Home Page
Club List
Calendar of Events
Singles News
National News
Local News
Lead Story
Links/information
Library
Country Singles (our
northern states paper)
Singles Scene News
PO Box 10159
Scottsdale AZ 85271
USA
voice - fax
(480) 945-6746
Editorial
Jan/Feb 2004
by Janet L. Jacobsen
Seems to me like Y2K was just yesterday, and here we are at Y2K04. Amazing. Of course, as they say, time flies when you’re having fun!
Here’s some fun: It’s Leap Year again! Used to be a lot of goings
on about how it was the year that ladies were “allowed” to ask
men out, propose mar-riage, etc. But since we can do all those things
any time, there’s no real need to fuss. Except, of course, that we
get an extra day in February. All those things you’ve been saying
you’d do if you “only had more time”? Do them on the 29th!
Society for the Arts, in conjunction with several other organizations,
is sponsoring a benefit dance at the Ritz-Carlton on January 16. Live
music pro-vided by long-time local band Affinity - so “long time”
that they played for us years ago when we had live bands at our singles
dances. One of the co-sponsors is the Greater Phoenix Swing Dance Club,
so look for lots of “big band” style dance music. And it’s
definitely a good night to “dress to impress,” but don’t
get so formal that you can’t dance! It’s not strictly a singles
dance, but should be a high percentage of singles.
Also coming up is the 12th annual Singles Fair and Valentine’s Ball,
Saturday, February 7, this year at the Doubletree Paradise Valley Resort,
5401 N. Scottsdale Rd. We’ll have a booth, as always, as will many
other singles groups and singles-oriented businesses. With no Singles
Showcase last fall, singles organizations will especially want to take
advantage of this very efficient method for recruiting new members for
your group.
Valentine’s Day is upon us, as well. You don’t have to have
a “main squeeze” to enjoy the day, by the way. One of my favorite
things to do is get a bunch of those “school” valentines, and
just give them out to people throughout the day - store clerks, people
at work, etc. I give them to all my students at ASU too. They are always
so surprised, and some will say it’s the only valentine they got.
Had a request recently from the publisher Houghton Mifflin to use one
of my old articles in a high school textbook. Cool. They’ll use it
in a textbook on writing. No word on whether I’m serving as a good
example, or a bad one. The article is “Explaining Away Our Relationships.
Does our craving for an explanation hurt romance?” You can see it
in our archives at http://azsinglescene.com/archives/9-98.htm.
Speaking of school, I passed my comprehensive exams and now “just”
have the dissertation left to finish my doctorate. I’m studying male/female
misunderstandings. It’s actually not a topic that’s been studied
much, but nevertheless my big research problem is narrowing things down
to something manageable because there are so many possible ways to study
this. For instance, an alarming number of people, when I say I’m
considering my research options, will say, “Well, you could just
hang around at my house.”
Anyway, I am hoping to have more time to get out and do more things with
the singles groups, and maybe even start up our series of singles classes
and workshops again. Hope to have some decisions made on that in time
for the Singles Fair, so stop by our booth! If nothing else, we’re
bound to have a fun survey or two you can fill out!
So many singles publications have recently folded or temporarily suspended
publication that we are no longer offering our “National List”
of singles publications, nor the Singles Press Association national ad
offer.
Of course, it’s not just singles publications; print publications
of all kinds are seeing their circulations shrink. I read a lot on the
Internet myself, but I also still get a lot of magazines, so I don’t
know if I’m part of the problem or part of the solu-tion. It’s
hard to imagine that print public-ations will disappear completely, but
some new model for making them profitable will have to emerge. Or maybe
publishing will only be done by nonprofit companies as a public service.
Too early to say.
We’ve hardly had a winter, and by late February, Spring will be upon
us! Get out and enjoy!