I'm kinda hoping I'm wrong, of course.
Now I'm wondering what nefarious group led to the gym class with the parachute.
I'm kinda hoping I'm wrong, of course.
I've never heard of the conspiracy, but I did discussion Square Dancing in this comment.
I had square dancing in gym class in 9th grade. As I recall it was awkward, but I was able to do it, which makes it the only kind of set (?) dancing I didn't completely fail at.
"The students requested several songs that they would much rather move along to than my 1993 techno-country."
Hilarious.
OP: An excellent antidote to the rest of the news screaming today.
I'm pretty sure everybody who watches quicksand porn is both a Trump voter and at least curious about the serial killer lifestyle.
I knew about Ford's anti-jazz campaign, but not the legislative square dance stuff specifically.
Ooh, I read about this earlier today. I was going to share it with good friends who run a local square dancing band/monthly dance, but decided that the creepy Henry Ford aspect might seem like I was suggesting they were secret Nazis.
It's obvious that the quicksand porn is largely about the squishy noises, right?
At least the German antisemites/racists tried to use Wagner as an alternative to jazz instead of just total bullshit.
Total bullshit is the most truly American cultural tradition.
Then you can enjoy your techno-country and I'll listen to "Ride of the Valkyries" and we'll see who uses napalm better and has better art airbrushed on the side of their van.
I'm thinking this combined with this.
It's telling that you don't suggest win-loss record in world wars as a metric for comparison.
20: there's a great baseball nerd joke there, but nobody will get it.
Don't call me Shirley.
Haven't read the OP yet, but surely this means we need to start a movement to get contra dancing or clogging adopted as state folk dances instead.
Check it out: a flying Ekranoplan. I just found out I'm two degrees of separation from someone who owns one.
When I was little, my mom was terribly worried that I was going to grow up without any appreciation for culture* and desperate to a suitable activity to encourage said appreciation. It turns out that one-stoplight towns don't have a lot cultural activities so I was enrolled in Irish dancing classes. I was horrible, but I didn't realize how horrible until Riverdance came out a decade later and I realized what I was intended to have been jumping off the ground.
* She knew me well.
As a kid, my thoughts were along the lines of "It's good for me that only the girls are supposed to jump off the ground during this dance".
contra dancing
Is that when you jump up, up, crouch down, down, left foot left foot, and then right right?
This is one of the few times I recommend Wikipedia and looking at the references. There is - at most- a grain of truth about how square dancing found it into the schools. The rest is tinfoil hat material.
25 But that's not what an ekranoplan is.
30: YES. Thank you. No, that's not an ekranoplan; that is merely a flying boat. Which are also cool, but not in the same league.
Oooh. Ekranoplan!
31 last: I've been in love since King Ottokar's Sceptre, and I don't care what the cool kids think.
33.
Spike: "Careful, he's got an ekranoplan!"
Barry and ajay: "You call that an ekranoplan? Now THIS is an ekranoplan."
I suppose should credit the former person or bear, but...
I ALWAYS SAY, WHY NOT BOTH?
The official state dance of South Carolina is the Carolina Shag. In North Carolina, it is not the official state dance, just the official popular dance.
Barry and ajay: "You call that an ekranoplan? Now THIS is an ekranoplan."
Humorless pedants, is what they are.
I mean, you could probably shorten the wings on that thing and it would work just fine as an ekranoplan.
I followed the links cited as sources (on the original stuff about square dance, not the legislative movement), and they mostly bottomed out at sites making bald assertions. Looking further, one problem with it is I didn't find anyone saying Henry Ford funded Lloyd "Pappy" Shaw. That guy seemed to come later, from the 40's. He did fund another dance instructor, Benjamin Lovett, from the 20's, and they co-wrote a book, which may have influenced Shaw.
A useful scholarly article (PDF). Its thrust is that Ford's promotion of folk dance was another hobby orthogonal to his various bigotries, but I don't buy it - his book's introduction talked about "the importation of dances which are foreign to the expressional needs of our people".
But it gives a lot more detail. In addition to the book, Ford built dancehalls, pressed records, distributed columns to newspapers, got music on the radio, had dealerships play the music on loudspeakers and put on local dances as outreach events, and Lovett spread a program around many public schools and colleges. But I don't know how much grounding there is to say Ford actually foisted the whole thing on the whole country. It appears to have had a brief craze that, if sparked by him, quickly became a much bigger thing.
41: young man if you aren't prepared to take ekranoplans seriously then you need to find another blog with commenters of your own sordid stamp because this is not the one for you.
Oh, excuse me Mr. "Flying Boat." Boats don't fly, you deluded fool. Its a fucking flying ekronoplan.
27: there is a different style of traditional dancing which involves a lot less jumping of the ground.
https://youtu.be/2bYsk3_RDmQ
But I doubt the classes were trying to teach it.
I can barely remember anything but "shuffle, ball, change."
OT: An new email correspondent of mine has a sig file reading "Lean Six Sigma Green Belt". Does that mean they are likely to be a problem?
Probably means he's a sucker for stuff marketed as business panaceas.
One of my DC roommates was/is very involved in the square dancing scene there. I made a flier for a dance event one time, and attended parties at which square dancing occurred. He wasn't quoted in the City Paper article, though, so maybe there are competing factions.
There's probably some kind of code where the style of apron worn is the tell.
Also that roommate was from Kentucky, and one time we got in a fight because he said prejudice against people from Kentucky was like racism, and I said saying that was racist. Neither of us found $5.
If it makes you feel better, you were right and he was stupid.
It turns out, I'm the official arbiter of both of those things if either of you have a Visa card or eaten in a Chipotle in the past five years.
48: 99.99966% chance he is an asshole.
56: Because I'm a Bayesian and they are from Ohio, 99.999966 percent.
