This is my response to the 25 things challenge.  It was originally posted on Facebook, but I removed it during the Facebook Terms of Service shit storm of February 2009.  Since then, I’ve decided to use Facebook only for social networking.  Any of my creative output, such as photos or writing, will go on my own web sites, or on Flickr, where they respect their users’ intellectual property.  Occasionally, I will post links on Facebook.

I enjoyed writing my 25 things, and truly enjoyed reading other people’s 25 things.  That’s not narcissistic (as some newspaper stories about the trend alleged).  It’s a way to connect with people who are interesting.  As far as relationships go, the rest is up to us to follow through on.  A social networking site can’t do that for us.

Here are the rules:  “Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.”

1. I love tea. I hardly ever drink coffee. I love tea so much that I coined the phrase, “Tea…the other brown drink.” Yeah, that was me.

2. I avoid wearing light blue shirts or blouses because they remind me of the uniform I wore for eight years in Catholic school. Needless to say, saddle shoes are totally out of the question.

3. I went to the first 15 years of the Clifftop old-time music festival, and then got completely burnt out on the festival camping. I miss the people, the music, and the dancing, but not enough to camp there.

4. A few years ago, I finally found a sweet man who is at least as smart, if not smarter, than me. So, I married him.

5. I got married for the first time the day after I turned 52. Better late than never.

6. I have two black and white cats. One is named after the late, great Dave Grant. The other is not.

7. I was in Washington, D.C. working on Capitol Hill, on September 11, 2001. Ever since then, I always make sure I have comfortable shoes with me at work, so I can walk the ten miles home in an emergency, if I have to.

8. I learned Appalachian clogging in 1980, and picked up the banjo in 1986. Now I’m learning to play the ukulele.

9. I have three sisters and two brothers. I’m the third.

10. I had never heard of the Weekly World News until my younger sister was in it for teaching Bible study in the nude.

11. Most of my life, I haven’t worn make-up. I guess I’m more interested in cosmology than cosmetics. However, I have begun to wear a little lipstick now and then, because I am tired of seeing photographs of myself in which I look like I don’t have any lips.

12. Until I got on Facebook, I thought my name was unique. Then I got a friend request from someone named Julie Mangin. I checked her friend list, and she had another Julie Mangin already on it. Every once in a while my FB feed says something like, “Julie Mangin is a fan of KFC chicken,” and I think “how do they know?” before remembering it’s the OTHER Julie Mangin.

13. My niece and I share a birthday. On my wedding day, she went into labor and had to leave fifteen minutes before the ceremony began. If her daughter had been born a day earlier, all three of us would have had the same birthday.

14. I have souvenir plates from the Maryland amusement park, The Enchanted Forest, which I sell on eBay.

15. I’ve always wanted to do something on stage in the Galax band contest that would cause the Moose Lodge to create another contest rule. It would be referred to as the “Julie Rule.”

16. Every weekday, I read the Washington Post comics section on the subway in the morning. If I have time, I do the sudoku, too.

17. I’m thinking of retiring in a couple of years.

18. I’m the first person to win a prize in the Washington Post’s Style Invitational contest for an entry that they deemed too vulgar to print. Gene Weingarten called it, “a hilarious entry too revolting to be published on any planet inhabited by sentient beings.” I didn’t think it was that bad.

19. I used to be known as the Clog Mogul of D.C., but I always preferred to be called an impresario.

20. I have the world’s largest collection of Mark Eden Bust Developers. They are among the many tacky treasures I collect.

21. I have had one of my photographs published in People Magazine.

22. If I could start my own religion, I’d make Girl Scout Thin Mints the communion wafer. I would encourage meditation while listening to Uncle Bunt Stephens play “Candy Girl.” One of the sacraments would involve crabs, fresh tomatoes, corn on the cob, and beer.

23. I used to smoke a pack and a half of cigarettes a day until the late 1970s. I quit because I was struggling through music school, and I needed to drop the smoke breaks to get more study and practice time in.

24. When I was in my 20s, I learned to drive a motorcycle. On the first day of driving class, I kick-started my motorcycle in gear, launched myself six feet in the air, and landed on all fours. On the last day, I got the highest score on the driving test. The instructor called me his most improved student.

25. I received a masters degree in library science about 25 years ago, and started working as a librarian. Now, I’m a web developer who writes dynamic pages in PHP/MySQL. What the hell happened?

Jerry Springer, David Hasselhoff, and those two other judges (whoever the hell they are) don’t know what they’re missing.  The show they are on, America’s Got Talent, gets all the pop star wannabes.  I went to Buena Vista, Virginia last weekend for the Rockbridge Mountain Music & Dance Convention, and witnessed some real talent.  I don’t need the crooning vocals and the incredible high notes.  I don’t need the posing dancers with technical proficiency.  Just give me the Green Grass Cloggers and a back-up band that includes the best old-time musicians alive.

Two days camped in out with a few hundred equally rabid old-time music musicians and dancers and fans sure adjusted my attitude.   I almost forgot I had a job.  When I’m at a festival, I’m about as “in the moment” as I can ever get. Bob and I arrived mid-afternoon on Friday night, not knowing what Hurricane Hannah might send our way.  We set up our tents, and when Susan arrived, we had a marvelous 10′x20′ tarp roof to our campsite that we hoped would stand up.  As it turned out, we just got rain, steady but not torrential, and which came straight down, instead of sideways.  We went to the square dance at the big pavillion, but realized that when you dance that exuberantly on concrete, you pay for it in the morning.  The little dance pavillion down in the campsite had a plywood floor; not ideal, but still better than concrete.  Skeedaddle played there at 11:00 p.m.  Bob and I did the swing until it was time to crawl into the dome tent with the air mattress that fills almost the entire floor.

The next morning (okay it was a little bit into the afternoon), the Ukulele Summit happened right in our campsite, mainly because I’m the one who called for it.  Everyone had a song to share, and some techniques, and some laughs.  We played Hawaiian tunes under the direction of Hugh Crumley, were treated to the fine song stylings of Anastasia Maddox and Susan Bunn Rosen, and even Bob sang something (”Bow Tie Daddy” from Frank Zappa). Bob accompanied my singing of “The Vatican Rag” and we all joined in on “Burning Down the House” by the Talking Heads.  Bet no one has done it with 4 ukes and a Hawaiian slide guitar before, although the Belligerent Brothers have done it with a fiddle, banjo, and a marimba.

The afternoon was filled with exciting performances, which I caught on video.

The Green Grass Cloggers kicked it up for their 37th year reunion.  For a group that is mostly in their fifties, they were in great form.  They were such iconoclasts in the early 1970s, when they decided to enter the “World Clogging Championship” at Fiddlers Grove in North Carolina.  Rodney Sutton told a little of the history of the group, and said that after they won it the second year, the rules were changed so that their style would be disqualified.  By that time, they’d become so popular that a number of them hit the road to perform at major folk festivals around the U.S. and Canada.  You can see their reunion performance on my YouTube channel

The Indian: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2sKyLAgmJo

Tea Cup Chain:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGt4iPIpIp0

Freestyle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ckj0zWRV7SY.

I’m not sure who to thank for the appearance of a trebuchet at the festival.  It provided over an hour of enjoyment to all who watched.  A trebuchet is a type of cataput that relies on a counterweighted throwing arm, in this case, an arm about twenty feet long.  Watermelons, water balloons, a rubber chicken, and a toy bass-playing polar bear were launched into the air.  If they had cleared the stratosphere, it could have been called a space program.  Instead, it was just plain fun.  Check this out on YouTube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmY-CW6Wuco.

So, America does have talent, but the popular television show doesn’t begin to address the variety that’s out there.  That’s why I love to get out there and witness it for myself.

There’s a wild time going on in West Virginia this weekend. The Appalachian String Band Music Festival is a mecca for old-time musicians all over the country. I’d guess a good 3,000 people are crammed into every possible camping space at Camp Washington Carver in the little town of Clifftop. There will be fiddle, banjo, and band contests, not to mention clogging. There will be tunes in the campground all day long and all night. Some of the greatest, funniest, most interesting people I’ve ever met will be there. But I won’t.

It’s been a couple of years since I’ve been to the festival in Clifftop. About ten years ago, I just got tired of camping. I especially got tired of camping around hundreds of people whose priority was playing tunes, drinking, and hollering at all hours of the night. Now I’ll admit to having engaged in such behavior myself when I was younger. But I’m not the same person any more.

Still, I remember fondly the transcendent moments I experience while at a festival. One night I’ll never forget was about eight or nine years ago, at the Bluegrass and Old-Time Fiddlers Convention in Mt. Airy, North Carolina. It was a warm, clear night, around midnight. I had gone there alone, and was at that moment strolling from jam to jam with no one but myself for company. All I know is that the music was so good that I felt a peace within myself unlike the way I usually felt, which was insecure and lonely. I looked up into the sky at all the stars, with the music wrapping around me like a ribbon and I realized that at that moment, I was exactly where I belonged in the universe. All was right with the world because I was at that festival, hearing that music.

Moments like that at a festival are the exception, though, not the rule. I hate trying to sleep while a couple of drunks decide to have a yelling match outside my tent at 5:00 a.m. It’s not like it’s safe for a single woman to speak up for herself in that situation. And then there’s waiting in a line for an hour for a hot shower in a concrete bath house. Don’t get me started on the PortaJohns.

About four years ago, I met Bob, who will listen to old-time music, and even likes some of it. I’m fortunate that he also likes to dance. But festivals are really for people who play the music, and not much fun for those who don’t, especially if all their spouse wants to do is chase jam sessions all weekend. So, between my dislike of camping, and my desire to not make Bob endure a whole weekend of boredom, I’ve stopped going to the big festivals like Clifftop and Mt. Airy. Fortunately, there’s the Rockbridge Mountain Music and Dance Convention in September. It’s small enough, and Bob knows enough of the people for both of us to have a good time. I’ll be there again this year, and since Bob has taken up the ukulele, we’ll even play together there with some other folks we know.

To all my friends who are in Clifftop right now, I say, “Whoop it up!” I’ll be thinking of you. And I’ll have some of you over in a couple of weeks so you can tell me all about it.

Harrisonburg, Virginia is “the Friendly City.” We were there this weekend mainly because Bob has a painting in a show there (see http://www.bobcantor.com/ for details). We drove in on Route 33 (where we’ve been told you can get HALF your kicks), and ended up stopped at the intersection that faces the courthouse square. They were having an event there that involved people in 1850’s costumes. Man, did they look hot. I saw one of the presenters from a distance, and said , “Bob, that’s Sandy!” And indeed it was her with her daughter Lucy, performing in a storytelling session. We found a parking space, walked to the square, and sat among the small but attentive audience, which included her husband, Steve.

It’s always great to know someone in town that can give you tips on what to do and where to go. Steve gave us two great ones which made the weekend so much more interesting for us. First, we asked where we could get some ice cream to eat on this hot and humid day. He recommended Kline’s Dairy Bar, which not only had fabulous home made soft-serve ice cream, but had some great neon for me to photograph. While we were there, the skies opened up, and we had some much needed relief from the heat.

The other tip Steve gave us came about because we were talking about music, and we mentioned that we were both playing ukulele a lot these days. He told us that the owner of the Guitar and Amp Center had an awesome collection of ukuleles on display, and when we got there, we knew Steve was not kidding. He even had two bass ukuleles made by Gibson. The owner also answered a question I had about my 1927 Martin ukulele, and gave me the good news that the instrument I have is indeed all original. He even had one on display, so I could see for myself. I took a lot of photos, the best of which can be found on my Flickr site (http://www.flickr.com/photos/tackyjulie/).

I’ll post more about my weekend in Harrisonburg later. In the meantime, enjoy the photos!

Every year, I go down to Charlottesville for a weekend camping in the woods with 200 or so of my friends. We play music, dance, eat, drink, and best of all, laugh. If I didn’t have this party to go to, how would I measure the quality of my life? This is the best, the place where I feel most welcome. Even if the rest of my life isn’t quite this grand, it’s important to know that the possibility is there.

This is the twenty-second year in a row I’ve done this. Bob has come with me the last three years, and it’s so wonderful that he gets it, too. Now that he’s got the hang of the ukulele, he was even jamming with us. Who knows how good he will be next year?

I haven’t been playing that much this year, but somehow, my fingers got themselves in gear and I played my banjo faster than I have ever played it. Thanks to Sheila for inviting me into that jam. It was a ride of a lifetime. I’m still popping ibuprofen for my shoulder.

Paul and Susan are my camping buddies. At first, it was just Paul and I. I don’t even remember when I first met Paul. We like to camp together at parties and festivals like this. He used to always bring the women he was dating to this event. If they didn’t get it, then he didn’t see a future for them. Susan took to it like a duck to water the first time he brought her. Not long after that, they became engaged. I really enjoy her company. The best thing is that when Bob came along, he fit in perfectly. So, now we are two married couples that share a campsite. It feels so warm and welcoming.

Hugh and Anastasia show me how to have a good time. Their campsite is always filled with people, food, instruments, and toys. We held the second annual Ukulele Summit there. We shared charts and tunes and tips for playing. Hugh got out his steel guitar, and we sounded really Hawaiian! Anastasia sang, and Steve sang and backed us up on guitar, too. Steve invented the “capon,” which is a capo with a small rubber chicken on it. It’s definitely a tacky treasure, and I’m going to enter it into the Tacky Treasures Road Show for him.

We’re on the banks of a river, and a walk down the rocky shore is always a treat. People are swimming, fishing, and building cairns with the river rocks. I found a tree where a pair of downy woodpeckers are building a nest hole. It was amazing to watch them work, and I was happy to be able to share what I found with Bob.

This was the thirty-fifth year in a row that this party has been held. There are only three organized events connected with it: silly skits on Friday night, at the end of which they sing the theme song of the party; tee shirt and raffle ticket sales on Saturday morning, to raise money to defray costs; and the raffle on Saturday night. Everyone is happy for the winners. I’m happy for all of us.

See my photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/tackyjulie/sets/72157605129657095/