Yesterday on Facebook, I suggested that Monday, June 30, 2014, was “Moxification Monday.” Here’s what I posted:

Time to get those home Moxie fires burning! Moxie up, friends, tomorrow is Moxification Monday.  I love my hometown!

According to my brother, who commented on my post, one of the local papers is sending a photographer to my hometown today, looking for the signs of Moxie.  Who knew?  So this morning, in the wee small hours, I drove from my apartment to my new old house and hung out a load of Moxie Laundry on my clothesline.  I know, I’ve been delinquent in writing about house progress and move-in deadlines, but it’s true!  My new old house on a hill has a clothesline!  And today, it’s full of just a few of my favorite Moxie clothes and accessories, with the exception of my orange underwear.

I might hang out my clean laundry on the line, but there’s this little thing called tact…

As I was hanging out the tee shirts, the orange bandana, the aprons, and the socks, I started thinking about gifts.  When I go to my new old house and work in the garden or clean a window, I think of what a gift the house is to me.  Sure, I paid for it through a bona fide real estate transaction, but there are things about the house and property that are priceless, like the gardens.  They were built over the fifty plus years the prior owner lived there and they’re amazing.  They’re not like a bunch of fast-growing landscape materials thrown into a strip mall parking lot, guaranteed to look presentable today, tomorrow and forever.  Every flower and plant was carefully considered.

I promise to tell you more about the beautiful garden gift I inherited later this summer.

Then there was the little gift of a Moxie pocketbook I got on Friday.

One of my friends was catching up on my blog and found this post I wrote last year about my makeshift Moxie pocketbook and gave me this gift.  Well, I had to wipe a little tear from the corner of my eye I was so touched and happy.

Listen, home friends, this is what I’ve been thinking lately.  Maybe you’re tired of hearing about Moxie and maybe you’re tired of me talking about it.  It’s even possible that you’re tired of me.

(“That Julie Baumer, I get so sick of hearing about her Moxie Recipe Contest.  I wish she’d take her orange mixing bowls and move her fat Moxie BLEEP back to New Hampshire.”)

Don’t be angry with me if my picture is in the paper, ok?  Because even though it’s fun to experience those minutes of small town celebrity, in the back of my mind, I’m always thinking about the best way to promote The Moxie Recipe Contest and The Moxie Festival and our town.  Being able to shine a bright orange and positive light on the hometown I love feels like a gift.  It’s the gift I’m giving to the place I call home.

Thank you for giving me a chance to give a gift.

In the bigger picture, each person who lives in Lisbon Falls, Lisbon Center, and Lisbon (“the Lisbons,” as Maurice Bonneau calls our towns) gives a gift to the world during the Moxie Festival.  Did you ever think about that?  Things in the world are kind of messed up right now and yet 30,000 people come to our little town to celebrate with us each year because we’ve figured out how to have bright orange fun with something as simple as a can of bitter soda.  When I think about that, it makes me really proud to say I’m from this little town.  What a wonderful gift we give to the world.

Let’s keep on giving…and wear your orange loud and proud today!