[Vision2020] The state of this forum

[Joan Opyr]

Dear Visionaries:

I certainly understand Linda's impulse in calling for an end to this 
forum in its present unmoderated form.  Over the many years that Vision 
2020 has been in existence, we've been plagued by the likes of Edna 
Wilmington, Faul Ottomaticks, Stigmatta X and a host of other frauds, 
fakers and fools.  The soulless monster who posted this morning is a 
direct descendent of these trolls, and he or she has rightly been 
condemned by the entire list -- left, right and center.  It seems to me 
that we are as close to universally united as we will ever be in our 
collective disgust and horror that anyone would be so thoughtless, so 
cruel, and so grotesquely inhumane.

I wasn't able to access my email this morning (because I somehow 
managed to download the Welchia virus, God help me), but my phone began 
ringing off the hook within five minutes of the posting of that 
message.  People were outraged.  They wanted to vent and to speculate 
and to talk about what we, as a community, can and should do in 
response.  Strangely enough, Linda, this has given me renewed hope for 
this forum and for this town -- I heard about this email before I 
actually read it.  A great number of people cared enough to get on the 
telephone and begin calling one another to talk about what ought to be 
done in response to this atrocity.  Everyone -- and I do mean everyone 
-- wants to know who did this.  We all want this person rounded up, 
routed out, and publicly identified and shamed.  This says to me that 
there are very definite limits to what we, as a community, consider 
acceptable and unacceptable.  More importantly, we are, for the first 
time in a long time, united.

I'm sorry it took a vicious troll to bring us together, but together we 
are, and perhaps we can take comfort in that.

Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment
www.auntie-establishment.com