Reviving the Lost Art of Letter Writing

One of the common peeves of those who are of the opinion society is circling the drain is the decline of letter writing. We don't take time or think deeply, instead we opt for a dashed off email or text instead of a reasoned and personalized letter. Those same doomsayers bemoan the loss of to history. They would ask that we imagine the Gettysburg address as a text message or Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail in the form of an email.

Me? While I understand the pressures of a busy life, I've been making an concerted effort to become a writer of letters. It started a year or so ago with writing thank you notes for Christmas and birthday gifts and with effort has been evolving into something more.

While I don't dispute the fact that electronic communication has its place in a modern world (if I did, I wouldn't be writing a blog), I do think the prevalence of text, email, and Facebook have opened the door to slap-dash messages and one-way communication. Receiving thank you notes has become the exception instead of the rule. We no longer follow up with long-lost friends by mailing a few pages of a well thought letter. Instead we share selfies and craft a carefully edited version of our lives that will be benign enough to pass the probing of nosy potential employers while still showing us as younger, hipper, and more in-touch than we really are.

So, here's encouraging you to pick up a pen and a piece of paper, find a few minutes to sit down and pen a few words to someone worthy of your time and thoughtfulness. Stuck? Well, here's a little 1950 film from Coronet International to get you started.

Waterman's Ideal Fountain Pen

Here's another ad for Waterman's Ideal fountain pen touting what in 1911 was a big selling point, its portability. Imagine how freeing it must have felt to no longer have to dip a pen into an inkwell in order to write. Suddenly writing on the hotel veranda while enjoying the sea air was a real possibility, not a cumbersome contrivance that could only be managed at the risk of ruining everything you were wearing. 

The mention of the extra amount of letter writing that takes place over the summer struck me. Ah, for the time when correspondence wasn't a dashed off email, twitter hash-tag self centered, or fake-book account filled with selfies and skewed accounts of reality with a bias toward witty sarcasm. Sorry, just indulging my inner Luddite.