Back in the days when people sent letters, I kept a correspondence file.

I still have that file. Looking through it is like excavating an archaeological site from the late 20th century. The stationery alone tells a story: business letterhead, yellow legal paper, hotel note pads. The occasional missive written in a hand so elegant it looks engraved and others that appear to have been composed during an earthquake.

I probably would have continued the habit if technology hadn't replaced correspondence with communication. We send emails, texts and direct messages, faster and more disposable than the conversations they replaced. I still save some. And I rarely look through them before hitting Delete.

There is an ignoble exception.

After four decades of writing newspaper columns, it's hardly surprising I receive the occasional epistle from the far side of reason. Uncharitably, I often refer to these messages as "nut mail." Even more uncharitably, I sometimes share them with a small circle of friends, usually forwarding them under the rubric of "More That I Have to Put Up With."

Attorneys see handwritten pro se motions that begin with traffic citations and end somewhere around sovereign citizens and Posse Comitatus. Doctors have difficult patients. Police officers have regular customers. Every profession that spends enough time rubbing against human suffering develops a few calluses.

They are not signs of cruelty so much as adaptations. Without them, you couldn't keep doing the work.

The difficulty........

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