The Letters Home

Long ago, we did not have all of these different ways of communication that we have today, especially instant communication.  Our way of communication was writing a letter. 

I have been thinking a lot lately about the way we lived in the past before electronics.  The electronics have become intrusive and it feels like a burden to me.  I feel concerned about our young people that have grown up in this era of instant everything and all these electronics and wires and chargers and constant everything.   They have never experienced the freedom of living without it and that is sad to me.

I have old letters that are very personal and full of memories from long ago when life was what seemed to be normal for me.

In a letter my Aunt Leona included a recipe for her sweet bread.  There are letters announcing a birth or sadly a death.  We processed things slower in these times as I feel that it should be.  We did not have to learn to wait for news as we would have to do today if we suddenly did not have internet or cell phones, we simply knew that everything takes time.

I love the morning sunshine peeking into the house.

There is an addiction today and it is an addiction to instant.  Everything "now" is causing us to waste our life, and this is not why we are here on this earth.

I want to leave this world knowing that I have tried to show how to go back to basics, and how people did quite alright before all these electronics today and frustrations that we have today. We can still write a letter as it was done long ago, nothing is preventing us from doing that.

Charles and I have been setting our home so that if suddenly these things stopped working or are simply just too expensive for our budget, we just don't have them anymore and live like we did before them. It puts a comfort in our body just knowing that we can do that and know that you can do that too and live comfortably if you simply just start by not having so many things.

I know that I could not do this blog without internet. As you can see, I am slowing down writing posts, and this is because I want to be doing and write as I have the time which is allowing me to do more.  No matter how we count it, I do not have that many more years to live because I am getting older.  However saying that, none of us know how much longer we have no matter what age so we need to live with purpose.  

One of my purposes is to share anything that I feel will help get people back to basics. 

This was a letter from a family member to my mother after a terrible car accident when his wife was killed.  They had just married and were on their way for their honeymoon and hit a bridge.  

I have a box of letters but cannot get to them from where they are stored at the moment but when I married and we moved to an Air Base during the Vietnam war, I wrote letters home.  There was no other form of communications other than a local pay phone for an emergency or a telegram and that was okay.  

I would write to my mother at least twice a month. When my mother received my letter she would pass on any new news to other family.  When my mother would write back to me she would include any news from my brother that was in the Marines at that time or from my Grandmother or other family members.  Our communication worked very well and it was an exciting day when a letter would arrive. 

We did not have the need to have constant communications because we were busy living our lives.  Three years after being in the military we found out we were expecting our first child and wrote home right away.  We received telegrams to congratulate us after giving birth.

We did not have the worry about carrying a phone or charging up electronics, it was actually a very freeing life and during this time neighbors visited one another and people were very friendly so there was not the isolation as there is today.

This can be done today, nothing is preventing us from living without all of these extra items that come with monthly bills.  We have many generations now that just do not know this is an option, I can say that we can live without it and it can become a perfectly normal way to live.  It is other people that may not like us doing this. The options are write a letter, or go visit them or both.

There are times when the new electronics are good for someone that is risk of falls or medical devices, I am mostly discussing this because there are many people that are financially struggling and paying for some items that are not a necessity for life. 

Reading real books

To read a real book, one with paper pages that we hold in our hands and feel the pages and hear the sound of the page turning is so much better than reading with a light glaring in our eyes.  No wires, no worries that it will run out of charge.  Just get into a comfy place and take it all in. 

I love reading my Christmas books, and my favorite book is A Basket Brigade Christmas.  I did not read this last year due to things being so hectic  but I am looking forward to reading it again this year.  

I am back to gardening again.  The past couple of years have not gone so well with gardening but I am not giving up.  Charles and I have extended our garden space, I will do another post on this at another time.  I am excited about our new space and have been studying a lot about the proper dates to plant seeds, and doing the math of the length of time from seed to harvest.  I have made a new garden book and I am going to do my best to plant at the right time and also plant back up seeds to have plants ready for those plants that have problems.  We have made hoops to cover our plants this year.  This has taken a lot of work to do which if we want something we have to do the work to make that happen. 

I will be back out in the garden this afternoon for a few hours so I had better get this post out. Pop over in the forum and let me know what you all have been up to or add anything relevant to this post. 

Grandma Donna