Joan Didion once said that she used her “good” silver every day, because “every day is all there is.”

That line, which was uttered to a reporter from my newspaper almost half a century ago, was brought to my attention this month, after we published the story of the 100-year journey of one family’s china, and readers poured their thoughts, and their memories, into the comments section. The use of fine china — and of other accouterments associated with formal supper, like silverware — has been on a downward slope for over a century, and in a nosedive in recent decades.