Hallmark Conspiracy?

Okay...so disregarding Philo's previous post for now... I was wondering about something else. I got a thank-you card this past evening (not that generic one to the left) from someone whom I took out to dinner last week for her birthday. It was certainly a nice gesture. I usually write cards for her, too -- though I didn't this time -- and I've always done so quite naturally. But I don't really bother to write cards for anyone else now that I think about it. She's essentially the only one for whom I would proceed to select, purchase, and write out a card, and truth be told, I don't really receive cards from anyone else anyway. I'm sure she writes cards for everyone and their mothers, which is how I even find myself with a card in my hand every so often, but I certainly can't find it in myself to do something like that naturally for everyone.

Now, what I'm wondering is this: is card-writing a lost art? Not that I don't sincerely appreciate her thank-you card -- which was a very nicely chosen one, by the way -- but, for those who do write cards: is it all just an extraneous ritual drummed up by Hallmark and its like in some marketing chicanery that promotes the "indispensability" of cards? On the other hand, for those who do not write cards: is it a common courtesy and affection that we've forgotten to show to our fellow man in an increasingly unempathetic society of self-serving ingrates? I ask you, which is it? Affection or affectation?

Hey, whaddaya know? My Merriam-Webster Word of the Day for Oct. 16 (midnight delivery) is "mugwump." In its secondary definition, the one spotlighted by the M-W Word of the Day feature, the word means "a person who is independent in politics or who remains undecided or neutral." Funny that I was just trying to remember that word yesterday while writing about being "politically agnostic" and well, here it is, one day late. Thanks anyway, Merriam-Webster. Incidentally, "chicanery," used in the paragraph above, was my Word of the Day for Oct. 15. Just spewing random facts here, folks. Move along.