{"id":337,"date":"2003-02-21T17:22:04","date_gmt":"2003-02-21T22:22:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karinajean.com\/wp\/?p=337"},"modified":"2006-08-23T07:42:11","modified_gmt":"2006-08-23T12:42:12","slug":"you-looking-for-me-i%e2%80%99ll-send-you-a-letter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/karinajean.com\/wp\/2003\/02\/you-looking-for-me-i%e2%80%99ll-send-you-a-letter\/","title":{"rendered":"You looking for me? I\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2ll send you a letter."},"content":{"rendered":"

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Um, someone got to my web page by searching for \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201cphotos peeing behind.\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u009d Welcome to the interweb! Thank you Google!<\/span><\/p>\n

(Um, for the record ((mom)) I do NOT have pictures of peeing behinds. The phrase \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201cpeeing behind\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u009d is on my photo page. Wild.)<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

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Last night I went to a book lecture by Dava Sobel, author of Galileo\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s Daughter. That book is one of the most finely written works of non-fiction I\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2ve ever read. It was fantastic. Maybe I liked it so much because it was about Galileo, and I love science, or maybe it was because it was about a wonderful father-daughter relationship, and I\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2m sort of a daddy\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s girl sometimes. But it was so well written. Sobel translated over 100 letters written from Galileo\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s daughter from her convent, and uses it to tell the story of Galileo, the church, and his science. Wonderful.<\/span><\/p>\n

While I was at the book lecture, I started thinking about letters. I love letters. I\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2m a real packrat – I have a couple of small boxes at home full of cards and letters. But at the same time, letter writing is a dying form of communication, really. In Italy in the 1600\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s, people would write each other letters much as we might call someone to let them know how our day went. Messangers would take letters from person to person, sometimes waiting to collect a response. That stuff charms me. I collect stationary, and try to write letters. I love sitting down with a nice pen and a nice card and some fun stamps and sending notes out to my friends. And then, when I clean my room and come across stacks of old correspondence, I find myself thinking: what the heck am I going to do with this stuff? <\/span><\/p>\n

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In a time when we come across so many old letters and photos in thrift shops, should we worry about keeping a written record of our daily lives? And, should I save letters for posterity when I don\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2t really think I\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2ll ever be a famous person of interest, like Galileo was, and people probably won\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2t want to read my letters?<\/span><\/p>\n

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And what about this computer stuff? With the emails and the on-line journaling, we\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2re probably reaching a point very quickly where we may not have a handwritten record at all. It\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s still fun to write by pen and ink, but it\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s harder to take the time and sit down and do so. It\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s also slower. It\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s so easy for me to keep a window open on my desktop, type for a couple of minutes crazily, and then leave it.<\/span><\/p>\n

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But besides the historic paper trail, what are we losing from writing electronically? I wonder if we aren\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2t losing the ability to think clearly and concisely. There\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s a lot of pressure when you\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2re writing something by hand to get it right the first time. I think that the habit of thinking through your arguments is a good one to know. It\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s very easy when writing electronically to just zip through the middle, write the intro, and then figure out the best conclusion. I mean, I do that all the time. But here I try to do an off the cuff ramble. Sure, I set it aside for hours some times, but it generally comes out just the way I post it. And it probably shows, hey?<\/span><\/p>\n

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<\/span><\/p>\n

The snow here is melting, slowly but surely. My car was covered right over the top but it\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s nearly down to the middle of the doors by now. It\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s been in the 40s every day. Alternate side of the street parking rules have been suspended all week, and I\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2ve been reluctant to shovel my car out. Apparently the city has been reluctant to finish up the job as well \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u0153 because there\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2re mountains of snow all over town, and primarily in my neighborhood, that haven\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2t been trucked off and melted yet. It is a huge job, so I understand it\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s taking a while. But you know what Jersey City did? They went out on Wednesday night and took off all of the snow. They towed cars, moved snow, and towed the cars back. That\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s seriously hard core! They put all the snow in an old reservoir for storage. It\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s rock. It\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s supposed to rain all day tomorrow, which means the snow should melt and melt and I\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2ll be able to move my car with a minimum of shoveling. That\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s my plans for Sunday. Saturday, well, I think I may go to another belly dancing class! Whee! I love it.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Um, someone got to my web page by searching for \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201cphotos peeing behind.\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u009d Welcome to the interweb! Thank you Google! (Um, for the record ((mom)) I do NOT have pictures of peeing behinds. The phrase \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201cpeeing behind\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u009d is on my … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/karinajean.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/karinajean.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/karinajean.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karinajean.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karinajean.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/karinajean.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/karinajean.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karinajean.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karinajean.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}