Moxie math and keeping the stories straight.
Moxie is a state of mind, or so I’ve been told numerous times. Apparently, it also has its own distinctly different system of computation. How else could this be the Moxie Festival’s 31st year, if 2008 was its 25th, or silver anniversary?
History is important to me and by extension, the history of Moxie is something I’ve paid particular attention to especially since 2008 when I wrote my first Moxie book, but really, since 2004, when I first signed on to provide PR and marketing support for the Moxie Committee that summer and the following year, too.
By way of review, the date of the first Moxie Festival is steeped in apocrypha, like so much of Moxie’s story. The details often are determined by who is telling the story. I’ve seen my role in updating Moxie’s canon as trying to keep those stories straight, or at least sticking to one story and making sure others did the same. That’s never been an easy task. Thankfully, a few others laid a solid foundation, namely Frank Potter and Q. David Bowers.
For instance, the first year of the Moxie Festival could be 1982, when Frank Potter’s book signing at Kennebec’s, the Moxie Store, drew a couple hundred people. There’s a story associated with that but I’ve detailed it in my books, so I’ll let you dig that one out on your own. The date most often associated with the start of the festival, however, is 1984. That’s when the Chamber of Commerce got involved with the festival, which they continued with up ‘til a few years ago. 1984 was the date that our Moxie Committee used to come up with Moxie’s 25th in 2008. If you check out this blog post from that year, posted on my old blog, Words Matter, there remains a digital trail with a date stamp. Simply doing the math (the traditional kind, not the fancy Moxie kind) that makes 2013 the 30th year of Moxie festivals.
There are competing agendas. Some of Moxie’s supposed “historians” that haven’t taken the time to actually do the work of gathering details like to play fast and loose with those details. I’m glad that I set this information down so if there are still some fans of Moxie that care about dates and details, they know where they can find them.
I hope that sets things straight. I’m sure some Moxie crank will take issue with my own math and have their own story about why this year is the 31st year of the festival, or perhaps year #32.
As for me, I’m going with 30.