Much of what we know of history, or at least fairly recent history, comes from reading old personal letters. We know a great deal of daily life from reading old letters that people wrote about their daily lives. While historic letters will always be preserved, personal letters are what really tell us about life.
What will the future generations do? There will come a time when the personal letter goes the way of the dinosaur. People simply do not write personal letters any more except perhaps to their grandmother, if they are lucky enough to have one. When I was a kid, one could see letter writing tapering off and the weekly phone call being made. I can remember my parents waiting until the magic time, I believe it was 5:00 when rates dropped, to make a call to relatives. If the call came in earlier, they thought something was wrong or that someone had died.
The phone call has now evolved into texting and email. Human communication has become a series of OMGs and TTFNs. We LOL over jokes and we questions people’s whereabouts by dumb questions like RU@wk. What was once elegant expression has degenerated into a series of grunts and other caveman like utterances.
How will future generations learn of their past? Electronic communications is actually a series of 1’s and 0’s. How will these 2 digits translate into human language? How will we know what our grandparents did after dinner, or even what they had for dinner? How about emotions and fears and courtships. Does anyone write a love letter now? I have a small collection of letters from my father to my mother during WWII. I have gotten a glimpse into this couple as a man and woman who were in love and who were apart because of circumstances beyond their control. It is a glimpse of a young couple that most children don’t get to see. Our parents are/were our parents, not a young couple in love.
In my desk I have letters from old boyfriends, friends and from my grandparents, aunts, and parents. My children won’t have these kinds of treasures from their parents. Their parents didn’t do such things like letter writing. Their parents made phone calls and emailed. Their parents did not text.
What preservation of history will future generations have that show simple day to day life? All the video footage in the world won’t provide a glimpse of ordinary people going about their business doing ordinary things. Letters showed us that.
I know it’s voyeuristic of me, but I do love to read old letters, especially those written in other centuries. Those letters give us glimpses into real lives and history.
In the future, people will read our emails, blogs and online diaries.
But in case they don’t, I still have my very first hand-written diary somewhere around here. It will come in handy when biographers want to dig up some juicy details of my life some day. : 0
A simple poem I wrote when contemplating this very subject years ago:
The Babble of Mrs. Barrenger
In the attic of my heirloom home
live tied boxes of bundled letters,
stiff and yellowed as old bones,
chipped flowers, children, and friends.
It has been suggested I throw
them away—those framed girls are grown,
handsome boys creak by like men,
slow as my eye across the wavering page.
But still, the pile breeds, one box begetting
another. And I am afraid of forgetting.
Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt 12/8/08
Thanks for sharing that one, Pinko. I am fond of poets. My mother is one –unpublished, of course. I’ve always thought that the talent of a poet was in turning simple words into visuals of the mind. Now you’ve got me visualizing that bundle of old letters just waiting to be re-read by someone.
I have been working on a biography of one of my wife’s German-American great-grandfathers — the one who lied to the enemy alien registration office in 1917 in order to avoid recriminations against his own Prussian-born father. This man was a farmer who had decided to settle on the High Plains. He was in love with a girl back in mucho sophisticated St. Louis. He succeeded in winning her English-American heart with his heavily accented English. When they left St. Louis after the wedding and headed west, her family joshingly warned her not to let the Indians get her. I was getting all this in dribs and drabs from third party memories and an old letter here and there, but I was having difficulty in getting the real sense of the man. Then someone found a stack of letters. In one of them was a love poem written by a young German-American farmer to the love of his life in St. Louis. It all came together then. It also explained those remarks from elderly family members that the old fellow used to bring his lady love flowers almost every day of their married life.
There’s nothing, nothing like a handwritten letter. I have boxes of letters exchanged between 20 year old guys from WWII, which my husband and his mother saved. Reading about the way the young men supported each other is humbling. Some were in the Pacific, some in the Aleutians or Europe or ….
Husband also had a fiancee, who wrote to him almost every day. She became his fiancee without him. Went out and bought a ring, sent the bill to his mother and had a party, at which her father put the ring on her finger. She wrote about how happy she was! Her letters are really fun to read.
I’m fortunate enough to have received hundreds of letters from my kids when they were in college. Glad we didn’t have computers and e-mail at that time. The difference between typing and sending e-mail is that one doesn’t really think about what is being written many times. When you sit down to put words on paper, you do think, and you do re-read it before sticking it in the envelope.
My husband wrote love letters and he continued to put little notes here and there, like on my pillow or the bathroom mirror. His last note (at age 79) to me read: “I love you no matter where you are, but I want you close at night.” Would an e-mail convey the feeling, I wonder?
What an incredible story, Wolverine! I do hope you include excerpts from the letters in your book. And of course, the poem….
Someone who brings flowers every day to his wife? Wow. I wonder if any men do that anymore ever.
@punchak
Punchak, you are getting me verklempt.
You three are amazing! Great stories. Punchak, what became of the finance? Obviously it didn’t last.
Engagement didn’t last long, because the girl’s father told my husband that he, the father, wouldn’t want to be married to her! Honest!
Husband went on to have many girl friends; told me I was no. 213. He was 30 when we married. I didn’t tell him what number HE was 🙂
What a lovely comment thread. Made my (long and stressful) day.
Yes, I miss writing long letters. I’m a writer by trade. My handwriting has deteriorated from lack of penmanship. I no longer have a callus on my finger or ink stains. But Facebook and e-mail make it possible to share photos, videos and more with family and friends, and the challenge is in being brief, like poetry, in posts. I don’t often succeed!
Ironically, I started making my own cards a few years ago. Takes time, they look homemade (I’m not an artist), but they are unique and while I’m making them, I’m thinking of the person. I make about 100 a year.
I hesitate to pass this on… there’s a Web site, http://www.lettersofnote.com and Facebook fan page called “Letters of Note,” “an attempt to gather and sort fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes and memos.” I hesitate because if you like to read letters, it can be addicting. It’s like leading an archeologist to an unopened dig and handing her a shovel. Beware.
When my son was a newborn during the Gulf War in 1991, and I was spending tons of time breastfeeding, I corresponded with two soldiers in Iraq. Then after my first husband died in 1998 and I was cleaning out things, I gave the letters to an author, Andrew Carroll, who founded the Legacy Project, which collects and preserves wartime correspondence. Although I don’t think he used them in the book he published, he did send me a signed copy. His own family letters were burned in a housefire – that’s what inspired him. PBS did a series based on the book.
Uh-oh, you’ve gotten me started now!
This is a nice thread. However, I’ve never been one who is good with words or good at writing long letters. Still, I’m enjoying reading this thread. I’m glad it was put up here.
Emma, its the weekend. Time to throttle back. Letters….
Emma, will you be joining us for the discussion of Guilt? Have you seen the film? I thought it was excellent. Fiction (I guess)
Punchak, that is totally hilarious! Will you tell us? wink wink
Cindy, tell more about this author……
I am scared to go to that website.
Thanks GR. Actually, you are much better at it than you realize.
I am lamenting the fact that everything electronic is so ethereal and epheral also.
We don’t take an email, as a rule, and put it in our desk. We might leave it on our computer. And when we get a new computer…the letter probably goes to the harddrive junkyard. If our hard drives die, there goes our letter. If we use a web-based email then the letter goes to the great letter boneyard in cyberspace, eventually, unless someone hard copies the letters.
.
Actually, one thing I will say – my mother has some extremely old letters from her ancestors. The penmanship (I’m talking the actual handwriting) is really beautiful. I don’t see handwriting like that these days.
Then again, I can’t talk – my handwriting is illegible to anyone else but me. Part of the problem was I had a nasty kindergarten teacher who thought left handed people were maybe possessed by evil or something, and forced me to be a right handed person. As a result of that, my handwriting is very very very bad. The crazy kindergarten teacher’s solution to left handed people – hit them with a stick on their left hand whenever they did something with it instead of their right hand! That was back in the days where teachers could do that stuff and not get tossed out, obviously.
Anyway, leaving that all aside – I just don’t see cursive handwriting these days the way it was way back then (I’m talking about letters from the early 1900’s). The computer has replaced the need for people to write out letters by hand. So, it’s a bit of a lost art (cursive handwriting).
There’s also something to be said about what MH says – that on the computer things don’t really get preserved the way old letters did. Letters took time and effort, and when you got one from someone, you often saved it somewhere in a drawer or something.
These days – you get so many e-mails from friends, relatives, etc. – that while you may save them and even move them from one computer to another – you rarely look back at them. Eventually, in my case, I start deleting them out when I find they are starting to accumulate way too much space.
In this case, it’s not just so much the fact that often they aren’t moved from one computer to another when old computers are discarded – but also the fact of the sheer volume of them that you have to deal with. If I saved every e-mail from friends and family that I’ve gotten over the years – even ones I just deemed to fit into some criteria as more important than others (discarding such things as emails containing silly jokes and so on) I’d still have literally thousands and thousands of e-mails. It’s just not the same in the old days when one family member or friend – would send you just a handful of letters (at most) in a year’s time.
I’ll take your word for it – then again I’m my own worst critic. Anyway, you’ve certainly read enough of my writing to render an opinion on it!
@Gainesville Resident
I’ve seen the observation many times that cursive is going away in favor of printing for the next generation (when they actually have to “write” something). Do they even teach cursive in school any more?
Remember having pen pals as kids? I used to love beautiful, scented stationery, wax envelope sealers, stickers and nice pens. I have saved every chatty letter my children ever sent me from their various summer camps over the years, along with their sweet Christmas Eve notes to Santa Claus. My mailbox is full of bills, magazines and advertisements, and so rarely a handwritten note, except maybe at Christmas. Personalities don’t shine forth in truncated emails. And we are the poorer for it.
Totally agree. And future generations will be much poorer for it.
One of my favorite public letters is the one about the girl who survived Donner pass and went on the California …Virginia Reed.
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Perilous-Journey-of-the-Donner-Party/Marian-Calabro/e/9780395866108
I wonder if they teach it in schools these days, too! Actually, wow did I hate learning cursive handwriting in school. I got poor marks in it – and had real troubles with some of the capital letters especially. Actually, when I do “write” – I print rather than write cursive handwriting. I never did master cursive handwriting – the only time I do that is to sign my name.
Flat Stanley!
I had several pen pals. Some in the USA, one in Australia, and one in Israel. The Israel one was a girl my age – and I was supposed to write her in Hebrew and she was supposed to write me back in English – to help each other learn the two languages. It didn’t really work out that well though – her English wasn’t good, and neither was my Hebrew! Needless to say – I think we maybe exchanged letters 4 or 5 times, and gave up. The other pen pals lasted longer, but eventually for whatever reason – we must have lost interest and stopped writing each other.
I’m so old that when I was going to school, we had ink wells and pens with nibs. Very few kids had fountain (reservoir) pens.
When writing essays in hi school, we wrote the first ex. in pencil, went over it and corrected what was needed, and then came the ardous job of putting it in ink. Penmanship was practiced and graded through seventh grade. Ball point pens were heaven sent.
My son’s handwriting is definitely printing; very easy to read.
I still have my teenage diaries–fun to look back at all the little crushes and dramas and drawings, and the little books with the tiny keys. Do any kids even do THAT anymore?
I had no idea that nib pens were used in the last century even. I thought fountain pens had been around forever.
I don’t know if kids still keep diaries or not. I burned mine before I went to college. That was probably a good idea.
Letter writing is indeed a lost art. I have many family members that continue to write beautiful letters in perfect penmanship to this very day. I’m not much of a letter writer, but I sure do enjoy a hand written letter. I don’t mind writing a quick a note to thank someone. I love post cards.
Do people still send post cards these day? We have a collection of family letters and postcards from the men serving our country from WWI, WWII, and The Korean War. They are so interesting to read. It’s like you’ve stepped back in time. I have a post card on my fridge that I sent to my grandparents almost 30 years ago from Switzerland. It’s funny to see what was on your mind at a young age.
I’m convinced kids today will not be able to print, let alone write. My daughter wasn’t taught penmanship until 3rd grade. I my day we were using penmanship for all of our work. My daughter and friends say penmanship takes too long. I’ve told my daughter I would work with her on her penmanship, but she has no interest. I come from a family of many teachers and proud to say we all have beautiful penmanship. However, I think that my generation will be the last to use it on a regular basis. Very sad.
How did she communicate if she wasn’t taught to write? Are you talking about cursive or print?
Funny how people will brag that they can’t write or their handwriting is horrible. Would these same people admit that about their reading ability?
I’m afraid that I’m an email sender rather than letter writer. Every Christmas when I receive a card and enclosed letter from a high school chum, I cringe. Not because of the contents of the letter ,which I enjoy, but because I know that it will probably be months before I sit down and compose a written response. At least this year, she has retired so I can send an email to her at her home instead of a shared school computer.
A few years ago my mother wrote each of my sisters and I a long letter telling about her family and our early childhoods. It was good to have that information in her own words. Last year for my birthday she gave me a priceless gift – the letters and drawings that my father had sent to me when I was about three years old and he was in Quantico training for the FBI. I didn’t even know these letters and drawings still existed. She had thrown away our rock collections, arrowheads, and troll dolls in the move here many decades ago so there was no reason to think that the letters had ever survived. There were illustrations of our family dog, my sister and me, our favorite fairy tales and stories. I always had looked forward to those letters since I was a daddy’s girl.
In addition to the letters, I’ve been given all the old B&W family photos. We had all seen pictures of my parents when they were first married and a couple pictures of them as small children, but this group of photos included many of my mother as a teen. One of my sisters is the spitting image of my mother and her daughter, though she doesn’t resemble my mother now, looks very much like my mother as a teenager.
I’m a regular buyer on eBay and routinely buy from a seller in New England. Each package comes addressed in Palmer method script and a somewhat shakey hand. I suspect that the person who addresses and mails the envelopes may be the seller’s mother for the description of the items is very contemporary although the handwriting definitely suggests someone older.
@Moon-howler
Fountain pens were around, but the kids where I grew up and went to school couldn’t afford them. Besides, they tended to leak.
Hopefully bad handwriting and bad reading ability are not congruent, or being in one group means you are also in the other group. I have horrendous handwriting, but my reading ability is pretty good – I can read fairly fast with high comprehension and retention. So, I hope I’m not some kind of anomaly as there’s probably a lot of people with really bad handwriting out there. Then again, I know there’s a lot of people who don’t have good reading skills. Actually, to me the best invention as far as reading goes is the Amazon Kindle. I like to read a lot – and it sure saves me from lugging a bunch of heavy books on trips.
Mr. Howler, Son Howler, and little Howler all have horrible horrible handwriting. They are good readers. They are just incapable of legible handwriting.
Kindle rules.
OK, indeed I don’t think horrible handwriting is a predictor of horrible reading ability. Glad to know I’m not alone in the horiible handwriting department. Even my printing would be illegible to most people. I’m embarrassed by it quite frankly – for me to print neatly, I have to write extremely slowly – and it would be a massive effort for me to write anything lengthy. In school it used to take me forever to write out homework assignments and really slowed me down. Very frustrating to me – as it just wasted a ton of my time. If only they had home computers back when I was in school – I could have typed everything out and it would have saved me huge amounts of time!
And yes, Kindle is one of the greatest things that have come along lately. If only it had come along years ago – it would have saved me an awful lot of trouble lugging around books to read on all my travel.