This is an interesting article on square dancing and why it’s enjoyable. Unfortunately, it contains an erroneous statement about square dancing’s status as the national folk dance. Square dancing was declared the national folk dance for a finite period of time, 1982-1983, in Public Law 97-118, 96 Stat. 104, June 1, 1982. But there are only five national symbols: the flag, the Great Seal, the national anthem, the bald eagle, and the American rose. In a multi-cultural society, why should a dance form based on Anglo-European traditions be declared a national symbol?

I like square dancing. A lot. I also like contra dancing, swing dancing, two-stepping, international folk dancing, disco dancing, salsa. I wouldn’t support any of them as a “national dance”.

I’ve been thinking about how to publicize square dancing. One idea I had was to take the club’s badge maker and make badges with various slogans that might pique people’s curiosity. You know how you see people wearing buttons that say things like “Lose Weight? Ask me!” I don’t know whether people actually do ask, but the badges might serve as a conversation opener.

So I need to think of brief phrases. Time to brainstorm.

Here are a few that percolated through:

• SquareZ: why not use this site’s name…
• Kewl Squarez: Well, it might make people ask
• Dare to be Square
• Do the Do(sido): Take off on current Mountain Dew ad
• PMS Exercise: stands for Physical, Mental, Social
• GeoMotion
• Euro Squares
• PoMo Squares: stands for Post-Modern…might make people ask
• Square the Circle
• Circle the Square
• Dances in Squares
• Ask Me

While surfing around, I found a thesaurus site: Plumb Design Visual Thesaurus. It’s very cool, although putting it on auto-navigate in 3D ended up making me motionsick. Once I get over that, maybe I’ll be able to come up with more phrases…

Here’s a graphic from the virtual thesaurus in 2D mode…but you need to imagine it moving…