email response to 4-H

--- On Fri, 3/20/09, XXXX wrote:

> I just
> wanted to let you know that on March 28 there
> will be a group using the big room. Please make
> arrangements to shoot under the arena.

Hi Xxxx,

Last Saturday we moved all the BB stuff into the big trailer, so we're already planning to use that rather than the big room both on the 22nd and on the 28th. We knew about the pageant thing already and were planning on being outside anyway.

> I understand that there was an incident with a vendor from
> the Coon hunters’ show a few weeks ago. I was
> not there and don’t
> know exactly what happened, but when something happens I
> have to field the heat
> for it. I don’t mind taking it if it is
> necessary, but each instance puts someone off to 4-H.


I take tremendous exception to this statement. You're right. You weren't there. I was. I don't know what exactly it is that you "understand" nor where you get your understanding from, but I have not and will not ask you nor anyone else to take any heat on my account. If any coon hunter had any beef to share with me, I invite them to say it to me in person.

Not a single soul from the coon hunter group said one word to me in the entire two-hour period we shared the premises with the coon hunters. If they had a problem with anything we did, that would have been the time to raise it, not weeks later in some anonymous underhanded way. The lowliest criminal defendant has a Constitutional right to be directly confronted with his accuser. Where is my accuser in this instance?

I will not respond to anonymous complaints nor to anything you may "understand" from rumor or innuendo. If there is any heat to take from any source for any specific conduct of the BB team I will answer my accuser directly and specifically. You need not get burned.

I suppose what galls me is the assumption by you that there was indeed some "incident" which occurred. That you blindly accept the truth of this accusation without any proof or even discussion is unfair and insulting to me. I could just as easily tell you that I "understand" the coon hunter group held an orgy outside in the woods that night. Would you treat that statement as true? Of course not, yet you treat an essentially equal statement about our conduct as gospel and then tell me that you're taking some heat for it. Implicit in your message is a warning that we need to behave in future so you don't have to take more heat on our account.

I'd like to think that since 2000 when we started the BB team, I might have begun to build at least some track record of more or less responsible behavior such that I don't need to be warned to play nice with the other people in the building.