This looks like quite a project: Square Dancing in Wisconsin: A Historical Perspective. It’s obviously a labor of love that will provide a valuable historical resource. The IAGSDC also has a history book, although I think it’s now out of print. It’s a collection of interviews and articles detailing the first 10 years of the IAGSDC.

I wonder how many other states or regions have written histories. I know Jim Mayo (no online presence, but here’s an article he wrote) is working on a history of Modern Western Square Dancing, and Bob Brundage has interviewed over 100 MWSD leaders for an oral history project for the Lloyd Shaw Archives. I’d love to see these resources become generally available.

Looks like CDNOW, the online music store that I’ve always used to look up song titles and see who did which songs on the Hanhurst tape, has become a mere front end to Amazon. Going to CDNOW at www.cdnow.com just results in an immediate forward to Amazon (with a CDNOW header at the top). Yet another step backwards for competition and diversity…

Hmmmm…wonder if all my old CDNOW links will work.

Nope…they just take you to the new, improved (not) Amazon/CDNOW combined front page. Sorry, but I probably won’t go back and repair them all.

After a lot of web searching, I found an article describing what’s going on. CDNOW hasn’t been sold to Amazon; Amazon is just handling the web sales. Huh…so I guess if one buys a CD after initially trying to go to the CDNOW site, CDNOW gets the sale. But one gets the Amazon front end, so what’s the point of not using Amazon in the first place?

I’m leaving for Oregon for Thanskgiving, where I’ll have only 30K modem access to the ‘net (it’s a 56K modem on an iMac, but we’re out in the boonies, so our connections are never speedy) on a phone line that’s used for lots of voice calls, so being online for hours isn’t possible. So no surfing, and probably very few updates to SquareZ. If, for some unknown reason, you’d like to see pictures of previous Thanksgivings at Star Ranch, check 2000 and 2001. And if you still haven’t seen enough of the ranch, here’s some May fishing scenes.

I came across a web site (by clicking the Random link in the webring box) that represents the antithesis of what I believe about square dancing. Of course, I think square dancing is great for mental and physical exercise. And of course I think square dancing is lots of fun. BUT, I think the dress code is a handicap, while this author thinks wearing the costumes is practically a moral obligation:

Changing square-dance dress code to alleviate personal discomfort, in the hopes of pacifying and retaining dancers, is ludicrous when you examine the whole picture. Think back. What prompted you to become a square dancer? Why would we want to give up the only major form of free advertising that exists in the square-dance world–the trademark and hallmark of our national folk dance?
…
Each dancer is an ambassador for the activity, a promoter of its benefits, and the voice of square dancing. If you love this folk-art art form and have reaped its numerous benefits, then you have a moral obligation to preserve it for others.

Well, some publicity might be worse than no publicity. Sure, the costumes make people notice…but do they make people want to join in? Personally, I started dancing in spite of the costumes, and probably wouldn’t have started at all if gay groups had any kind of dress code.

Throughout the site, the author describes square dancing as the national folk dance. That’s just wrong. There is no “national folk dance,” despite the efforts of some square dancers to make it so.

The author says:

It is our national folk dance and was officially declared so in an Act of Congress signed by President Reagan in 1982.

This is sort of true. There was an act that made square dancing the national folk dance for 1982-1983. But that was 20 years ago. There have been attempts since then, but all have failed.

For a history on this, see Julie Mangin’s widely-cited article, The State Folk Dance Conspiracy: Fabricating a National Folk Dance. I mentioned this article back in 2000, and continue to agree with it. I like modern squares. I like traditional squares. I like contras. I’m unsure on whether I consider MWSD to be a folk dance, although it certainly evolved from a folk dance tradition. I don’t care. I like to two-step and swing, and I don’t consider those to be folk dances. I like MWSD because it’s a unique dance form that combines elements of game-playing and puzzle-solving, while still being a dance. I’d like to be able to keep doing it, which means I want more people to join in, which means I want to see it well-promoted. But not by lying and calling it the “national folk dance”. It just isn’t.

Here’s a list of things you can do to foster a dance community. It was written from a contra point of view, in Contra Dance and Community, but most of the points work for modern western square dances also.

• Volunteer to help clean up at the end of a night of dancing
• Have a dance party at your house once a year
• Ask a new person to dance, or show a new dancer a basic step
• Volunteer a service (running off flyers, researching sound equipment, carrying equipment, storing equipment, offering rides to and from the dance, etc.)
• Learn how the sound system works at your dance and volunteer to help run it for an evening
• Take money at the door
• Musicans: ask dancers for input on: tempo, phrasing, etc.
• Callers: ask dancers for input on teaching techniques, approach, etc.
• Dancers: Listen to the music, the caller, the teacher
• Organize a potluck dinner before a dance
• When things go wrong, and the evening is not perfect, smile
• When things go right, and the evening IS perfect, smile
• Feel joyous and pass that on to the next person you dance with

Here’s a dance quiz for you. I came out as a dancing master:

Take it…you might be a dancing queen…or a jester…

The world of online, free-for-all encyclopedias is very strange. A few days ago, I mentioned Wikipedia, where anybody (even non-registered folks) can edit anyone’s articles. As one might expect, there are problems caused by anti-social people, people with agendas, etc. Some authors have to spend a lot of time undoing spurious changes. On the other hand, for a group of serious, community-minded folks, the whole wiki thing is cool. I could see it used for a collaborative square dance teaching tips site, for example.

Another on-line encyclopedia-like community is Everything2. which describes itself as “grown from being a very simple user-written encyclopedia to a very complex online community with a focus to write, publish and edit a quality database of information, insight and humor.” Everything2 has an entry on square dance, with a fairly detailed write-up by “elflad” (who I think I know). Elflad has also written an entry on square dance formations, which is very detailed. Unfortunately, you won’t find Everything2 entries by googling; Everything2 keeps search engine spiders out of its databases. Also, you won’t find external links in Everything2; all links are to other existing or non-existing Everything2 nodes.

If you want to see how big a semantic mindshare (at least on the web) you have with respect to a particular word, check out Googleshare. I did it with myself (of course), and Vic Ceder. Here’s how we rate:

• Kris Jensen has a 0.39% googleshare of “”square dance””
• Vic Ceder has a 7.06% googleshare of “”square dance””
• Kris Jensen has a 0.72% googleshare of “”square dancing””
• Vic Ceder has a 2.21% googleshare of “”square dancing””

Think about that: Vic’s name appears on over 7% of the pages that also mention square dance. And that’s just his name; I’ll bet it would be higher if we looked at pages that link to his site.

Here’s another way to have fun with Google: Googlefight. Stick in two rival keywords and see which has the most references in Google. Example: “square dance” gets 152,000 results, while “contra dance” gets 17,100 results.

Bill Peters made a gag out of never yodeling. Dee Dee Dougherty-Lottie always does at least one yodeling singer. Daryl Clendenin recorded a singing call, Good Callers Don’t Have To Yodel. Supreme Audio has a whole list of yodeling singing calls.

Can you learn to yodel over the internet? Try this course. And you can practice, along with Tarzan, Goofy, and a coyote, here. For lots of other links on yodeling (Country-Western and Alpine style), see Yodel Central. My new favorite place, Wikipedia, doesn’t (yet) have an article on yodeling.

Now, how did I get on yodeling today? Jeff Garbutt, an Australian caller, announced on the sd-callers email list that he was going to take down his web site (will be a dead link fairly soon), but that he was making the content available for anyone who’s interested. So I went exploring. I’d been to his site before, and liked some of his promotional writing about square dancing. He had a couple of links on yodeling, googling took over, and here you have it.

A couple of years ago, when I first wrote this weblog, I got involved with the Open Directory, a collaborative human-edited directory of the Web. I became an editor of the Square Dancing category (which, by the way, currently needs an editor). I mentioned the Open Directory a couple of times: here and here.

I also mentioned Nupedia, an open source, collaborative encyclopedia. Well, Nupedia looks like it’s going nowhere; the latest article was posted more than a year ago . However, there’s another project, the Wikipedia, a WikiWiki site devoted to building an open content encyclopedia that may have taken away Nupedia’s impetus. Nupedia has (had?) an elaborate review system for every article. Wikipedia is open; anybody can edit any article at any time. For more info, see the entry on Wikipedia in the encyclopedia itself.

This open format has clearly encouraged contributions. While the Nupedia had no entry on square dancing, Wikipedia has several, including:

• Square Dance
• Western Square Dance
• Contra
• Gay Square Dancing

. And all can be edited at any time. We could make it a definitive reference.