Saturday, August 27, 2011

Young-adult letters

From a Boston Globe article on letter-writing among young adults:

Samuel Pearce, 20, a Brown University student from Milton, began writing letters to an African pen pal as a child and to a friend at summer camp when he was a teenager, and when his best friend went away to college he chose to stay in touch via snail mail. This experience inspired him to write letters with other friends as well.

“It’s cool,” Pearce said. “If there’s someone I’ve been friends with but haven’t written letters to, often times, beginning writing letters with them reveals dimensions of them that I just hadn’t thought of before.”
It is cool, and Pearce’s comments remind me that one of the great friendships of my life began by correspondence. You can read some excerpts from the letters of my friend Aldo Carrasco in this post. Believe me, it’s worth the time.

When did you last write a letter? My last was in April, to my fifth-grade teacher Mrs. Schorr.

[Thanks to Music Clip of the Day for pointing me to the Globe article.]

comments: 3

Elaine said...

Now, do these have to be 'ink and cursive, snail-mailed with a stamp' kinds of letters?
Just askin'...

Michael Leddy said...

Yes, that’s exactly what the article is about. But pencil or typescript would be fine too.

Elaine said...

Hand and wrist issues (over-use injuries, mostly--who knew?) mean that I type whenever I can. Letters of condolence are always by hand, but for the long catching-up missives, I type into WordPerfect and print them out to mail. Modern Times.