I agreed with these folks regarding the NOTION of letter-writing...the good old days, as we'd say: trying out a new fancy pen, the pretty stationary, the long pauses over how to word something just right....

But if you offered me email or letter-writing today, it'd be a slam-dunk choice. Emailing is all about touching base immediately - no fussing over stamps and mailing and trying to summarize a month's activity in one page! - and that's time and time is worth a thousand carefully-placed words on paper. My mother and I "converse" in brief but fun or sad or glad or mad email almost every single day now, and when letter-writing was all we had she was lucky to get a weekly phone call from me and vice versa. And there are off-the-cuff things you'd tell someone in an email that you wouldn't have shared in a letter. Spontaneity is so sweet!

The good old days of trying to figure out what to write in a letter are gone, and I say to all that: Fare Thee Well!!