If you’re “in the mood” for swing era big band music, “I’ll be seeing you” at the Dine and Dance to the Victory Swing Orchestra in BB’s Stage Door Canteen at the World War II Museum in New Orleans. A three-course dinner with wine and 90 minutes of dancing to a full orchestra with 3 singer soloists made for a wonderful evening during our trip this past October. Dancing was the reason we headed to NOLA and we’ll be back again in 2024 for one of these delightful tributes to the 1940’s Big Bands at the museum. A Valentine’s Day dance will be held on February 17^th (not to compete with Mardi Gras parades) and another evening will be on June 1. (See schedule/buy tickets at https://www.nationalww2museum.org/programs/dine-dance-victory-swing-orchestra). Before the end of this year there are also luncheons and teas in 2023 and a New Year’s Eve Dine and Dance (https://www.nationalww2museum.org/events-programs/bbs-stage-door-canteen).

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By Lisa Skriloff, Editor, Multicultural Travel News

On the weekend that Juneteenth National Independence Day, commemorating the end of slavery in the United States, was officially recognized as a Federal Holiday, we were touring Newport RI, with its own paradoxical history of the “co-existence of religious freedom with the poison of racism.” So quoted our guide at Touro Synagogue, (the oldest synagogue in the country,) whose informative talk started with the history of how the Newport Jews came to settle in the seaport, starting from Spain to Recife, Brazil, to New Amsterdam (New York City) where they “received no warm welcome from Peter Stuyvesant.” The descendants of these Conversos, who fled the inquisitions in Spain and Portugal, founded the Congregation in Newport in the late 1600s.  Following his visit here, George Washington, in his 1790 letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, pledged that the new nation would give “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” Yet at the same time, the “trade and export activities…that were the main engines of economic growth during the 18th century, (were) inexorably linked to Newport’s participation in the slave trade and widespread ownership of slaves by families throughout the city” as we learned at our visit to the Museum of Newport History. Today’s Newport is more human rights forward. During this same visit, Newport was celebrating June is LGBTQ Pride Month, and, with organizations such as Newport Out welcomes the community all year long. We also learned about Newport’s “Sail To Prevail – The National Disabled Sailing Program,” the first sailing program for individuals with disabilities in the United States.

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What would it be like to be…..Autistic and in a Relationship? Allergic to everything? Two films screened at the Tribeca Film Festival 2017 immerse viewers in the worlds of David, trying to connect with the world in Keep the Change and Susie, trying to avoid it in The Sensitives.

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I was familiar with the Irish word for “Cheers” (Good Health) having seen “Sláinte” in writing  but had never heard it pronounced out loud until mixologist and raconteur Anthony Caporale uttered “Slan-cha” during the performance of THE IMBIBLE: A SPIRITED HISTORY OF DRINKING currently playing in New York City.

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Are they doing a cha cha? Is it a hustle? It’s a bit of both in a Bossa Nova choreographed to “The Girl from Ipanema” a musical number in Trip of Love, a psychedelic love valentine to the 60s professed in song and dance, which opened Off-Broadway on Sunday. If you, like me, squeal “Oooh, I love that one” when you hear the song “You Don’t Own Me” and “What Becomes of the Broken Hearted” and “California Dreamin’” you’ll be screaming throughout the entire performance of Trip of Love. (If you hear ‘Trippin’ love you wouldn’t be far off.)

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Quick. Quick. Slow. Slow. That’s the counting pattern for the country 2-step dance. And also the pace of our Nashville long weekend this past April.

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