This weekend I’m at Foolzcon, which isn’t a con. It’s a gathering of friends, where the object is to sit around talking, eat, tell stories, catch up on a year’s worth of events and memories, and forge the bonds of friendship a little more solidly. Friday was a potluck, with tables of food. This morning it’s quiet, the few diehards pf the Morning Crew cradling their cups of coffee. There’s a gun conversation going on, a writing tools chat across from me, a couple of military-types discussing mustang officers, and me in the middle writing intently.
This morning before I left the house, I wrote a chatty letter in a silly card with a picture of a Hypno-Cat in the front. I didn’t write about anything much. Then I addressed it to my son in Boot, put it in the mailbox with the flag up, and considered the concept of letters from home. In this era of texts, emails, and social media chats, a physical pen and ink on paper letter seems almost counter-cultural. I am amused at the idea my son may have trouble reading my handwriting – to be fair, he hasn’t seen it often over the years, and I’m out of practice in the gentle art of handwriting. My mother tried.
I can do full formal italics or calligraphy (although I’m not good at it), better than I can do the scrawl with a ballpoint pen. I slow down, think it through, and form the letters carefully as though I were drawing a bit of art. Pen in hand I am scratching along, unable to keep up with my thoughts.
What if…
What if cybersecurity devolves to the point where we can’t trust texts and emails? Where will we be, if star travel is expensive but vital, and a courier must hand-carry the ink on pages, with wax seals, in order to parlay alliances? What will letters from home look like then? Even as we spring off this world, into the solar system, and weight is a question, will it all be electronic? What will it mean to receive a slender envelope from home, sealed with a lip imprint of a kiss, a slight perfume still clinging to it? Email can’t carry the full weight of a mother’s love in the way that a dragon sticker on the back of the card can. It’s silly, but it isn’t.
I’ll keep writing him, every other day or so. I don’t expect him to keep the physical mail. I do hope that they will cheer him and shore up faltering resolutions in the weeks to come as he is broken and molded to fit Uncle Sam’s conception of what a sailor ought to be in this fallen age of irresolution.
The group is slowly growing here. I’ve been joined by more friends, and now we’re batting around what a Ranger would do in space. Space Rangers sounds like a lovely series title! I don’t have time to write it, but feel free to take that and run.
I need more coffee, and conversation. I have cards to write later, filling in my son on the shenanigans which will mean nothing to him, and everything.
Mad Genius Club 
10 responses to “Letters from Home”
You’d need a seal in case the AI learns to forge handwriting.
I still have letters my mother sent to me when I was in summer camp. Those mean everything, and email is not a substitute. I hope your son keeps the letters you send.
Back in 2016, if memory serves, anyway, the last time I was in Munich, the cab driver and I got to chatting. He was joking about computer security, since Munich and several other German cities had ditched MS for straight Unix after back doors were found in the software. “We go back to the old days, post cards and sneaker net, ja?” He winked.
His accent pegged him as being from Saxony, behind the Iron Curtain. He was old enough to have grown up in that world. I winked back and said, “Ach, ja.”
In the current digital age, I think hand written letters are especially meaningful, because of the extra effort involved.
On a slightly different topic, sometimes you can’t even receive letters; it has to be a family gram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Familygram
yeah, letter from home are important in basic.
What Draven said. I remember so many mail calls where I didn’t get anything. And the shear excitement when I did.
“What if cybersecurity devolves to the point where we can’t trust texts and emails?”
I am told that a couple of years ago the Kremlin switched back to typewriters.
I wish I were there. And BTW I’m sure y’all have heard of the AI fake of the principle’s voice that got the principle fired. We may be returning to the days of physical print and paper because of such shenanigans.
Some of us have been saying this for a while. Another use for AI (in use in CA already) is to digitize things like deeds and titles, then use AI to seamlessly redact “problematic language”, like restrictive covenants based on language. Wait until they seamlessly redact ownership on the grounds of “stolen land”.
Yeah, I’ve said elsewhere that TPTB have probably had high end text, image and video falsification for a while; the fact that it’s trickling down to the masses is if anything going to wake a lot of people up.