends and family.
13. I think TJ is one of the funniest things on the internet. She has also introduced me to some of the coolest things on the internet.
14. I’m bored with WoW. I’m not sure if I care to get over the boredom. I’m not sure Wrath will cure it. I think it is broken inside me.
15. I’m sick of my computers, the web, politicians, religious pushers of all stripes, politics, pundits, jerkfaces, phenoms, trolls, critics, asswipes, corporate lifestyles, humidity, materialism, advertising, the worship of sex, people who make sweeping generalizations, people who make lists, and television news people.
16. I need more hugs and kisses from people.
17. If I can learn how to be optimistic, anyone can. I wish more people would try.
18. I want to dedicate my life to something bigger than myself. How do you narrow it down to just one thing? And how do you eat & pay rent while you’re doing it?
19. I don’t believe in mid-life crises, except from a hormonal point of view. Everything else is just an excuse to avoid reality.
20. I wish I could adequately explain the difference between acceptance and giving up.
21. I want to wear a short, cute, fun hairstyle, even if it’s not right for my face.
22. I want to know why compassion is less valued than competition.
23. I think people are tribal animals. Emphasis on tribal. Emphasis on animals. Until we get that through our thick, “civilized” heads, we’re always going to fall short of anything resembling world peace.
24. Can you write for a blog about a game you’re falling out of love with — especially if they’re not all that interested in you writing about what interests you — just to get the experience to put on your resume for bigger things in the future? Should you even try?
25. I think atheism is not a lack of belief; it is a belief in something different.
26. I think science is as much a mythology as any religion. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But to think it is higher than other mythologies is to make an arbitrary exception.
27. Sometimes, when thinking about my gramma’s death hurts so bad that my chest hurts and my teeth grind, I try to remember that time is not necessarily linear just because we perceive it that way. When a wave crashes to the shore, does it cease to exist or does it just go back into the ocean? I try to remember that gramma and I are both in the ocean and we are waves, seeming to come and go but still part of the same thing.