 |
| Doing my part for USPS! Only one stamp left! Time to purchase more. |
Terrible, tragic news came from Denmark on December 30! The Danish postal service, 400 years old, is now kaput! A hopeful note is sounded in the article you can read by following the link in the previous sentence, as well as the link within the link: “It seems like a slow-motion mistake; letter-writing is coming back into style, especially among young people sick of technology….” I should hope so!
When I heard on NPR that Danes will no longer be able to mail letters, my heart almost froze, and I vowed then and there to write and send more letters in the coming year. I always have done—maybe not as often recently as in former years, but now I am doubly motivated, because I do not want to lose my beloved United States Postal Service!
 |
| View from bank: Where is the bay? |
On the morning of New Year’s Eve, Wednesday, a friend stuck his head in the door of Dog Ears Books to ask what on earth I was doing there, open on such a cold, blustery day. I told him I had to come to town, anyway, to collect my mail, always hopeful that I’ll find a friendly note in my p.o. box. He asked if my hopes had been rewarded, and I told him, yes, there was a holiday card from a friend, and the day before there had been two letters waiting for me. Hurrah!
 |
| View from inside bookstoren |
Also on December 30 I had a large family of customers who had decided to follow the Icelandic Christmas Eve tradition of exchanging books and then spending the evening reading them. Although late for Christmas Eve, they didn’t want to wait another year before getting started, so we had a wonderful time together on a cold, dreary winter day when I hadn’t expected to see a soul.
Still on the subject of mail and books, here's a reminder that, thanks to the foresight of Benjamin Franklin (and maybe a little self-interest on his part, too, since he was a printer by trade), the USPS offers a special rate for sending books, known generically now as media mail. It’s a wonderfully economical way to share books with family and friends. Please, however, do not include letters in your book package! Letters are first-class mail and need first-class postage, and I would not want to see book rate (the old name will always take precedence in my mind) vanish from mailing alternatives, having enjoyed it all my life. Magazines and newspapers cannot go at the media rate, either, as they contain advertising. Media mail is intended for educational purposes, a way of promoting national literacy.
Coincidentally, as one year passes into another, I find myself halfway through an epistolary novel set in 16th-century Florence, Italy. Although the novel is written in French (and my French is rusty), it is easier to read than many modern French novels, perhaps because of the epistolary structure. My biggest challenge is keeping the many character/writers straight. Italian characters in a mystery novel written in French and set in the 16th century = a quadruple challenge! Not that I ever figure out whodunit: I read mystery novels more for settings and characters.
On the car radio as I drove home one day in the last week of December, I heard part of a program where one person chooses a book to introduce to two other people, and I was immediately drawn by the discussion because the chosen book of the day was Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It was interesting to hear how a trio of young people new to the book responded to a story I know practically by heart, how they interpreted the characters, and what themes they saw in the story.
Some people think Austen originally intended her second novel, P&P, to be composed entirely of letters, then changed her mind.
 |
| Re-reading her sister Jane's letters strengthens Elizabeth's prejudice against Darcy. |
As it is, there are nineteen letters in the book, all of them fairly long (with the exception of Mr. Bennett’s brief, wry response to a letter from a man his daughter Elizabeth had earlier refused to marry), and Mr. Darcy’s letter to Elizabeth is surely the longest, taking up almost the whole of Chapter 35. That letter, revealing as it does the character of the writer and of the other man Elizabeth had previously found more sympathetic, requires Lizzie to question her previous attitudes toward both. Arriving then back at her friend Charlotte’s house from her daily walk, she learns that she has missed a visit from Darcy’s cousin, but the cousin no longer holds any interest for Elizabeth, who can “think only of her letter,” that is, the letter from Mr. Darcy. Her head is filled with his words, and nothing else can hold her attention. Have you ever had that feeling?
(One member of my extended family detests epistolary novels. For me, they can be brilliant, or, perhaps more easily, trite and pedestrian, a lazy writer's shortcut, but certainly no one would accuse Austen of laziness. The quality of writing is separate from a story’s structure.)
When it comes to letters that arrive in my own post office box, all are welcome, and none is ever boring. Someone was thinking of me! If we lived only a few miles from one another, we could meet for coffee, go for a walk together, sit and “dream by the fire,” or play outdoors in the snow with my dog. When hundreds of miles separate us, each letter is a precious gift of the sender’s time given me. Priceless!
 |
| Envelopes not recycled yet |
