Once upon a time I was a troll on alt.drum   You people (whoever was there then and is still alive and cares) first of all have my sincerest apology.  I'm going on memory (not sifting through google groups archives), so some of the details may be a little off with the fading of old memories (I think that we're talking about 12-13 years ago?).  But I managed to get touched (and now I've gotten what I deserved from the coyotes of the world).

So dumdrum seemed like a troll too.  But I'm not sure if she was.   Lots of people certainly thought so.  My bet is that dumdrum was an awesome drummer, but who knows.  The thing is that I wasn't.   I wasn't a drummer at all.   Looking back now it sure seems puzzling that I spent so much time then arguing about drumming with drummers (when I just wanted to be one, but had never really made any kind of effort to actually try *practicing* or anything sensible).   So whether or not it was actually alt.drum (or some other newsgroup/mailing-list) who knows?   If it's important I suppose I can go google it later and make corrections.  I think it was Bob who introduced me to the group (I'm thinking now that it was an unmoderated mailing list (rather than an actual newsgroup)).  What I do know is that along with alt.gnu.discuss and alt.hackers.malicious it was my favorite place to read/play when I was just figuring out the world wide web.

Bob was (and still is presumably? I think it's probably like riding a bike) a drummer.  He loved drumming and tried to get me interested, but I wasn't interested enough to take several hours of my time to go hang out with other drummers and bang on a drum.   I liked trolling the list though.   It's a cool connection that it was Bob who introduced me.  Because he's still in my life (Mary and Michelle were incredibly close and have stayed that way all these years).   And  he and Mary showed up at Mom's memorial service in the Stone Church last week.  For which I will be eternally grateful for the rest of my life.  Anyhow the details of my trolling are sort of sketchy with so much time having past since.  My memory is that I saw a bunch of people arguing vehemently with dumdrum.  I don't remember what the argument was about, but I remember that dumdrum seemed to be sort of cheating (underhanded arguing) but somehow I liked her style and thought that those demanding her silence (or for her to leave the list) were acting like bullies.  So I think I tried to come to her defense.  In hindsight, I doubt she needed (nor even wanted) that.  Eventually I ended up arguing with her about some things too (but I was somewhat careful in never fully attacking -- only poking around the edges of her points to suss them out, never wanting to truly piss her off because frankly I was a little scared).  Since I was pretty new to the internet at the time (and much younger than I am now), the skill of lurking wasn't something I had learned (it hadn't really even occurred to me).   I'm much better now, but since they were called "discussion groups", well that's what I thought I should do, "discuss".

My absolute favorite person on the list was named R.  This was ostensibly because he didn't want people to know whether he was a guy or a girl.  But he was really open about everything, so everyone knew he was a guy and that the R stood for Robert (I don't remember R's last name).   R. taught me a whole bunch about tolerance.   At the root of it, dumdrum had an agenda that had to do with race and "ownership" of artforms.  She had a sort of "out there" take on these issues, but as far as I could tell it was pretty internally consistent and even made some sense.   She didn't like that it was possible to buy (for instance) "plastic" djembes, and thought that programs without "authentic Africans" (or maybe at least instructors who had been trained by "authentic Africans") were horrible, even if they taught kids in schools how to "technically" drum.  Or something like that.   Dumdrum also referred to herself as the coyote.  And this is one of the things that calls up Mom somehow.  I think that Mom had a bit of that same instinct of the "trickster" and while she may not have been the sneakiest person in the world, she certainly enjoyed a good laugh and would see the humor in anything that wasn't truly hurtful.

Back to the story though.  I got very close to R. We would chat on ICQ all the time.  He was the first person I'd met on the internet that I ended up making contact in real life with.   I know that his relationship with me preceeded (although maybe it continued through some of) my time at Intelligenesis/Webmind because I was working on Whippoorwill farm at the time.  Malcolm had brought me (at my request) a steer hide back from the butcher at one point after I'd read a book about tanning (and gone and bought the right crystallized stuff to make it happen).    That was a project and a half tanning that steer hide.  It probably took me somewhere between 3 and 9 months to finish.   I just remember it soaking for a long time and then the hardest part was after it had mostly all tanned, I had to pull it out of the solution (sopping wet, incredibly heavy and stiffer and more unweildy than one can imagine).  If you don't know how much leather is on a full-grown hereford steer, believe me it's a lot when it's all still in one piece.  But I figured out how to hang it up in the barn and work on a section at a time (for several hours a night) and when I was done for the evening I'd dunk it back in the barrel/bucket full of tanning solution.  The thing was that I didn't have any clue what I was going to do with the hide.  Growing up on a farm, I'd had a rug made from a calfskin and always like that, so I guess that was probably my goal.  But what I was doing didn't seem like it could possibly succeed as a rug, because the hide was so thick and lumpy it would just never lay flat.   Anyhow, I managed to eventually cut all the fat off of the hide.  And then I hung it up to dry.  And then tried to rinse the tanning solution out of it (I had chosen to tan with the hair on).  And when R. (who lived in Florida) mentioned that he would be travelling to NYC (I was working at Intelligenesis by then) and said he was going to loan/give me a djembe I couldn't believe it.   It seemed like an incredibly generous gesture and I wanted to reciprocate, so I immediately offered R. the hide I had tanned (figuring he might be able to make a drum bag or something out of it -- or maybe that was his idea when he finally saw it).  We met one night in the Village and traded a drum for a hide (the djembe R. brought me blew my mind -- it was truly a beautiful thing).  R. also dragged me to a concert (where some master drummers were performing) which did truly blow my mind even though I didn't stay for the whole thing.   R. and I stayed in touch for a while, but eventually I unsubscribed (or stopped checking?) the drum list because I'd seen pretty much every coyote referenced dumdrum had in her arsenal and there was not much new to be had.   Plus I probably started to realize what a fraud I was, especially after seeing the master drummer dude(s) playing their djembes in that concert.   So eventually I left with my tail between my legs (so to speak).

But what happened to the djembe you ask?  Well, I really loved it and though I never tried to take a lesson, I did bang on it with my hands an awful lot and it sounded wonderful (even though I have what is essentially a lousy sense of rhythm (at least compared to most good drummers)).  I hauled it back and forth once or twice from the Intelligenesis office to home but eventually decided I wanted it at work.  Ben had given me a really sweet deal where I had to show up in the Wall St. Office only 2-3 days a week (and I worked from home the other 4-5).  And he'd told Jim (who was at least several years younger than me if now an entire decade) to be my boss and figure out how to get me to code stuff that needed doing (I came into the job knowing no Java (we were trying to create artificial intelligence) and really not even knowing how to program very well.   But Jim was pretty helpful (I cringe when I think of what I must have put him through) and basically an all-around good guy.  One time when Jim (and maybe Christian and some others?) were hanging out in the office on a day when I wasn't there, Jim apparently thought he would use the djembe as something to rest his feet on.  But he was a bit careless and when he brought his booted food down on the middle of the head, his heel split the goatskin head quite cleanly.  I remember showing up the next day and being very sad.  And Jim was even sadder and incredibly apologetic.   When I realized how much it bothered him, it took most of my anger away.  I don't remember for sure, but I'd like to think I didn't give him too hard a time about it (other than maybe an instinctive initial reaction).       For many years I've had the idea that I'd like to get a fresh goatskin and put a new head on that djembe.  If I can dig it out of the closet, I think I just may do that now.