My apologies to elderly aunts everywhere

In today's StarTribune (Tuesday) is a letter to the editor from Janet Haarman of Emily, Minnesota, giving me a kuckle whack I deserve. It concerns last week's birding column in which I referrred to my late, generous, kind Aunt Maude -- my father's aunt, actually, as an old lady aunt. I didn't mean to label her in an unkind way. And I will try to be more sensitive. (The definition of old is "having lived for a long time." Being an old lady or an old man is better than the alternative.)