“Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.”
Today is perfectly lovely though still a bit chilly at 48°. It’s the lack of any breeze which makes the day feel almost warm. The cats have staked their claim in the sun streaming through the front door. Gracie is outside playing with her pal Cody. He leaves his own house, runs here and barks at the door to come in and play with Gracie in the backyard. When they’re done, I let him in and open the front door. He runs home and leaves an exhausted Gracie behind him.
The Red Sox won their first game yesterday. It was against the Yankees and was a see-saw game until the seventh. I’m thinking being home was all they needed. Yaz threw out the first pitch and Johnny Pesky said, ” Play Ball!” I love tradition.
I used to own lovely stationery. In the corner of every sheet was an embossed K. Having that box made me feel special. Though I haven’t any of those sheets left, I still have some boxes of note cards left over from the days of handwriting. I’d send a thank note for gifts and special evenings. I haven’t done that in a long while; instead, I write an e-mail or make a phone call, but they just aren’t the same. Taking the time to write a note elevates the gift and the gift giver. I think it’s time for me to go back to that lovely tradition of giving thanks in a special way.
When I was in Ghana, I sent blue aerogramms. My writing was tiny, and I filled every open space. My mother saved several of those, and I love reading them. They aren’t filled with exciting travels or stories of marvels, but they give a chronicle of my every day activities, my students and my trips to the market or my rare evenings out at the Hotel d’Bull for a movie. Back then, I thought the news quite boring, but I knew my family would be thrilled to read about Ghana and what I was doing. I never thought I’d be reading them forty years later.
Writing letters has gone out of style and been replaced by e-mails and blogs. I imagine, though, I too would have had a blog of my adventures in Ghana, but I do love having my letters and re-reading them. They are a narration, a log, not dependent on an internet connection. They are far more substantial.
Explore posts in the same categories: MusingsTags: Boston Red Sox, Gracie, stationery, writing letters
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keepthecoffeecoming.blog 
April 9, 2011 at 12:08 pm
Ahhh, the pleasure of forward planning. my sister just put in for our Olympic tickets for London next year. We will be going home for this.
One of the highlights, is, in fact free. the bike racers have numerous climbs of Box Hill which was so close to my home and school in Dorking. I will be on the Hill watching. Box Hill was often used in the The Saint to impersonate the Swiss Alps with it’s switchback climb !
Watched Made in Dagenham last night…..fantastic
Kat I am not overdoing PT as it is all supervised, but my spirits are really up ! It has been a terrible two months
April 10, 2011 at 10:20 am
My Dear Hedley,
What a wonderful combination: going home and seeing the Olympics. You even get to see part of them at just about your actual home. I will be watching what I can on TV. I don’t usually miss watching.
I have been to England several times and was thrilled to know there would be Olympics there. What a boost!
It is good to know everything is supervised,and I am glad you are feeling so much better. I know my own terrible two months of not being able to move without a walker and of sleeping on the couch so I am so happy your spirits continue on the rise. Soon enough you’ll be my dear Hedley complete!
April 10, 2011 at 11:30 am
Kat
I go to a clinic three times a week before work. On the “off” days I have written instructions for home, which have to be done twice a day.
I am very careful not to exceed guidelines and take the risk of putting my self back. I am walking with an air cast on my right leg.
I am also positive over the PFO surgery and hope that I will not be visiting Beaumont Hospital Royal Oak except for consultations !
Happy Sunday to you and Gracie
Love hedley
April 9, 2011 at 12:14 pm
What could have been a wonderfully perfect day got destroyed by the strong winds we´ve had most of the day. But I went down to the lake and got photographs to show in my blog (for a very long time in to the future too if I like to 🙂 )
I had to check what aerogrammes was and I saw that it could be both a card and those thin letters I used to send to my pen-pals in the US. I must have been the most boring pen-pal in the world 🙂 I only got girl pen-pals and had absolutely no idea what to write about to a girl 🙂 🙂
But that´s a bit strange really since my best friend was a girl 🙂 But then again she was a Tomboy.
I wonder if letter writing won´t come back again like most things does. I know e-mails goes faster but still it´s not as fun to get as a common old fashioned letter!
Have a great day now!
Christer.
April 10, 2011 at 10:22 am
Christer,
We did have a pretty nice day yesterday though it was a bit chilly. Today is the same. The sun coming through the front door is where Fern is sleeping. She is warm and toasty.
Letter writing is gone for good I think though I do get a small note periodically from my aunt, in her 80’s. I always though getting letters was great fun and exciting.
April 9, 2011 at 5:35 pm
I remember getting letters on special paper, light blues as I recall, from girls who would lace the envelope with perfume. I guess it was suppose to make us long for them. But all the interest, the glamour, the imagination is gone now and what’s funny is the letters you can keep and read over and over again. Can’t read squat when the lights go out and blogs disappear right before your very eyes.
April 10, 2011 at 10:24 am
Z&Me,
I’m still hurting from when the first Coffee disappeared just as I was writing it. Letters stay around. The paper today had a great article about all the Civil War memorabilia in collections, especially the letters. If they had been e-mails, printing them would have saved them but the printing would have destroyed the personal touch of putting a pen to paper and of seeing the actual handwriting.
April 9, 2011 at 5:47 pm
Letters are a thing of the past with telegrams, snail mail and typewriters. Our school system curriculums still have our 21st century kids wasting time learning cursive. We love ancestor worship in this country. Today every kid should learn how to type and print. The only value of cursive is to sign your name. In the future that could even be done electronically.
My uncle, who died in 1975 at 80 was in the stationary business. He was the last person I knew who had gorgeous handwriting along with a pair of spats.
April 10, 2011 at 10:27 am
Bob,
I always loved pictures of men wearing spats. They seemed so formal and even elegant.
Some kids still don’t have access to computers at home so writing is the only way they can get some things done, but I do agree that cursive is on its way out. I used to have great handwriting, but using a keyboard has destroyed it. I can barely read it myself sometimes.
April 10, 2011 at 3:04 am
I keep a large box of letters and cards I’ve received over the many years, and they are so special. Receiving a card and letter in the mail is exciting.. I always smile when I open my mailbox and it contains a card or letter from a friend and not a bill.
April 10, 2011 at 10:28 am
Lori,
I’m with you on smiling when I get a card or a letter. I still send cards for just about every occasion and holiday. They just seem to brighten the world a bit.
Bills I hate too!
April 10, 2011 at 9:43 pm
My Dear Hedley,
I’m glad to know that you are doing so well and taking the time to do only what is expected. I was worried you’d get impatient, but I happy that you are following the guidelines.
Thank you- Gracie and I had a wonderful Sunday.
Enjoy your week and keep getting better.
Love,
Kat
April 11, 2011 at 2:32 pm
Kat,
Several things from today’s blog entry:
1. Patti says she has been making her own curry powder. She got a recipe and buys the individual spices when she is in Austin (the place of just about everything), mixes them up, keeping special attention to adding slightly more of the ones she wants to accentuate. All *I* can say about it is…YUMMY!
2. Did you make any digital copies off-line and local of the posts you made to the previous incarnation of your blog? If not, are you now making copies of your posts to THIS blog? [I mean…what makes you think it won’t disappear one day?]
3. I have manila file folders of letters (some with original envelopes) going back to a bunch in the ’60s with a few from a ‘best friend’ in the ’50s. I have great pleasure in bringing them out on a rainy day and perusing them. Sometimes, it even gives me an idea for a modern letter, blog post or email.
4. The PROBLEM with paper letters is that only your friends, lovers, and acquaintances got to save YOURS. That was all rectified (to my great pleasure) when I immediately took up writing letters on a personal computer in 1982, when I built my first one! I now have pretty much all my letters from that point forward. When email was less sure (usually on the part of my friends’ computers, since they never seemed to back up either their email or their text files), we all numbered our letters, so we could be sure there weren’t any missing from the sequence. I even recall having a paper log of such at one point far back in time.
So, this is an encouragement for all reading this to back up all digital copies of your correspondence. Save them for future generations. Back up even your blog posts. They are NOT guaranteed to stay out there in cyberspace for eons.
Yours in flavors both exciting and foreign…
April 12, 2011 at 10:43 am
Rick,
I started making my own curry powder when I first started making my chicken curry, but now I just buy Madras curry. Maybe I’ve just gotten lazy!
I have all of the Blogger Coffee saved. I backed it up every week. I have done the same with this one, but I am very far behind doing it. When I had the two surgeries, I didn’t spend much time on the computer. I’ll have to make it a project.
Many of my friends did not get computers as early as I did so there was the phone, not e-mail, to keep in touch. I still see and call my closest friends so we seldom write e-mails to one another. I have saved some, mostly from Coffee friends as I don’t want to lose them.
I learned the hard way to back everything up on an external drive. Experience is sometimes the hardest teacher of them all.