Landline telephones. (Astrid Riecken for The Washington Post)

I chuckled after seeing what my wife inscribed next to Andrew Van Dam’s July 2 Department of Data column, “Barely a quarter of Americans still have landlines. Who are they?” [Business]. She wrote: “Steven Grogan.”

I treasure my landline, and it is the redundancy of communication that I value most. Though my cellphone is generally reliable, there are times when it does not connect. This could be a huge problem if there were an emergency at home.

The column pondered why “the Northeast is the last place to give up its landlines.” Being originally from that region, I know it’s one part of the country where people more frequently think about contingencies. They lock their doors and probably rely on multiple means of transportation. Or maybe the Northeast has the highest concentration of baby boomers who, like me, might still use their rotary phones attached to the kitchen wall if they had the chance.

Steven M. Grogan, Fairfax

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