Gentle Nonsense, It's Dadaism Month!

Today I break the rules of professional business blogging and blog-blab on about ideas pretty much unrelated to my blog's topic (fundraising and social change, for those still tuned in).

My ol' college buddy Boog Highberger, current mayor of Lawrence, KS (Go Jayhawks) and unwavering Gentle Anarchist, has declared International Dadism Month.

To be celebrated on Feb. 4, April 1, March 28 (coincidentally my birthday), July 15, Aug. 2, Aug. 7, Aug. 16, Aug. 26, Sept. 18, Sept. 22, Oct. 1, Oct. 17 and Oct. 26.

Here's the piece in the Lawrence-Journal World with boog's photo. And here's a post I liked from another blogger.

Google tells us that Dadism was "a western European artistic and literary movement (1916-23) that sought the discovery of authentic reality through the abolition of traditional culture and aesthetic forms," offers one of the hometown newspaper online chatters.

Interesting to me is transplanting the movement to our own time, noting the global jumble of media images, outsized personalities, shocking not shocking violence, political and corporate interests, doublespeak, tiny businesses, cultural amplification via technology, sustaining charitable spirit, intimate impersonal communities, red vs. blue, the new right vs. the Landon-Kassabaum Republicans, each blue caucus opposed to each other blue causus, religious fundamentalists vs. evangelical progressives vs. ethical peaceniks, rich and poor... Is there any sensible way to weave these threads together? How are we making meaning from this noisy culture?

In the meantime, here's to acknowledging nonsense.