Bryant Park

Walking through Bryant Park, grass being watered

The other day the entire green space covered with Fashion Week tents

Now it’s sod again park chairs and people awaiting the okay to climb on

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Next there will be a skating rink, tomorrow a yoga class

Now that’s Adaptive Reuse in action

I pass Italian tourists furiously scribbling postcards while chatting without looking up

Does anyone write cards anymore except tourists?

The art of letter writing, the treasures stuffed away in boxes, drawers awaiting discovery

The smell of musty paper and faded ink

Ruth Reichl’s book about her mother a memoir put together from long forgotten letters awaiting the discovery and finally a kind of closure, a knowing.

Today we use with amazing ease an email message that can so easily get lost? Or in truth erased or due to new technology that won’t have the slightest clue how to open and convert-how disheartening to know it’s all there but can’t see it, feel it.  I love the digital age, but I am still in awe of the tactile act of holding a handwritten letter in my hands.

Photos are the same.  How much history are we losing by not keeping some things in “hard copy” form.