{"id":49944,"date":"2021-12-25T21:50:16","date_gmt":"2021-12-25T21:50:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=49944"},"modified":"2021-12-25T21:50:16","modified_gmt":"2021-12-25T21:50:16","slug":"dear-whomever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=49944","title":{"rendered":"Dear … Whomever"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Whenever I receive one of those \u201cDear Friends and Family\u201d holiday greetings each Christmas, my memory is drawn immediately to my late mother-in-law.<\/p>\n

Why? Well, because she was a relentless writer of letters to what she called her network of \u201cpen friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

I want to stipulate something up front: I don\u2019t toss those \u201cDear Current Resident\u201d letters away when they come from loved ones. I read them. Some of them are rather interesting. For instance, I learned this week that one of my cousins has moved from Denver to North Carolina and that another of my cousins is now what he calls himself a \u201cgrand dude.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, my memory of my mother-in-law makes me smile when I get these letters.<\/p>\n

She insisted on writing original compositions. She also insisted on receiving them. If she got anything that smelled like a \u201cform letter,\u201d she would toss the letter into the trash and scratch the individual from her \u201cpen friend\u201d network.<\/p>\n

Her motto, and I paraphrase it broadly here:\u00a0If you don\u2019t care enough to send me an original letter in return for those I send to you, then you are not welcome to be a pen friend to me.<\/em><\/p>\n

Her letter-writing kept her mind alert for many years after she retired at age 72 from her job at a Portland, Ore., newspaper. Indeed, the time she would take to write the letters \u2014 with her own hand, I hasten to add \u2014 kept her active and engaged in her surroundings.<\/p>\n

We need more of that these days. Not less of it.<\/p>\n

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n

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Whenever I receive one of those \u201cDear Friends and Family\u201d holiday greetings each Christmas, my memory is drawn immediately to my late mother-in-law. Why? Well, because she was a relentless writer of letters to what she called her network of \u201cpen friends.\u201d I want to stipulate something up front: I don\u2019t toss those \u201cDear Current … Continue reading Dear … Whomever<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10],"tags":[9826,9825],"class_list":["post-49944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-media-news","tag-letter-writing","tag-pen-pals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49944"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49946,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49944\/revisions\/49946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}