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.

As I sat at the computer yesterday, a "Hi" popped up in my chat box. My son in New York. It was a simple conversation with no earthshaking news, but, yet such a comfort to feel him close. Forty years ago in Chile we didn't even own a telephone for me to chat with my parents. There was a waiting list of several years to be able to purchase a telephone line. In our attic I have boxes full of the weekly letters my parents and I wrote over the years on crinkly, thin air mail paper. They were invaluable when I was working on my memoir (as yet to see the light of day).

Last night the news showed Pope Francis kissing an Italian man suffering from a deforming genetic skin disease called neurofibromatosis. Later a reporter interviewed the man. I thought how courageous to show himself to the world. He told how the Pope's blessing and embrace had changed him. Today, as I walked in a crowded entrance to the metro station, a man with the same condition passed me, though less severe. I felt immediate compassion for him and wondered if he had seen the interview with the afflicted Italian. Would people now look at him in a new light without turning away?