Letter writing: wither thou goest?

Lately I've read some articles and heard some talk on public radio about personal communication. More to the point, in summary nobody writes letters any more, and many lament the loss of handwriting. Writing as someone who usually got "D"s, with the rare “C”, in penmanship and who's been typing for almost forty years, in some ways that's a good thing. I can print clearly but it's tedious, slow, and the longer I write the harder it becomes to read. On the other hand I can type about forty words a minute with very few errors (thank you, backspace key!) and the print is clear.

And yet I think the discussions made a good point. With Twitter, blogging, Facebook and texting nobody writes any more. Even email seems to have run its course with some people. So I decided I need to write more letters. Many of them will, of course, be emails (I'd rather not waste the paper to send a letter to two dozen or so people), yet I do want to get more in touch with people.

Writing letters is not quite the same as speaking to people, whether face-to-face or over the telephone. Frankly I'd much rather sit down with people; that's so much more enjoyable. Unfortunately distance makes that impossible for some, and so they get letters instead.

Some will argue typing an email is less personal than writing a letter by hand, and I won't argue with that. I remember during and after college exchanging letters (sometimes quite long ones!) with friends from other states, sometimes as many as five or six a year. I still think, though, if I write in a stream-of-conscious style (as if speaking) that is just as personal as typing a letter, which I did sometimes do even if the typewriter was a clunky, old manual which needed a sledgehammer to use the "Q" and "P" keys.

And I have to admit I still have some of those old hand-written letters, some of them from a high-school pen pal from England named Titilope Omomo (if I remember the spelling correctly). I'm not sure where they're packed other than they are in a box with other memories such as knick-knacks, papers, yearbooks, and other things. There's something about holding a thirty-year-old piece of paper and reading words written in pen that's somewhat faded which you can't get from saving emails.

I've decided I'm going to write to my friends more often. Of course it'll be emails, mostly, but sometimes they will be hand-written letters. I'm not abandoning the old ways, just adding new ways to them.