People who have been wronged or mistreated need to hear an acknowledgement of that injury before they will ever likely be willing to move on to bigger or other conversations. A century and a half after the fact, one enormous wrong began being righted on a warm, wind-swept desert day in Arizona last month.

Better late than never is an appropriate truism, I guess, but the fact is that the longer you wait before making amends the more engrained the offense becomes. Acknowledging the wrong and apologizing sooner rather than later is always the wisest course of action.