Do you get letters?
Yeah, me neither. I used to, though: When my parents moved to Florida, my grandparents and cousins and I all wrote letters to each other. When my grandparents moved to Florida, they corresponded via letter with my cousins. Toward the end of my grandmother's life, we found beautiful love letters from my grandfather neatly stacked beneath letters from her grandchildren.
The Write-In & Type-In Event
April 16, 1-5 p.m.
The Paper Seahorse, 211 S. Howard Ave., Tampa.
This happened well before texting and email and Facebook and free long distance, of course. Letter writing has fallen out of fashion, and that's a pity. Those longhand love letters to my grandmother wouldn't have packed quite the same punch had my grandfather texted his declarations of undying love to her.
At least two people on the CL team have manual typewriters (the veritable David W. and myself), and in our office we have another made into a artistic homage to the typewritten word. All the same, I'm unsure the last time any of us used a typewriter — and we own typewriters.
Paper seduces, which is why this afternoon's (April 22) Write-In & Type-In at The Paper Seahorse in Tampa delights me. Until 5 p.m., anyone can celebrate National Card, Letter & Poetry Writing Month at the Write-In & Type-In . You can type notes on typewriters in their "Writing Saloon", with old school typewriters courtesy of Tampa Type. They have tons of other things happening, too — you can write a letter of encouragement to a sick kid, a homeless pregnant woman or an elderly person; you can get tips to improve your handwriting (video games worked for me, but I'm sure these guys have other suggestions); you can get ideas about what to say in a letter (because sometimes it's OK to send a note to someone "just because"); and you can create your own piece of "mail art."
A note about this event: This all sounded like a nice idea (but that's about it) until some folks from The Paper Seahorse delivered a press kit to Creative Loafing . The kit contained information about the event along with samples of buttery-thick postcards, silky vellum papers, and a self-indulgent sampling of the stationary and paper arts they have. That's when I started to get excited, and that's why, if you have time, I highly suggest you pop by today and check out the Write-In & Type-In .
