Letter Writers of the World...
So, I love to write letters.
I always have. Near my writing space, I keep postcards and in my closets, notecard after notecard. I'm highly unorganized though. But dedicated. And in love with paper. (Sorry trees, but I love you in both forms.)
So I found this blog today: Good Mail Day
And this book: Good Mail Day: A Primer for Making Eye-Popping Postal Art
which I have just added to my Christmas Wish List.
It looks mouthwatering to me. Letters sent and received. Is it a luxury these days? I'm not sure, but I cannot wait to learn new ways to make my letters even better than the handstamped quickies I send out.
Another way to create. Another way to put a little beauty in the world and into someone else's life. I love it.
I think about what has happened to letter writing and it's a sad causality I suppose of both technology and busy lives. When I was young, the surprise and excitement of a personal letter from my grandmother or someone else for that matter was such a warm and personal feeling. I don’t think my kids really ever learned this experience. It would be a good goal for 2010 to drop them a personal letter or at least a note card on a routine basis.
ReplyDeletei love still sending letters to my grandmother but i have found that treating email like a real "letter" makes it a great deal more fun :)
ReplyDeletealthough i do miss having pen pals in print.
For many years, decades, I kept up active constant letter writing with friends -- especially poet friends -- all over the United States, and occasionally elsewhere in the world. I've saved all of the paper letters I've received, even quick scribbled notes.
ReplyDeleteI've never kept a journal, but to some extent the letters I've written to people over the years have served -- in part -- as a kind of journal, a sort of thinking out loud. I've tended to start a letter, then I continue it over the next three or four days, before I finally mail it. Paper letters, I mean.
A paper notebook is also much lighter weight, and easier to carry around, than even a small laptop computer. And paper doesn't crash. I have things written on paper that have outlived any hard drive ever made.
I think also of the vast knowledge, the history, that has come down to us preserved in letters people have written. Computers are a useful tool for some kinds of things, they can search faster, they edit and make copies faster, all of which have there upside and down side -- but I believe in the end paper (or something resembling paper) will outlast them. Letters will one day reclaim the world.