Perhaps we might put some of this 'insulting' in context.
Personally I find this insulting:
"You have hardly posted two polite comments in the last year";
particucilarly as it is patently untrue.
My "was it something I said" comment was aimed at someone who had once again raised a point of difference which has now been going on for many months and is proving unresolvable, yet the poster has dragged it up on numerous unrelated threads despite my requesting that we agree to differ or deal with it off-line in order not to inflict it on other members of this forum.
Again, I find "You come across as superior, patronising, grumpy and irrascible by turns," somewhat insulting as I don't believe they are descriptive of how I am - though you will have to ask my friends if that's the case.
In an odd way I find:
"The party's over
dim the lights,
Empty the ash trays
of redundant claims,
The ghosts of voices
in the night
Discuss another set
of party games";
rather childishly insulting, not because of what it says (it says nothing), but rather because it is one of a number of hostile and personal postings from this individual spread over several threads irrespective of topic.
Which in its turn makes;
"I'm beginning to think that Rifleman may not be too far off the mark." - rather insulting to be compared to somebody who indulges in such childish invective.
It is one of the unfortunate features of folk song - as it stands today, is that it seems to attract insults like horshit attracts flies.
Perhaps you would like to run your finger down this forum and count the number of times those of us who don't readily fall into line with what happens in folk clubs have been referred to as 'folk police' or ' folk fascists' or 'finger in ear' or, as I got recently 'woolly jumpers' (this last being accompanied by something like "sit down, shut up, and take what you're given").
My late friend and mentor for a couple of decades, Ewan MacColl, despite his being dead for around 20 years, is still the target of vituperative abuse from certain quarters - must earn him a place in the Guinness Book of Records for a performing artist, surely?
High hopes said:
"It isn't nice to suggest that some of us who have been performing for more years than we care to remember"
No it isn't - but some of us have got used to it. I calculated recently - to my horror - that in a couple of years time I will have been involved in folk song for half a century, yet I'm still being spoken to as if I had just dropped into a folk club on the off-chance. Whatever length of time you've been involved, it doesn't make any of us automatically right about anything.
Don; re my quotes in your previous posting - all of them are long term arguments which are related to specific statements and have been hammersed out ad-nauseum.
One of my favourite responses to something I found unnecessary or arduous used to be "life's too short", but as I will reach my 67th birthday this year - it really is too short.
I spent thirty odd years benefiting from and enjoying the generosity of traditional singers - as well as coming away with a large number of songs and a great deal of information, I also was left with a feeling that I owed those people a great debt - an obligation to make the best use of what they so generously gave.
I don't know whether I wish to remain a member of this forum. As much as I have enjoyed and benefited from it and have learned a great deal from it, I really don't see the point of continuing if the impression I am making is the one Don described. I have a great many things I still wish to do - and to repeat - life really is too short.
Jim Carroll