Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 20, 1994 TAG: 9410210017
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In my work mailbox I found a college press release with a bumpy thing in it that had a distinct letter-bomb feel to it, but it turned out to be a pin promoting a campus event.
I also got a letter responding to my recent yard-art column. The writer said I forgot to include her favorite lawn decoration: an examination table she inherited from her obstetrician-grandfather, which she fashioned into an outdoor planting station, using the metal stirrups as guides for her watering hose.
My telephone voice-mail at work had several messages. And waiting at home in my rusty mailbox was the following assortment: two pieces of junk mail, a magazine, a party invitation and two bills.
When I turned on my home computer, I received my fourth kind of mail: an E-mail letter from my friend Evelyn in Washington, D.C. Written on Sept. 22 (I hadn't checked my messages in a while), the letter outlined her recent trip to Manhattan. She'd been to a party where people talked about their affinity for - get this - Roanoke.
"We agreed that there's a sense of community there, and yet it's kind of sophisticated," she said, basing her comments on a recent visit.
Evelyn spends a lot of time composing E-mail letters at work - she won't divulge her exact daily count, on the off chance that her boss might come across this column. She joins a growing number of people who've learned to cruise the information highway, which I understand about as well as the proposed "smart road."
The Internet, from what I can tell, lets you chat with friends across the country at work - without scamming on the company's WATS line. It also lets you tap into encyclopedic wells of information called "databases," providing expert information in such fields as oboes, left-handed right-fielders and people who collect trolls.
The '90s version of a pub, it's been called - a place where people socialize and gossip, only no one gets drunk or goes home with someone they shouldn't.
It's an introvert's dream: You don't have to look good or speak well to impress. In fact, you don't have to see people at all. Less milling, more haste.
It's Life Lite.
I've always had a problem with intangible things. I never got the concept of vectors in high-school physics, just like I never really understood chemistry or computer science. I like to see what I'm studying, touch it, spill coffee on it.
When I go home from work, I love the ritual of spotting a letter sticking out of my mailbox, deciphering the handwriting, looking at the postmark and then ripping the envelope apart. I love hearing my newspaper thump on the porch each morning, smelling the newsprint, seeing the smudges it leaves on my new white shirt.
Which is why I'm fighting the urge to comprehend the Internet with all its bells and whistles. I know it's efficient and quick; I know it will save lots of trees.
A former professor of mine, who rarely writes letters but has E-mailed me a time or two, loves the technology because he doesn't let himself worry over every word and sentence. He types out his thoughts, sends them and they disappear instantly from his screen, forever.
My friend Evelyn, who has mailed me only one actual letter in five years, has sent a half-dozen E-mail notes since our visit two months ago. She confirms that the spontaneous transmission frees people to write who might otherwise be intimidated - or too lazy to hunt down an envelope or stamp.
I suppose it's possible that the lost art of letter-writing could be resurrected by E-mail. Maybe something that is sophisticated can really foster a needed sense of community - whether it's among an international community of oboe enthusiasts, or two old friends reconnecting over the glare of a VDT screen some 200 miles apart.
Today's party invitation seemed to me the perfect compromise: It came to my home mailbox via postcard, but the RSVP listed an E-mail address.
Now some die-hard Internetters might prefer to stay home and party over the entertainment speedway, but I'm not willing to go that far.
I like my life full-bodied, like a good dark beer, with more milling and less haste.
Some things weren't meant to be Lite.
Beth Macy, a features department staff writer, wishes they'd invent a light for the computer terminal so you'd know when your E-mail arrives. Her column runs Thursdays.
by CNB