Can we save the pen from death row?

It seems it was just yesterday we were still using typewriters, pagers, floppy disks, and cassettes. This morning, while I was jotting down ideas for a short story, I wondered if the pen will suffer the same fate and become obsolete. What’s a writer to do without a pen? Imagine a ballerina dancing without music or an artist painting without a brush. The mere thought of losing the pen to technology makes me cringe. To me, the perfect image of a writer’s relationship with a pen is that of Josephine “Jo” March in Little Women (one of my favorite books and movies). I loved how the ink from her steel nib pen had stained her fingers so much it became her trademark. Unlike Jo, I don’t stain my fingers because I type my stories. But there’s always a tradeoff: in this case ink for carpal tunnel syndrome. At least people knew Jo was a writer when they saw her inky fingers. Me? I go incognito all the time. When my wrists give out and my fingers drag on the keyboards, I take two Tylenols and grab a dear pen instead. What a break that is! Long live the pen!