Yesterday I was asked to remove the post regarding bullying. I have thought long and hard about this. The original post that started it all has been removed before I wrote that post. The catch is that this is the Internet and what you put on the Internet stays on the Internet. I learned many years ago in real life, actually it was a general rule of thumb in the corporation that I worked for....Do not put anything in writing that you would not want to see on the front page of the New York Times" This is a theory that is ingrained in me.
I guess it is time to come a bit more clean about my past. I am normally the quiet one in the crowd, meetings etc., taking excellent notes and only speaking up after I have watched people come up with one thing after another. When I did speak up, it was always very direct and honest as could be. That is what propelled me up the corporate ladder. I was not that way at work only. That is me plain and simple. My first venture into volunteerism was through a domestic violence shelter in a small town in Tennessee. Turns out I had moved to a town whose Judges were grandfathered in and not elected, which led to very bias calls. The woman that held the position of Director for the Prevention of Child Abuse at the time approached me with some startling statistics. The county had not had a child abuse conviction in over 5 years. She asked me if I would be interested in starting something. Mind you I was a, pardon the language, "damn Yankee". At that time, a Yankee came to visit...but a damn Yankee came to stay. So after a lot of research, I decided to attempt to build an organization based on the Child Advocacy Center that was already in place in Chattanooga and The National Child Advocacy Center was in Huntsville, AL. I took on the good ol boy network at the time. Had a crash course in grant writing after I had spoken to every organization in town and formed a 501c. We had done it. I came back to Illinois realizing that my kids needed to be closer to family. The shining moment came when they called me in Chicago and told me they had a free standing building and would I mind if they named it after my daughter. That was over 20 years ago....sheesh almost 25 now. It kills me to give those numbers as it reminds me of my age. I have spent the last 25 years, besides working as a single parent to raise three kids, finishing my education, always doing something to protect others and make a difference in the world. I am no different in Second Life. When I say I am the same in all worlds I truly am. In Second Life it is the side of me you see when we had the RFL team and now with Stand Up 2 Cancer.
I have found that people do not see the big picture very often and that for some very odd reason, quite often turn into a completely different person in sl. I can not do that as I don't know how to be anyone but myself. You may or may not like me but I am always directly honest. I tend to figure the people that can not deal with direct honesty, usually it is within themselves but it is easier to blame me. After all I have done through my life, I do have some pretty thick skin. You have to, to truly accomplish things for there is always a target on your back.
Back to yesterday's blog, now that hopefully you understand a bit more about me. First and foremost under no conditions do I condone Robert's mouth. I hate it and have been victim to it. I have also had to calm him down on my own venue before he started during events. But the post was not so much about Robert as it was....now back to the big picture so lets open our minds and see what is happening.....twice in a few weeks I have watched the live music community or parts of it not all of the community---join in on a witch hunt. So before you all jump up and blame me, which I am sure many of you are ready and willing to do, ask yourselves Is this community becoming more filled with jealousy, hatred, bullying. This is not the community that I have come to love over the years.
To be very honest with you, it sickens me when I see it. I am truly questioning if this is something I want to be associated with any more. Questioning if doing Stand Up 2 Cancer is something my heart would be in, which is a shame because there already quite a few venues and wow the number of performers signed up. Even some of my designer friends want to participate. Its amazing. I watched what happened when we stopped RFL a couple went and put a team together afterward. I have to commend them for it, yet as a whole this community makes a huge difference. As a whole ...not just a few....but a whole....that's all venues, international venues and yes I learned how to use my translator and google translate .... but their hearts are the same as every other venues......It is as a whole that we make a difference. I know that I for one do not want to do this, if I am seeing people go after each other with hateful words that hurt. It is not Robert I want to defend. It is the entire music community. Please stop making it hard to do so.
There are those that will send me the hateful nc's, im's and pm's. I can handle those...that is what mute, ban, block are for. On the other hand if it something you can discuss without the cussing and mudslinging, I am always willing to discuss anything, it does not mean we will agree but it may make both of us look at things differently.
So yesterday's blog stays, I am not ashamed of my words. Though I have been told I was wrong something....it is through a third party and not a performer directly, but I may have been wrong about when I said that all Robert wanted was recognition....I was told he charges performers. If this is so I was not aware of it as the times I have asked me to record for me he never mentioned a word about a payment.
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