Last Updated on July 9, 2007
Here is what I intend to be the final chapter in the drama which struck Journal-land, and in particular yours truly.
If you do not know about the drama to which I refer, then when you are through reading this, please visit the entries dated July 2 to see where it began.
Before you go back in time to those posts, however, I must update the situation: the journal writer with whom I had a “quarrel,” the one who first accused me of attacking her beliefs and making her feel “unwelcome” in her own journal, then accused me of lying to you about what I said, and suggested that I had launched a “full blown campaign to smear” her name, has apparently seen fit — without any explanation — to remove all traces of the incident from her journal.
I don’t know if she looked at the situation later and decided that it was an overreaction, whether she read my extended responses and decided that maybe my motives weren’t as bad as she had initially assumed, or whether she simply tired of thinking about it and wanted to put the past behind her. I never will know for sure, and that’s fine.
Not to beat a dead horse, but her deletion of her side of the story leaves me in a quandry of sorts. She never named me specifically in her journal, nor did she provide a link in her journal to what I had to say in response. I named her and provided links because I wanted you to read both sides and tell me what I was missing. Apparently, this is what she took as a “full-blown smear campaign.” Far less than a smear campaign, I was only trying to be fair: as I obviously learned, one person’s words can be misread fairly easily! Go figure.
Now that the articles to which I refer have vanished as quietly as my initial comment that started the whole thing, there’s no point in naming her now, as there is no “other side” for you to debate. You’ll either have to accept my account of what she originally said or not. It’s up to you. I have removed the links to her journal (which no longer go anywhere anyway) as well as the sole mention of her AOL screen name.
At the same time, I am not removing my description of the incident itself, because I think it is a good lesson about what can happen here in Journal-land when a simple comment is misinterpreted. I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t ever leave a comment in someone else’s journal, but I am suggesting that no matter how respectful you intend to be, the journal writer’s perception of your words can easily go off the deep end through no fault of your own. Be forewarned and click that “Leave Comment” button with caution.
To those of you who have written comments in my defense over how I have conducted myself, your words are greatly appreciated. I am happy to consider the matter closed.
