My goodness -- did I fall asleep?

Well, I thought I would stop blogging for a week or two (which turned into a month or two) just for the perverse thrill of being inundated by calls and emails from terrified readers. Sort of like getting to go to your own funeral.

But apparently those emails and calls all went into some extremely effective spam killer in my computer's security system, because I never received even one of them. So to all of you who have been trying relentlessly to get in touch with me, I offer my humblest apologies.

And I guess I owe you an explanation.

My excuse is that my family recently moved from Brooklyn to the suburbs of New Jersey, and between packing and unpacking (and work and my kids), I haven't had much time for anything.

But I'm back now. So please, take heart. The long summer of my absence is finally over.

Here in my new home state, there's news which would send a chill down any fundraiser's spine. My new state, apparently, lost hundreds of millions of dollars in education funds because someone made a mistake filling out an application form.

Let's focus, for a moment, on the version of the story that I heard initially: some other-than-meticulous grant writer put the wrong column of numbers in an application for "Race to the Top" funding. The federal government, unwilling to bend in its bureaucratic regulations, refused to allow a simple correction to be made.

I had two reactions when I first heard that story. First, I thought of all the little mistakes and typos I've made, or failed to catch, on the zillions of proposals I've submitted over the last 20 years. [Note to future prospective employers (if I'm ever looking for a job again): Kidding! I'm just making that up for the sake of my readers.]

The idea that a screw up by me or one of my staff could lead to the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars (or even hundreds of dollars) is terrifying.

But I was also struck by the absurdity of such a situation. After all, shouldn't the decision of how to appropriate federal monies -- money that could have a profound effect on the lives of countless kids --be determined by underlying merit, and not by who has the most careful proposal writer on staff?

Recent news reports, however, make the issue more cloudy. Perhaps the New Jersey officials were given an opportunity to make the correction and failed to do so. And apparently they opted out of a grant training session -- which all of the ten winners opted into.

What's the point?

Certainly it's a cautionary tale about being careful with applications. And about avoiding hubris.

But also, when you look deeper into the story, you begin to see how the carelessness of the applicant seems to reflect a kind of cynicism about the goals of the program.

And there's no quality more undermining for a fundraiser than cynicism.