Location: Really deep in the heart of South California Gender:
Posted:
Nov 21, 2025 - 7:01am
Jiggz wrote:
Has anyone in here written a letter, with a pen, on paper, by hand...in the past, say...five years?
Ten years?
Writing letters was always my favourite form of written expression, you could say my favourite form of writing.
As a high-school student, cloistered away in a boys only boarding school, I wrote letters to girlfriends, for other guys, for a small fee.
Two of them went on to marry the girls concerned, and one is still married, 45 years years later.
I wrote letters when I was a merchant seaman, when I was in the Army......and then....besides love letters written to HerLoveliness, I haven't written and mailed a letter to anyone in the past twelve or fifteen years! Perhaps more!
In the age of email, smart phones, doom scrolling and AI.....I think I should correct that with some radical authenticity, and resume writing letters.
I need to purchase a new fountain pen, some decent stationery, stamps...and instead of playing the game of getting a phone number or email address when I sit next to a lovely woman on a plane, I think I should aim for a postal address.
Great story there.
Yes.
I wrote a letter to my first grade teacher a couple of weeks ago. We still correspond off and on because my mom and her became friends way back.
My mom even played cupid between her and my dad's brother back in '61. That didn't work out.
She sent me a card on Halloween and that compelled me to give her an update.
I even sent her flowers on last Valentines Day. She was my first teacher crush.
I prefer not writing in ink and paper because I really have to pay attention and not make mistakes.
But she likes the handwritten letters. In the last letter, I told her I was thankful for her teaching some basic principles I still use today.
She's 91 years old.
Has anyone in here written a letter, with a pen, on paper, by hand...in the past, say...five years?
Ten years?
Writing letters was always my favourite form of written expression, you could say my favourite form of writing.
As a high-school student, cloistered away in a boys only boarding school, I wrote letters to girlfriends, for other guys, for a small fee.
Two of them went on to marry the girls concerned, and one is still married, 45 years years later.
I wrote letters when I was a merchant seaman, when I was in the Army......and then....besides love letters written to HerLoveliness, I haven't written and mailed a letter to anyone in the past twelve or fifteen years! Perhaps more!
In the age of email, smart phones, doom scrolling and AI.....I think I should correct that with some radical authenticity, and resume writing letters.
I need to purchase a new fountain pen, some decent stationery, stamps...and instead of playing the game of getting a phone number or email address when I sit next to a lovely woman on a plane, I think I should aim for a postal address.
We had some TV channel-surfing time last night so we dragged up a Colbert show from I think Wednesday. Topic of the day was of course the Epstein email dump... lots of schadenfreude there as we imagine a certain someone finally getting his just rewards... and lots more to come. One of the guests was Pete Townshend. Oh, Pete, so the Who just wrapped up a farewell tour? How was that? You and Roger got along, made amends, love each other now? How sweet!
Sometimes one our cats will manage a trifecta: wood, tile and rug all in one barf session.
After a 4 year gap, we just got the little fella a couple months ago. First time he did anything like this...my fault as i just brought him back from a short hike and let him drink water too quickly before he settled down. My wife blamed it on the left over deer thigh we found that the magpies were pecking on...but he never got close enough to that.
Aluminum will probably only get more expensive, especially with tariffs. The plastics aren't necessarily separated by hand: in municipalities that recycle numerous types of plastics they recommend putting the bottles into recycle bins with the caps on. Apparently they grind down bottles and caps together and put them in water tanks to separate them. I didn't know this, but the PET chips sink and the chips made of HDPE or PP float. I think PP is recycled in fewer municipalities though.
That makes sense. grinding them up is probably one of the recycling steps anyway.
And the cost of the people needed to sort and remove the caps will mean that they all end up in the landfill... which is the oil industries plan anyway.
It was bad enough when the caps got so thin you needed a pipe wrench to twist them...
Glass bottles and aluminum caps... time to kick it old school.
Aluminum will probably only get more expensive, especially with tariffs. The plastics aren't necessarily separated by hand: in municipalities that recycle numerous types of plastics they recommend putting the bottles into recycle bins with the caps on. Apparently they grind down bottles and caps together and put them in water tanks to separate them. I didn't know this, but the PET chips sink and the chips made of HDPE or PP float. I think PP is recycled in fewer municipalities though.
