Deborah, let do this a bit differently. First off, welcome to Mudcat. It is a real life community whose members often get together at various events and have developed real life friendships and relationships. As in any community, we have our burdens and at times Garg is our heaviest burden. The sad part is that he often has great knowledge, but unfortunately his "devils" are too often in control. I am saddened that your first experience is with him.

To the rest who have these concerns, they are legitimate. However there is an element of personal responsibility. I wondered the same thing and it took less than five minutes to figure out that Deborah was not only legitimate, but someone who had folk music's best interest at heart.

Welcome to our town, Deborah. I hope you will stay and contribute, as I suspect you could contribute mightily. You will be surprised at the folkies that contribute and monitor this list. It is an invaluable knowledge base with worldwide membership. You will learn, as you have started to already, that we have some folks that need to spend more time in the real world, but they are a minority. Spend some time in the FAQ's and learn the distinction between the BS: threads (a real term) and the music threads. It is especially important to learn to use the the search functions for the forums and the Digital Tradition (a database of song lyrics).

I am so happy you have joined, and hope we can share a song along the road sometime.

All the best,

Big Mick Lane