Dear Chums ~

I have been a member of this board for fifty months. In that stretch of four years, I have posted enough messages to stand on the cusp of "promotion" from Old Hand to Veteran (in two more posts, but who's counting?).

One of the reasons that there are not more posts with my name on them is that I don't read all of the threads -- there is not enough time in my bivocational life, especially with a bride who insists (for some odd reason) that I pay as much attention to her as I do to my computer. Another is that, on two major occasions, I have backed away from the board for a period of time in angst.

As a priest and a judge, I deal with upset people all of the time and have, I think, grown a thick enough hide that, when people project their distress onto me, there is little internal damage. But, frankly, I don't need more of the same when engaged in an "off-duty" pursuit which ought be relaxing and enjoyable. Thus, on those occasions when I have felt the brunt of someone's hostility on these pages, I have wondered "Who needs this excrement?" and withdrawn.

Thanks to Jackie for nudging me gently back into the fold on these occasions.

The learning from all of this is contained in the maxim: "Don't feed the trolls." Now, when someone is rude or appears to bait a trap, I adopt a policy of masterful inactivity and don't respond.

As to my own sins, they are too many to catalogue. As a lawyer and a judge, I tend to see things in jurisprudential ways, which is doubtless annoying to non-lawyers. As an unashamed Anglophile, I know that I have annoyed others by my persistent use of terms like "The Mother County" and "The Colonies." As a Christian, I clutter these pages with references to Holy Scripture and to the traditions of the Church ... but what would you expect from a clergyperson? As a somewhat whimsical and perhaps deranged person, I find it hard to stay on topic and have been responsible for leading many threads astray ... even to the point of discussing matters culinary, to the great distress of Jackie.

One would hope that those who are occasionally (or perennially) annoyed by my many faults would do as I do when I feel attacked or snubbed or baited by a responsive posting: ignore me.

And there is no cabal ... save in the minds of those who apparently need an enemy onto which to project their own anxieties. Any cabal worthy of the name would have encouraged me to exit permanently on those several occasions when I have been silent for a term.

Affectionately ~

Father Steve