Will this be the year letters take their final curtain call? In 2013 will we be saying, “Remember paper?” I think not! I am encouraged by the letter-writing whispers I heard just yesterday. First, artist Lisa Congdon has announced she’ll take on a letter-a-day challenge in 2012: 365 Days of Hand Lettering. Hats off to Lisa. And The New Yorker has posted an early-year ode to the letter with
Life And Letters. The article speaks the truth:

“If we stop writing letters, who will keep our history or dare venture upon a biography? George Washington, Oscar Wilde, T. E. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, E. B. White, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Vera Nabokov, J. P. Morgan—if any of these vivid predecessors still belong to us in some fragmented private way, it’s because of their letters or diaries (which are letters to ourselves) or thanks to some strong biography built on a ledge of letters.”