Last Friday a letter came across my desk. It was an anonymous one; other than Facebook and website comments where we sometimes see a made-up name or none at all, Hood River News doesn’t get many anonymous letters. And it is our policy to not publish them in print. (The contradiction between this policy and allowing name-hidden comments in our electronic platforms is a topic for another day.)
Despite the anonymity of this hand-written letter, I wanted to air it out. I hope to address, however, the essential points the writer is trying to make about — among other things — lack of clarity, and the mental state and professionalism of yours truly. In that spirit, portions of the letter are published in italics, and it begins:
“Well, Kirby, you did it again, upholding your reputation for taking the picture of the backside of people again.” Here’s where I need to write around things a bit; I’ll just say the photo was of person one and person two. “And you have the _____ to publish it …! Just get a photo from your victims and publishing it rather than make a fool of yourself.
“I still don’t know what (person one) looks like if I met (them) on the street.”
This is where lack of clarity comes in: The writer evidently reversed the people in the photo, and the caption did not specify who was at right and left, and that is something I should have seen to.
(As to the back of the head comment, it was more of a side view. A few years back, my staff had some fun when I was away on vacation, putting together a Kaleidoscope that was a collection of photos I had taken, some published and some not, of the backs of peoples’ heads. It was good fun.)
The writer continues: “And please drop off the blow by blow of notes you have written. About like your notes on sidewalks.”
I’d recently written my second and (stated) last column about my year-long daily letter writing regimen. Boring. Point taken.
The sidewalks comment is about, I speculate, a two-page photo essay of images, collected over 10 years-time, I put together in the 2018 Panorama special section celebrating (yes, that is the word I choose) the man-made and natural imprints in new and decades-old sidewalks of Hood River.
At other times, we’ve run photos of sidewalks, and in 2000, when I moved to Hood River, I wrote a column about how lucky Hood River is to have the number of sidewalks it does. Writer has a good memory.
The writer continues: “There is so much happening in this town that you need to lift your sights,” but makes no suggestions. Anyway, granted: There is “a lot happening.”
The writer finishes by saying, “Oh, stop publishing dates and times of already happened events. How lame.”
For the record, we publish details of “already happened” events — ones happening on Friday and Tuesday nights, the day before the paper arrives in the mail. But since the paper has always been available at our office and some of the markets by Friday and Tuesday afternoons, we have always included events on those nights because some readers might pick up the paper early enough to get something out of the information. Again, the writer chose not to include their name; based on the supposition that the anonymity is a reflection of a real wish to get their point across, I invite whoever it is to contact my boss, publisher Chelsea Marr, and discuss it with her in more detail. After that exchange, the writer might choose to say who they are; either way.
In closing, the writer’s disgust with my obsession with sidewalks is noted. I had no plans to write anything about them again, and likely won’t now. You could say a “curb” goes with sidewalks — or should!
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