There’s a 1.8 mile hike from the parking lot to the beach between the cliffs. It took us four hours to make it to the beach and back. That’s just a little over a mile an hour. There was so much to see on the way. The highlight was the wetland area halfway through the trail where there are nesting red-headed woodpeckers. If you don’t know what one looks like, check it out in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Bird Guide. They’re gorgeous. The red in the picture isn’t as vibrant as they are in reality, but you’ll get the idea. We watched a battle between a pair of adult woodpeckers, and a squirrel who was trying to raid their nest hole.

I searched in vain on the beach for shark’s teeth, but I wasn’t disappointed. It was pretty out there.

After our hike, we tried to visit the famous Vera’s White Sands Beach Club and Marina, but found that it is only open Thursday through Sunday. We ended up driving a little farther south to Solomons, and had a great crab cake lunch at the Captain’s Table. While searching for an alternative for Vera’s, Lynda demonstrated for me how cool GPS technology has become. She searched for restaurants near our location, and even dialed the restaurant for her so that she could make sure they were open. We’ll have to come back another day to experience Vera’s.

There are more photos from this trip in a set called Calvert Cliffs State Park on my Flickr site.

This is the $5 yard, meaning that the minimum bid for anything is $5. You can’t see it in this picture, but the items in this category covered about two football fields of space. I know what you are thinking, “you mean, I could have that porch glider for only $5?” Well, only if no one else wants it.

This tacky treasure was found in the barn, where the minimum bid is $10. I would have loved to have this faded print of a 19th century ballet theme, in a 1950s era “modern” frame. An extra bonus is the glitter someone put on the tutus of all the dancers, plus the male lead’s costume.

The $20 yard had nicer furniture, art, and crafts. Some of the items were not old; a few artists brought in their work to try to sell it by auction.

If an item isn’t about to sell, and there isn’t a prospective buyer guarding it, you can have fun with them.

After the auctioneer passed, and the winners and the pickers had done their work, the $5 yard looked desolate.

The only problem with the auction is that it is so huge. There were a few things that I might have liked to acquire, but I could tell that it would have been hours before the auctioneer would get to them. You can’t just take them up to the register like you can in an antique store.

Some day, I’ll go there when I’ve got time to spend all day. Who knows what I’ll find at Dixon’s Furniture Auction!

1998 was a very hard year for me. A couple of years earlier, I’d bought a four-bedroom house in my own name and moved my boyfriend and his two teenaged sons in with me. Then they all moved out toward the end of 1997 and I had to pay the mortgage by myself at the same time that I had taken a cut in pay to take a new and more promising job at the library where I now work. For most of 1998, I struggled financially, and I also struggled to keep my relationship with Marty together, despite his moving out.

On August 5, 1998, we had just returned from our third session of couples counseling. It had not gone well for Marty. Basically, the therapist, after hearing both our stories, turned to Marty and told him that he was wrong. As gratifying as I found this, I was by then savvy enough to know that this did not bode well for our future. After the session, Marty and I sat out on the patio in the backyard and discussed it. I don’t remember a lot about our conversation, except the moment when he turned to me and said, “I’m still mad at you for buying this house.”

That was the statement that made me stop my futile efforts to save the relationship, which had been an enormous drain on my emotional and physical resources. With everything I had sacrificed and compromised in the service of preserving it, it was finally clear that it was no damn use. He was stuck on the petty view that, as he put it, “a marriage won’t work unless someone is in charge, and if I get married, it’s going to have to be me.” I told him it was over, and he could take all of his stuff, including the radial arm saw in the basement, out of the house he resented me owning, and keep it all somewhere else. I didn’t care where.

If he saw me now, married to Bob, who is so much his opposite, I’m sure he wouldn’t know what to make of it. It was beyond his comprehension to think of a relationship where people are equals, and position isn’t determined by gender or (mis)interpretations of the Bible. (How DID I end up with this guy, anyway?) He’ll ever know what my life is like now; he died suddenly of a massive heart attack in early 2004, the same year in which I later met Bob.

Dang! That’s a hell of a way to end a post. Even though I am now happy in my marriage to Bob, there seems to be some processing I still need to do with the emotional remnants of my experience with Marty. Sometime soon, I want to post stories from the trip I took to Colorado with Marty to visit his extended family to tell them about how his stepfather abused him from the age of about three. How’s that for a cliffhanger?

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.

More photos on my Flickr site

Bob and I went t the Takoma Park Independence Day Parade. What a wide range of participants! There were the usual politicians, public service personnel and veterans, the school kids and day care providers. There were also musicians (the steel drum players, the dc motors band, and even a Christian rock band).

There were dancers from Bolivia, the Virgin Islands, and elsewhere in the Caribbean. Their costumes were crazy with color, and the V. I. Carnival troupe was simply over the top (think Carmen Miranda on steroids). Other floats/marchers dealt with local political issues such as the upcoming referendum on having slots in Maryland. While some of the marchers made their opinions known in a straight-forward way, others used satire and hyperbole.

“Bring casinos to Takoma Park,” they said. Their float included a pickup truck decorated as a casino, with little kids playing poker looking like little gamblers. There was a gangster representing the criminal element, and also an Elvis impersonator. (Actually, having Elvis could be considered a motive FOR a casino.) There were Shriners in their fezzes, some with custom clear plastic fez protectors because rain was predicted. (Only a sprinkle or two actually came down, thank goodness.)

There was even a float for a conspiracy theory that on 9/11, the World Trade Center Buildings were actually brought down by controlled demolition. Only in Takoma Park would you find such a diverse yet entertaining group marching together. After the parade, we went to the gazebo in the center of the old town to hear Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer performing for the kids. Then, we went to the new location of HMT on Westmoreland Avenue.

On Sunday, we saw the movie, “Get Smart” which was funny but not remarkable. I rarely see new movies in a theater, so that aspect of the outing was remarkable. We went to a Thai Restaurant in Silver Spring after the show. The food was good, but they were so efficient, we were out of there in 30 minutes. So much for lingering over dinner.

On Sunday, we went downtown to the National Mall for the last day of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, to hear Marcia Ball. She plays a rocking blues boogie woogie swing kind of music. We danced to two numbers, but it was just too hot. We listened to the rest of the set from the bleachers.We only visited a little bit of the Bhutan exhibit. It was fascinating, but we didn’t have enough time. I could only remark on what a beautiful country it was, and that it seemed that their art only used the most brilliant colors.

That’s it for now. I’m looking forward to taking a little trip to WV in August. I wish it could be a long trip, but I don’t know if I can be spared from work that long. I’ll have to figure out how much I care about that.

For more photos from the weekend, check out my flickr site: http://flickr.com/photos/tackyjulie/

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/

I hope I don’t run out of ideas to write about. If you find me writing something called Part One part 2, then you’ll know that I have. But what I’m really hoping for is inspiration. Send me some if you have any you can spare. Thanks.

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!

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.