Communications
Communications covers a full spectrum of “being in touch”. This was brought to mind today when I phoned one of my brothers back in Scotland.
When I emigrated to Canada, years and years ago, my mother used to send a weekly airletter (a flimsy blue tinged mailer that, if you wrote really small, could tell all the family news and local gossip). The interesting thing about these mailings was that she would mail them first thing on a Monday morning and they would arrive at my home on the Alaska Highway by Wednesday noon. Try that with snail mail today.
Letter writing was part of my upbringing since there was no phone in the family home until it was finally sold in the late 1980’s. If an emergency occurred, it was the local telephone booth that was used. Even my father who was in business for himself never had a phone at his business until two of my brothers took over in the 1960’s.
I have close Scottish friends in Canada and our e-mailing is limited to perhaps twice a year and one of the couples would rather chat on the phone since it provides that personal touch; with which I can’t disagree. E-mails and IM’s with their emoticons are good but lack the ability to cover the inflection in a voice or a facial expression. This is changing, of course, with the voice mail and webcams plus the introduction of cell phones.
Too bad that my two brothers have not modernized to the computer age; and they are not that much older than me. So we resort to the telephone; and it is me who picks up the slack since the pricing of calling is prohibitive of over there. That is not a complaint as much as a comment.
There are other aspects of communication but the foregoing is upmost in my mind for today
Stay in touch.
