20 April 2008 - 20:23State symbols

Bob and I are big Jeopardy! fans. Many times, contestants are quizzed on their knowledge of U.S. state symbols. Since Bob has only lived in Maryland for about a half a year, he didn’t know Maryland’s state symbols. He later went to the Maryland State Archives web site to bone up on his adopted state.

The state crustacean of Maryland is the blue crab. The state dog is the Chesapeake Bay Retriever. The state boat is the skipjack. There’s also the oriole, the black-eyed Susan, and even a state dinosaur, Astrodon johnstoni. All of these have a connection to Maryland or to the region.

And then Bob reminded me of something that makes me sore: the state folk dance is square dancing. It’s not mountain square dancing which I have enjoyed, but the highly structured Modern Western Square Dance (MWSD), a recreation club activity that dates back to the 1920s at the earliest. I’m not sore because it wasn’t my kind of square dance that became the state folk dance, even though I think it’s more inclusive and more genuinely a folk dance; I don’t think any dance should get that honor. Having a government agency determine a state folk dance is the antithesis of the folk process, but the sponsors of the bill didn’t see this irony at all. These so-called square dancers weren’t interested in finding the most representative folk dance for Maryland, they just wanted the “honor” for themselves.

At the time the legislation was being debated, in 1994, I dealt with it by writing a well-researched article for the Old-Time Herald explaining exactly what they were trying to do, and why I thought it was a terrible idea. If you read the article, you will find that it didn’t just happen in Maryland. And before their state-by-state campaign, the MWSD-ers tried and failed to have square dance declared the national folk dance.

My one consolation is that I believe the presence of my article on the Internet has made it available to congressional researchers every time they (the Modern Western Square Dance organizations) sucker some Congressman into sponsoring this legislation. It is usually referred to a committee right away and never do-si-dos its way out. After all, the U.S. Congress has more important things to do. After more than two hundred years of existence, this country has only a handful of national symbols: the flag, the Great Seal, the national anthem, the bald eagle, and the American rose. I think Congress is afraid of opening the flood gates to all kinds of “national” designations.

I’d like to see a Jeopardy! game with “state folk dance” as the category. As nearly every state legislature now has been hoodwinked into making square dance their state folk dance, what better way to show the stupidity of their decisions.