The volume of letters to the editor has slowed to a trickle, and it’s a sign of the season – the seeding and spraying season.
Western Producer readers are typically too busy at this time of year to set pen to paper or fingers to keyboards and comment on agricultural issues of the day. There’s a similar decline in the number of letters during harvest.
In between times, the Producer is fortunate to have so many articulate people seeking a public forum for their thoughts.
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It isn’t that easy to write a letter these days, to the editor or to anyone else. A letter is a personal and time-consuming exercise and personal time is a scarce commodity.
Telephones and e-mails have replaced letters in many people’s lives. While fast and convenient, neither has the same cachet, the same anticipatory thrill, as a letter in the mailbox sent by a friend.
Journalists and authors are typically pretty good letter writers, but that’s likely because they’re at ease with the language and quick to articulate their thoughts in written form.
Those without benefit of such practice find it laborious to fashion prose, especially since many must take the additional trouble of disguising spelling and grammatical uncertainties with inscrutable handwriting.
Ernest Hemingway said he liked writing letters “because it’s such a swell way to keep from working and yet feel you’ve done something.” There’s that aforementioned writers’ mentality.
I tend toward Lord Byron’s view: “Letter writing is the only device for combining solitude and good company.”
One wonders if phone and e-mail will allow us to capture history the way letters have done in the past. That very question last year prompted journalists Lisa Brunwald and Stephen J. Adler to compile a book, Letters of the Century, which includes the following missives.
“Mr. Capone has never filed income tax returns,” wrote lawyer Lawrence Mattingly. His letter led to Al Capone’s conviction on tax evasion.
“It will include male-pleasing figure studies,” wrote Hugh Hefner to newsstand sellers as he promoted the launch of Stag Party, a magazine later known as Playboy.
It’s a sobering thought to see historical perspective revealed through personal letters. And through them we also see that, whether they realize it or not, our Open Forum contributors provide a written history of our prairie times.
