I've just finished reading "Don't You Have Time to Think", a collection of letters written to and from Richard P. Feynman. A birthday present from my wishlist.
Previously I've read the collection of letters to/from Tolkien. (Several times actually. Very nice collection!)
It suddenly struck me that over my lifetime I've probably written <200 letters to people.
When I was young I had a couple of pen pals, and when I was entering university I was involved with a couple of play by mail games which involved writing random letters involving strategy & etc.
Personal letters though? I've written very few, and I think they've mostly consisted of letters to my partner/partners of the time.
(For example Megan went home for a few months at the end of a university year about two months after I initially met her. So there were many letters back and forth. Recently she spent two months working in the USA; counting eggs and avoiding alligators so again there was a flurry of written letters, maybe 20 total during the duration of her trip.)
I guess that most of my (hand)written messages to people have been in the form of postcards whilst on holiday.
A long time ago I offered to mail postcards to Debian developers. I know I sent at least two, and I received at least one back - but the thing I remember most was exchanging addresses with Amayita and getting into character set issues. Her emails, containing her Spanish address, were difficult to understand as my mutt/console refused to display the foreign character set properly.
I can't recall whether she did ultimately receive a card from me, but I'm sure she'll remind me if she did.
Anyway I have no resolution, intention, or expectation that I will suddenly start writing more physical mails to people. But I think it almost counts as something we do less of these days. The telephone and internet have become the norm.
In some ways this is fantastic. In others it less good.
On the left my handwriting is so bad that maybe this isn't necessarily a problem.
ObQuote: E.T.
Tags: books, debian, letters, postcards 5 comments