We send emails and use social networking and - can you believe it? - even make phone calls but those don't replace a personal letter. A mountain of memories and history will expire one day with all of the lost computers and deleted files. Nothing can quite replace the feel of a fountain pen as it glides across fine paper or the look of a friend's handwriting.
Whoever sent a perfumed email?
Or saved one?
8 comments:
Michael, I was away last week when you announced the 5 year blogging period. I think I've been visiting your site for about that long, which is longer than any other site. It is truly astounding that you've managed as many posts as you have, I would have run out of things to say long ago.
Well done, and keep up the good work.
If you ask the younger generations they would regard a personal letter as weird behaviour. A sad state of communications....
Although I've always defended the printed word, I don't think that emails, for instance, have no value.
Two recent instances for me - we're installing new servers and desktops in our office. Our IT suppliers have to empty out the old email folders and I had asked one of my coworkers to please save the emails that passed between me and them when I was recovering at home from cancer treatment.Many of those emails were personal impressions as well as their expressions of support and good wishes.
This morning, I stumbled on a few emails that passed between me and my wife back in 2008. I was home, about 2 months out of treatment, finally taking some short trips out of the house and testing my sense of taste and ability to eat solid food.
All of those emails became immediate in the sense that I was not years down the road from there, but was back in those moments. And as far as a perfumed email - I could just as easily feel my wife's touch as she wrote me from work during the days I spent alone at home.
My contention - the personal letter resides not only in the physical stock of paper and ink, but within the sender and receiver. It's meaning isn't lost or diminished necessarily by the nature of its physical presence.
Then again, I did print all the above out. Wouldn't trust it to the digital cloud... :)
- Jeff
Jeff,
That is a powerful reminder of the truly important.
Thanks!
Michael
Dan in Philly,
Thanks for your kind note. I'll keep tapping away.
Michael
Bob,
Give them time.
Michael
I've sent a perfumed letter! It was to my (then) boyfriend circa 1993, and was one of those notes folded into a complicated triangle that you pass in 7th period study hall.
Nineteen years (15 married) & two kids later, I think it was a highly effective decision! :)
My 8 year old has started corresponding with a friend of hers that changed schools last year. They both hand-write their letters - complete with sad faces & tears over how much they miss each other.
I still send hand-written thank you notes, as do my daughters (the other is age 6).
My husband and I both make our girls hand-write their school reports also, which their teachers greatly appreciate. Not only is hand-writing good for muscle strength and hand-eye coordination, but it also proves without a doubt that Mom & Dad did NOT write the report for them!
CincyCat,
I still have some of my wife's perfumed letters from before we were married.
There is a power to the hand-written word.
Michael
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