Write Me A Letter

Full disclosure.
Before Covid-19 I used to write a lot of letters.
Since the pandemic I've been writing even more letters. 

However, having been subjected to Zoom and Facetime for the past 18+ weeks (and subjected others - sorry!) during the pandemic shutdown, now more than ever I'm convinced that putting pen to paper is a much better alternative to maintaining a human connection with the people I love and care about.

As St. Paul often took pains to point out in his much more consequential letters, "this is from my own hand."  Hence, the intimacy of pen and paper.

So I've been steadily writing letters and postcards to the people whom I love and care about during the pandemic.  Nothing that will make it posthumously into my collected letters.  Just a few sentences on bright, splashy postcards I made using bristol board, spray adhesive and the 2019 Artwork-A-Day calendar pages from the Metropolitan Museum of Art (a Christmas present from my sister Roseanne) or two or three short paragraphs on the inside of Alaska or icon-themed notecards.

I haven't received a whole lot of replies (to those who have written me, thank you, dear correspondents!).  Perhaps the rest mistakenly believe that living in Southeast Alaska is analogous to living on Tristan de Cuna (mail every two-three months or so, weather permitting).  Nothing could be farther from the truth: here on Douglas Island, (weather permitting in the winter) our mail is delivered six days a week to my mailbox year-round. 

So as at least one commentator on Paul's Letter to the Romans has reportedly argued, the greeting at the back of his letter more accurately translates as "I, Paul, greet Phoebe, Amphilitus, Rufus, Tryphaena, Junias and Urban with the holy kiss. I'm under house arrest and  I haven't had any mail in months so how about writing me a letter or at least a postcard?"