Maybe my generation (40+) has too many old habits from our upbringing that we can’t break.

I am referring to my kids mainly, who have never written a letter in their lives (except to Santa), BUT do communicate regularly thru technology. Most of their quick burst twitters or facebook chats will never again see the light of day UNLESS THEY PRINT. Which, getting teenagers to do anything is a challenge today.

You understand the importance of preserving communication, cause you are a writer. I understand it NOW that I’ve had the blessing of holding my grandma’s letters in my hands. Incidentally, my Grandma Helen at age 80 taught herself how to use a Commodore 64, in order to keep communicating cause her handwriting had failed her. She kept doing that until her death at age 94.

So, because of your posting, I’ll go home and harass Cori and Joel to start printing out the important communications to them. Guess I’ll have to take stock in Lexmark printing cartridges…

For all the hand-wringing over digital communication and the loss of ‘physical’ communication, in many cases the difference is the effort we put forth in preserving that communication. You took great care to preserve the love letters from your wife, collecting them, storing them in a box, dragging that box along every time you move. You could do the same with e-mail if you just hit print. Or a little more complicated, ctrl-C and start a Word doc of correspondence.

One Valentine’s Day a while back I collected the e-mails my wife and I had sent back and forth when we first started dating, formatted them coherently in Word and printed out a book of sorts.

You can have the same keepsakes with digital communication, it’s just a question of whether or not you’re going to put forth the same effort.