In my youth, I was inspired by the father in the memoir Fifth Chinese Daughter, as he made copies of every letter he sent, and kept every letter he received. Although I was as lazy as the next guy, somehow I managed to always find carbon paper or make photocopies.
Back then, for normal people, merely finding a paper and an envelope and a stamp, not to mention writing, was a mountain hard to get over. No wonder politicians thought a single letter stood for a heck of a lot of constituents. And no wonder Thank You letters are valued.
At any rate, personal letters would be long and rambling—like a nice conversation in a bar. Not now.
I find an e-mail to be short like a business memorandum—it even has a subject line, just like a memo does. Corporate memos, written with carbon paper in duplicate, were important for keeping information flowing. At an institute I worked at, memos were sent to little wooden holders on office doors. Other places used “pigeon holes” in the front lobby. Big corporations, as in the movie about that bear from Darkest Peru, Paddington, used vacuum message tubes. Of course folks kept sending memos even after life got easier with the invention of the interoffice communicator, called for short an intercom.
(Memorandums could be misused for criticisms and turf wars, but that would be a separate essay)
In everyday life, letters were written partly because of the frightening, horrible expense of calling Long Distance, an expense that meant screaming, “Quiet, it’s long distance!” That is, right up until “deregulation” which was, by the way, fought bitterly by the phone companies. Of course, if it was your child at summer camp using a pay phone, you just bit the bullet and let him use a rambling conversational tone. A buddy at army cadet camp was amazed to hear my phone call, “Wow, you really do talk business-style.” I was trying for concision to save my parents money.
As for being concise, for modern cell phone text messaging, according to a college girl (Athena Scalszi) on her blog, it is considered a sign of anger if you include the period after each sentence. Who knew?
Unfortunately for posterity and people who enjoy biographies, no one will every publish The Collected Phone calls of…
Of course, when you and your drinking buddy ramble in a bar you are like a radio scanner seeking something you can both latch on to, or for someone receiving your letter to write back about. Note: There’s a contemporary Nancy cartoon advising don’t reply to every topic in a pen pal’s epistle. (https://www.gocomics.com/nancy/2023/11/03)
I remember my father advising me that a paper letter’s date must include the year (no, that doesn’t insult the recipient, as if they don’t even know the year, because they might keep the letter) and he said something about the proper folding of a letter, something that I still don’t know.
…For today’s blog, I was stuck for a topic, but I just happened to have an e-mail letter handy. No point in making a copy of it, I suppose, not for frivolous, ephemeral e-mail—not like real letters in my day! As best I recall, when writing the letter below, I had to bite my tongue to keep from having too many subjects. Maybe from being used to writing on paper, or maybe it’s the Irish in me. This after we had so recently talked on the phone long distance!
E-mail to Blank (name omitted)
in a town South East of Calgary
Dear Blank,
I couldn’t ask you over the phone, but it sounds like you are making some money from a renter. That’s fine.
Thinking of our finances and retirement… In my case, I am frugal, compared to actual people, not compared to what I think in my head I could be doing. My bank officer says I am doing fine.
I want to quote you a song from some guys in the gay community:
“Young man, put your pride on the shelf,
No man, does it all by himself.”
I saw my bank officer a few weeks back merely as a “check in,” as opposed to getting any new information or making any changes. My point is that instead of relying on my own common sense, like a student who mistakenly thinks “I have to try harder” I did a reality check with my bank officer. You never know.
And if I have made any silly financial mistakes in this life, well, I am accepting that my “just-like-other-adults” I know, my “only human” father, also nicely frugal, made some silly mistakes too. Strange how I didn’t see him as clearly when I was younger.
.. …
On another matter, it occurs to me that if you are willing to open your heart and mind to getting writing feedback from me, then such willingness will do you good because you may in fact find someone else, closer and more suitable. Call me a new age mystic, but I think folks appear after “becoming willing.”
Today in Starbucks, where I am typing this, I met a young lady with a handbag from Harrods in London. She is excited about going twice a year because of makeup and things you can’t get here; I said people in the Doctor Who Shop recognize me; she liked it when I said I have stickers on my laptop from Lois Vuitton in Harrods.
I will tell you my Harrods story sometime. (Say, the story is partly on my blog, Feb 15, 2023 under Have Social Skills, Will Travel… a couple other London stories are around then, my other batch of tourist essays is in May of 2022)
I escape the Canadian winter in just ten more days!
Regards,
Sean
… …
… …
Sean Crawford
Calgary
During a stupid polar vortex,,
Minus 30 Celsius at 4 p.m.
Screw this weather, I’m going to London!
January, 2024
No post for January 15
Update: Today a businessman told me that none of the new hires knows how to write a letter!
Footnote: “Deregulation of prices” has also drastically lowered airline tickets: Now both air carriers and telecommunication carriers have a lot more companies competing.
Footnote; Someone did an dissertation on letter writing, back in the 1997. It looks good, but I haven’t read it yet.
https://scholars.unh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2997&context=dissertation
