A foot deep

Reading has always been an enjoyable time for me. However, there are moments when reading is not as enjoyable. Last night, I sat on my couch, finishing a mediocre book about Thomas Jefferson's life. One aspect about Jefferson' s life I enjoyed was his writings of letters. Over the course of his lifetime, he wrote over 18,000 letters...more are still being discovered today. If you do the math 18,000 letters over the span of 80 years equals 225 letters a year. Here are some interesting facts about letters [communication] these days.

Hand-Written Letters
In 2006, the Radicati Group estimated that, worldwide, 183 billion
e-mails were sent each day. Two million each second. By November of
2007, an estimated 3.3 billion Earthlings owned cell phones, and 80%
of the world's population had access to cell phone coverage. In 2004,
half-a-trillion text messages were sent, and the number has no doubt
increased exponentially since then. So where amongst this gorge of
gabble is there room for the elegant, polite hand-written letter?


I often wondered, throughout the book, what would Jefferson use today as a form of communication? Text. Email. myface. My sneaky suspicion is he would still write letters, or just call you on his land line if necessary. Here is my reason: his eloquence and love for words would be lost in a "fast paced" world that stretches across the earth but only goes a foot deep. Jefferson occupied a small piece of real estate in Virgina the stretched 80 acres but ran miles deep. If you concede that Jefferson would use text, email or other "fast paced" communication tools, you could nullify the constitution being written by him. I'm no scholar, but my theory is that the greatest writers today don't use the latest and greatest communication tools, because nothing communicates like a hand-written letter signed, sealed and delivered. The letters I keep near and dear are those from people who have taken the time and thought to create and design and mail and sing with their own hand a letter speaking words of love.

Speaking of letters, Clive Staples Lewis has a new book out...what? Someone has put together a collection of letters in a book called "yours, Jack". It a good read filled with Lewis's thoughts about life, love and everything under the sun. Here is a quote that I enjoyed, “The trouble about God is that he is like a person who never acknowledge’s one’s letters and so, in time, one comes to the conclusion either that he does not exist or that you have got the address wrong.” (Lewis, 1921)

It seems a painful paradox writing about writing letters, especially on a blog. But I hope to write more letters, more often to those I love and cherish. The only problem I foresee, is how do I track down addresses? Most likely email.