A few days ago, in an attempt to clean out email folders and assign junk or spam status to some that clearly were that, I made a list of all those subject lines in the 75 or so emails that appeared in my Junk folder. I've been writing about some of them for days. I first had an email account in the 1980s, an "experiment" by a local teaching hospital to offer email accounts to teachers in the local school system to see how we might find them useful. I sometimes thought of myself as a late night Emily Dickinson, sending missives lowered in a basket from my window to friends waiting outside. I loved that I could write something in the middle of the night and the receiver could read it whenever he or she wanted. I guess you can do that with a paper letter just as well, but I did like the idea of sending the mail immediately without purchasing stamps or special paper or new pens. But I've saved letters on paper that my grandmother's aunt wrote to her when my grandmother was mother to three babies (before, in a 21-year span, my grandmother had twelve children to care for); I've saved letters that my father wrote to his sisters during WWII, one recounting how he had heard that Hitler died; I've saved a letter that was written to my daughter by Queen Elizabeth's Lady in Waiting. I wish I had saved the one letter my father wrote to me when I left home for college. I wish I had saved the year of daily email correspondence with a friend after my daughter died. So many words.So much winnowing.
A few days ago, in an attempt to clean out email folders and assign junk or spam status to some that clearly were that, I made a list of all those subject lines in the 75 or so emails that appeared in my Junk folder. I've been writing about some of them for days. I first had an email account in the 1980s, an "experiment" by a local teaching hospital to offer email accounts to teachers in the local school system to see how we might find them useful. I sometimes thought of myself as a late night Emily Dickinson, sending missives lowered in a basket from my window to friends waiting outside. I loved that I could write something in the middle of the night and the receiver could read it whenever he or she wanted. I guess you can do that with a paper letter just as well, but I did like the idea of sending the mail immediately without purchasing stamps or special paper or new pens. But I've saved letters on paper that my grandmother's aunt wrote to her when my grandmother was mother to three babies (before, in a 21-year span, my grandmother had twelve children to care for); I've saved letters that my father wrote to his sisters during WWII, one recounting how he had heard that Hitler died; I've saved a letter that was written to my daughter by Queen Elizabeth's Lady in Waiting. I wish I had saved the one letter my father wrote to me when I left home for college. I wish I had saved the year of daily email correspondence with a friend after my daughter died. So many words.So much winnowing.
And I love where this prompt took you, from current emails to early Emily Dickinson emails, to long form and special letters. Thanks for sharing, Kay!