Nice story, Larry. Thanks for posting the link, I hadn't seen that
one. I like the way the author referred to remembered scents, etc.
There's a tactile quality to looking at old letters that we will miss
in looking at email. Yeah, I know, Steve hates paper ;-) But some of
us like the fact that letters are written in permanent ink, on paper,
that you can see the scratchouts as the writer composed the note, etc.
I've actually experienced some of the "reading through . . . old
e-mails" stuff already -- prematurely. Since my twin sis (Eva) died
too young (at 51), I naturally treasure any emails I exchanged with
her. There's a bittersweet quality to reading the email
correspondence, of course. None of us knew what was coming. . . .
Reading the messages we exchanged in AOL is pretty easy. Some are
printed out (unfortunately, only on a deskjet printer, which hardly is
permanent ink. I don't have a laser printer at home). Others are
saved on the old notebook computers we once used, still available in
her old "organize" files. As long as I continue to use AOL, I can read
them easily.
But, not everything she wrote me came to my AOL account. To use the
image in the article Larry linked to, I don't have for Eva a single
"electronic" version of the "box" in which Kyra's correspondence from
1960 to 1985 was saved. For example, my sister worked at the National
Archives and sometimes wrote to me at work from her NARA account. At
work, when my agency switched several years ago from Lotus CC: Mail to
Novell Groupwise, at the time of the conversion, I imported most of my
old .cca extension mail into Groupwise, thereby preserving it. Her
correspondence is separate from my work-related mail, set aside in an
archived Groupwise folder marked "Eva." As long as I'm running
Groupwise, I can access it.
Of course, since I don't have Groupwise at home, I can't read Groupwise
messages on my home computer. Right now, I can only read the Groupwise
messages from Eva which I "saved as" messages in MSWord. I didn't do
that with everything she sent me at work over the years, many messages
are just saved in Groupwise. Some day, before I retire (which won't be
for a while), I'll have to look into migration utlities to see what is
available to export her messages from Groupwise into -- well, what ever
I will be using at home at that point. Probably still AOL but who
knows. Of course, there's the additional wrinkle that I can't readily
pick out from the "Gwarchives" file the items that I once archived in
the folder marked "Eva."
Maybe paper isn't so bad, after all. (I know, I know, I'll never get
Steve to agree, LOL.) Thanks again for posting the link, Larry.
Maarja
-----Original Message-----
From: Larry Medina <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 11:49:41 -0700
Subject: [RM] RAINdrip: Wonder if reading through 25 year old e-mails
will evoke the same feelings....
http://www.chicoer.com/oroville/ci_3974529
-- Larry Medina
Danville, CA
RIM Professional since 1972
List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html
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