Thank you for the thank yous!
One of the best things about writing an opinion piece is when it touches people. I get contacted on occasion by people who have said that what they had read may have affected how they thought about things, or maybe even helped them in a personal way.
Don’t get me wrong, I have been contacted on the contrary as well – many times. A lot more in fact. With those people, I ask them to write their opinions down and we will run them as a letter to the editor. It’s only fair that if I am allowed to write down my opinions publicly, that readers have the same right. Even if it totally disagrees with my views, it will be run as long as it legally isn’t hurting someone else (feelings excluded, we’re all allowed to disagree).
I won’t give names because some of these encounters are very private, like the one instance many years ago when a woman I barely knew came into the office with outstretched arms to give me a huge, teary-eyed hug. She told me that something I wrote bonded her family back together. How’s that for a great day? . . . contd.
