Playing archeologist in my basement for five consecutive days I came across a cache of letters that I have kept through the years, buried deep in the boiler room. As I picked through them, reading many, it reminded me of how I miss the hand-crafted letters of a written note…and you were wondering how I could spend five days in the basement sorting boxes! I have a particular fondness for the card, letter or note with it meandering thoughts, arrows to afterthoughts, sketches and the deep consideration that only seems to come from a putting pen to paper. As I have recently ventured into the realm of Twitter, I figured it out – I get the bird!
Since the dawn of communication – beyond the grunt and punch – when people started to correspond over reasonable distances, birds have somehow been involved. The original “air-mail” was conducted after kidnapping a pigeon, strapping a carefully rolled up message to its leg, and sending it along to its eventual destination – hopefully with some prior training. For centuries, notes were written with a quill – a feather plucked from the hide of a large bird. Through the 19th century we decided to emulate the birds, leaping from horse to truck to the metallic bird that sends our notes across the oceans and beyond through the clouds; again, at the expense of the birds.
Bounding into the electronic age, the bird appears anew. Twitter – the modern Paul Revere – to send our thoughts to every rooftop and mountainside with each tweet that escapes the writer. As I caress the pages of the first flirtatious notes my wife and I passed at University, or the notes of love professed across the long distances our relationship had to bear, I wonder how this new generation will delve into their inner depths to convince each other of their undying love as well as find their hidden goals and aspirations. There is definitely a place for this new electronic communication – yes, yes, there is certain irony in the fact that I post these demystifying thoughts on a blog that may very well have arrived to you through a link in Twitter – but I will always believe that our deepest thoughts, those that we share with a careful few are at-risk to be lost, or worse, never found… It saddens me that the art and style of writing, now cursive, is a mere brief discussion in our current elementary school syllabus. I show my pre-teen boys the letters from a Dutch uncle whose writing is a masterpiece and flawless in both inscription and grammar, while they think it looks more like Greek.
As my kids enjoy thinking about how Harry and Hermione trade idea by Owl, I think about how Twitter, managed by Hedwig’s electronic counterpart, Hootsuite, will be their future medium for dialogue and I embolden myself to ensure they don’t leave my house without the fluency of the written word, and hope they will carry that art to the next generation…I just hope they don’t lob an Angry Bird at me as their parting gesture!
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All the fantastic things are basic, and many can be expressed in a solitary word: liberty, justice, honor, obligation, mercy, hope.
Appreciated this post – not frequently I drop a remark but in this instance experienced obliged to!
Great post friend, keep up the good work.
Loved the insight and so understand the joy of holding a hand written note that has survived the years. In defense of the electronic communication form it does allow for a much broader reading base as well as a cleaner basement! (Am chuckling at the idea of a recently found note of your would be 99 year-old grandfather who used carbon-copy paper to write his family a three page letter. Early form of blogging.)