May 3, 2005:

Apologies, unasked for, over mistaken decisions forty years ago.

How odd: that it seems important to her now.

Yet how odd also that the right decisions weren't obvious. When a fourth grader knows what to do, and the grownups don't.

But that was the experience of life, wasn't it? Adult ineptitude, later generalized into the evident incompetence of nearly all leadership. Whereas your instincts, childish or later, were often proven right.

It's the latter that needed learning. To trust those instincts. When all the wisdom and pressure of the world are against them.

Which is why the apology seems so unnecessary. Who could blame her? All the experts said: Do this! We're the authorities in these things.