I was the featured speaker Sunday at the annual luncheon of the Delaware County Literacy Council.

It was an honor for me as this crucial organization honored their volunteers, although I joked that our critics might suggest otherwise. Many of them would love to tell the Council they very often see little if any connection between the newspaper and literacy.

But I showed up, in part to salute the priceless work these volunteers do to increase basic reading and writing skills. Judging by some of the e-mails I receive every day, they have their work cut out for them.

I am an admitted dinosaur, someone whose skills were honed utilizing “Palmer Penmanship” under the firm – some would suggest ruthless –hand of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

I have many concerns about technology, and what it is doing to us as a society. I happen to believe that all this communication, which in theory is supposed to make us closer, more connected, more wired into each other’s lives, is instead making us more solitary, less likely to deal with each other one on one, and utterly incapable of communicating a cogent thought, especially in its written form.

My son – and I suppose many of his generation – no longer feels the need to actually talk on his ever-present cell phone. He now simply “texts” his thoughts.

We now believe something called a “tweet” – the message delivered by Twitter – is fine literature, with its limit of 140 characters.

Swell.

I know that some of the people who e-mail me every day have something very compelling they are trying to communicate. But for the life of me I have no idea what they are saying, aside from the fact that it is often in all caps, which I am told translates into them yelling at me. I get lots of those each day.

I have something in common with the people at the Delco Literacy Council, and the volunteers who carry out their work.

We are both in search of readers, and stressing the importance of reading and writing in our daily lives.

I believe the newspaper is one of the building blocks in that foundation. I became a newspaper reader in part because of the home I grew up in, where my mother and father would never consider starting a day without first perusing the daily newspaper.

Besides, where else would I have learned how to read the horse racing entries than other than at my father’s side as he caressed those very special pages in the sports section.

I will continue pushing to increase literacy and writing in my own way. I hope the newspaper will always be a part of that mission. I am beginning to have my doubts.

That is not a good thing. Either for me, or for or society.