The sad state of mail

I received a Christmas card from a friend, with a real hand written letter inside. This friend has been in my life for many years now, let's see, I first met her in January of 1976 - that's been more than 30 years! On and off throughout our lives, we've kept in touch and way back many years ago, we used to write letters fairly often. Although we have what some might consider to be a significant age discrepancy (17 years), and our lives have taken very divergent paths, somehow we have managed to maintain an interesting relationship. We've never lived near one another except for that very first year almost 32 years ago.
Anyhow, a couple of years ago, after several years of not having any communication with her, I found her son's email address online (he's a staff member at a church in a neighboring state) and emailed him to see how she was. He contacted her, and she immediately emailed me back. Off we were again, communicating by email and now some phone calls since we both have the same cell phone plan.
However, in the letter she included with her Christmas card, she mentioned that her hard drive had crashed several months ago (I had known that, and had been waiting for her to contact me again when she might have it fixed.) But it was her last statement that caused me to pause in my tracks: "Hope you have a meaningful Christmas and New Years and I don't know when you'll hear from me next. Take care." Hmmm. I was thinking about this and mentioned to my youngest son-you know, people don't write letters anymore. My mother was a letter writer-she regularly wrote to all us kids after we moved away from home, and to her siblings who lived many miles away. When I was in college, I practically LIVED by my little post office box. Many days I received letters from home, either from mom, or, from the boyfriend I was dating at the time. For years my siblings and I wrote in a "round letter", a fat envelope that went from house to house with everyone's contributions in it. I can remember the highlight of my day, even 20 years ago, was getting a letter in the mail. But now, oh my. There are not very many letters in my mail. Every once in awhile, I will get a letter from my elderly uncle, who lives in a town not too far from here. He still writes to his far-away and near relatives. But this past year, 2007, I cannot remember anyone besides him sending me a letter, and it's getting to the point I don't hear from him by letter maybe 2 or 3 times a year.
Does anyone besides me think that there's just something precious that we've lost in our culture when the mail you get includes nothing but advertisements and bills? And that when we have no computer, we have no way to communicate? I'm thinking I'm going to write her back. Perhaps we'll be the only two people in the USA who still send letters, but there's just something about writing down your thoughts. I'm not talking about typing letters, I'm talking about real writing. Like with pen and paper. Does anyone remember how to do that anymore?