Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2014 22:01:16 -0400
From: Kate Dunlap
Subject: Response to Taylor Kish, Chatlist 5045
Dear Taylor:
I believe there are many people who read the Chatlist, but rarely submit comments (other than the occasional Friday ad) because they prefer to avoid the possibility of being attacked by ghost people like you for simply stating their opinions or sharing information.
I fall in this category. I’m a reader, but rarely a poster. However, I can’t sit in silence after your personal attack on Caroline Siverson, who had respectfully rebutted the assertions of another poster to this list. If you had followed in kind, with a substantive debate, I would take no issue with you. And I could easily laugh off your ridiculous portrait of Chatham County becoming “the former Godless Soviet Union,” full of illegal immigrants who, protected by Democrats, are somehow going to take your future from you. But because you are so off-base in your characterization of Caroline, and especially after your creepy stalking of her online, I feel compelled to respond.
Far from being a baby-boomer retiree fat cat who lives in a high-dollar house on all the money she somehow milked from the government as you infer, Caroline Siverson could be the poster woman for hard work, success, and the American dream. When I first met her over 30 years ago, she was a single mother who was barely making ends meet on one of the many odd jobs she took on, from store clerk, to electrician’s apprentice, to sign painter. Then for 10 years or so, she ran her own housecleaning business, which enabled her to employ several other women. During that time, she picked up some landscaping work, and soon added garden design to her many skills. She was so good at it that she closed her cleaning business and embarked on her very successful career as an entirely self-educated landscape designer. Over the years, she has employed dozens of workers, and she’s helped several of her former employees spin off from her company to start their own businesses. You probably didn’t find this information online, Taylor, because she doesn’t need to advertise. As one of our area’s most highly sought after designers, people call her based solely on word-of-mouth recommendations, and she has a portfolio and client list any landscaper would drool over.
Somehow Caroline also finds time for public service. She was a member of the Chatham County Planning Board for three years, and she currently serves on the Appearance Commission. She can often be seen in the audience at Commissioners’ and Planning Board meetings, and she is the president of Chatham Citizens for Effective Communities. She is as informed about the policies of the last 20 years of Chatham County government as just about anyone.
But even more importantly, and the primary reason I’m writing this long letter to you, Taylor, is that Caroline is one of those rare individuals whom many people consider their best friend. She is exceedingly kind, unassuming, empathetic, loyal, and generous. She is beloved by almost everyone who has had the pleasure of knowing her. So beware, I may not be the only one on this list you have awakened with your attack. There is an army of us who call Caroline Siverson our dear friend, and we will step forward to defend her.
A while back, someone on this list made the case that anonymous posting by some people is justifiable because they fear retribution by employers or others, and that the authorship of valid arguments shouldn’t matter. Fair enough, when you post substantive and factual reasoning. But when all you want to do is bully other posters by slinging mud from behind the guise of your pseudonym, that rationale doesn’t hold up. Caroline has the guts to post under her own name. When masked actors who accept no accountability throw nothing but dirt at people they don’t even know, they’ve lost the battle for credibility.
By the way, you may want to look up the meanings of the words diatribe, rant, and hate, which you used to describe Caroline’s post. Then compare all of her Chatlist submissions with yours. You may learn something.
Finally, I hope you enjoyed the recent Labor Day holiday, Taylor. You can thank those “government/union ways” you are so afraid of for that.
Kate Dunlap