For me, it started in 1962 – the French teacher at the university was so charming I decided to stay in the class even though he was speaking French and I was in the wrong room.  He told a story – about how in his year in Paris he went to the post office every day to send a letter home to the US and stood in love and bought a stamp and put the letter in the slot next to the clerk.  There was a stamp machine outside the post office but no one ever used it.  “Why?” he asked one day, and the people in line all answered, “Because if we start using the machine, one day it will break down, and we’ll be so used to it we won’t know what to do.”  

Addiction.  I’ve always tried to avoid it, even though I write in these pages every day and seem to like my nightly pills a little too much…  I try to stay away from relying on any one machine – and now it’s turned out to be the right thing to do….