Election Day in Chile. Presidential run-offs. Hubby and neighbor lady report light turn-out.  I think many figure: why vote when the outcome is completely predictable?

    Yesterday two belated birthday cards arrived for me. Postmarked in the States on November 25^th.  Twenty days to be delivered to my door. Perhaps they took a little side trip along the way. My son enlightened me. “No one uses postal services anymore. It’s either email or courier.” True, I seldom send cards or letters anymore. My yearly Christmas letter travels by email. No more writing out each card by hand, licking envelopes and stamps as the perspiration drips down my brow. The exceptions are cards sent to a few computer-less elderly ladies and goofy birthday cards to a few close friends. Give me humor any day rather than the flowery, sentimental Hallmark verses.

    I do enjoy receiving cards though, delivered by Cristián my mailman, wearing his red cap. He stops his bike and rings the doorbell. We exchange a few friendly words and comment on the heat as he hands me a clutch of white envelopes and maybe a magazine. Within a span of two weeks he delivered the August, September, October and November issues of the one U.S. magazine I subscribe to. I said, “They must have all come in the same ship.” I was being kind. No doubt those magazines languished in some deep, dusty bin in a dark Chilean postal warehouse. The white envelopes are growing fewer and fewer as I’m given the option to receive the information by email and ‘save the trees’.

    I read that the biggest tree-consumer is toilet paper. I have yet to locate toilet paper manufactured with recycled paper. I suspect that the one brand of grey-green toilet paper, known as “Confort” (someone’s idea of a joke?), available in Chile in the early ‘70’s, may have been recycled. It was a tad softer than newspaper.