My post yesterday contained a number of errors that required me to spend some time in the afternoon fixing. I’ve made the changes and the apologies a little red in the face. I still stand by the general thrust of my article: that the critics overreacted and this controversy should not have erupted over something so trivial as a Blog Awards event, but that doesn’t excuse my misread of the start of the argument, or some of the accusations I threw around.
Skdadl summed it up best when she left the following comment in correction to a comment she’d written under temper:
Och, temper. Bad thing. Leads to typing from the hip. Sorry.
This sums up everything, in my opinion, from the comment threads straight through to my own post. I too blogged from the hip, and I went too far.
What can I say? I’m a blogger; my criticisms apply to me as much as they apply to anyone else. But cooler heads are starting to prevail, I think. Perhaps in the spirit of the holidays, we all can just relax and let things become fun again.
As for the Blog Awards, when the long list is finalized, I’ll be voting, and when the long list is whittled down to the short list, I’ll do my annual review of the nominees. I honestly and sincerely hope that those who have taken offence to the controversy can return to the awards, and not pull their nominations. I believe that this event can still be enjoyed for the fun in which it is intended, and I’m still looking forward to meeting some of the new faces in the crowd.
In the meantime, let’s distract ourselves with some cute toddler pictures:
Christmas Letter 2007
In other news, I managed to finish our annual end-of-year letter this past Friday. Wanting to take a step beyond the usual end-of-year letters our friends and family sometimes send out, we decided to turn our letter into an eight page newsletter. Truthfully, I just wanted an excuse to use my copy of InDesign; it’s been too long since I’ve been involved in the laying out of a fanzine.
Over 100 letters were dropped in the mail on Friday to our Canadian friends and family. We hope to send the American and international letters while on our vacation here in Iowa. But for those who aren’t on my mailing list, all of whom I still consider to be friends, I am enclosing a PDF version of the newsletter, which you can download to read at your leisure. Merry Christmas.