Countdown to #JanuGary

It's interesting how things come to be. JanuGary is the result of a couple things happening at once. First, Gary's sister in law posted a picture she had taken of Gary on a "Video on Trial" style country music show. It was this silly pic of him shrugging and he was credited on screen as being a "Country Music Impressario". The pic was so stupid I immediately made it my profile pic. When people started liking it. I posted "I see a lot of people liking this picture and not a lot of people making it their profile pic". And then they did. That was the beginning...

 

The other thing that happened at this time of course is that Prince and David Bowie had both recently died and I noticed that many people on Facebook were writing long tributes to their heroes. So I posed the question "Wouldn't it be nice to celebrate someone while they are alive?" and I started the Gary Rideout Jr. appreciation weekend - a weekend of celebrating a local hero. People love Gary, and they were so into it that we decided to extend the celebration until the end of the month. It was my wife Maggie that coined the term "JanuGary" and once it had such a catchy name I knew it was unstoppable. The ways that people celebrated Gary mutated very quickly and organically into the photoshop extravaganza it is today. My hope is that it continues to change and grow and surprise us all.   - Pat Thornton.