Here’s an article in the New York Times about a resurgence in board games: The PC Generation, Back to the Board.

Some sample quotes:

Michael Megalli: “Even when you’re playing against people on the Internet, the human factor, the social interaction, is really minimized. With work and family, it gets harder to see friends as you get older, and the games are a great way to get people together who otherwise have really busy lives.”

Phil Potter: “The great thing about strategic board games is they are a great opportunity to get people together and do something social.”

Mike Kilbert: “In Monopoly, if you get the right properties and get hotels you will clobber everyone else. The people in their 30’s today don’t want that kind of game, they don’t have that mentality. They want games where everyone can stay involved.”

Well, what’s square dancing but a real-time game that’s non-competitive and everybody stays involved. It’s also highly social, and, as an added bonus, adds some physical exericise. What a deal!

All of the square dance email lists I’m on have been very quiety lately, as has rec.folk-dancing. And I obviously haven’t been writing lately. I wonder if it’s the war…

The war hasn’t stopped my dancing, however. T-B and I traveled to Becket, Massachusetts, for the LCFD Dance Camp, with Lisa Greenleaf calling and the Groovemongers playing.

This weekend, we danced A2 to Darryll Lipscomb on Friday, and we’re going to a contra dance featuring one of our favorite bands, Bayou Seco and caller Lausanne Allen, a caller from Vermont.

There oughta be a law against autoplay music on websites. Here’s yet another example: the 52nd National Square Dance Convention starts playing something (don’t know what it is, because I backed out quick) as soon as the start page loads. But, hey, guess what? I don’t browse in a vacuum, and, as it happens, I was playing MP3s while surfing. Result: instant cacaphony.

I went back to the page briefly, to look for a way to turn the freakin’ music off, but no dice. Bamm, I’m outa there.

Wise up, webmasters: music is a good thing, but it should be voluntary, and (I think) it should serve some function…playing some stupid MIDI file just to have some sound is irritating.

Okay, I turned off my music and went back. The page played a MIDI version of Oklahoma (I can see all kinds of copyright violations, but what the heck), which is appropriate, since the convention is in Oklahoma City, and it only played it once (whew, no autorepeat). But there ought to be a way to turn it off. Quickly.

Ah yes, the fifties…where square dancing, beer, and cigarettes went together. Check out this beer ad from 1952, showing people square dancing, smoking, and drinking beer because, “in this freedom-loving land of ours, beer belongs…”

This item is available on eBay for the next 5 days. I’m almost tempted; I could hang it next to my 1896 self-portrait of Frances Benjamin Johnston enjoying a beer and smoking a cigarette (with her legs crossed in a very unladylike manner).

This list of tips on dancing with beginners has good advice. Here are the first two items:

1. Smile
2. Make eye contact.

These are some things we could improve in MWSD. After an evening contra dancing, I really notice the lack of eye contact in MWSD. In fact, when I google “eye contact square dance,” the references that come up are almost all contrasting contra dancing with square dancing. Virtually every writeup on contra dancing mentions eye contact as an important part of the dance. If you watch square dancers, it almost seems like there’s a taboo on direct eye contact…unless you’re trying to help someone.

Oh wait…here’s a reference to eye contact:

Bow (Honors) To your Partner: Men: Turn slightly to face your partner making eye contact(emphasis added). Place left hand behind back or at left hip, palm out. Place right foot in front of left foot. The right foot should be pointed toward the lady with the toe touching the floor. Man’s right hand holds lady’s left hand. Both legs are straight, with weight on the back foot.
Ladies: Turn slightly to face your partner making eye contact(emphasis added). Left foot should be pointed forward with toe touching floor, right foot in back. right hand holds skirt toward center of square, right arm bent at elbow. Place left hand in partner’s right hand. Both legs are straight with weight on back foot. [an acceptable traditional variation of styling is that the man bow slightly from the waist as the ladies acknowledge with a curtsy.]
To your Corner: Men: Right hand holding partner’s left hand, turn slightly to face corner, making eye contact(emphasis added). Place left hand behind back or at left hip, palm out. Place left foot in front of right foot. The left foot should be pointed toward corner with toe touching floor. Both legs are straight with weight on the back foot.
Ladies Left hand in partner’s right hand, turn slightly to face corner making eye contact(emphasis added). Place right foot in front of left foot with the right foot pointed toward corner and the toe touching floor. Both legs are straight with weight on back foot. An acceptable traditional variation of styling is that the men bow slightly from the waist as the ladies acknowledge with a curtsy.

Here’s what I think…square dancers should lighten up a little…

Kate Yule and David Levine are square dancers. David’s also a science fiction writer, and both are science fiction fans who publish one of my favorite publications of all time, Bento, a physically-small, sporadically-published fanzine. (…I just lost 1/2 hour browsing through the few issues that are online…)

They write about square dancing on occasion, although my favorite, Kate’s first description of dancing with the Rosetown Ramblers as a straight woman, isn’t online yet.

But another favorite, a reverse Switcher story called “Immigrants”, is online in Bento #7. (I wonder if they ever think about switching back, now that Macs are following the Unix path…)

Their most recent issue, Bento 14, arrived a few days ago. It included a piece by Andrei Codrescu that totally struck home. It’s called “‘Vampires’ at the Airport,” and you can listen to the original NPR recording here. I’ve been there, roaming, searching, endlessly seeking a place to plug in. Why can’t airports provide more outlets?

This weekend, I was dancing at an A2 dance when the caller called Chain Reaction from this formation:

After we all stood there looking blank, the caller told us what he wanted: the dancers in the wave step forward and do a partner hinge, while the couples step into the middle, and adjust to a right-hand star. At that point, we could continue as in a regular Chain Reaction: the outsides trade while the center star turn 1/4; those who meet Cast Off 3/4, while the others move up. Well, the first part sure doesn’t sound like any legitimate extrapolation of the definition that I’ve ever seen, and I fear the word “bogus” may have passed my lips.

At any rate, we did what he wanted from that setup a few more times and then went on to other (legitimate) things. The next day, I queried the challenge-sd (subscription info) email list and got a couple of reactions from callers I respect (as well as some private email echoing the same thoughts):

• Executive summary: Totally bogus.
• Ridiculous and preposterous.

So don’t look for me to workshop that particular “extended application” of Chain Reaction.

Additional notes: the discussion on challenge-sd has continued, and someone suggested calling this as “Do the call in phantom 1/4 tags, except the last part which you do with real people – Chain Reaction” and someone else suggested (same idea, different wording) “Finally Real People, in your Overlapped Phantom 1/4 Tags, Chain Reaction”, although the same person who suggested the latter added, “Even with the appropriate words to make it technically correct, it seems too contrived. It takes too many words, and still seems distasteful.”

Someone just sent this to me (and a bunch of others):

With all the sadness and trauma going on in the world today, it is worth reflecting on the death of a very important person which almost went unnoticed last week. Larry LaPrise, the man who wrote “The Hokey Pokey” died peacefully at the age of 93. The most traumatic part for his family was getting him in the coffin. They put his left leg in…. and then the trouble started.

My first thought was “I thought he died a while ago…”, so off to Google I went, and found out (after coming across a lot of sites with the same joke quoted above), that yes, indeed, Larry LaPrise died in 1996, not last week.

I also found out that Larry may not have created the Hokey Pokey; see The Mystery Lives On. This article also quotes Larry:

“The Hokey Pokey’ is like a square dance, really,” LaPrise said in 1992. “You turn around. You shake it all about. Everyone is in a circle, and it gets them all involved.”

I think the person who sent the email is involved in traditional square dancing (at least, it’s mostly traditional callers in the list of addresses). And the Hokey Pokey is more like a traditional square; it’s the same every time it’s done…at least, unless you find an instrumental version and get a highly-trained professional caller to decide the order that the body parts go in and out (don’t go there…).

I’m on the Square and Round Dance Web Ring, so there’s a banner at the bottom of each of my pages with the webring controls. Both the previous site (Valley Squares of Shelton, CT) and the next site (Mike Callahan) have automatic MIDI music that starts to play as soon as you enter the site. I hate that, since I usually have a TV or iTunes going while I surf. If the music is useful (like hearing some samples from a square dance record producer, or demo calling from a caller), I’ll play it (after turning off other sound sources. Otherwise, it just makes me hit the Back button as quickly as I can to stop the sound.

At least the two sites that surround me display controls for the music, so I can scroll down and stop it. Sites that play music and give me no controls go on my blacklist.

More Google searches:

Here’s a census of the TLDs (top level domains) returned by a google search for “square dance” (from The Suffix Census):

Hmmm…I wonder what the .gov sites are doing on the list?