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Treasure trove of letters and diaries
In the last MLT Q and A about Austria, was really intrigued by the old family letters and hand written correspondence that Mona and Lisa found, and were able to piece together how the war affected their family. The madness of the war affected even a small rural town in Austria, pitting neighbour against neighbour.
This got me thinking about how valuable old letters and diaries can be. If those letters were not retained and stored away for safe keeping, Mona and Lisa never would have learned of their family history and things that happened in the war that affected their grand parents and relatives. I think learning about the experiences and life drama of our relatives and even strangers is enriching.
In the 90s when my dad worked teaching math in Japan as a post retirement job just because he loved teaching, wrote me many handwritten letters over a span of nearly 10 years, and I don’t know what happened to those letters, and I kick myself now I did not save them. I may have kept some in my desk but probably got thrown out when I moved out. With my dad in a care home now with dementia, those letters of daily life and concern he wrote me decades ago would be so priceless.
I came across this Ted Talk that I found really inspiring.
https://youtu.be/CIopFzbIPJw?si=YCS69D8MT3-g3m9B
There are people out there who collect and read old diaries and journals of strangers. I guess it would be OK for a total stranger to read my deepest secrets. This Ted Talk expresses how everybody has a story, one worthy of sharing, and that the emotions we have in life are really timeless.
Those of us blessed with the gift of creating music, art, and poetry can capture their life’s emotions forever, that can perhaps help someone going through a similar experience as yours many years later. Hand written letters and diaries can be similar as our life drama and emotions and thoughts are captured in them. On the internet I learned some people just burn their journals after they finish them, which I think is a shame. It would be valuable if grand children or distant relatives decades or centuries later could have access to them. Apparently there is an organization in London and other places that collect old diaries/journals like this site where you can submit them for historians and social study scholars to have access to them to be able to see the normal every day peoples lives at different times in history. It’s kind of like leaving a time capsule for our distant descendants to get a glimpse of our world and our emotions.. The Great Diary Project.
Does anyone here keep diaries/journals or collect old family letters and postcards? What do you want to become of them when you are gone? I’ve been journaling off and on since childhood, but started a real collection for the last 15 years that now span 30 journals, and 23 pocket journals. I sometimes enjoy going back and reading them occasionally to remind me of my thoughts and what my life was like at different points in the past 15 years. I find the moments with my mom when I visited her in the care home and the feelings I had dealing with her dementia the most valuable and insightful. It’s painful to relive sometimes, but I don’t want to forget that period either, as she was the most beautiful and precious person in my life even then. They give me insight into how I changed and thoughts and feelings I forgot about. I figured though they would end up in a landfill after I am gone, but perhaps I see there are other options for them. Maybe can be of value for someone in the distant future, a relative or stranger.
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6 Replies
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I learned there are some used book stores and antique stores that has collections of old diaries that were donated by families or the estate after someone passes. That’s how some people who chase down old diaries acquire them. Some people collect old letters and post cards, as they enjoy reading the old hand written scripts and can be fascinating to get a glimpse into someone’s world in another time in history.
Old letters and diaries remind me of this song.
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It was apropos Jung, that should make mention of postcards. Alongside my attention to MLT, I have, for almost thirty years, been seriously enamored over vintage/antique postcards. I can confirm that they can be wonderful little windows into the past. My own collection, which spans the years from 1900 to around 1950, have had messages on the back that not only say “having a wonderful time….. wish you were here”, but that also make reference to births, deaths, fires and floods (sound familiar?) travel plans, Halley’s Comet (1910), and the 1918 flu pandemic. Postcards in the early twentieth century were the Facebook of their day. Adults and children alike, collected them in albums, gave them away, exchanged them, and yes, mailed them. Nowadays you can sometimes find them at antique and collectable shows, thrift stores, and garage sales.
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Hi Len
That sounds like a great collection of post cards you must have. Thanks for sharing that. It certainly forms a great piece of history, that can mark certain well known times from just ordinary people. The hand writing I think carries a little bit of the person’s essence in the post card. I found some post cards from John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Just brief sentiments expressed in the few words they wrote, but it expresses so much more of them from the mark they leave and their signature.
Next time I’m in an antique store, I will see if there are any old post cards, it sounds intriguing.
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Len
Imagine finding this treasure trove of a letter in an antique store. The power of the handwritten message.
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Thanks Jung: Yes, the woman in the video clip definitely has a wee treasure. As mentioned, my other passion is vintage/antique postcards. While The Beatles are not one of my main themes, I do keep my eyes open for Liverpool cards, such as St. Peter’s Church (where John and Paul first met), the Liverpool Insitute, and Penny Lane, places that already existed from before the Beatles era.
From biographies I’ve read, the “boys” were active correspondents with family, friends, and as we see, with fans. Ringo released a book in 2004, Postcards From The Boys, and Olivia Harrison’s biography, Living In The Material World (2011), includes an illustration of a postcard of the Friar Park gatehouse (described as The Lodge), which would date to the earlier resident, the eccentric sir Francis Crisp.
Ah yes, there are many avenues down the rabbit hole, should one wish to go there.
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