We might be missing something by not writing to one another.
How many of us go back to check Facebook postings from 2008? What about those funny email messages you fielded from your best friend? Print out or not? Saved, or deleted?
I won’t get into the world of photography where screen shots replace actual photographs you get to hold in your hand.
I guess that’s why I work with a publication that puts things in ink on paper rather than the whirling vortex of whatever it is that swirls around as communication now.
Julian Assange and Eric Snowden “got it.” Everything is up for grabs, yet nothing is. We’ve already moved on.
What triggered these thoughts was the fact I had to rifle through an old box of photographs I had saved from a previous life of working at other newspapers, as well as, the early Merc years. I was looking for a specific picture I thought I had in a huge stack of unsorted black and white photos.
As I sifted through the memories and pictures, I ran across a number of hand written or typed letters I had received that I deemed worthy of keeping.
They reminded me of people in my past who had taken time to scribble or type something for my edification or entertainment, and mailed it or, in some cases, left on my desk.
Now, we just use postal terms. We exchange emails, cryptic texts with half-sentences and poor spelling to those who may or may not “open” them because they’re one of four dozen impersonal notes they have already received in the morning mail.
So there I was, viewing pictures I had taken in those crazy bygone days. My photo of Bing Crosby without his toupee; Gordie Howe, strolling through Eatons when I caught him signing autographs for a trio of kids who had swarmed him. He signed on the fly.
There was a picture of my first managing editor ever, Roy, and my first friend in a newsroom, Eldon, as they pondered chess moves over lunch break.
The photo of Ian, the former Glasgow United goalkeeper in action brought back memories of one night of crazy partying with his former teammates when they visited Toronto.
I re-read funny letters from Geoff Ursell, Gary Hyland and Heather Hodgson who you might know as Saskatchewan literary contributors. But enough shameless name dropping.
I had forgotten a letter from another fiendish friend John, the Italian. Not famous, but he made sure I stayed in the paper-game, and one from my mother, whose handwriting style I had forgotten, yet another from friend Vern who had dropped a saved stupid poem on my desk. There was a cheery note from Leah, a young high schooler then who worked for me “back in the day.” She had uncanny talent to dig out stories and her message, which she noted, was being left on my desk at 10:20 p.m. at the end of a long working day, was filled with triumph and positive thoughts. I didn’t know I had saved it. But I must have for a reason.
Last winter Leah sent me another note, after 25 years, via now very expensive Canada Post, telling me how much she enjoyed working with me those many years ago and how those reporting experiences impacted her life.
The note made me tear up, as did that cheery note from the high-schooler I re-discovered the other day.
I don’t think people do that now. I haven’t saved anyone’s email yet and I don’t know why.
