Thanks for the reminder. I shall do so. Steve in Baltimore
County.

The art of letter writing seems to disappear. I have tons of letter which need weeding out and shredding, but every time I start, I stop and read and put everything back.
Which reminds me, I have to clean out my e-mail. Years old e-mail is just not the same as years old letters.

I remember the joy of sitting down with my fountain pen and bottle of ink and writing lots of letters. We moved so much earlier in our marriage and have friends all over the country..not to mention family. I never liked ball point pens for letters. But sad to say I don't do that anymore..it's mostly emails because the news is as current as minutes ago,and the response is always quick as is my reply to that. In essence,it's the equivalent of several letters in one day or a long phone call. But still...I miss writing letters.Nice to see you doing quotes Mary...you started with some goodies.

I have two letters sitting in front of me to answer, and two cards to send, both of which shall have a note in them. One of them is to my cousin who lives in town. We can pick up the phone to chat, and I can drive in to visit, but her typical means of communication is a letter. Always with a verse tucked in side, often with a small piece of her original artwork. I can't tell you how special the day becomes when an envelope with her address arrives.

I love this quote and what it says. Letters are special. Email is nice, and so is cheap long distance.........but, they aren't letters.
When I get an email, I can just paste "yes" and "no" right into the sender's original text to answer a question.Nobody expects a novel back in answer and if fact, it's borderline tacky to do so. Emails are like synopsis of a letter. They elicit replies but not so much original thought. They are often short and deal with one subject. On the other hand.......Letters are like open-ended questions. They cannot be answered with yes and no. They force the recipient to contribute some real thought into replies.

I loved getting letters especially those pen pal letters that all the teenage girls got from servicemen during WWII. Some of us would have a dozen or so regular letters to get off. I like to think the men enjoyed getting them as much as we enjoyed sending them.

But I didn't spell at all well. I had what today would be called some sort of Spelling Dyslexia. As a teen, I seldom noticed that there just wasn't such a word and I let it go, or copied the letter over. As I grew older, I became more and more embarrassed about it. A letter might have a dozen or so corrections. If I was tired, it was worse. Sometimes, I couldn't even get all the letters in my four letter first name down correctly.

Now, thanks to Spell Check, I write far more than I used to. E-mail is a great thing to me. The bad part is that few of my friends or relatives want anything to do with a computer. They say they are too old to learn. Sad.

I still have a couple of friends who write (or type these days) letters & I do cherish them. While I love email & it's helped me to reconnect with several old friends, there is nothing like getting an old-fashioned letter in the mail. There is nothing like holding a piece of paper in your hands, full of news and views that you can read over and over gain & then to put up to pick up later & enjoy once again.

Did any of you have pen pals when you were young and in school? I had one in England for about 5 years when I was in elementary school and Jr. High. I can still remember the thrill of getting one of those really thin envelopes with her handwriting on it. We lost touch though.

I used to subscribe to a publication called "Letter Exchange". It's purpose was to connect people wanting to correspond on subjects of their interest, I found several very nice pen-pals, some were limited and some became lively, wide-ranging friends.
Somehow many started to email eventually and most of the contacts died. Some started to get highly political and we just ended up disagreeing so much, it wasn't fun any more.
The publication discontinued, too bad, I still miss it, but people do move on.

I miss letters too, but have especially enjoyed email friendships because I've "met" folks with my particular interests. So often we start emailing about one thing but slowly expand into other areas. The worst thing is that you suddenly stop hearing from them and since you don't always have phone number or even real name, you can only wonder...computer problems or something more serious...and often it's months before you're back in touch. Sort of like here on the GP...old posters disappear for awhile...and you wonder and hope they return someday. josh

I'm still corresponding with the woman who became my pen pal when I was 16, and we've gotten together at various times over the years both in the UK & here in the States. I got her name at some pavilion at the New York World's Fair in 1964 (I can't remember which one). And yes, it was & still is, an event to see one of those blue airmail envelopes in my mailbox.

I think this thread has inspired me. I now want to send return notes to the people who sent messages to me on their Christmas cards!

Did any of you have pen pals when you were young and in school?

Yes, I had a couple in America. One of them was a boy, who got my name from a gal, who was also a pen pal. I was at that tween age, when I was taken back, wondering what my parents might think! LOL He was a delivery boy for Western Union. OMG......does that date me or what?

I wondered why an American would want to be pen pals with an American overseas? Suspect it was because they wouldn't have to take the trouble to learn another language. I used to go down to the beach in front of my house and translate letters written in English to my French friends from their American pen pals. I never thought to ask in what language they wrote their replies. But I felt like at least the American kids were missing a bet not attempting to correspond in the language of the country where their pen pal lived. You get more of a feel for learning a language how it was actually spoken, than through a text book.