One day in 1998, a few days after the death of his father, Péter Gárdos's mother handed him a box containing two thick bundles of handwritten letters, each tied with ribbon.
He unlocked a desk drawer and removed a cardboard box containing a four-inch-thick stack of handwritten pages from yellow legal pads, the work of fifteen years.
There was Portuguese soup and Puerto Rican stew at the family-run concession stands, where the handwritten menus were scrawled in thick felt marker, crossed through as the "onolicious" fried ice cream or pork with tofu and macaroni ran out.
He simply reached under his writing table and produced a one-inch thick stack of yellow legal paper, all covered in handwritten words and scribbles and lines, and then he calmly slid it across the table to me with this single comment: "That, my friend... is one song".
Along with the thick condolence books sitting on the Norgroves' side table – books full of testimonies, photographs and handwritten notes from Linda's former colleagues with the environment group WWF in Peru, and her friends and colleagues in Afghanistan with DAI – is a plastic folder stuffed with letters from schoolchildren, mainly teenaged girls, in Jalalabad.
It seemed unlikely that the letter would reach her, and, if it did, that she'd respond, but, a week later, a thick envelope arrived, holding six tightly folded pages marked "personal and confidential": I have to apologize — first of all — for the handwritten letter — my truly conservative aversion to all machinery (including Internet, TV, microwave oven, etc. etc. ...)...
It seemed unlikely that the letter would reach her, and, if it did, that she'd respond, but, a week later, a thick envelope arrived, holding six tightly folded pages marked "personal and confidential": I have to apologize — first of all — for the handwritten letter — my truly conservative aversion to all machinery (including Internet, TV, microwave oven, etc. etc. . . .).
Handwritten note included.
Handwritten notes, mind you.
Is it a handwritten letter?
