I like to amaze my daughters by telling them about a remarkable communication device that made it possible for their mother and me to stay connected when we were in different countries. While we met in New York, there were several years when I was there and she was in Finland. This was the ‘90s, international phone calls were expensive, there was no email or texting, no direct messaging or social media.
But, luckily, there was a dazzling new invention, ready to augment phone talk: the fax machine. I could write by hand, draw a picture, include a photo or anything else I might put on paper, and a minute later, she would hear a buzz and a bell, watch a roll of thermal paper unfurl, then hold in her hand what I had sent. Soon I would receive what she sent to me. I often insist—with an excessive amount of seriousness—that if it weren’t for this technology, perhaps my then-girlfriend and I might not have survived the years apart.
But that was then. The need to stay connected with those we love hasn’t lost any of its urgency. Rather, the need—and the possibility—for instant communication has greatly expanded. That fact got me thinking about the tools we rely on to stay in touch. I can’t remember when was the last time I received in the mail a personal, hand-written letter, so maybe that time-worn technique has forever lost its sway.
But what about you? How do you stay connected? What modes of communication keep you in contact with those you love? Perhaps, like I did, you have weekend (or more frequent) calls to a parent. Maybe there’s a daily check-in by phone with a parent, a child, a dear friend. Or perhaps a regular email or (wonders) FaceTime or Zoom with voice and picture keeps you close. Maybe it’s fast and frequent texting that’s the key to connection. Then again, perhaps it’s posting on social media that you depend on to keep your circle wide and activated.
As always, I look forward to reading your observations and the opportunity for this community to learn from each other. Please do be respectful. And if hand-written letters are still a part of your world, you just might motivate someone else to pen the same.
America, America is sustained by paid subscriptions, making it possible to keep nearly all the writing available for everyone. If you’re not already a paid subscriber, please consider becoming one.
*Illustration credit: CSA Images via Getty Images.
I have purchased 12 individual self-inking stamps. On each stamp is the name and address of whomever I want to be in touch with. At the moment 12 is about my limit. But I have plans to change that. I have a collection of postcards - or you can buy them by the boatload on eBay - and I randomly select 12 cards and $0.40 X 12 = $4.80. Forever. Postcards aren't a big time or writing commitment, and I've never met anyone who said: stop sending me the postcards. Cheers
With the advent of COVID, my family in Ireland could not even visit one another, even though they lived in the same town. So they started a weekly family Zoom call on a Sunday evening to stay in touch with one another, but the added bonus is that I, my cousin in Idaho, and my nephew in Australia are able to join in. Since the COVID restrictions have been lifted, we have continued the weekly Zoom, and it adds a new dimension to maintaining family contact. I only wish this had been available when my parents were still alive.
After my father passed away last year, I established a regular schedule with my mother to talk about anything or nothing. We started by phone and have mostly moved to video chats, though sometimes those fail because she’s not very tech-savvy and I can’t troubleshoot well when it’s a 4 hour drive to diagnose computer issues. Still, we manage, and I know it’s helped her deal with a now-empty house.
I stay in touch with my closest friends and my daughter via text. Even my young grandsons share a phone for texting - for emergencies only, no apps.
I may be one of the rare exceptions, but I still put pen to paper or card and send a handwritten letter. I have a bin full of cards and letters I’ve received through the years. Whenever I see the cards I received from my deceased sister, I’m immediately transported to memories of her, sometimes more powerful than a photo.
My sister and I talk almost everyday. She was my rock from 2000 miles away when my husband died. She texts me pics of her 2 grandkids. My oldest son texts me once a week. I would prefer to hear his voice and sometimes ask for him to call. He is 3k miles away. I have facetimed my only grand. but not to often. I occasionally see pics of him that his Mom posts on Instagram. I used to call my Dad once a week, also my Mom. They are gone now. I am currently going through letters..so many letters. When I left home I wrote every week to my parents. Reading them makes me cringe as I was a woebegone 19 yr old! My best friends and I would write letters and send cards. I am not so good at it anymore. I make my own holiday cards and send them once a year but that list grows smaller every year and few return the favor. For me communication has devolved to texts and a few friends I meet for coffee or see posts on FB. Of course many are gone now, Getting older changes your address book! I would love more letters but even if I write few do the same. I am currently reading letters from a friend of my great aunt who was in Tennessee. My parents in Ohio got regular updates on her health by letter. My Mom's cousins wrote long letters to my Mom. They lived in PA and that was the way we all communicated because in the day long distance phone calls were unheard of! I love letters. I have a rich family history at my fingertips! Maybe we should start insisting on more letter writing. It is more thoughtful and involved.
At the beginning of COVID, we (we have 6 grown married kids and 10 grands) all installed an app on our phones called Marco Polo (free option). It allows us to record a video message of any length to an individual or group in the family. The message is sent and you click on it to play it. It seriously saved my extended family's tight bond to each other, a precious and valued commodity. We created a big family group, a kids only group, a craft-obsessed sisters group, a sports fanatic group as well as individual one to one contacts. Being able to see each other on screen helped us so much when we could not physically be together for our weekly Pop Pop Pizza nights. Some are more active on it than others on a daily basis but everyone uses it. I bought the upgraded version for everyone for the special features it added. We continue to use it now as much as during the pandemic. I will also add that I make handmade greeting cards that I send to people. It takes time and is a work of unique art each time, often personalized to the recipient. I include a hand-written message.
Before covid we used to cruise with some good friends who live 2000 miles away. So, when travel was not possible, we started to zoom every week and basically we have never stopped. We cruised with them again finally this year, but we still zoom. We don't always accomplish anything with the discussion, but we have a good time if nothing else. We email and text a lot, but seeing someone has more appeal. We even zoomed with a next door neighbor who is having chemo and was advised by her doctor not to meet in groups because her immune system is down. I have also started a Substack, but my subscribers still number in single digits.That's what we do.
My 3rd wife and I communicated with Yahoo messenger for two years. I am happy to say we are still together almost twenty years later! We met online in 2004 and married in 2006.
Since my mom went into memory care last winter, I visit her each weekend and spend an hour just chatting about the same things and coloring. Ironically, I see her much more frequently than I did before her Alzheimer’s diagnosis.
My fiancé’s 12 yr old daughter gets handwritten postcards from her grandma every week. She started the practice during COVID lockdown and has continued. It’s very sweet.
Jul 15, 2023·edited Jul 15, 2023Liked by Steven Beschloss
I have a lot of graphic artist/illustrator friends, so those '90's fax days were always fun...kind of an early "meme" era. Today, it's all texting. The family thread. The close friends threads. The tradesman-related threads. Each with it's own sense of humor (or not.)
I am the oldest of eight and age 81. We have an annual reunion in Kansas where we grew up. I live in Pennsylvania and have siblings in Wyoming, Colorado, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Kansas. I have numerous nieces, nephews, nieces, grand nephews and nieces and great grand nieces and nephews. Facebook has for a long time now the best way for me to keep up with a significant portion of my extended family. I have family contact via Facebook nearly every day.
I left the USA in 1973. My mother and I kept the postal service afloat for many years! Phone calls were much too expensive. My parents died in in 1990’s so I have kept in touch with my sister, first by weekly phone calls (which had gotten cheaper) using a landline. Now we video chat using WhatsApp. I am trying to get my non-tech-savy cousin to either install WhatsApp or use Facetime, but she’s not that interested. With some friends, it’s frequent texting.
I find those who have taken the time throughout their busy lives and made relationships and communications with people have used all forms to keep in touch regularly. If people want to have great relationships with grandkids, they need to step it up and have some fun and maybe do things kids like to do. If you plan on visiting your grandkids once a year, your grandkids are going to know you for that many hours. I'm not judging, you spend time on what you feel is important. All of us find ways of getting things done. I find absolutely every opportunity to lift my grandchildren up! When a wonderful child has wonderful children, that's something to celebrate!
In the late 1960’s stationed overseas, I communicated with my family with small reel-to-reel voice recordings sent by slow mail. Today I spend much of each morning checking my phone for the daily text and VM check-in of friends living alone. And then email, messenger, and the scheduled facetime or Zoom meetings. I try to pen a “real” letter to my closest friends now and then and I am always gifted with an appreciated “thank you”! I stocked up on forever USPS stamps but don’t mind the price. My family saved all of its correspondence over the past 100 years, including those tapes. It is now a burden with the mixed feelings knowing today’s electronic communications will be lost with all the incite and history they contain. How do you archive your voice?
"MICHAEL! I LOVE YOU!💕"... posting in this tiny text box on this tiny free burner phone in my tiny bed in my tiny room in this tiny town.... is the only way I know to tell your brother I love him!😁😁😁
Twenty of my beloved Aunts and Uncles that cared so much for my moral upbringing when they found a bottle cap sized marijuana brownie in my room... all died from chain smoking cigarettes. The rest of my relatives are lost down the MAGA Rabbit Hole!
Day after day I watch MSNBC on my phone with a (delusional?) hope some pundit will realize the science that up to 60% of anxious people (60% of Americans?) are cured by placebo. Twitter and fb algorithms are AI robots that are figuring out how to morph all our wonderfully diverse innocuous placebos into the insidious placebo of Hate.... just as the Followers of the Prince of Peace consistently voted for War ... the "Faith in Jesus" placebo morphed into hawkification and their power of Superior Assertion habits derived from the Rejection Desensitization that they derived from Evangelizing!
Pre-1969 we had the landline (a new term), and I went to Sweden to teach for 3 years. I wrote endless postcards and long letters to my family and good friends because I could afford an International call.
After 911 everyone wanted cell phones to have contact with my students back here in the US. Wealthy kids, mostly. Today my whole family texts and still call to hear special loved ones voices. Times have changed, but the letters I treasured because I could re-read and feel better. Have wonderful travels!
Interestingly I hand wrote a letter today. Funnier still I was unable to download a recipe to send along and dug out some old school recipe cards to include the hand written recipe to send in the mail, the recipient prefers paper copies. :)
My Dad passed away 20 years ago, my Mom 10 years ago. Since she passed, my four siblings and I text - A LOT (much to the dismay of our spouses!). Even though we're miles apart (from Columbus, OH to Philadelphia, PA to Aiken, SC), it's like we're back home together. On the rare day I don't receive a message, I'll send out a local weather report or a goofy picture I saw on social media - just to say Hi.
When I was young I wrote letters to my father every week or so, and he wrote back as often. Later, I was using email, and I gave him a laptop and set him up on AOL (remember that?). We would write to each other every day. I still have all those emails. I wish I had saved the letters. Now I write to friends using email, texts, and social media. I haven't written or received a personal letter in years. I think that's too bad. There was something special about finding a letter in my mailbox. Getting a text or email just isn't the same.
I was never a big fan of the telephone but once the pandemic hit it became a lifeline for talking to my son at the other end of California. He would call while walking around his neighborhood for a work break and I would often be walking my dog my neighborhood. It was great and we still do this just not quite as frequently.
First and foremost, it’s important to know how your loved ones prefer to communicate. My mom refused to learn how to text or email, so the landline was her preferred connection. When I became her live-in caregiver, I gradually introduced her to FaceTime using my phone. She loved that. But as much as she loved it, she didn’t want her own smart phone. She was afraid people would start texting and emailing and stop calling. Reasonable.
Texting is my preference, and I keep close to several friends this way. It’s no coincidence these are the same friends who live farthest away. I can’t see them every day, but I sure can connect with them every day. Sometimes several times a day. When I do connect by phone, it’s always planned/scheduled by sending a quick text first. These calls are usually extended conversations, and I want to be sure my friends/family have the time to chat.
I still send cards for various holidays throughout the year. My friends don’t connect this way, and I don’t mind at all. It makes me happy to let them know I’m thinking of them.
I confess I don’t write letters anymore. I was a big letter writer in my youth and even had pen pals in other countries. Now, I text and FaceTime with my grown children and siblings (my parents are long gone) and use Facebook for other distant friends and relatives. I so still use email, especially if it’s a lot of information I need to convey.
The landline yes. But though we still have one my current favorite connections are through email and text. Just getting accustomed to instagram for grandchildren’s sake.
Still in the 1960s when our family went to Europe and like fireworks continued in different directions - brother in college here, parents travelling in Middle East and Europe because of family business, sister and I put in private school, we wrote letters, and received letters, and loved getting them and sending them, (at least once with real consequences). They sit in boxes now, waiting to either amuse or horrify the children and grandchildren when they inevitably will wade through our past.
FaceTime has been a godsend ever since my first nephew was born 7 years ago. He and his (now 3!) siblings live 700 miles from me and I truly believe this connection has contributed to them feeling like I’m really part of their lives. Now I have a 1-1/2 year old daughter, and while we do fly to visit fairly often, it’s so wonderful for her to be able to see her grandma, aunties/uncles, and cousins in between visits.
I normally call my mother when I want to talk to her. But, since my father passed away last year, I have a unique way of "reconnecting" with him. I have an archive of his old photos with me and my siblings. Whenever I feel like I have missed him, I opened an album and I will flashback a load of memories that sometimes make me cry with sadness. I also look at his old radio, listen to his songs, 📻 and i really feel his presence. It's nostalgic
I fear that letter writing is a thing of the past since it is no longer taught in schools. At least that is my understanding. My poor English teacher mother would be horrified had she lived to see this day. Now I use texting for quick notes or questions to my children in New York & Mattoon, IL. We also connect on the phone, usually once a week. 2 of my siblings are in CA & OR - we keep in touch by phone and splurge on a Zoom meeting on birthdays. The 1 sister in the area communicates by phone & occasional lunches. Even birthday cards are handled on-line. It seems not many want to deal w/the paper involved. The quarantining of the pandemic ended family get-togethers w/the in-laws all of whom are in the area. When that ended, it seemed that everyone had established new routines w/their own families. We now communicate almost exclusively by texting. Things have definitely changed.
In college, my parents and I communicated weekly via postcards, big enough to cover what there was to say. Once , I apologized for spending $2.. 25 on a new pair of shoes and complained about dorm food. Daddy wrote back a letter with $5. 00 in it and told me to put ketchup on the food. When I felt like going home for a weekend or for vacation, I looked on the bulletin board in the student union bldg. were those with cars put notices, riders wanted, and would contact one going my way.
In high school years, I was the head majorette in the fall, but in summer, led the town drum and bugle corps . Composed of all ages (anyone with a car welcome), we competed in various towns which usually had a fair. Attending after marching, 2 really cute, preppy fellows I noticed, were following me. (One had to be on the lookout for the wrong kind), Seems they had run along the sidewalk beside the band, following me. Turned out great with one of them. He hitchhiked from Hornell, NY to Bradford, PA to see me;, sleeping on a park bench that night and taking 12 hours too get back home.We wrote, he came to other towns. I got a Christmas job to pay for a cashmere sweater for him. He went to Lehigh, , I to Penn State. We lost touch. 6 years ago, I looked him up on facebook, there he was, and of course, remembered me. We have emailed each other everyday since. He says Good Morning and Good Night with hugs.
Family wise, everyone is gone that I knew. I am the last. So, hating telephone talking as I think and write better than I talk, I text my son in NJ, then he calls back. If I ever call him, he thinks there is something wrong. I cannot find the one letter he ever wrote to me. He was a ski patroller at Hunter Mt. NY, the first he had ever lived away from home. Wish I could find it. My daughters and grandchildren all live here in Bradenton, FL . We mostly text, send pictures, They work. They have children. They are busy. But whenever I need them, they come immediately. Sometimes we go shopping at Macy's or Barnes & Noble or a garden center as we all love plants. Other than that, I joke with customers at work, come home, speak to a neighbor if outside, and that's it.
Text mostly. But recently I decided it was past time to visit friends I hadn’t seen for eight years in Toronto and Cleveland, Ohio. Fantastic to see people in person. Chinese friends who emigrated from the PRC many years after I taught English in Wuhan. We’ve stayed in touch since 1981. Saw some Cleveland cousins I hadn’t seen for 45 years and -their children and grandchildren I had met only once or twice and old friends from decades ago. I must say since moving to Arizona I get a lot of visitors so many of my friends show up on my doorstep quite often. Especially the ones who golf.
I generally call about a half dozen friends, almost weekly just to touch base -what’s the most fun of all is babysitting and spending time with my great grandson -either at my house or his. Swim museums, baking cooking just hanging out and playing. Locally I meet friends at coffee, shops, and restaurants or sometimes they come to my condo pool. I think it’s important to keep in touch and let people know that you care.
I have four married children and 10 grand children living in all parts of the US
At the beginning of the pandemic, one of my children, set up a group chat, called “cheering up, grandma”. We are still using this and sharing life events, funny photos, pet pictures, and anything that might pop in to our minds that we feel should be shared.
Many of my family live on the East Coast and I am on the west coast and I can’t wait to get up in the morning to see what’s going to be in this chat room each morning
I find this a true blessing, and I’m thankful for the technology that allows this to happen
Our children are so wrapped up with texting, we can’t get thru to them when we try to call them. They sometimes don’t have the time to talk unless we call repeatedly! The one thing they do have the time for is to face time if we insist that we need to connect with our grandchildren, but once again it’s not as often as we would like!
Several years ago, I found a box of old letters I had saved. I scanned them and sent copies back to the friends who had sent them decades earlier. In one case I sent a beautiful letter to the sister of the now deceased author. The response I got back was truly wonderful. I even got back one more handwritten card.
But the art and the joy of letter writing is, I think now gone. After so many years of typing I can barely read my own handwriting anymore. My question is, what experience today is closest to what receiving a great letter used to be like?
I write to a dozen people around the US on a regular basis, at least once per month. A combination of family members and old friends. I also scan all outgoing handwritten letters and have done so since 2018. I use fountain pens. I also maintain a personal daily journal (handwritten) and separate journals for each of the three grandchildren where I will record a one page "Dear ___" letter documenting something fun or interesting we did together. They might find these letters amusing someday after I'm gone.
We have had a Royal Mail "forever" stamp as well, with our Elizabeth Regina, just her visage embossed on it. Like, one centimetre or so, square. Denoting just 1st & 2nd 'class', it's speed, fast/slow, through to delivery. No price indicated. Such being whatever has been previously determined - over the decades, from tuppence to forty fold now...mostly, now it's electronic gibberish, generated at post-office counter, for postage charge.
Mr Beschloss, I thank you too, for your commentary and reminiscences. Having lived through such wonderful communicating facilities, I still like writing letters, fountain pen, paper, stamps, mailbox - unbeatable, exciting ritual, for dear ones🙏....🧘🌃🌻
I do write handwritten letters still. Maybe six a year. A couple pages. Because I own some from the past. To open a letter from my top drawer, years later, is revealing, sentimental. Letters can be re-read. When people pen letters, they are in a slower, therefore more careful and thoughful mode. The handwriting is sentimental and telling to me. Snail-mail 4-ever,
I mostly use texting for brief messages or sometimes to direct the receiver to check their emails, where I send longer, more complicated messages. I love the ubiquitous opportunity to reach or be reached anytime, anywhere. I am 76, worked as a nurse practitioner and still reach out frequently (maybe too much?) I use Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter till I give up on it, & considering Threads.
I have 3 grown kids, 9 grandkids and many friends and colleagues. The worst thing for me is isolation.
It seems like I keep in touch with friends, old and new, in so many different ways that I forget how we've communicated: Facebook, DM, email, text, phone calls ( I miss when your friends or even acquaintances just picked up the phone and called—and you were surprised who it was!), and many hand-written cards.
Yellowstone 1923 had an episode where sending an urgent international cable was a godsend over other forms of communication like mail where speed was paramount. Back then, such electronic media was relatively rare to the general public. What I use today is phone, text, email, FaceTime, and conferencing tools like Zoom and Teams for instantaneous communications both locally, nationally and globally.
I send cards to my grandson and have done so since he left for college from detroit to New York City ten years ago. He recently told me that he has every note and card that I have sent him in the last ten years. It made m very happy to know that he values the m in this way. One’s own handwriting it powerful, even if the message is always the same: I love you.
I used to write long letters to my parents and to my sister, as well as to a friend of ours whom my husband and I met while we were students at university and he was the live-in janitor at the Wesley Foundation where we spent a lot of time. He went to Vietnam and came back a very angry and damaged young man, but we kept in touch. Eventually he found a woman to love him and he is still with her, though he is now her caregiver as she has Alzheimer's. Throughout we have kept in touch, now by email instead of written letters on paper and my communication extends to their daughter, whom I keep in touch with on Facebook. I write to my sister by email as well, but sadly find that none of my friends have ever felt they had the time to write except very sporadically. I keep in touch with some cousins on Facebook and a family Whatsapp site, and I often text with my daughter and with our honorary daughter, her best friend, online. (Our daughter lives with us, so I don't have to write to her usually.)
I text my son & grandkids very frequently & we exchange pictures that way too. For more detailed conversations I do prefer a phone conversation & so that happens frequently too with my son & my sister. I’ve got some group texts with local friends - typically full of funny pictures, suggestions for good books or movies etc. I do use Facebook to stay in touch with some out of state family & friends, including high school classmates. I wish I could say I still write personal letters, but barely manage to send quick notes with Christmas cards. I do have some really treasured letters that my dad had written home to his folks when he was in the army in Europe during WW2. Very eye opening & fascinating glimpses into both actual history but especially into parts of my dad’s life that he never talked much about. It’s sad that personal letters really seem like a relic from the past.
I chat with my closest friend over the phone. Youthful members of my family prefer texting and I like email for longer missives. I try to use snail mail for birthday and thank you cards.
I have purchased 12 individual self-inking stamps. On each stamp is the name and address of whomever I want to be in touch with. At the moment 12 is about my limit. But I have plans to change that. I have a collection of postcards - or you can buy them by the boatload on eBay - and I randomly select 12 cards and $0.40 X 12 = $4.80. Forever. Postcards aren't a big time or writing commitment, and I've never met anyone who said: stop sending me the postcards. Cheers
With the advent of COVID, my family in Ireland could not even visit one another, even though they lived in the same town. So they started a weekly family Zoom call on a Sunday evening to stay in touch with one another, but the added bonus is that I, my cousin in Idaho, and my nephew in Australia are able to join in. Since the COVID restrictions have been lifted, we have continued the weekly Zoom, and it adds a new dimension to maintaining family contact. I only wish this had been available when my parents were still alive.
After my father passed away last year, I established a regular schedule with my mother to talk about anything or nothing. We started by phone and have mostly moved to video chats, though sometimes those fail because she’s not very tech-savvy and I can’t troubleshoot well when it’s a 4 hour drive to diagnose computer issues. Still, we manage, and I know it’s helped her deal with a now-empty house.
I stay in touch with my closest friends and my daughter via text. Even my young grandsons share a phone for texting - for emergencies only, no apps.
I may be one of the rare exceptions, but I still put pen to paper or card and send a handwritten letter. I have a bin full of cards and letters I’ve received through the years. Whenever I see the cards I received from my deceased sister, I’m immediately transported to memories of her, sometimes more powerful than a photo.
My sister and I talk almost everyday. She was my rock from 2000 miles away when my husband died. She texts me pics of her 2 grandkids. My oldest son texts me once a week. I would prefer to hear his voice and sometimes ask for him to call. He is 3k miles away. I have facetimed my only grand. but not to often. I occasionally see pics of him that his Mom posts on Instagram. I used to call my Dad once a week, also my Mom. They are gone now. I am currently going through letters..so many letters. When I left home I wrote every week to my parents. Reading them makes me cringe as I was a woebegone 19 yr old! My best friends and I would write letters and send cards. I am not so good at it anymore. I make my own holiday cards and send them once a year but that list grows smaller every year and few return the favor. For me communication has devolved to texts and a few friends I meet for coffee or see posts on FB. Of course many are gone now, Getting older changes your address book! I would love more letters but even if I write few do the same. I am currently reading letters from a friend of my great aunt who was in Tennessee. My parents in Ohio got regular updates on her health by letter. My Mom's cousins wrote long letters to my Mom. They lived in PA and that was the way we all communicated because in the day long distance phone calls were unheard of! I love letters. I have a rich family history at my fingertips! Maybe we should start insisting on more letter writing. It is more thoughtful and involved.
At the beginning of COVID, we (we have 6 grown married kids and 10 grands) all installed an app on our phones called Marco Polo (free option). It allows us to record a video message of any length to an individual or group in the family. The message is sent and you click on it to play it. It seriously saved my extended family's tight bond to each other, a precious and valued commodity. We created a big family group, a kids only group, a craft-obsessed sisters group, a sports fanatic group as well as individual one to one contacts. Being able to see each other on screen helped us so much when we could not physically be together for our weekly Pop Pop Pizza nights. Some are more active on it than others on a daily basis but everyone uses it. I bought the upgraded version for everyone for the special features it added. We continue to use it now as much as during the pandemic. I will also add that I make handmade greeting cards that I send to people. It takes time and is a work of unique art each time, often personalized to the recipient. I include a hand-written message.
Before covid we used to cruise with some good friends who live 2000 miles away. So, when travel was not possible, we started to zoom every week and basically we have never stopped. We cruised with them again finally this year, but we still zoom. We don't always accomplish anything with the discussion, but we have a good time if nothing else. We email and text a lot, but seeing someone has more appeal. We even zoomed with a next door neighbor who is having chemo and was advised by her doctor not to meet in groups because her immune system is down. I have also started a Substack, but my subscribers still number in single digits.That's what we do.
For group communications nothing is better than What's App
We have one which is our direct family of 14 ( including kids, spouses & grandkids), our Israeli family, & our friends around the world
We have smaller threads on Text as well
We use Zoom & FT though much less now that COVID has abated
& occasionally this strange thing called a...telephone!
My 3rd wife and I communicated with Yahoo messenger for two years. I am happy to say we are still together almost twenty years later! We met online in 2004 and married in 2006.
Since my mom went into memory care last winter, I visit her each weekend and spend an hour just chatting about the same things and coloring. Ironically, I see her much more frequently than I did before her Alzheimer’s diagnosis.
My fiancé’s 12 yr old daughter gets handwritten postcards from her grandma every week. She started the practice during COVID lockdown and has continued. It’s very sweet.
Wonderful essay. One note: it's "mother and me," not "mother and I."
I have a lot of graphic artist/illustrator friends, so those '90's fax days were always fun...kind of an early "meme" era. Today, it's all texting. The family thread. The close friends threads. The tradesman-related threads. Each with it's own sense of humor (or not.)
I am the oldest of eight and age 81. We have an annual reunion in Kansas where we grew up. I live in Pennsylvania and have siblings in Wyoming, Colorado, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Kansas. I have numerous nieces, nephews, nieces, grand nephews and nieces and great grand nieces and nephews. Facebook has for a long time now the best way for me to keep up with a significant portion of my extended family. I have family contact via Facebook nearly every day.
I left the USA in 1973. My mother and I kept the postal service afloat for many years! Phone calls were much too expensive. My parents died in in 1990’s so I have kept in touch with my sister, first by weekly phone calls (which had gotten cheaper) using a landline. Now we video chat using WhatsApp. I am trying to get my non-tech-savy cousin to either install WhatsApp or use Facetime, but she’s not that interested. With some friends, it’s frequent texting.
I find those who have taken the time throughout their busy lives and made relationships and communications with people have used all forms to keep in touch regularly. If people want to have great relationships with grandkids, they need to step it up and have some fun and maybe do things kids like to do. If you plan on visiting your grandkids once a year, your grandkids are going to know you for that many hours. I'm not judging, you spend time on what you feel is important. All of us find ways of getting things done. I find absolutely every opportunity to lift my grandchildren up! When a wonderful child has wonderful children, that's something to celebrate!
We all stay connected primarily by cell phone, text messages, emails and Facebook. None of us use Twitter or any other platform other than FB.
In the late 1960’s stationed overseas, I communicated with my family with small reel-to-reel voice recordings sent by slow mail. Today I spend much of each morning checking my phone for the daily text and VM check-in of friends living alone. And then email, messenger, and the scheduled facetime or Zoom meetings. I try to pen a “real” letter to my closest friends now and then and I am always gifted with an appreciated “thank you”! I stocked up on forever USPS stamps but don’t mind the price. My family saved all of its correspondence over the past 100 years, including those tapes. It is now a burden with the mixed feelings knowing today’s electronic communications will be lost with all the incite and history they contain. How do you archive your voice?
"MICHAEL! I LOVE YOU!💕"... posting in this tiny text box on this tiny free burner phone in my tiny bed in my tiny room in this tiny town.... is the only way I know to tell your brother I love him!😁😁😁
Twenty of my beloved Aunts and Uncles that cared so much for my moral upbringing when they found a bottle cap sized marijuana brownie in my room... all died from chain smoking cigarettes. The rest of my relatives are lost down the MAGA Rabbit Hole!
Day after day I watch MSNBC on my phone with a (delusional?) hope some pundit will realize the science that up to 60% of anxious people (60% of Americans?) are cured by placebo. Twitter and fb algorithms are AI robots that are figuring out how to morph all our wonderfully diverse innocuous placebos into the insidious placebo of Hate.... just as the Followers of the Prince of Peace consistently voted for War ... the "Faith in Jesus" placebo morphed into hawkification and their power of Superior Assertion habits derived from the Rejection Desensitization that they derived from Evangelizing!
Pre-1969 we had the landline (a new term), and I went to Sweden to teach for 3 years. I wrote endless postcards and long letters to my family and good friends because I could afford an International call.
After 911 everyone wanted cell phones to have contact with my students back here in the US. Wealthy kids, mostly. Today my whole family texts and still call to hear special loved ones voices. Times have changed, but the letters I treasured because I could re-read and feel better. Have wonderful travels!
Interestingly I hand wrote a letter today. Funnier still I was unable to download a recipe to send along and dug out some old school recipe cards to include the hand written recipe to send in the mail, the recipient prefers paper copies. :)
My Dad passed away 20 years ago, my Mom 10 years ago. Since she passed, my four siblings and I text - A LOT (much to the dismay of our spouses!). Even though we're miles apart (from Columbus, OH to Philadelphia, PA to Aiken, SC), it's like we're back home together. On the rare day I don't receive a message, I'll send out a local weather report or a goofy picture I saw on social media - just to say Hi.
When I was young I wrote letters to my father every week or so, and he wrote back as often. Later, I was using email, and I gave him a laptop and set him up on AOL (remember that?). We would write to each other every day. I still have all those emails. I wish I had saved the letters. Now I write to friends using email, texts, and social media. I haven't written or received a personal letter in years. I think that's too bad. There was something special about finding a letter in my mailbox. Getting a text or email just isn't the same.
I was never a big fan of the telephone but once the pandemic hit it became a lifeline for talking to my son at the other end of California. He would call while walking around his neighborhood for a work break and I would often be walking my dog my neighborhood. It was great and we still do this just not quite as frequently.
First and foremost, it’s important to know how your loved ones prefer to communicate. My mom refused to learn how to text or email, so the landline was her preferred connection. When I became her live-in caregiver, I gradually introduced her to FaceTime using my phone. She loved that. But as much as she loved it, she didn’t want her own smart phone. She was afraid people would start texting and emailing and stop calling. Reasonable.
Texting is my preference, and I keep close to several friends this way. It’s no coincidence these are the same friends who live farthest away. I can’t see them every day, but I sure can connect with them every day. Sometimes several times a day. When I do connect by phone, it’s always planned/scheduled by sending a quick text first. These calls are usually extended conversations, and I want to be sure my friends/family have the time to chat.
I still send cards for various holidays throughout the year. My friends don’t connect this way, and I don’t mind at all. It makes me happy to let them know I’m thinking of them.
I confess I don’t write letters anymore. I was a big letter writer in my youth and even had pen pals in other countries. Now, I text and FaceTime with my grown children and siblings (my parents are long gone) and use Facebook for other distant friends and relatives. I so still use email, especially if it’s a lot of information I need to convey.
The landline yes. But though we still have one my current favorite connections are through email and text. Just getting accustomed to instagram for grandchildren’s sake.
Still in the 1960s when our family went to Europe and like fireworks continued in different directions - brother in college here, parents travelling in Middle East and Europe because of family business, sister and I put in private school, we wrote letters, and received letters, and loved getting them and sending them, (at least once with real consequences). They sit in boxes now, waiting to either amuse or horrify the children and grandchildren when they inevitably will wade through our past.
FaceTime has been a godsend ever since my first nephew was born 7 years ago. He and his (now 3!) siblings live 700 miles from me and I truly believe this connection has contributed to them feeling like I’m really part of their lives. Now I have a 1-1/2 year old daughter, and while we do fly to visit fairly often, it’s so wonderful for her to be able to see her grandma, aunties/uncles, and cousins in between visits.
I normally call my mother when I want to talk to her. But, since my father passed away last year, I have a unique way of "reconnecting" with him. I have an archive of his old photos with me and my siblings. Whenever I feel like I have missed him, I opened an album and I will flashback a load of memories that sometimes make me cry with sadness. I also look at his old radio, listen to his songs, 📻 and i really feel his presence. It's nostalgic
I fear that letter writing is a thing of the past since it is no longer taught in schools. At least that is my understanding. My poor English teacher mother would be horrified had she lived to see this day. Now I use texting for quick notes or questions to my children in New York & Mattoon, IL. We also connect on the phone, usually once a week. 2 of my siblings are in CA & OR - we keep in touch by phone and splurge on a Zoom meeting on birthdays. The 1 sister in the area communicates by phone & occasional lunches. Even birthday cards are handled on-line. It seems not many want to deal w/the paper involved. The quarantining of the pandemic ended family get-togethers w/the in-laws all of whom are in the area. When that ended, it seemed that everyone had established new routines w/their own families. We now communicate almost exclusively by texting. Things have definitely changed.
I’m in a group text with my kids (one in NYC one in Amsterdam) and we text everyday about Wordle, politics and our lives. I love it.
In college, my parents and I communicated weekly via postcards, big enough to cover what there was to say. Once , I apologized for spending $2.. 25 on a new pair of shoes and complained about dorm food. Daddy wrote back a letter with $5. 00 in it and told me to put ketchup on the food. When I felt like going home for a weekend or for vacation, I looked on the bulletin board in the student union bldg. were those with cars put notices, riders wanted, and would contact one going my way.
In high school years, I was the head majorette in the fall, but in summer, led the town drum and bugle corps . Composed of all ages (anyone with a car welcome), we competed in various towns which usually had a fair. Attending after marching, 2 really cute, preppy fellows I noticed, were following me. (One had to be on the lookout for the wrong kind), Seems they had run along the sidewalk beside the band, following me. Turned out great with one of them. He hitchhiked from Hornell, NY to Bradford, PA to see me;, sleeping on a park bench that night and taking 12 hours too get back home.We wrote, he came to other towns. I got a Christmas job to pay for a cashmere sweater for him. He went to Lehigh, , I to Penn State. We lost touch. 6 years ago, I looked him up on facebook, there he was, and of course, remembered me. We have emailed each other everyday since. He says Good Morning and Good Night with hugs.
Family wise, everyone is gone that I knew. I am the last. So, hating telephone talking as I think and write better than I talk, I text my son in NJ, then he calls back. If I ever call him, he thinks there is something wrong. I cannot find the one letter he ever wrote to me. He was a ski patroller at Hunter Mt. NY, the first he had ever lived away from home. Wish I could find it. My daughters and grandchildren all live here in Bradenton, FL . We mostly text, send pictures, They work. They have children. They are busy. But whenever I need them, they come immediately. Sometimes we go shopping at Macy's or Barnes & Noble or a garden center as we all love plants. Other than that, I joke with customers at work, come home, speak to a neighbor if outside, and that's it.
Text mostly. But recently I decided it was past time to visit friends I hadn’t seen for eight years in Toronto and Cleveland, Ohio. Fantastic to see people in person. Chinese friends who emigrated from the PRC many years after I taught English in Wuhan. We’ve stayed in touch since 1981. Saw some Cleveland cousins I hadn’t seen for 45 years and -their children and grandchildren I had met only once or twice and old friends from decades ago. I must say since moving to Arizona I get a lot of visitors so many of my friends show up on my doorstep quite often. Especially the ones who golf.
I generally call about a half dozen friends, almost weekly just to touch base -what’s the most fun of all is babysitting and spending time with my great grandson -either at my house or his. Swim museums, baking cooking just hanging out and playing. Locally I meet friends at coffee, shops, and restaurants or sometimes they come to my condo pool. I think it’s important to keep in touch and let people know that you care.
I have four married children and 10 grand children living in all parts of the US
At the beginning of the pandemic, one of my children, set up a group chat, called “cheering up, grandma”. We are still using this and sharing life events, funny photos, pet pictures, and anything that might pop in to our minds that we feel should be shared.
Many of my family live on the East Coast and I am on the west coast and I can’t wait to get up in the morning to see what’s going to be in this chat room each morning
I find this a true blessing, and I’m thankful for the technology that allows this to happen
nobody's perfect
Our children are so wrapped up with texting, we can’t get thru to them when we try to call them. They sometimes don’t have the time to talk unless we call repeatedly! The one thing they do have the time for is to face time if we insist that we need to connect with our grandchildren, but once again it’s not as often as we would like!
Several years ago, I found a box of old letters I had saved. I scanned them and sent copies back to the friends who had sent them decades earlier. In one case I sent a beautiful letter to the sister of the now deceased author. The response I got back was truly wonderful. I even got back one more handwritten card.
But the art and the joy of letter writing is, I think now gone. After so many years of typing I can barely read my own handwriting anymore. My question is, what experience today is closest to what receiving a great letter used to be like?
I write to a dozen people around the US on a regular basis, at least once per month. A combination of family members and old friends. I also scan all outgoing handwritten letters and have done so since 2018. I use fountain pens. I also maintain a personal daily journal (handwritten) and separate journals for each of the three grandchildren where I will record a one page "Dear ___" letter documenting something fun or interesting we did together. They might find these letters amusing someday after I'm gone.
We have had a Royal Mail "forever" stamp as well, with our Elizabeth Regina, just her visage embossed on it. Like, one centimetre or so, square. Denoting just 1st & 2nd 'class', it's speed, fast/slow, through to delivery. No price indicated. Such being whatever has been previously determined - over the decades, from tuppence to forty fold now...mostly, now it's electronic gibberish, generated at post-office counter, for postage charge.
Mr Beschloss, I thank you too, for your commentary and reminiscences. Having lived through such wonderful communicating facilities, I still like writing letters, fountain pen, paper, stamps, mailbox - unbeatable, exciting ritual, for dear ones🙏....🧘🌃🌻
I do write handwritten letters still. Maybe six a year. A couple pages. Because I own some from the past. To open a letter from my top drawer, years later, is revealing, sentimental. Letters can be re-read. When people pen letters, they are in a slower, therefore more careful and thoughful mode. The handwriting is sentimental and telling to me. Snail-mail 4-ever,
I mostly use texting for brief messages or sometimes to direct the receiver to check their emails, where I send longer, more complicated messages. I love the ubiquitous opportunity to reach or be reached anytime, anywhere. I am 76, worked as a nurse practitioner and still reach out frequently (maybe too much?) I use Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter till I give up on it, & considering Threads.
I have 3 grown kids, 9 grandkids and many friends and colleagues. The worst thing for me is isolation.
It seems like I keep in touch with friends, old and new, in so many different ways that I forget how we've communicated: Facebook, DM, email, text, phone calls ( I miss when your friends or even acquaintances just picked up the phone and called—and you were surprised who it was!), and many hand-written cards.
Yellowstone 1923 had an episode where sending an urgent international cable was a godsend over other forms of communication like mail where speed was paramount. Back then, such electronic media was relatively rare to the general public. What I use today is phone, text, email, FaceTime, and conferencing tools like Zoom and Teams for instantaneous communications both locally, nationally and globally.
Being ADHD I allow my impulsivity to dictate. So it’s all over the place! Snail mail continues to be my favorite form.
I send cards to my grandson and have done so since he left for college from detroit to New York City ten years ago. He recently told me that he has every note and card that I have sent him in the last ten years. It made m very happy to know that he values the m in this way. One’s own handwriting it powerful, even if the message is always the same: I love you.
I used to write long letters to my parents and to my sister, as well as to a friend of ours whom my husband and I met while we were students at university and he was the live-in janitor at the Wesley Foundation where we spent a lot of time. He went to Vietnam and came back a very angry and damaged young man, but we kept in touch. Eventually he found a woman to love him and he is still with her, though he is now her caregiver as she has Alzheimer's. Throughout we have kept in touch, now by email instead of written letters on paper and my communication extends to their daughter, whom I keep in touch with on Facebook. I write to my sister by email as well, but sadly find that none of my friends have ever felt they had the time to write except very sporadically. I keep in touch with some cousins on Facebook and a family Whatsapp site, and I often text with my daughter and with our honorary daughter, her best friend, online. (Our daughter lives with us, so I don't have to write to her usually.)
We’ve got 2 adult daughters, one in Dallas & one in San Jose CA. We play Wordle as “proof of life” every day.
I text my son & grandkids very frequently & we exchange pictures that way too. For more detailed conversations I do prefer a phone conversation & so that happens frequently too with my son & my sister. I’ve got some group texts with local friends - typically full of funny pictures, suggestions for good books or movies etc. I do use Facebook to stay in touch with some out of state family & friends, including high school classmates. I wish I could say I still write personal letters, but barely manage to send quick notes with Christmas cards. I do have some really treasured letters that my dad had written home to his folks when he was in the army in Europe during WW2. Very eye opening & fascinating glimpses into both actual history but especially into parts of my dad’s life that he never talked much about. It’s sad that personal letters really seem like a relic from the past.
I chat with my closest friend over the phone. Youthful members of my family prefer texting and I like email for longer missives. I try to use snail mail for birthday and thank you cards.
Starting therapy over the topic of this post. :-/ No, seriously. UGH.