I live in an independent living community (folks over 65). I think of this when I see the crowds form in the afternoon near the mail room. We are of a generation that was used to real mail.

I know I'm delighted when I find a "real" letter in my mailbox. I think all of us are hoping for something more personal than the usual catalogs and ads from cremation societies (which are written to look like handwriting.)

What I so enjoyed the days of letters is you just had to look at the handwriting and knew immediately who it was from. I miss those days so very much, now its like the odd bill and junk mail.

kathy

My mom had such distinctive writing, and I love to see her cursive on paper.

and the fact you'll never get a "written" letter from a grandchild...that's right, my dgkids have no idea how to write in cursive...and i'm unwilling to print other than the littlest 2...how do sign a legal paper?

how do sign a legal paper?

*****

In the future? Biometrics- fingerprints and retinal scans!

My daughter lives in a different city on the mainland of BC, so it is very easy and fast to give her a phone call, or send an email....but that being said, I often send her a card with handwritten note inside or photos from dearly departed family member in their own hand writing describing the people, places or things. She covets and treasures these so much. Best of all is my 95 years-young aunt to whom I mail all sorts of things, and funny, but she replies in kind - even though she does use a computer for email!!!

What sorta gets me is that many folks save all those letters. I have most of the letters that my grandfather sent to my grandmother when he was courting in more than 110 years ago. What made her want to keep those? And now?

When my children were very little my best friend moved away. This was before email, and "long distance" phone calls were expensive. We decided to write often to each other, and mail the letters back to the writer once a year, at Christmas. We did this for years, and each of us has quite a collection--narratives of our kids' childhoods.

This is especially meaningful to me because my mom started a journal when I was 9, writing on the first page that it was written for me so that someday I could read about my childhood and know that my parents and I loved each other. Sadly, she died that year, with very few entries written.

These days my granddaughter and I write long letters to each other. She's 25, so she can write in cursive and read it. I think giving up the teaching of cursive writing is a mistake.

I think I have written before how I received back letters that DH (very few) and I sent to our families when we were serving overseas and our children were growing up. A true treasure. Yes, makes me wish I had kept a journal....but these letters that I wrote as that young woman seem to be so be "me....at my very best"....where a journal might be more mundane. I wish for more. Then my last-born child that married a serviceman and was sent to Okinawa in 1997...with two children and a computer; really had "Nanny" (very close to grands) hop on that ride.....been riding ever since. But, noteworthy is that I have those years of emails and photo's printed and I have loved reading the news we shared thru those years. Haven't been hooked up to a printer for ages, but I still do keep files for letters from family.....just because I often forget what is happening while we live so far apart and see them less and less often as they make their ways in life. It is the phone and texting that is gone.....forever....sadly. BTW...I don't text and have never thought about why....hummmm.

I used to love to read & write letters to friends and family. Now its a lost art. I can't do it anymore it hurts my hands and my penmanship is horrible. I have kept a lot of my old letters some are about 50 yrs old. Yes, young people don't know what they are missing.

Not unlike many things discussed here, I have a different view. Rather than longing for the days of yesteryear with slow, written correspondence, I regret living so much of my life without access to today's cheap means of immediate communication and information access.

When I lived abroad, phone calls to the US were too expensive to make regularly except for business and a few special personal occasions. Letters and packages, even by the fastest air mail, took 7-10 days. We were basically out of touch with friends and family.

Several of our kids have lived and worked abroad and on the other side of the country. I can message them and get a response as quickly as if they were three blocks away. I can have phone calls and video calls with them for free, as I did with my own parents before they died.

To me, stacks of old letters or written materials would evoke sad memories of when communications were slower and much more limited, more difficult, and more expensive than today. I much prefer how it is now.

My mother and aunt would write me weekly. It sounds so archaic now. Also friends and I would correspond by mail, and it was such a personal touch to receive a letter. I never get a handwritten letter unless I get a card from someone and a note is enclosed. I save old cards but didn't save other letters. I do have a trunk of letters my husband and I sent to each other every day while we were at different colleges. I have not read them in many decades and don't know why I saved them. They will just be thrown out by the kids. It is a journal of my life though.

My parents were married young, during the depression. My Mother moved in with my Daddy's family and he went off to the Navy to save money for college. I have their love letters from that time and it is really sweet. Thankfully they are PG. It is so nice to have.

I'm glad we have all the easy, quick forms of communication today, but our texts, emails, Skypes, etc., aren't leaving much of a record. Much of what we know about American history, for instance, was learned from journals and letters written at the time. The diaries of women traveling across the country in covered wagons made an enormous contribution. How else would we know what happened on those journeys? Those diaries and letters are remarkable, considering how difficult it was to to write them. Materials were often hard to come by, and sometimes the women had to make their own ink.

Someday our lives will be far in the past. History. What are we telling future historians?

Covered Wagon Women, Vol. 1

It's unfortunate that letters aren't written much anymore. Such letters can be an important part of family history. But I do enjoy the easy of texting and email to keep up with family more regularly than letters.

Last night I was reading a letter from my grandmother (1967). It was just general chitchat, ending with a complaint that cigarettes were $3 a carton. She died a month later of a heart attack.

When my mother died we found in an old trunk a batch of letters written to an aunt from about 1885 until 1905. What a treasure they were! They prompted me to start a 10-year project of writing a history and genealogy of my father's family. Because of that project I got my first computer sometime in the 1980's and have not been without one since. I gained insights into family that I would never have had without the letters.

When my husband and I were dating he would write me almost daily although he was living on an airbase less than 10 miles away and we saw each other nearly every day. He was able to put into words things he was not able to say. I have those letters in a bundle for my children to read when I am gone. They will see a side of their father that they never knew. I now use e-mail daily, but letters were a very big part of my life.

Also a saver I enjoy now and then reading old love letters and family letters from a time long ago. Perhaps one must have a touch of sentiment to understand.

I received these letters, with a lot of pictures, from a brother who was cleaning out his garage. He had them from when he had cleaned out our mother's home when she went into assisted care at 91. Since I am the one who is doing the genealogy of the family, he thought I should have them. Letters are a valuable source of information for that purpose.

I loved the speed of email. It is great for a quick reply to a question but it is not like a multi page letter. That is like comparing apples and oranges. How many people keep and print emails? I will admit that I do when it has family information, but most off the time I just delete them. It is kind of like digital vs film cameras. There lots of pluses with digital cameras, but how many have hard copies of the photos they took or are they still on the flash card? I keep forgetting to do it.

There lots of pluses with digital cameras, but how many have hard copies of the photos they took or are they still on the flash card?

This is something I feel strongly about. My dad was an avid amateur photographer, and I am too. He had his own darkroom, and the thousands of prints, negatives, and slides he left me are a treasure. The many people he photographed among our family, friends, and neighbors agree. Some would have no pictures of their childhood or parents if it weren't for my dad.

The situation is certainly different now, with just about everyone snapping away with their digital cameras and phones. But you're right--what happens to the photos? Even if they're transferred to disks or whatever, I don't see families gathered around a monitor someday, looking at old family pictures.

So I print, print, print. The massive photo printer on my desk gets a fair amouint of use, and every so often (I wait for a sale) I put in an order to Mpix or Adoramapix. I print some 4x6, some 8x10 or larger, and a lot of 5x7's. Between my dad's pictures and mine, I've filled a lot of albums. My favorites are Itoya Art Profolios. The photos will last a long time.

Alisande - What printer do you have? I need a new one. Years ago I had the Epson large format printer that used 8 ink cartridges. Great prints but expensive. I now go through a local photo lab for special prints or Costco for snapshots.

I had a darkroom, mainly for B/W but could do color. It took over the powder room and DH convinced me to sell all the equipment. I miss making my own prints. I could spend hours in the darkroom.

I have a Canon Pixma Pro9500MarkII, but it isn't manufactured anymore. The newer model is

Canon Pixma Pro-10

Yes, the ink is expensive. One good thing is you replace only the empty cartridges--one at a time. I've heard of the cartridges being refilled with cheaper ink, but I've also heard that doesn't always work out very well.

I kept the old Christmas cards when dh and his sister cleaned out his dad's house. I think it made sil mad, but they were in the trash can. I found a couple of treasures in there like an old tintype I gave back to sil and a letter from the governor to my fil. It was typewriter typed and hand signed. No one else has children, but dh and I thought my children might find it interesting some day. There was also a few cards from dh's grandmother. She was famous for using up every bit of blank space on paper. Lol! The handwriting was of an era when people put ore effort into making it legible.

I agree with your "two cents". These days, I get very few letters from relatives and acquaintances. One noticeable item in handwritten letters is the absence of a spell checker. When I reviewed letters from Mom (decesed), I could track her declining health in her handwriting. I see the same decline in my sister's handwriting (sad), My own handwriting has begun to decline. Its not as neat as it once was.

I treasure written correspondence when doing my family history. Its a touchstone to the past. I have a few samples that are 190 yr old. Signatures in these letters were valuable for sorting out how individuals spelled their surname.

I too, like SnidelyWhiplash, appreciate the low cost and speed of a keyboard with internet. I was raised in a different time long before the internet when writing ability was important. I believe that good penmanship yet has merit in today.s world, albeit slow compared to the typed word with other modern conveniences. I am saddened to learn that cursive writing is no longer taught in some schools. Its no wonder that today;s students can't write. Printing is slow compared to cursive. Cursive characters are designed to flow smoothly into each other and this speeds writing. It leaves some latitude for individuals to develop their own distinctive styles. although that was frowned upon by teachers of the art some 70 years ago because they were striving to mold the output from everyone to standard form.

Lets not forget that this country was built with cursive writing. Case in point: The Declaration of Independence is hand written in ink with a nib pen. The original Constitution was hand written. In fact, all court records such as land descriptions and marriages were hand written until the introduction of the typewriter in the 1880s.

I only had one grandparent--my paternal grandmother, and she lived 1,500 miles away. When I was young, phone calls were outrageously expensive, so I wrote to my grandmother on a regular basis. I was the only one of her nine grandchildren who made time for her, and I loved her dearly. When she passed away in 1972, in with her important papers, there was an envelope filled with a sampling of letters I had sent her through the years. One was squiggles from when I was a toddler--and my mother had "translated" my writing for her. There was also an essay I had written when I was about 11, about the person I most admired--my grandmother. Those letters are priceless to me...because they were so meaningful to her.

It is sad that people no longer write letters. In fact, most now use email for things which should be handwritten and sent "snail mail", such as thank-you notes, invitations, announcements, etc. There is definitely a downside to technology and "progress", in my opinion.

wanda, imagine if you and your grandmother had lived several decades later. You could have spoken with her several times a week, had video calls whenever you wanted, exchanged emails at will. Wouldn't that have been better?

My relationship with my mother was enhanced in the mid-90s when she got a WebTV unit that gave her email access. We'd exchange short notes every few days and had significantly more contact than previously. She did the same with all other family members, to the same effect. I treasure the enhanced relationship our communication allowed. My keepsakes are in my memories of our relationship, no storage space needed.

Snidely - You must have a far better memory than I do. My mom passed away 5 years ago and I can't remember any of our conversations, especially not word by word. If those conversations had been in a letter format than I could re-read them and enjoy them all over again.

Yes, we can instantly communicate with one another. But...no one in the future will have a clue about us -- how we felt and what was said, or only hinted at -- in letters.

I am quite sure that a great-great aunt, a spinster, had a crush on her cousin. I know it from 'reading between the lines' in letters she wrote to other people. She would work him into every letter, sometimes saying he'd received the letters she sent to him during WWI. (He'd been stationed in France and had visited the family's ancestral village in the Jura mountains.) She was an only child, stuck at home caring for first her sickly mother, and later, her senile father. Letters were pretty much all she had.

I don't know that my memory is different from anyone else's but as I said, I have many happy recollections of the close relationship. I do remember a number of conversations (and email exchanges, by the way) that were particularly noteworthy to me. My wife and kids mention her from time to time too as things arise that remind them of her. She died 13 years ago. She was nothing all that special, just a sharp and insightful person who loved and was tuned-in to those around her.