[Callers] Sticky floors

[James Saxe via Callers]

In my recent message about negatives of applying wax to a
slow floor, I wrote:

> ...
> Note also that wax, unlike, say, corn meal, will not easily be
> removed by sweeping at the end of the evening.


As it happens, while looking for something else, I just came
across a 2013 thread on the trad-dance-callers list where
someone mentioned corn meal and another list member replied
with a cautionary tale about a local dance series that ...

> ... had to temporary relocate, and settled in a church basement which had a tile floor. The caller sprinkled corn meal over the floor in hopes of improving it since it had been waxed.
> As the evening progressed, the crowded unairconditioned hall became quite hot & humid and the cornmeal grains absorbed the moisture, softening and sticking to the floor.
> It couldn't be swept off after the dance. It had to be laboriously *scraped* off by the custodian on hands & knees.
> 
> The dance was evicted from the church, never allowed to return.

I'm not sure why the experience reported here differs from
what I've seen with corn meal.  Was it the humidity?  Was it
something about the underlying floor or about what had been
done to it before the corn meal was added.  (For example, had
it not been well cleaned after an event the previous evening
where people had dropped food and spilled sugary drinks?)
Was it something about the kind of corn meal? Was it really
corn starch?  BUt I thought I should pass along the report.

--Jim