Handwritten Letters May Become Things Of The Past

Many Old And Useful Arts Disappearing

Lost Arts And Causes

Part II

“... Something from our hands have power to live, and act, and serve the future hour.”

— Wordsworth Last week I was saying that many old and useful arts are in danger of disappearing. They are becoming lost arts. During the 1930s, my father worked as a typesetter for a newspaper company. Typesetting is very nearly nonexistent now. It took patience and skill to set the type correctly. In order to print out as intended, the typeface had to be set up backwards.

Computers now handle most of the mechanical side of publishing.

This is a great advance in terms of efficiency, but it comes at a cost. Many expressions from the old days have become archaic, too. When a dramatic news story breaks, no one shouts, “Stop the presses!”

I don’t close my column with the standard “That’s thirty.” If I said, We just put the paper to bed,” would you know what I meant?

The other day I received a handwritten letter from a former student of mine. I was surprised because it seems that no one writes letters anymore. Everyone seems to be emailing or Facebooking or Tweeting, and they deride the postal system as “snail mail.”

This may be part of the reason we’re going to lose so many local post offices.

If I have used any of these terms incorrectly, it’s because I don’t do them. I use my computer as God intended — as a fancy typewriter.

Anyway, as soon as I finish this column, I’m going to sit down and write back to that student and I’m going to mail it. After all, she took the time and trouble to write to me, and maybe the two of us and a few others can keep the art of real letter writing alive.

Handwriting itself may be endangered. Many schools no longer teach cursive writing. Students pass directly from printing to the computer keyboard.

When I was substituting, I often wrote information on a whiteboard (blackboards and chalkboards are obsolete). Students would complain that they couldn’t read my writing — not because it was bad but because they can only read printing. It seems to me that the beautiful penmanship of the old days should be preserved and continued into the future, but it appears that it will simply vanish over time. When those of us who practice the art have passed away it will be gone forever.

Are these lost arts and others like them also lost causes? I hope not.

In the meantime, why not write a letter to someone who would love to hear from you? Just imagine their surprise! And that’s the view from Antioch Mountain.