[HT: The Sailor]
WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
![The Shield of Achilles -- Auden [emphasis added]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/shieldtop-150x150.jpg "The Shield of Achilles -- Auden [emphasis added]")
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2001-2022
After scanning its face again and again,
I began to scale it, picking my holds
With intense caution. About half-way
To the top, I was suddenly brought to
A dead stop, with arms outspread
Clinging close to the face of the rock
Unable to move hand or foot
Either up or down. My doom
Appeared fixed. I MUST fall.
There would be a moment of
Bewilderment, and then,
A lifeless rumble down the cliff
To the glacier below.
My mind seemed to fill with a
Stifling smoke. This terrible eclipse
Lasted only a moment, when life blazed
Forth again with preternatural clearness.
I seemed suddenly to become possessed
Of a new sense. My trembling muscles
Became firm again, every rift and flaw in
The rock was seen as through a microscope,
My limbs moved with a positiveness and precision
With which I seemed to have
Nothing at all to do.
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of
universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I
reach my hands and play with pebbles of
destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs
reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive
in the universe.
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Truly “Something Wonderful”! Thank you!
Had no idea people still danced the Shag but this pair are amazing!
That was my Wife and me, 25+ years prior to ’03; though I insisted on no “public displays of emotion”. … Her life ended. … And, I am crying at this moment. … But, Thank You, for posting that.
Bless you and your wife’s memory.
In 1983 I worked in South Carolina and the ladies tried their best to teach this northern boy to shag dance. Didn’t work but I still appreciate watching. And Carolina girls are the best.
Watching Leslie dance gives me goosebumps and a case of envy. Soo much fun there –
Something else wonderful: Stardust
Just lovely, through and through.
Yes, Julie, lovely through and through. Thank you.
Indeed!
Awesome. 100% Awesome. I wonder what ever happened to them.
Look up Leslie Melton Jennings. Still dancing away.
Same with Grant.
Something wonderful, indeed.
Thank you. Leslie is perfect. What great memories, and what a nice reprieve from Black Distemper Month.
That was something wonderful, Gerard, and the young lady, Leslie, has a most beguiling figure.
Yes, lovely.
Come to NC and you can get all the lessons you want, it remains very popular here and in SC.
Cheers y’all.
Back in the early ’50s I as a pre-teen, went from Miami up to a summer camp in the North Carolina mountains (Unaccompanied minor, by train, weren’t no thang, back in the day.). Found the Shag, Charleston, Black Bottom were still quite popular dances there. Glad to see they’re still preserving some of our popular history.
Someone once said: Woman, thou art dance! So very true.
Did you notice how perfect their posture is? I love to see that, since mine has been poor most of my life. Dancers have impeccable posture. They looked so smooth and cool.
Leslie is so talented, so beautiful.
A wistful note from a wistful putz!
I could be wrong, but that distinct loose-limbed, leg-shakiness – maybe an influence on early, ‘56 Elvis? Maybe that kind of lankiness in dance is uniquely Southern and widely imitated?
That was from 2003. I DuckDuckGo’ed Grant Garmon. He went on to have a career in the military and then in law enforcement.
https://vajrshaggersinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Grant-Garmon-VJSHOF-2017.pdf
Fabulous post, hits me hard, I don’t know where to start.
As a young fool in the 1960s I resisted all efforts by my parents to get me to learn to dance. It was “boring” compared to TV and movies.
3 years ago my wife asked me, for the third time, to do ballroom dancing lessons with her. I agreed, under protest and unwillingly, because the reason was to dance at our oldest son’s wedding.
I have since learned…
-TV is shite, including all the double shite from netflix, amazon and their ilk.
-People with nothing to do in the evenings get into trouble with booze, and other nonsense easily predicted by the old aphorism about “idle hands”
-Dancing 4 nights a week:
-leaves no time for drinking or other mischief.
-keeps the weight down.
-drops the blood pressure seriously, I damn well mean seriously, big time, all you lumps out there listen up.
-Improves the after hours life, know what I mean, a nod’s as good as a wink…
-Demonstrates that all one’s silly ideas of being well coordinated are silly.
-Makes me the amateur over 65 King of the Cha Cha and runner up of the Tango in the podunk town where I live.
Until dancing in some form revives, civilization is doomed. We are monkeys. If we wont dance, we are very bad monkeys, doomed to fail.
I intend to learn the basics of Shag dancing pronto. Looks a lot like a fast “Bolero”. Google it, you undancing losers.
I met my girlfriend in a samba class more than 25 years ago. We never did the shag, but we danced just about every other ballroom dance we could get lessons in (we even took Paso Doble lessons once, but it was never played at the local social dances) until she couldn’t. She died just before the lockdowns eased here in Colorado. I haven’t danced since, because the studio only just opened up, and they’re only allowing couples who are vaxxed to sign up, and I’m neither.