Haste, Post, Haste!

I'm reading a new book called Yours Ever: People and their Letters, which is about, duh, people, and their use of letters for correspondence. Which got me thinking. Why don't people write letters anymore?

Sure, people still send cards with little messages of love or "thinking of you's", but no one really sits down and writes an honest to goodness letter. I think the last time I received a letter was when I was a freshman in college, from my mother, and she only wrote a letter because Hurricane Isabel had knocked out their power and she couldn't email.

Which brings me to my next question. Is email considered a letter? Or is it just a relative of the telephone call? (which most people don't do anymore either) Maybe email is the parent of the text message. This idea reminds me of the parts in the Bible where it says "So and So begat so and so, who begat..."- Letter begat telegram, who begat telephone, who begat email, who begat text message.

My point, (and I do have one) is people just "check in" with each other now, they don't really want to hear all about the goings on. The author of Yours Ever, Thomas Mallon writes that the speed and expediency of email is what we've become accustomed to. "Its addictive instant gratifications have replaced the old, slow anticipation of the daily visit from the mailman, who now brings mostly junk."

As much as I say I would like to reincarnate letter writing, I do not possess the skill or the time. I say skill because it takes a lot of practice to sit down and write a readable and enjoyable letter. And time, well, who has enough of that? (as I sit here, lazily, and blog)

Maybe that's the answer. Maybe the letter has morphed into the blog. Really, back in the old days a letter was a "Here's what's going on in my life" tome. Blogs are the same way. We write about things that interest us, enrage us, bore us and sadden us. Letters did the same thing. So maybe instead of saying that letter writing has died, we can say that it's just evolved into blogging, with a bit of email thrown in for a quick "how are you?"

And to be fair to my generation, we are more connected than ever, even being thousands of miles apart because of the speed and efficiency of email, text and the electronic age. So instead of losing touch with someone because they move away (Mr and Mrs. M) you can still keep tabs on them because they are only a text or email away.

Oh yeah, and a phone call too.

Correspondingly yours,
Nay