A Lost Art

Hand writing Letters is a Good Thing ....... If nothing else, it tells the recipient that one has taken the time to sit down and put pen to paper and think about that person to whom one is writing ... Giving the moments of one's Life, is a Grand and Gracious thing, regardless of how it is done ... Is it not possible to imagine the joy of one who receives your Letter, knowing that he can take it out of his pocket, or desk drawer, or whatever special storage place, and read it again and again ... without having to "Click" 40-11 times to pull up some sterile text ???

I respectfully disagree,on the grounds that an animated smiley face really shows someone how much your LoL means. And drawing a smiley face with an ink pen could soak through the paper and ruin it.And spell check doe snot allways work a sin tended, but it beats having to look up a word.

Jalopkin - I concur with you one hundred percent! After treating a house-guest with fine hospitality for several days, I received a thank-you note by e-mail and felt almost insulted. It would have been better to send nothing at all. I wondered how my guest would have felt if I had, instead cooking up some pretty decent meals, I had just cut out pictures of food from a magazine and laid them on the plate. It would have been equally tasteless.

  Park4, Peter Lake & Olivia,

After a weekend filled with visiting family and before another one just like it, I noticed that you have been sneaking around in the past and saying very nice things.

Thank you,

Stoney


Letters tied with ribbon in bundles: What could be more intriguing than that?

Road  Yacht:   When  you  wrote  "doe  snot,"   was  that  a  Freudian  slip? 

And .... there we have the dilemma as Tiberius sees her ... Truly, it would have been better if nothing had been done ... One understands RoadYacht's  position and gladly applauds it, while Tiberius and the rest of us in the Pur Sang section, wish for RY a better class of friends in the future ....... (Not that we do not appreciate a a good Smiley Face, here and there ...)

The Pen Is Mightier Than Word .......

Abigail  Adams.....I  just  KNEW  that  she  was  a  troublemaker....lol

good morning eyesters!!
 
one of my favorite books...
"love letters of great mean and women: from the eighteenth century to the present day" ~c.h. charles~

As a profoundly hearing impaired person, the telephone is not a good means of communication.  Using relay, while a godsend, lacks a certain spontaneity so I've often had long handwritten correspondences with several people; usually older people to whom computers remain a mystery and the written word revered.  As well, text messaging and email are truly things for which I am very greatful......keeps me in touch in a "sorta" way that the telephone did before hearing loss.
 
One of the more unlikely correspondences was with my son-in-law's grandmother.  A fine lady who came from strong German stock.  She was "white bread and mayonnaise" WASP and I, rye bread and mustard Jewish.  We could not have come from more different times and places......she was DAR and my parents were first generation American born.  Yet we had a friendship that spanned many years.  In the last few years of her life, she found it difficult to write (severe arthritis), so it became a one-sided correspondence, but that was okay.  Her daughter told me that when she went through her things when my friend had died, that she had kept all of my letters.  Her daughter saved them for our mutual granddaughter.......as you see, her daughter too is a very special person.

don't use spell check.....men!! or cut and paste...

When  I  was  in  high  school,  homework  was  defined  as  work  that  MUST  be  done  AT  HOME.  So  we  were  required  to  maintain  fountain  pens   and  ball  point  pens.  Since  homework  must  be  done  at  home,  fountain  pens  were  considered  to  be  contraband  at  school.  And  study  halls  could  only  be  used  to  study  {NOT  to  do  homework}.  This  is  where  I  first  became  acquainted  with  the  term  "Jesuitical,"  although  the  rules  were  easier  to  describe  to  "civilians"  {those  not  enrolled  with  us}  as  "Mickey  Mouse"  in  their  very  nature.   By  the  way,  the  place  was  taught  by .....  Jesuits.

Bert~doe snot, was one of those spell check said it was alright,so it must be,right? And, since we dont have a syntax button...I actually love to write best with a yellow legal pad and an eberhard faber #2...the words seem to flow from the pencil tip,as if pulled out by my muse,strung together by the gossmar threads of whimsical thought.   I never took typing in school, and so learning to use more fingers than hunt-n-peck, was a late life challenge that seemed timely.  (Mom used to play piano by ear,but sometimes her nose got in the way)(Dad's joke,a cherished memory)

Jalopkin~ the toungue in cheek aspect of this form of writing seems to come across to some people,more than others. Must depend on the OS,or maybe the monitor refrsh speed?!?  8-)

Andy~the really great aspect of this medium,IMHO,is its instantaneous form of delivery,mitigated by the receipient's ability to turn off ,or filter.And don't forget de-send.But,and of no small import to communications between my Sister and my Mother,is to get an entire thought out before being interrupted,even though there is time to let out the cat before finishing the scree

  
At the small town funeral of a cousin whom I would not have recognized, the presiding minister toward the end of things, asked if there were any wishing to make comments about the deceased or their relationships with her.

Thirty-one such persons consumed forty-five of the longest minutes of my life doing so. Most quoted from notes, held in their hands, that she had written to sum up experiences that they had shared. Experiences the value and importance of which would have gone under-appreciated by them were it not for her.

It was at once torture and one of the great lessons of my life.

That little town is a long forty mile spin killing an hour no matter what you do. The drive gave me time to consider some things about my late mother that her sister and the mother of that late cousin, probably did not know.

I spent the next day composing and hand writing a letter using a chubby little fountain pen that I had owned for fifty years. That turned out to be important.

Our uncle, father to that cousin and husband to that aunt, had been too ill to attend the service or to receive visitors.

He died very shortly thereafter and on the morning of his funeral, I was sitting on the living room floor where I had been shining shoes, trying,without success, to bawl or something.

A call had come in reporting the death of a young girl, Emily, the daughter of friends.
She had adopted me as her godfather when I had taken on her misogynistic father for routinely and rudely ignoring her in favor of his less brilliant and less thoughtful sons.

She had been in a car with a friend and her father when that man decided to end it all by crashing into something solid.

Like so many early reports, that one had been wrong but I didn't know it then.

It was inexcusable to miss the funeral of my uncle, a man we all adored for his ability always to make everyone feel as though he had been waiting just to see them, but I did it.

Just as well as it turned out, I guess that I had imagined that that letter might have been passed around among my mom's remaining brothers and sisters and I was marginally okay with that.

Unforeseen was that it would that day and since become part of the funeral liturgy for the clan. Yikes.

My reason for bringing it up on letter writing day is this: Owing to a crease in the paper and perhaps a tear or two, one line had become illegible and God knows who decided what it might have said but the words that they came up with were pure poetry and the absolute making of the thing.

No fountain pen, no blurry words, no magic.





 

And now, let us think about that really finely crafted writing instrument. There are the mass produced kind,the handmade,the found,borrowed,stolen;but most have memories attached if they have been in your possesion a long time. I have a Fisher Space Pen,been in my pocket for more than 25 years.I have changed ink color,and that is a whole other avenue of memories(aqua?plum?that blue-green from grammer school that came in little plastic cartridges?)
  I think this,in fact,may be a hinted sub-topic.

Road  Yacht:  Isn't  it  a  good  thing  that  the  Founding  Fathers  were highly  literate?  Think  about  how  terrible  the  Declaration  of  Independence  or  the  Bill  of  Rights  would  be,  if  they  were  full  of  grammatical  &  spelling  errors.

The romantic in my loves to write letters, but my hand writing is so poor and child like that I am embarassed to send them.  I occasionally type, sign and mail a letter because I know the joy of opening your post box and seeing something that you weren't expecting that says "I cared enough to write".  Even with my atrocious penmenship I still like to fire off postcards to my friends, it may not be a full letter but it is a way of saying, someone very far away cares about you.
 
Dear old Da wrote me once a week when I lived in Ireland...my flat had no telephone, fax, internet, etc.  Those white airmail envelopes were food for my soul and he understood that like no one else in my family.  During his time in the service during WW2 he would receive letters from his mother and since he was the only child of a single woman he also get letters the entire extended family and many people from his hometown who all knew and loved him like he was their own son/brother.
 
Da still has these letters, and we still love to read them.  Most are hand writen but some (mostly his mother's) were typed.  There were poems, photographs, handbills from community programs, feathers, pressed flowers, and even a pair of shoelaces.  He said he vividly remembered getting one letter because it smelled like pickling spices and he knew before he opened it that it would be a laundry list of all the harvesting and canning his grandmother had done in the previous weeks. 
 
You can't really smell an email, now can you?

It's like my avatar got swiped for the photo!
 
I'm a fountain pen junkie.  That was all I asked for as a graduation present, and is now what I use day to day.  There is something meditative of the smooth flow of ink that cannot be replicated with the harsh scratch of a ball-point.
 
I know this isn't the point today.  I just really like writing with a fountain pen.  I am trying to do a whole novel by hand . . . the only problems come up when I forget to check my ink level before I head out the door to write.  Running out in the middle of an idea can be annoying.
 
Hand written letters . . . I love getting them, I love sending them.  They almost make up for the bills in the mail.
 
And I agree.  Abigail Adams was a trouble maker, and good for her for being one. 

 Nachista~ I have had emails that stank

STONEY:   Great Stuff !!! Keep it coming ...
 
ROADYACHT:  I see your point, and remember the Cartridge Pen quite well ... Fountain Pens being the enigma that they are to the CyberGeneration behind me, that does not remember when there were no Computers, I am most positive that the Cartridge concept will really throw them a curve .......
 
Got a Shaeffer Fountain Pen as a Bar Mitzvah Gift, and really enjoyed writing with it, and also learned not to lend it to anyone else, because the Nibs wear-in according to the Owner's Grip and the angle at which he addresses the paper, and another person can change it enough that one's Penmanship suffers and can look very much unlike the Owner's actual script ... A simple moment of Physics, but one that a lot of us probably never thought about ... Checked with a GraphicArtist buddy of mine once, and she told me the same curse holds true with a set of, RapidoGraph Pens also ... and it can affect the cleaness of the work produced ...
 
Was given a Mont Blanc Executive set for my twenty-first birthday, solid Gold Nib, and I have only replaced the Nib twice in the last fifty years ... a Good Investment, really .......

There is so much mail comprised of junk mail and bills these days!
During hospice care for my mother she enjoyed checking the
daily delivery from the postmaster. I e-mailed friends and
family with a plea for snail mail to my mother. I wanted her to
have letters from real folks she knew and loved during her last
good days of living. The response was gracious and after her day
I keep all those letters for these were from truly good people.
When my brother and I were settling her estate we found a
30 gallon bag full of correspondence my mother had received
for the last 19 years of her life - for she had written to people in all the
places she had ever lived (Ireland, IL, AZ). There were holiday
cards, photographs, letters - many from folks we did not recognize.
In her retirement she had spent her day writing and reading letters from
friends and family. I still vividly remember us writing Easter cards
shortly before her death. Little did I know that this was such an
integral part of her acts of daily living.
 

i find beauty in all the arts of communication.  like having your cake and eating it too!  love to receive email with the latest digital pics and video's of the grandkids.  yet, when i open the box at the post office, and see my mother's handwriting, i can't deny that either.  it's all good.

BERT:  Freud didn't wear Slips ... that was J. Edgar Hoover and his Punchmate, Twinkles Tolson ... the only thing Jedgar was closer to(as often as possible) was his Pekinese, named, Flatus ....... Tolson's biggest complaint during their conubial sessions was, that Hoover always reeked of Alpo .......

I saved all the letter my first husband sent, read and loved every word, However, he lied!

Michael:    Behind  every  great  woman,   there  is  a  good  little  man.....lol
 
Jalopkin:  OMG,   the  FBI  humor  is  really  funny.....assuming  what  you  say  is  true,  then  dang  you  woulda  thought  that  the  guy  wouldn't  have  been  wrapped  so  tight,   regarding  misbehavior  attributed  to  others...
 
Brigid:  Welcome  aboard!   You  obviously  are  young,   you  are  amazed  at  how  people  actually  had  to  bungle  through  life  WITHOUT  THE  INTERNET...lol

BERT:  A happy thought, indeed ....... However, one need not assume ANYthing in this case, as assumptions are dangerous in the first place, and for anther thing , everything that I have said is a matter of Public Record ... Hoover's vehemence was caused by his POLITICAL ambitions, his personal quest for Power, as absolute as he could get it to be, while taking his directions from the Camerlengo, and being protected by the Power above ...  him, and himself remaining in the wings while actually driving the Bus ... very similar to the actions and habits of the Camerlengo himself ....... "the FBI Humor" as you put it ... IS pathetically funny, but it  IS  NO  joke ....... And in the, "Truth is Stranger Than Fiction" department ....... the Pink Tutu that Hoover danced around in, during his off hours( he NEVER wore it to the Office, Eleanor always wanted to borrow it) was Gifted to him, by way of the Dutch Embassy, from Herman Goering, from his own private Collection ... (Put Twinkles Tolson into an absolute snit !!!) This data was related to a British Embassy Assistant(Read Gopher) by a marvelous old Lady named, Corrie Ten Boom ... Herself a Beacon for the Dutch Resistance, and a Godly woman who personally saved and smuggled over 1200 Jews out of Holland, right under the NAZI noses ....... Sieg Heil Mother Fletcher .......

My hand writing, when I take the time to make it legible, is thanks to Sister Immaculata, Sister Rita and the Palmer method of penmanship at St. Thamos Aquinas Grammar School in Chicago.
 
I used to write letters to my far flung family all the time when I was younger and phone calls were beyond my budget.
 
Now most of the folkes in my family have the internet so day to day happenings are conveged via the great www.
 
I used to write letters every week to all, especially my Grandmother, I was her favorite, but now my Granddaughter and recently my Grandson and I e-mail each other all the time.
 
 

At work when filling out stuff by hand I have had people and even youngsters comment on the fact that I use cursive, and that it can be read and understood. 

I also hate it when I'm trying to update things in the computer profiles and can't read the chicken scratching of my co-workers.

If you can't write so it can't be read, when you are in that situation, upload your information yourself.

I was horrified, at the turn of the previous millennium, to receive a thank you note from a certain un-named religious functionary that had been written on one of those hideous pieces of paper, rather than a proper piece of vellum. The nerve of that Roman bastard!

And then a few centuries ago, I was sent - excreted is more apt - a thank you note by some German fellow (he was overly fond of his own etchings, that ass) that wasn't even properly rolled and bound in leather. The revolting missive he scratched out to me was actually FOLDED. And then sealed, get this, with WAX!!! Absolutely disgusting.

You can only imagine my utter revulsion, then, at receiving a thank you note not last week that had been written on the cheapest paper imaginable, and then unceremoniously folded into a so-called "envelope" which had - and I can barely type the words - been licked by the sender in order to seal its adhesive flap shut.

One need look no farther than the rapid degradation of written communications to properly comprehend the decrepit state of society today.

Jalopkin:  I  was  aware  that  Hoover  had  an  unorthodox  lifestyle,  which  apparently  was  no  big  secret  but  which  was  never  discussed  openly.  I  find  it  extremely  hypocritical  that  he  ran  a  department  that  would  immediately  disqualify  anybody  similarly-situated  for  any  position  of  trust  in  the  government,  on  the  theory  that  they  sould  be  highly  susceptible  to  blackmail.  You  are  always  an  interesting  contributor  to  this  site,  this  is  where  I  sharpen  up  my  mind  and  at  times  get  to  practice  my  laughter. 

Okay, Jalopkin, I must admit, you're on a roll today.  You've had me laughing so hard, poor little Hoover's got to be thrashing in his grave.  And the mention of cartridge pens brought back memories of the messiest method of pen and ink writing I ever used, white blouses spotted with ink from drippy or leaking cartridges.  I think I can even remember how to "load" those cartridges in the pens, and praying it worked and wouldn't spurt out all over.
 
Bravo jalopkin for some fine writing today...but of course I'll deny I ever said this, if asked. 
 
(about the root canal v. the hug: I'd rather have a root canal too, so there.  Really, I'd rather you had the root canal ....)

Stoney, you're more than welcome.  You are a gift to us.

I don't remember getting mail, let alone letters, until I went away to school my freshman year. That was back in 1967 and I had just turned seventeen.  

Telephones were rotary and only good for talking. Long-distance calling was only for life and death emergencies. Slide rulers ruled the day and computers and cell phones were science fiction. There was a lot more face-to-face communications back then and I kinda miss it..... at least for the most part that is. I couldn't get away with making faces and various hand gestures when talking to someoneI'sd rather not be talking to like I can now. A+ for technology on that score.

Anyroads, I was pretty lonely by the time I drove on to campus and settled into my WPA built cinderblock dormitory room in good old Norman Oklahoma.

I remember how nice it was receiving letters from my family and the boxes of cookie crumbs I received from my sisters. These always made me laugh because I knew if they had arrived intact and I would have eaten them, they probably would have made me sick. My sisters still can't cook but I love ‘em for trying.

My very favorite letter back then was the very first letter from my very first girlfriend back home. Although I don't remember much, if anything, about what it said on the inside, I still remember seeing the envelope in my mail slot with all the lipstick kiss prints on the outside.

Meanwhile, far away, and forty some years later..... we now occasionally exchange emails that have somewhat bridged the miles, the decades, and our very different lives.

It's all good.

PETERLAKE: Great  Stuff !!!!!!!
 
 
PARK4: What .......
 
 
BERT:  They're all a buncha flaming Hypocrites, and the entire System of Democracy, is a self-feeding Monster, and has proven to be the worst form of Government ever devised by man ... The last ditch effort to save their Societies was to adopt a Democratic Form of government, and it killed all the great Societies of the World ... That is exactly why ... The Founding Fathers of this country(who were a buncha Jailbirds) designed a CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC ... "and to the REPUBLIC for which it stands ..." Democracy is MOB Rule, and it is nothing more than who has the Larger MOB or can afford to hire the most Mercenaries ....... and then of course, Democracy, Redistributing the Wealth, takes all the Incentive out of doing ANYthing to make a Buck, cuz the Democrats are gonna take your money and RE-Distribute it to some leech who has never hit a lick at a snake, while his Dopefogged Girlfriend(s) are off squirting out kids wholesale, looking for a career at the Federal Tit  ...  Ben Franklin even wrote that in a Letter ... with a Quill Pen ....... The Harker No Ball Jotter  ... writes thru Butter and Chicken Cacciatore ....... to answer your Question, Bert ...

I've used fountain pens, ballpoint pens, typewriters and word processors.... and still it's just the words that matter.  As much as l like calligraphy, I'd hate to be corresponding that way.  As for the allegation that letter writing is a dead art, OMG, what the heck is all of this forum?  Our postings can be hastily scribbled passing bits of ideas, or they can be perceptive and carefully crafted messages from deep inside.  In either event, we reveal ourselves both with our words and with our omissions.  Much as I'd like to have a chest of all the letters I've ever written, no one (including me) would ever take the time to read them.... so I write in the hopes I make someone/something a bit wiser, or happier, or thoughtful.  Yeah, it's a form of molding the world... much as a playwright takes delight in watching (from the wings) as the audience grows silent and enters the magical world he has crafted.  And I'm tempted to repeat the words of Frank Church in his response to eight year old Virginia O'Hanlon:  http://www.newseum.org/yesvirginia

Don't you DARE edit 'Catch-22', Evelyn Waugh!  If Waugh hated reading so muchhe should have applied for a job on the (now threatened) Reader's Digest.  (I hate to think what he would have done to Carlyle's 'The French Revolution' or to Marcel Proust's 'Remembrance of Things Past'!)

As for Napoleon's preference for a smelly wife, I can only say my comments would be in bad taste, touching on odors which -- in hindsight -- might best left alone.

If using 'A Night in Casablanca' had legal issues, would 'A Night in the White House' have suffered by extension?  And what's wrong with 'A Night in Oran', Groucho... I doubt that Albert Camus would have objected... Groucho could have handled the nights, and Camus could have handled the days (a logical enough division....).  The little matter of a plague could be handled by deft script writers, without ever infringing on Poe's 'Masque of the Red Death', even though it is out of copyright ....

Reading Doc, and he's saying while a bureau of actual paper letters would be wonderful indeed, no one not even himself would take the time to read them.  And my thoughts fell down our basement stairs to a shelving unit, the highest shelf, where there sits a box that's lopsided and dented and warped from damp and time, and in it all and I mean all the letters sent to my lover now husband, and from me to him, all the letters joined into one box when we joined hands and furniture in late August 1970.
 
And after Lo! all these years, they've only been removed once, I flipped through them, looking for a poem I thought I wrote in one of them, but didn't, so the top went back on it, and the sides got taped back down, and now here it is in this house -- and neither one of us has read one of those letters, nor do we feel any inclination to do so.
 
We never will, I know that now.  Yet this is the first time I even considered giving them the heave-ho.  I took such good care of that box: I packed them up as well as I packed up our legal papers and kept them with me when we moved.  When we had a child, I worried she would read these hot and heavy epistles, and rather than tossing them in honor of our having gotten on with our lives,  I wrote on the front in black marker and ALL CAPS the following:  PRIVATE LETTERS BETWEEN P. AND B. -- DO NOT OPEN
 
What was I thinking? 
Clearly, I was a new mother and I didn't know kids yet.
If anything could make one's child open a box of love letters, it would be those words.
 
(She said she never did open them.
I think she's not telling me the truth.)
 
Either way, maybe it's time to throw that box away.  They're not words for the ages, for the aged, or god knows for my grandkids.  The girl in the light blue Eaton vellum envelopes, and the boy in dimestore white only exist in fond memory now, and I think it's time that we put that genie back in the bottle cork it and throw it back into the past where it belongs.

Doc  Nolan:   I  wonder  if  Napoleon  would  have  enjoyed  Al  Pachino  in  "Scent  of  a  Woman?"
 
Park  4:   Now  you've  done  it.....your  magnanimous  praise  of  Jalopkin's  prose  has  caused  him  to  go  into  "full  tilt  boogie"  mode,   possibly  creating  the  risk  of  a  meltdown.   Park4,  I  like  your  old  house  photographs,  the  old  girls  are  quite  elegant...

Park4:   Our  posts  crossed  like  two  ships  in  the  night,   I  just  got  to  read  yours.   Bravo  for  taking  the  high  ground  and  not  using  the  episode  of  your  box  of  letters  to  create  a  platform  from  which  you  could  have  teed  off  on  your  ex.   I  also  had  to  learn  the  lesson  that  one  just  cannot  micromanage  someone  else's  midlife  crisis.....people  have  the  right  to  make  their  own  life  decisions,   even  if  they  are  not  very  good  ones.

Park4...OOOPS,  i  think  my  speedreading  caused  me  to  screw  up  the  meaning  you  tried   to  convey.  now  if  you  had  written  it  down,  and  given  it   to  me  in  a  box...

No problem bert.  Our letters are of the teen-age variety, we were only 18-21 when we wrote them, and they are really pretty..........silly.  Nothing I could use against him if I wanted, the crimes of the heart that are recounted in them are the stuff of Lovin' Spoonful songs.  Like "Wouldn't It Be Nice."  Oh embarassing. 
 
We did have a fight the summer we got married, and it's probably recounted in one of those letters with tons of recriminations, the crime had to do with him having a sudden fixation on the Rolling Stone's song "Under My Thumb" and I didn't think it was funny, and he said I was too sensitive....and that's largely the kind of letters we wrote.
 
Later, I wrote better stuff.  But since we lived together, they weren't ever in letters, and so they don't qualify.
 
But the stuff in the box, no one could mount any accusations based on them.  LOL:  The Lovin' Spoonful Defense.
 
I think Doc Nolan has spurred me to action.
 
As for Jalopkin:....................................!!!  And that's the short version.  And you never heard it from me.
 
 

Before you toss those letters away, PARK4, be aware I have a lifetime collection of books, many of which I may never read again (though I should since they're my good friends).  And I keep magazines for two years that I KNOW I'll not read again -- it hurts to throw them away.  And I have friends I haven't seen in years that I still hope to see again..... I've decided that the pain of 'tossing' is greater than the pain of keeping. ---- And a final warning:  My father, an eminently practical man, threw away all the recipes my mom had collected over her lifetime.  His explanation: 'She hasn't made these in years.'  He forgot that they were the warp and woof of The Seven Siblings childhoods.  My sisters were FURIOUS; 'the boys' were disappointed.  And we have spent years trading the bits and pieces we salvaged, recreated, or found.   Every Thanksgiving I make my great-great-grandmother's bread recipe which mom made until dad persuaded her that store-bought was cheaper in both terms of money and time (he was then an 'efficiency expert', having moved on from being a chemist.)   ---- And then there are the letters and newspaper articles my youngest brother found from two of my grandfather's uncles, who fought in the Civil War.  One letter preserved and now on 'the family website' is the letter back home to 'mom and dad' in upstate New York informing them of the death in combat of his older brother (Battle of Milliken's Bend).  ---- So don't blithly toss that box away.  Let someone else do that after you are both dead.  That way it won't be your responsibility and you'll never have any second thoughts or regrets.  Time will cover you soon enough in anonymity.

Oh my, Doc.  I actually went downstairs and got the box.  I'm not going to read them...we both laughed at how great our handwriting used to be, though.  And one brown leaf of a dead something fell out of one of the blue envelopes.
 
Well.
 
I once threw a ring away, as far as I could, into the Atlantic.  I didn't regret that.  But letters, they're so much more than a ring, aren't they.
 
Now you've gone and given me something to think about, Doc.  I really regret having regrets, and once they're gone, they're gone...
 
Oh, Doc!

Personal letter writing can be a deeply meaningful activity. It forces us to slow down and think about what we want to say and exactly how we want to say it, instead of quickly dashing off hastily composed emails or text messages filled with abbreviations, abridged opinions and brief observations.

From the paper to the pen to the words that you choose to use, personalized letters convey your own distinctive taste, style and voice. When you are the recipient, you can't help but feel that much reflection and care went into the handwritten gem you now hold before you...touching the paper in your hands and knowing that the author beheld that very same paper, grasping the way that someone has chosen to express their thoughts, and seeing the ink and handwriting flourishes, conveying elements of personality, is a unique experience.

Letters are personal in an increasingly impersonal world. Sometimes they are the only things we cling to when we have no other connection to our loved ones, our families, and our friends. We can keep them close to us and read them over and over again. It is important to stay in touch with the people you care about and love.

I always try so hard to write thoughtfully. What if, instead of my letters, my descendants were to read the things I've posted here at the Eye? Perhaps that is not highly probable, but it is possible. After all, no one can say what will survive the test of time. What would I like my words to reflect? What would I like future generations to learn about me from my posts? I try to make what I write worth the time it takes for someone to read it...and worth my time to write it...I want people to know that I care...

I also endeavor to take the time to print out the emails (of substance) sent to me, from my sons, and file them away. As a genealogist, I'm very concerned about the current and future generations, in this age of technology, not leaving a written record of their lives. As it is, I have very few letters from my ancestors, but the ones I do have shed more light on their existence, experiences, and feelings than any "official document" that survived from those periods.

Imagine what would have been lost to history...how much less we would know...how superficial and imperfect a record we would have...if we didn't possess Da Vinci's notebooks, Hemingway's letters, or if the Founding Fathers of our country had sent text messages to each other instead of expressing their thoughts and opinions on paper. John Adams actually purchased a folio book to preserve copies of his entire correspondence, even before the start of the Revolutionary War, in order to record "the great Events which are passed and those greater which are rapidly advancing." Wartime letters add so much more to our understanding of military conflict than any historical maps, battle plans, and recorded strategies. They add the personal touch of human emotion.

The human experience without handwritten correspondence is unthinkable.

There are, also, my favorite, handwritten notes...those wee treasures found on a pillow, slipped into a briefcase, tucked into the soft arms of a teddy bear, or accompanying a photo...perhaps laced with a trace of perfume or cologne...that tell a special person how very much you care...

Park 4:  You  were  so  melancoly,  that   I  suddenly  lost  whatever  anaalytical  self-confidence  that  I  had  felt  earlier,  and  was  sure  that  you  would  figure  me  as  trivializing  your  innermost  feelings...this  is  a  big  problem  of  not  having  face  2  face  communication....no  body  language,  inflections  of  voice,  no  complete  context...
 
Kindlee:  I  always  like  your  reflections,  it  is  obvious  that  you  have  the  guts  to  say  what  you  mean,  and  mean  what  you  say.   It  actually  demands  a  certain  amount  of  courage  to  write  a  strong  letter......fear  of  rejection,  the  risk  of  suddenly  being  emotionally  naked  and  all  alone........the  heart  is  a  lonely  hunter,  but  not  as  lonely  as  the  soul.
 
Ah,  The  Lovin'  Spoonful,  1965.  "The  younger  girl,  keeps  a  rollin'  cross  my  mind..."

Doc  Nolan:  Gonna  wade  into  "Deep  Survival"  tomorrow,   have  some  obligatory  "hurry  up  and  wait"  time,    the  book  will  be  perfect...  I  am  SO  ready  for  the  distraction  to  gloss  over  what  otherwise  would  be  a  very  VOCAL  frustrated  man... Turn  out  the  lights  in  the  chatroom  when  you  retire,  Doc... remember  we  must  be  GREEN.

I've tried to write letters and Thank You notes as often as possible. I taught my children that you would certainly be remembered for such acts today, as rare as they are. Sometimes they listened.
I prefer a fountain pen. I have a few old ones, some from my family that can only be dipped now, their bladders gone to wrack but nibs still canted and curious and satisfying in the uniqueness of what they can do for your expression.
I have some that I found in flea markets and antique stores, lovely old usable works of art. I was planning to pass them on to the next generation, with my windup watches and little white gloves and embroidered hankies, but they have no interest.
I have an old cheap pen that writes quite well, that took the cartridges, and didn't I write many an essay or math test or science quiz with it, wrote poems and songs and crush letters and pen pals and wrote my life out upon the page...
 
Some are gone, and some remain.
Some are just a blotted stain.
Will we ever see their like again?
Comes oft in dreams a soft refrain:
"Nostalgia brings such bittersweet pain."

On Fountain Pens: A onetime investment on a quality pen will bring more joy than a constant barage of disposable pens.  I love that I have to pause at the end of a page to let the ink dry.  There is time to think, to consider.
 
On Letters: A letter can be a well-thought document, with time spent on crafting the words to say exactly what is meant.  A tweet, and email, an IM simply does not often have the same level of thought behind each word.
 
On today's writing:  Best line comes from Kindlee . . . "The human experience without handwritten correspondence is unthinkable."
 
On my own correspondence: There is only one person I even occasionally exchange letters with.  My 94 year old Great Aunt.  Sadly, she is almost blind, and has to use a very large magnifier to even see the paper anymore.  So, when I write to her, I use a Sharpie instead of my fountain pen.  Which makes me a bit sad, but I'd rather her be able to see what I write than get grumpy about how I wrote it.
 
I should mention, this woman regularly gets history books on CD, since she can no longer read, because she refuses to stop learning and being curious about life.  How's that for an inspiration.

Olivia: I'm shocked that they don't want those.  But I wouldn't give up . . . time may change their minds.

  
"Be home in two weeks. Don't Bathe."
~N. B.~

What could be more clear? He was planning one of those side-by-side tubs on a Tuscan hilltop deals and he didn't want the poor noodge assigned with creating or schlepping hot water to feel like they were just fooling around.

There's no replacing face-to-face discussing, is there.  I didn't mean to sound melancholy bert.  I was just thinking backwards, and I wasn't feeling sad at all, or wistful.  Oh well, absent the idiotic "smileys" that are everywehre, we're just going to have to rough it and guess what tone the writer was writing in.
 
Kind of like the good old days before there even were "smileys."  Just that yellow Happy Face, who I think is the father of all electronic smileys, he multiplied like an amoeba.
 
Oh well, the white box of letters is still here, like the elephant in the room now, quiet and small but somehow bigger than life and unavoidable.  But it's still here.  Maybe I'll pick one, and read it.  Or not.
 
The younger girl song?  Another goodie from that group.  It was a simple sound, but so was I back then, in the day.
 
<smiley>

obviously I mean *everywhere* when I said smileys were *everywehre."  Which looks sort of Middle English-y, something out of Canterbury Tales, but I'm so off the subject now, I'm almost off the page and onto my desk...