I first started posting back in fall of 1999. A friend of mine had told me about Digital Tradition, and being new on the internet at the time, I went hunting for it.   I found it, but in the search, I blundered into the Mudcat forum. I opened a few threads just to see what was going on, and got to reading one that I was particularly interested in. "Hey," sez I, "these discussions are great!" Several people were using "handles," but one of the people who was posting under his real name was a folk singer friend of mine whom I hadn't seen in almost forty years (Sandy Paton of Folk-Legacy Records).

I stuck my oar into the discussion, greeting Sandy in the process. I posted used my real name. At the time, it never occurred to me to do otherwise. Since I was new to the forum, several people greeted me rather warmly, and I've been hangin' around ever since.

I don't have a web site yet, although I'm planning to cobble one together as soon as I figure out how to do it, and I note that, above, at 26 Jun 07 - 02:18 a.m., Jim Lad (Brannigan) has a good point about not wanting to confuse people who are looking for his web site. Well, for me, too late now! If I do a "vanity google" on my own name, I discover there are a few other "Don Firth's" out there, but more often than not, I wind up in a Mudcat thread.

Apart from that, I'm okay with using my real name. I figure that if I say something brilliant, I want the credit, and if I say something idiotic, I deserve the blame.

So be it!

Don Firth