When was the last time you sent a letter? Not an email, but a real, tangible piece of mail? If your answer is "not recently," you’re not alone.
Except for the occasional birthday or holiday card, most of us haven’t sent -- or received -- good, old-fashioned snail mail in a very long time.
Instead we text; we tweet; we post on each other’s Facebook walls. But in our quest for instant communication, have we lost touch with the joy -- the intimacy -- of handwritten correspondence?
This hour, we take a look at the history and art of letter-writing. We learn about some rare, 17th-century letters tracked down by a local historian.
We also talk to American writer and feminist Gloria Steinem. Her new memoir is called My Life on the Road.
GUESTS:
- Patrick Skahill - WNPR reporter and host of The Beaker
- Jana Dambrogio - Thomas F. Peterson conservator at MIT Libraries
- Andrew Carroll - Director of the Center for American War Letters at Chapman University
- Gloria Steinem - Writer, political activist, and feminist organizer
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JohnDankosky and Chion Wolf contributed to this show, with segments previously broadcast on December 11, 2015 and October 27, 2015.
