My online name, Ragtime Rachel, is perhaps a bit grandiose considering I play the piano rather poorly, but there is one piece I play rather well, and that's Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag." It was the song I heard Eubie Blake playing one day when I was twelve--he did it, as I recall, as part of a PBS special--and from then on, I was hooked, hopelessly, on ragtime. I had never heard anything quite like it, and endeavored to learn to play, simply to play that kind of music.