Lean on me

An email I recieved today:

Hi Harry,

I read your blog earlier when you asked not to be judged for spelling errors and typos because you’re busy, have a lot to write, and write quickly. Fair enough. But your most recent post misspells Cheryl Lien’s name every time you write it. That seems to be more mean spirited than a typo could explain. Without even discussing the content of your post, you undermine your writing integrity with carelessness like that.

This friend is absolutely correct. I just checked the post and I misspelled “Lien” every time it came up in the post. The darned thing is that even my blog’s spell checker underlined my mispellings and I did not catch it.

I appreciate the note and even more the forgiving nature regarding my excuse, lame though it is, for typos. This, however, was a typo. I’d like to shrug it off as the old i before e problem but that would be a little glib of me. I mispelled the name wrong the first time I typed it and continued to do so. Frankly, the post’s content is far more hurtful than the misspelling. I know that.

So did the School Board when I warned them fifteen months ago that if they didn’t rethink the direction they were taking I’d have no other option than to write frankly about this sorry episode. Instead I was censured for my blogging and not my mistake of revealing the ten million sales price of Central. Then the Board compounded their vengeful act by changing their Ethics policy giving them the power to remove me should I ever actually tell my readers what I know.

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