hats. off.

One year, for Christmas/Hanukkah - my mission was to prove that I was a killer gift giver. The previous year, I'd come up terribly short on my gift to Kim - and a bad gift from a best friend does not look good on a resume.

I wrote her a letter for any and every possible event I could think of until...well...the end. Every milestone birthday, divorce, marriage, pregnancy, childbirth, bad days, any days, moving away, the death of our parents and plenty more. I wrote each of them by hand, on soft, creamy paper and stamped them with a wax seal.

But Hallmark beat me anyway. Hallmark has introduced a new line of cards called "Journeys" that focus on a change in times. Cards dealing with cancer, chemo, recovery, depression, eating disorders and for homosexuals - coming out.

Maybe it doesn't seem like much - but for we writers - it seems like the technical age has threatened to diminish the meaning of what we do. With email - our messages are shorter, with text - even shorter than that. The power of words come not only in their meaning - but how they are used. It's not just reading a book...it's the drive to the store, the wandering of the shelves, opening that hard cover to the first page and discovering words that you don't only relate to - but relate to you. It's not just saying the right thing. It's opening the mailbox, seeing the envelope, reading the inside...

We're never going to get back to long, handwritten letters describing everything we're going through to the people we love most. But maybe a card or two - wouldn't hurt.

My hat off to Hallmark for acknowledging a change in time.