Hello all, I'm happy to have found this place, though I may not be as active as some.

My name is Rich.  I'm a librarian and writer (mostly poetry), and in the past did a little songwriting and classical composition, though none of my music has been published or performed, with one possible exception.

I'm old enough (72 at this writing) to have used typewriters as a daily tool, including Russian, Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew-alphabet manual machines before the Selectric and word processors (for most of my career I've been, inter alia, a foreign-language cataloger).  My first real typewriter was an Olivetti Lettera-22, a gift from my parents, which I used through high school and college and well into grad school.  Currently I have two Royals, a KHM and an HH, which formerly got regular use but now need a cleanup and some reconditioning, especially the KHM.  In addition there are three portables tucked away in a closet, which my wife variously brought from her parents' house or found at thrift stores: a Smith-Corona electric, an SC Super-Silent (I think), and a delectable little Royal Quiet DeLuxe, in excellent condition for its age, which at some point I plan to beg for.

I'm not an active collector and at this point in my life am not likely to go deeply into maintenance and repair; my main pleasure has always been to appreciate and type with these marvelous machines, and that is what I hope in time to get back to with the typewriters I have.

Thank you for the welcome and for the link, Pete.  I'm going to keep that information on file for when I'm ready to get at least my two big machines worked on.  There was also a shop in a suburb not too far from here that was open before the pandemic, but I don't know what the status is now.  I'm fortunate to have options close to home; it's a lot bigger production to send off a typewriter for repairs than a pipe or fountain pen!