This is an apology. It is a sincere one, not a backhanded one. It is on my public blog for two reasons 1) the material that offended the Offended Party appeared on this blog back in February and that Party will check and make sure that I kept my promise to remove the material and 2) the Offended Party is probably too angry to accept an e-mail or a letter from me, and it is my wish that OP hear my apology. Actually, there's a third reason. It's important for me to take personal responsibility for all of my actions, to "do nothing in secret" - so if the offense was public then the apology ought to be public too.

Of course, for any apology to be sincere it must also be honest....

and the truth of the matter is that I still have some difference of opinion with the Offended Party. After all, if we didn't have a difference of opinion we would not have a problem and there wouldn't be any reason for me to apologize.

I learned today, through my husband, who until recently didn't even read this blog let alone contribute to it, that The Offended Party felt that I wrote a story that was libelous. OP felt it was libelous because it was based on things that I did not hear myself, but things that my husband told me. OP was cast in a bad light. While it was the truth as I understood it at the time I wrote it, OP may be right. While I was an English major I never took any journalism classes. OP may be right on every legal point that was mentioned in our conversation. And I am not out, here at SomeWingedCreature, to break the law. I'm not even out to upset anyone who is likely to be upset ( more on that point later)

One of the first ways in which I was wrong was to argue with OP at all. Since OP is another human being whom I had accidentally offended, I should not have lashed out. But, I must take responsibility for the fact that I did and therefore extend a heartfelt apology for any hurtful thing I said during the phone conversation. Screeching back pain, a screwed up audit, and problems between my husband and myself are not anybody's problem but mine. I should not have initiated a phone call while not in complete control of my emmotions. This made the situation worse. I am sorry.

OP felt that I did not take enough steps to obscure OP's identity. Again, I don't know if that was true or not. I made an effort to do so. I did not personally know OP at the time the story was written, and was actually confused about the name OP uses....so it's possible that the initial I used to obscure OP's identity in fact made it more transparent. If the steps I took were not enough and OP has suffered for it, I am truly, very sorry.

Because, it's like this: Persons in OP's household did things that I thought hurt my husband, and so I wrote the story as I understood it and questioned OP's judgement publicly, at the time the incident took place. When I wrote about it, since I still love my husband, it's very likely that I was more passionate and less prudent than I would have been on another subject. Later on, I came to know OP personally, and my opinion about the matter changed. The Hub, who is the authority on his own emmotions, said he was over the incident and he wished that I would be no longer angry on his behalf.

So, I did get over the incident, and made an effort to get to know OP and understood things that made me sympathetic to OP. If I had thought of it, at that time, I would have gone back and erased the entries. But, as time passed, I simply forgot about it because I was actively trying to forget about the incident.

If I had been aware that this blog saves information seemingly in perpetuity - at least compared to the other one I had where information fell out of archive after a few months - I should have at least written something like "Hey, I was wrong about OP".

Because, as you know, the stated purpose of this blog is to give a voice to the humble and the meek, and at the time I wrote the offensive entry no one appeared to me to be more resilient, strong, and iron-clad than OP. I perceived OP's station in life as being so far above mine that my opinion, even if OP learned of it, would carry no weight whatsoever, except perhaps to bring a laugh. I thought that OP had as much chance of reading anything I had ever written as, say, George Bush, and that OP would take my opinion less seriously than Bush would take it. After all, Bush might have wanted my vote.

I have, today, learned to my horror, that if the pen is not indeed mightier than the sword, it certainly is sharper. It has cut deeply OP's heart, which is pure - OP wishes to preserve the name and reputation of OP's family, and mine with it. It has also severed relations with my husband, who is an innocent bystander to the entire train wreck - involved only to the extent that he told me what was going on in the way a man tells his wife what's happening in his life.

I keep thinking that this blog has about 5 readers - not including my mom. I now realize that may not be true. OP, maybe I seem to you like you seemed to me: strong and sure, and having advantages. I was wrong about you. You are a good person doing the best you can for your family. I can use no stronger language than this to explain - I could not imagine that one such as you would CARE what my opinion on the matter was, and even as I knew you better you still seemed as one impervious to criticism of any kind.

I am convicted by something that you said to me on the phone: That I didn't think of you as a person. You are right, at least partly. I did not think of you as a person with feelings that could possibly be hurt by someone like me. That I could hurt you still astonishes me a little. That I did hurt you makes me very sorrowful.

People have been trying to tell me for a long time that my words carry weight. I have never exactly believed it, but now I do - and like many humans it has taken a negative lesson, not a posative one to learn it.

In the future I must hold myself to a higher standard of responsibility - not because of legal concerns, but because of moral ones. It may indeed be my right or anyone elses to self publish what they see fit, regardless of who it hurts. I may even want to pass the ammunition to defend that right. But it isn't now, nor has it ever been, nor will it be my goal. I am responsible for every word that I have written as a writer and as a Christian and a human also responsible to measure how the reader may take it.

It is out of this responsibility that I extend to you this sincere apology.