I think all modern western square dancers should read Julie Mangin’s articles on MWSDers’ attempts to get square dancing declared the national or state folk dance: Thoughts on Square Dancing and The State Folk Dance Conspiracy.

I love modern square dancing. I also like to folk dance, contra dance, two-step, polka, waltz…in other words, I like to dance, period. If a state wants to have a state folk dance (in New Mexico, we have a state question, “Red or Green?”), I think the dance should be related to the heritage of the individual state…not some over-legislated pseudo-folk dance like modern western square dancing. If New Mexico had a state folk dance (it doesn’t), it should be something Hispanic or Native American…something that would reflect what is unique about New Mexico. Maybe modern square dancing is an appropriate state folk dance for Colorado, where Pappy Shaw started the performing group that was a catalyst in the modern square dancing revival. But not for every state!

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Can’t get enough of the dancing hamsters? Want more totally bandwidth-wasting silly sites? Try DanceRing. I don’t get it, myself.

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Another place to get listed: 4dance. A couple of square dance related sites have found it and are listed there: American Square Dance and Ask Dave. The disadvantage is your site is displayed framed by the 4anything advertising.

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What’s a weblog? Here’s Jon Katz’ writeup in Slashdot. I found myself attracted to the genre almost immediately upon encountering it, unlike Derek Powazek, who resisted, but then came around. Here’s another piece on weblogging by Cameron of Camworld, a blog that I check pretty regularly.

So what I’m trying here is a blog for a micromarket. In another rant, Camworld says:

Every industry in the world has a potential need for a quality weblog or two. It’s safe to say that the Macintosh community has been inundated with Mac-centric news sites for several years now. So many, that I’ve lost count. But what about a weblog for the homemaker? Or the thousands of hot rod enhusiasts? Or the ham radio hobbyists? These are called niche market portals, and every one of them (and thousands of other niche markets) could be a potential source of quality information for someone.

And, who knows…maybe someone will become interested in our little microworld of dancing in squares through some link that they happen upon.

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Who got the hyphens?

Looks like one company, McBride Computer Services, grabbed up almost all the hyphenated square-dance domains:

• square-dance.org
• square-dance.net
• square-dancing.com, .net, and .org

square-dance.com goes to a site that’s currently closed for maintenance.

Back to McBride…they’ll sell you a subdomain and 40MB of space for a mere $149/year. That’s one way to get a square dancing related URL.