|
I
love the rebelliousness of
snail mail, and I love
anything that can arrive
with a postage stamp.
There's something
about that person's
breath and hands on the
letter. —Diane Lane, actress
Kevin, this woman is the most adorable creature I have ever come in contact with.
If she turns out to be
even as good-looking as a
mailbox, I will be crazy
not to turn my life upside
down and marry her.
—Joe Fox (Tom Hank’s character in “You’ve Got Mail,” Warner Bros,1998)
August 1, 2026
Dear “Pen Pal,”
I’ve been thinking
about our letter writing
over the years and had
some thoughts.
Do you remember years
later that shout from the
old boxy Apple computers:
“You’ve got
mail!” It was from
the time when we barely
knew what the World Wide
Web was all about. That
shout eventually became
annoying, don’t you
recall, but we were still
pretty excited every time
we heard it, since it
meant there was something
on that screened box (a
future aquarium for some
people) to read.
Then wasn’t it crazy that a few years that shout would be the title of the
hit rom com with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. I know you liked them
both, but I always thought that Tom Hanks always plays Tom Hanks and
Meg Ryan was better in that movie with Billy Crystal and the diner.
But hey, you know we’re lucky that email scream is no longer there.
Imagine hearing it every time that spam emails arrive today. Who would
have imagined more than thirty years ago that emails would become
mostly junk mail, but junk mail is also what our poor mail man or woman
is delivering daily. Take the daily mail out of the mailbox, quick glance
and right into the recycling bin. How many 0% credit cards do I need?
Been thinking, about those Gen Zs and Gen Alphas who have probably
received very few personal letters. And those schmalzy Hallmark
birthday cards, they’ve probably only seen them in a drugstore display,
wondering who buys those?
We at least received paper birthday greetings in the mail often with
money tucked in. I do get more FB birthday greetings than I ever got in
the mail. The number I get wouldn’t even fit into our mailbox if they
were paper birthday cards. I do like those cards that fold out into
bouquets (“Designed in Massachusetts. Printed in China.”)
Remember when at the end of last year Denmark’s postal system stopped
delivering letters? Now it’s being handled by a company whose initials
are DAO-Dansk Avis Omdeling – very close to Dead On Arrival, right?
Is letter writing and the post office really dead? They said that about God
and books and Simon and Garfunkel years ago in that dangling
conversation asked, “Is the theater really dead?”
They estimate that Gertrude Stein wrote more than 10,000 letters - more
than James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, but not more than Voltaire, who wrote
15,000!
Queen Victoria has them all beat. There are 460 volumes of her letters.
Maybe she was compelled to write them and to try to break all records
since the first postage stamp issued was in Great Britain and has an
engraving of a young Victoria on it.
Stein had a book of the queen’s letters and enjoyed reading them. Talk
about writer’s cramp or carpal tunnel for all of those prolific writers.
Since Stein was into repetition, maybe she sent the same letter which she
would copy over and over to a bunch of people, or use that duplicating
tool of the past – carbon paper to make the re-letter writing easier. Wait,
Alice wrote the copies, for sure!
Will there be a renaissance of letter writing? I don’t know. It may take the
OPTPC , “Oprah Pen To Paper Club” or a campaign, TSSWSL, “Taylor
Swift Says Write Some Letters,” to jump start it.
It is estimated that 9.7 billion emails are sent in the U.S. every day, very
few of which are personal. While 6 billion text messages are sent daily
with an average of 41.5 per person. The average is low, however, since
people over sixty-five send an average of five texts, while young adults
send an average of eight-seven.
Those are the statistics. Hmmm?
We should do the best we can to give the postal employees something to
do. Got to get to the post office. I’m out of stamps that last for eternity.
My partner often feels that since, in his opinion, I spend so much time at
the post office mailing things, in my next life I should be a postal
employee. Maybe, if they have letters where I’m going.
Till the next pen to paper,
Hans
Art of the Month
“Alice B. In A Hurry,” Tom Hachtman (2011)
from Gertrude and Alice and Fritz and Tom
by Hans Gallas
|
