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.

I cannot believe my good luck today. I was driving down Main Street in Laurel, Maryland at just the right moment to witness the delivery of a seven-foot fiberglass chicken to the front of a butcher shop. An even greater stroke of luck was that I had my camera with me at the time.

More photos on my Flickr site

Chris and Lars are two old-time musicians who like to play practical jokes. If you go to an old-time music festival and see a campsite with a bust of Elvis, it just might be them. Ten years ago, I had a party at my house, and many of my old-time music friends showed up, including Chris and Lars. The next morning, when Marty went out to get the newspaper, he noticed a golden calf sitting on our deck. I knew right away who left it. I was amused, and somewhat honored that I had received this attention from the boys.

Marty, however, was offended. He felt that it was the golden calf from the Bible, the idol that the Israelites worshiped in the desert. I told Marty, “Look at this calf. It’s reclining. It’s from a nativity scene, for crying out loud.” But Marty would have none of it. At one point, I suggested that we paint it red and put it in the garden so that it would attract hummingbirds. This was not acceptable to Marty. We had to get rid of it.

How does one get rid of a 70-80 lb. unwanted sculpture? Several possibilities ran through my mind. We could go to a lawn sculpture store and leave it outside the gate. Surely, that would not be a crime. I thought about leaving it on the lawn of the government library where I worked at the time. This was before 9/11, and there was not as much surveillance at government buildings as there is now, especially not out in the Maryland suburbs.

Ultimately, I knew that the easiest way to get rid of the golden calf sculpture was to leave it out at the curb in front of my house with a sign on it reading “FREE.” Marty didn’t like the idea because he found it embarrassing. He didn’t think anyone would take it anyway. But I insisted, and made him a bet: if the cow was still there after 24 hours, I would have to drop it off somewhere and take him out to dinner at the Outback Steak House. If it was gone before then, he had to take me to the Outback. We shook on the bet at 8:08 p.m. that night. He had to carry it out to the curb for me, because it was so heavy. Strangely, he insisted on wearing gloves while he carried it, he was so repulsed by it. Then, he left and went home to his apartment in Aspen Hill, where he had been living since moving out of my house in November 1997.

It was not even two hours later that I heard a car pull up to the front of the house. It was now about 10:00 at night. I heard a door open, and the sound of mariachi music streamed out of the vehicle. I ran to the upstairs window to take a look at what was going on. By that time, the sliding door of a minivan was slamming shut, and it took off. The golden calf was gone.

This is such a silly story, but it shows how irrational Marty could be, just in order to get his way. He wasn’t that stupid a man, but he could dig his heels in on an issue if he wanted to, and no logic would work on him. I remember when we were arguing about the boys, and he told me that everyone he knew agreed with me that the boys needed to be out of our home and on their own. One of his best friends actually despised me, and the feeling was mutual. He was a misogynist pig asshole, and I was a liberal feminist. Yet, Marty admitted that he had said this to him: “Marty, I don’t even like Julie, and I agree with her. In police work, that is known as a clue.” And yet Marty said he couldn’t help it, though, and went ahead and moved out with the boys.

The strange thing about going back into my journal from ten years ago is seeing how hard I was trying to make this relationship succeed. There wasn’t a future in it, but I just didn’t know that then.

http://juliemangin.com/ten-years-ago-part-1/

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!

Last night, Bob and I woke up to a sound we couldn’t quite identify, not quite a dog barking, not quite a cat yowling. It was more like a raspy howl. I jumped out of bed and looked out the window to see a fox in my driveway, howling over and over. He was there for a few minutes, and then he got up and ran into the street, running down toward the ponds, still howling.

It still amazes me how much wildlife we have all around us, even though we are in a suburb of Washington, D.C. We are just about a mile due north of the Maryland/District of Columbia line, between the Capitol Beltway and downtown Wheaton.

Today, Bob and I took a walk down the street, right where the fox was probably headed last night. There is a network of man-made ponds to capture the storm water from Wheaton. There’s little green space in Wheaton, and the rain that comes down on all the impervious surfaces (parking lots, roads, etc.) has to go somewhere. The water eventually drains to Sligo Creek via little creeks that run through the neighborhoods. Whenever there is a major shower in the area, the potential for erosion of these creek beds is significant, which is why the ponds were built. They hold all that water, and send a controlled amount of water to the creek downstream.

A side benefit to this is that lots of species of wildlife are attracted to this area. Here’s what we saw today:

We didn’t see another fox, but we saw a pair of deer at the edge of one of the ponds.

Dozens of Canada geese; one pair had a gaggle of five goslings.

Several wood ducks: two females with clutches of chicks numbering seven and eight each, and one male. The males have fantastic coloring. http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Wood_Duck.html

Two black-crowned night-herons. http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Black-crowned_Night-Heron.html

A green heron.
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Green_Heron.html

One female belted kingfisher.
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Belted_Kingfisher.html

One killdeer.
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Killdeer.html

A couple of small turtles and one large one, possibly a snapping turtle.

Tree swallows, song sparrows, robins, grackles, a phoebe, a mallard duck, and a red-winged blackbird. We saw a baby robin that seemed to have just mastered flying, and a baby grackle that was on the ground but didn’t look like it knew how, yet.

Six tiger swallowtails clustered together in the mud, extracting minerals and nutrients from the soil.

A school of about thirty brown bullhead fish.

When I was shopping for a house twelve years ago, I found the ponds down the street. I saw my first night-heron there. It just about sold me on the place right then. Even from inside my house, I can see all kinds of wildlife, because there is an open field across the street. Behind that is a patch of woods, and behind the woods and to the right are the ponds.

I’ve never been such a fanatical birder that I keep a life list, but I do have a couch list. Follow this link to a piece I wrote about it on Julie’s Tacky Treasures: http://www.tackytreasures.com/tackyhtml/couch-list.html. I accumulated thirty three species on this list before I stopped. It’s unlikely that I’ll add any more to the list because I moved the bird feeder from the front yard where I could see it from the couch, to the back.  But if I do, that page is where I’ll report it.