by snarly | Dec 9, 2020 | Artistic apologies, Historical Apologies
It was recently discovered that the late author Roald Dahl’s family had added a note to his web site. It was hidden, as Washington Post’s Ron Charles noted, “like a Golden Ticket hidden inside a Wonka Bar.” (The note took Snarly seven minutes...
by sumac | Oct 30, 2020 | Historical Apologies
Around 1910, a man who had recently become a grandfather learned that his grandchild was seriously ill and had to go to the hospital. His daughter, the child’s mother, was beside herself with worry, maybe close to a nervous breakdown. Although he was very busy,...
by sumac | Dec 22, 2018 | Artistic apologies, Historical Apologies
Here’s a problem: how to talk about an apology embodied in a long, arch, ornate, annoying poem without making people read the long, arch, ornate, annoying text. Because that would be annoying. Excerpts? Summaries and excerpts? We’ll try. The poem is “Lines...
by sumac | Nov 22, 2017 | Historical Apologies, Personal Apologies
In one of those “One Hundred Years Ago” columns newspapers sometimes run, SorryWatch came across an interesting 1917 account of a soldier, Thomas J. Ryan, whose mother was having a hard time letting go. Ryan was stationed at the Presidio Army Base in San Francisco....
by sumac | Jan 9, 2017 | Historical Apologies, Youth apologizes
Back in the day – the eighteenth century, I mean – Emily Fitzgerald, Countess of Kildare, set up a school for her many children (by the end she had 22). She and her husband, the Duke of Leinster, bought Black Rock, a bathing lodge south of Dublin, and fixed it up so...
by sumac | Nov 28, 2016 | Historical Apologies
When the late poet Maxine Kumin had to defend her Radcliffe thesis, the committee asked questions about the thesis – “Amorality and the Protagonist in the Novels of Stendhal and Dostoevsky” – and also questions to test her general knowledge. She called it “torture.”...
Semi-apology from a ghost-whispererOctober 31, 2024
I did it for the animals and it got out of handOctober 9, 2024
SorryWatch Reads: I’m Sorry You Got MadOctober 2, 2024
Mexican Olympians, we celebrate you … with RACISM!August 2, 2024
Why did I say that? I’m going to be court-martialed, aren’t I?June 25, 2024