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FredRydr
May 3rd, 2016, 05:31 AM
I stumbled upon this on Huffington Post: A Love Letter to Letters - Remembering the Mail (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lori-ferraro/a-love-letter-to-letters----remembering-the-mail_b_9750278.html?utm_hp_ref=good-news&ir=Good%20News)

Fred

Crazyorange
May 3rd, 2016, 05:35 AM
I had forgotten about Columbia tape club......fond memories.

Chrissy
May 3rd, 2016, 06:19 AM
I stumbled upon this on Huffington Post: A Love Letter to Letters - Remembering the Mail (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lori-ferraro/a-love-letter-to-letters----remembering-the-mail_b_9750278.html?utm_hp_ref=good-news&ir=Good%20News)

Fred
I don't think I've ever sent you Yosemite, Disneyland or Canada. I need to shape up. :)

penwash
May 3rd, 2016, 09:32 PM
I was with the author until...

"And get ready to bust out your Bic pen, bubbly handwriting and notebook paper"

The lady needs to get some fountain pen love :)

Jon Szanto
May 3rd, 2016, 09:48 PM
This!

http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2016-04-27-1461727700-4565598-SeaMonkeys-thumb.jpg

FredRydr
May 7th, 2016, 04:04 AM
I like the family huddled over the fishbowl. I wonder how long that lasted before Dad wandered off to the garage.

Fred

VertOlive
May 7th, 2016, 06:08 AM
Jeez. So glad I did not keep those love letters. Awkward!

scrivelry
May 10th, 2016, 08:09 AM
I remember writing letters - pages upon pages of letters - to friends in camp when I was home, and one letter in excess of a dozen pages to a friend while I was at camp. Reportedly this was read with a sense of astonishment - 16 pages! It's only now that I think about it that I realize this person, practically a family member when we were all teenagers, has probably not to this day written a total of 16 pages of any one thing in their life.

My college mailbox was checked multiple times each day. I wrote ferociously all through those four years. I wrote and people wrote back and I waited for those letters... One friend who wrote to me my semester abroad had such distinctive handwriting that the barrista who also put the mail up would tell me "Your friend with the precise handwriting sent you a letter" when there was one in the mailbox - the amount of mail I sent and received must have been unusual.

Real letters continued, increasingly sporadically, until the end of the 90's or so. Now, I get a newsletter from that old friend once a quarter. He has been sending these out for a quarter century, and they are so amusing that people who have never even met him have asked to be on his mailing list after seeing copies people they know have received. They are just the things that have happened over the preceding few months, and the family does not lead a celebrity lifestyle - you can read about their latest car repair, and when Frank at the Auto Repair finally decides their car is done for, that nothing he can do will keep it going much longer, how they decide to pick a new one. They write about the latest trip to New Jersey and how much scrapple they brought back. They write about the horrible nicknames they have for their children which they think are cute, and all sorts of things of a similar import. They write all this down and their friends and former neighbors and total strangers read it and find it fascinating - it's amazing, because if I tried that I probably couldn't get my own mother to read it. Now that my aunt is gone, that, and birthday cards from my mother and mother-in-law are the only personal mail I get.

I keep meaning to write to my nieces. I might start today. I tried once, and even with stamped addressed envelopes included never got a response, but you never know. They're older now... they might have something to say...

VegHead
May 11th, 2016, 12:58 AM
Just this week I received a letter from a 20's-something niece. Handwritten. It was poorly written, spelling errors and I won't mention grammar. I've never felt more privileged to receive a letter ever before, to think that she sat down and wrote this letter to me even knowing all her shortfalls. It is she who has reached out to correspond, by hand, and wrote that it's not what we do anymore but should. So I replied today in my best FP cursive hand that I could muster, giving her a letter pin kind of three A4 sheets. Finally, I have someone to actually write to ...

Morgaine
May 11th, 2016, 03:47 PM
We all have to start somewhere! It is hard work promoting snailmail to friends and family.