Peace/love: a golden oldie

I went out dancing the other night. No, not ballet. My ballet days are over, I’m afraid. And no, most assuredly not the tango. My tango days are over, I’m very happy to say. This was dancing to the music of the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. Golden oldies, silver oldies, brass oldies, tin oldies. The music of that last decade, the 80s, is a bit unfamiliar to me. But the rest of the songs rang a bunch of pleasant although somewhat rusty bells. A portion of those bells involved raucous fraternity dances with spilled beer and even cigarettes (yes, yes, I smoked! But never inhaled; I just enjoyed making the most well-formed and longlasting smoke rings on earth.) Other bells rang for even earlier memories–of dancing in somebody’s knotty-pine-paneled basement to an old record player with a stack of 45s that dropped, one by one, onto a turntable. This dance the other night was held in a so-called ballroom, a large hall with one of those r...