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Archive for the ‘Letter writing’ Category

How I learnt to love the pen with Darwin’s bulldog

Posted in Letter writing, On writing, Philosophy and culture, tagged , , , , , on 15 March, 2010 | 2 Comments »

Susan Lawler is a lecturer in genetics and evolution at La Trobe University who, a few years ago, started an unusual experiment in teaching. Frustrated by the poor writing skills of her first-year students, she hit on the idea of using letters to teach both writing and genetics in one fell swoop.  Rather than have her [...]

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Vincent on a Sunday

Posted in Art and exhibitions, Letter writing, tagged , , on 22 November, 2009 | 2 Comments »

Did you know Vincent van Gogh was as expressive and perceptive a writer as he was a painter?  Try this: What is drawing? How does one learn it?  It is working through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do.  How is one to get through [...]

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Cock a snook on Friday

Posted in Letter writing, Philosophy and culture, tagged , , , , , on 8 October, 2009 | 3 Comments »

Friday is World Post Day.  It marks the date on which the Universal Postal Union was established in 1874 in Switzerland.  Nowadays, the day is used to announce new stamp issues, or initiate letter-writing competitions with what must be an increasingly retro constituency.  But I’m a retro woman myself, so I’m going to celebrate the [...]

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Aristocratic letters

Posted in Letter writing, Philosophy and culture, tagged , , on 7 September, 2009 | 2 Comments »

Still under the influence of P G Wodehouse, a book falls from my bookcase and lands on my lap.  It’s a carefully-preserved specimen from childhood, The Correct Guide to Letter Writing by A Member of the Aristocracy.  The third in a series of posts in tribute to the diminishing, if not the passing, of the magical medium [...]

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The great postal war of 1912

Posted in Letter writing, Literature, tagged , , , , , , on 11 August, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

My dear Fraulein Bauer, In the likelihood that you no longer have even the remotest recollection of me, I am introducing myself once more: my name is Franz Kafka, and I am the person who greeted you the first time that evening at Director Brod’s in Prague, the one who subsequently handed you across the [...]

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Fronto’s palimpsest

Posted in Letter writing, Literature, Philosophy and culture, tagged , , , , , , on 7 August, 2009 | 3 Comments »

Q.  What’s the definition of a meeting? A.  A place where ideas go to die. ***** According to The Washington Post, mailboxes are going to die — not in Sergey Brin’s garage – but in a “mailbox graveyard” somewhere close to Maryland, USA. Brigid Schulte wrote a touching piece, re-printed in The Age, about the demise of the mail service [...]

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