Last week’s Hard Candy dealt with the delays in the Clymer Park art project. In short, after covering the project from its inception and watching the delays, I wrote a column in which I suggested several things. One was that the city could have managed the project better; another was that the two artists who had yet to deliver (one of whom supposedly curated the project) should be ashamed of themselves.

This upset the artists. I get that. It’s embarrassing to be called out on something. One artist decided to put out a call to arms to his Facebook fans to write hate mail to me and the paper. I know this because several of you texted and messaged me to tell me there was some ugliness.

The letters I received, by and large, aren’t from locals, and it appears none of them had ever heard of Hard Candy or the Gabber before the artist’s post online; they certainly hadn’t read any of our news coverage of the public art project to understand the opinion column followed a series of the articles containing the very information they accused me of not reporting. Some letters were angry, others were condescending. Many illustrated the failure of our public school system to educate people about homonyms, the proper use of a plural possessive or critical thinking. Most, aside from one comment under the online version of the article whereby the writer verbally “flings poo” at the column, were lengthy.

This blog post isn’t to defend what I did. However, I do want to share with you the communication I received from one of the two artists I mentioned.

The Gabber’s spam filters grabbed this, so I didn’t see it until the next night, when I received my daily spam report. While I don’t have time to respond to everyone I upset as part of my job, I did think it was important I answer him, as he was mentioned in the column. Here’s the email I sent to him the next night:

Hi Frank,