Just in case anybody’s wondering what happened to me…
I’m in San Francisco at the MacWorld Expo doing booth duty for my company, Stone Design. I did dance last night (A1, A2, C1) and will be able to dance this weekend to Mike Jacobs at PACE. However, for the first time in a long time, I brought absolutely no calling gear with me…just some C3A flash cards so I won’t make a total fool out of myself on Sunday morning…
Looks like several square dancing mailing lists are down. sd-callers, gca, challenge-sd, and lgcwsd all were based at dmshome.org, and that domain name registration expired on December 27. I’ve sent messages to majordomo@dmshome.org and lgcwsd@dmshome.org; they’ve all been returned with the message “unrouteable mail domain “dmshome.org””.
What to do?
There are several email lists at yahoogroups that look like general square dance lists, although most are inactive:
plus a lot of club or regional square dance groups.
Who is Gregg Ostrick?
On the one hand, he’s a music producer, with an album of kid songs (Louisiana Songs for Kids), featuring characters like Oscar de la Oyster and Ezzard the Gator. Here’s a quote from Gregg on his goals in producing the CD.
On the other hand, he’s a domain name entrepreneur, who happens, despite no connection with the activity that I could find, to own squaredance.com. If you go to squaredance.com, you’ll end up at a poster site (relevance? they’re dance posters…). That particular domain (allposters.com) is not owned by Gregg (dba GNO, Inc); however, another poster site (Posterworld.com) is owned by GNO, Inc. and is affiliated with allposters.com. (Posterworld.com is linked from rainbowraccoons.com, a kids’ educational site owned by (you guessed it) GNO, Inc.). He’s written a report on the Secrets of Domain Name Hunting, which gives “some interesting techniques and ways that will aid … in finding and evaluating good domain names” (referenced here, but the given link goes to the w3.com site, owned by (you guessed it) GNO, Inc.
What are the odds that Mr. Ostrick is hanging on to squaredance.com, hoping that somebody with deep pockets (in square dancing? hah!) will come along and offer to buy it? The domain name registration expires on May 6, 2003.
BTW, I did find an extremely tangential square dance connection: Gregg maintains a website in memory of Al Hirt, Al Hirt did the song “Java”, “Java” makes a good patter song.
Another BTW: Happy New Year!
I spent the morning clearing out old (mid-80’s to mid-90’s) computer magazines (Dr. Dobb’s Journal and some IEEE and ACM publications (I almost got a Ph.D. in computer science…everything but the dissertation). There was probably still some good info in the journals, but computer technology changes so quickly (and the info is so likely to be on the web someplace) that it just didn’t seem worth the shelf space any more.
Square dance relevance? Other than sound delivery systems, square dancing doesn’t change all that much. I’ve managed to gather copies of caller note services from the ’70’s and ’80’s and find them useful…well worth the storage space. Choreography styles have changed somewhat, but not so much that one can’t gather useful info from the note services. Also, going back to some of the more “dated” patterns can add spice to an evening. I’d love to have complete collections of all the old note services; there’s some classic stuff there.
A nice informative site about recording dances on a laptop and dancing using dances recorded on a laptop. He also includes an intro to square dancing for non-dancers, from a challenge dancer’s perspective.
On Friday, some local dancers and I square danced for about 500 elementary (K-5) students at Bel-Aire Elementary School. Their coach had been teaching them square dancing for the past few weeks, and one of the aides, who’s also a square dancer, rounded up a couple of squares and a caller (me) to come in for a couple of assemblies. We danced some patter to both traditional and non-traditional music, the dancers and I answered questions (we were all surprised at how many questions the kids had), we did a singing call, and then we got some of the kids (the ones who wanted to) out to dance. They were mostly enthusiastic, and seemed to have a good time; the 1/2 hour we had with each group (K-2, and 3-5) went too quickly.
I found a page at QueerTheory related to gay and lesbian square dancing. It’s got a decent collection of links and a link for Texts: Square Dancing, which leads to an Amazon listing of books related to square dancing.
One of the listings is for Square Dancing (Let’s Dance), written by Mark Thomas for kids ages 4-8, and published in 2000. I got curious about what a book about square dancing for kids would say, so I did a google search on the title and author. I got three hits…and every single one led to the Amazon listing.
However, I persevered, searched without the subtitle, and got a wider variety of hits, including Just for Kids:
Offers consistent print placement, predictable text patterns, strong picture clues and interesting concepts. For ages 4 to 7. 24 pages with photo illustrations. A close-up look at the hard work of dance.
Hard work?!?
I couldn’t find out much more information, except that Mark Thomas has written a bunch of dance-oriented books for kids, none of his books are available in our local library system, and Square Dancing is available in both hard and soft covers.
While looking for stuff about Mark Thomas and square dancing, I came across a 50’s nostalgia site, where they noted:
Cowboy life was definitely in style!
cowboy fashions
square dancing
rodeos
dude ranches
country & western music
and included this graphic:
Look, ma…she’s wearing pants!
Anybody remember the 1996 Smithsonian Magazine article on square dancing? I’ll bet a lot of us have copies floating around. Here’s an abstract; too bad the Smithsonian won’t just put back issues on line.
Here’s a quote from a page related to River Of Song, a PBS series on American music:
“Roll up the rugs,” more than a call to let the entertainment begin, was literally the way dance space was created for at-home square dancing. Furniture was moved outdoors or into corners to make ample room for the two or more squares of dancers inside. At home dances were one of the many ways neighbors opened their doors to each other, drawing people together to play, socialize, and exchange information. Such informal music gatherings remain the places where old time, country, and bluegrass traditions are active. The square dancing that has ebbed since the 1950s, some feel, is undergoing a resurgence. In communities as demographically diverse as Columbia, site of the state University, to Ellsinore, population 362, in the southern reaches of the Ozarks, multigenerational groups come together on a frequent basis to dance to the music of live fiddlers and family bands. Square dance is being relearned as people in their twenties and thirties turn to the elder generation, former practitioners of these skills, to learn the calls, dance sets, and tunes that used to be done in these communities.
Busy day yesterday.
Went to the Wilde Bunch’s holiday party first. Numbers were down; we were actually able to do the gift exchange (the kind where people choose gifts in turn and can either choose a new gift or steal a previously opened gift) one at a time, instead of having three people open gifts at once, the way we have for the past several years.
Then off to the Lobo women’s basketball game, where the attendance was down slightly from yesterday, but our margin of victory went up.
Quick trip home to feed the dogs.
Off to the Flying Star Cafe (more commonly known as the “Double Rain…I mean Flying Star) on Rio Grande for dinner with a few folks.
Then on to a Jamie Anderson concert. The attendance was disappointing, both for the audience, and, I’m sure, for the organizers and for Jamie. Seems like it’d be a hard life, driving around from small concert to small concert, on the road for weeks. But then I thought about how much I enjoy calling for even one or two squares, so maybe Jamie enjoyed performing for a couple of dozen people.
Of course, I’m so monomaniacal about square dancing, that I listened to every song with an ear to whether it could be a singing call. None of them could (at least without major rearrangement). If you’re interested in hearing some of her music, check mp3.com. Several of the songs she did last night are there, including one of my faves, “I Want to Be A Straight Guy”.
A few years ago, the gay A&C fly-in was at Fallen Leaf Lake (off of Lake Tahoe) (it’ll be there again in 2004). In between dancing, we managed to find time to do a little kayak square dancing…eight folks out on the lake, with a caller shouting calls from the dock. Well, I just found a site devoted to canoe dancing, including a page of animated dosidos (check out the quintuple do-si-do, circular variant).
Speaking of dosidos, here’s a teaser for an article from the Old Time Herald (too bad the whole thing isn’t online):
Perhaps the most parodied square dance figure is the Do-si-do. Ask people to imitate square dancing and they will invariably cross their arms and dance around each other passing back-to-back. This cliché is an indelible image in the minds of the American non-dancing public, and it often appears whenever square dancing is portrayed in the media; on television, in cartoons, and in Hollywood films. You may recall images of Jed Clampett, Bugs Bunny, or possibly even Scarlett O’Hara, with arms crossed as they Do-si-doed. This is not the way it is done at community dances throughout the country; veteran dancers do not dance this way. Seeing dancers with their arms crossed is an easy way to identify the inexperienced dancers out on the dance floor.Over the years I have become increasingly interested in the origins of the figures that I dance and call, and I have discovered that the Do-si-do, as simple as it may seem, has a story behind it. In fact there are as many stories and hypotheses as there are different versions of dance figures known by this name, only one of which is the clichéd back-to-back version that most people would associate with square dancing.
Here’s a story about the Coon Dog Day Square Dance Debacle.