Many of my readers (and a lot more readers than I often have!) congratulated me on last week’s post, the text of my Friday night speech at Farpoint. A lot of members of the audience congratulated me too. That was very kind of all of you, and it’s nice to know my words hit home. A writer is a performer, and all performers live for audience feedback.

Unfortunately, last Saturday evening, the parameters I had laid out, for who is and should be welcome at our convention, were tested. That test has caused me a lot of soul-searching.

Here are the facts:

One of our regular attendees approached me late Saturday night to complain that another of our regular (so I was told) attendees was wearing a MAGA hat. The complainant wanted the other woman to remove her hat for the duration of the weekend and suggested that at least the hat and possibly the woman did not belong there. [There was a D.J. playing music.]