My husband and I were watching Lewis & Clark and at one point a gorgeous letter (one of 90 million read during the documentary) is quoted and it ends with Clark assuring the addressee that, if all goes well, he will send another letter "by next winter".
BY NEXT WINTER.
There is something so beautiful and courageous and romantic about that concept. People waited months and sometimes years to hear from each other. I'm certain each generation stands, at one point, with a kind of longing when looking back over the ways and habits of the other but I can't help feeling sad to the point of panic when I think of the lost habit of writing letters. I am aware that I am getting old when I examine just how judgemental and worried I am about the shortened code language that is emerging with Text Nation. I'm such an old fogey I don't even want to live there.
I can't live without long, precious descriptions of things I'll never see or mindful words strung together so perfectly my heartbeat slows and I feel more relaxed.
I'm thinking of sending the Lewis & Clark documentary to the parents of that girl that did 34 billion texts in one month. So many so that they figured out that she had to have been texting every millisecond. Thank GAWD she wasn't the head navigator on the Core of Discovery. We'd all be living in a parking lot in Pittsburg if she'd been in charge of keeping her eyes on the road.
Somberly Yours,
Geriatric Lady
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