#private letters

[bookymcbookface]

[blackswaneuroparedux]

σαφήνεια δὲ ἀγαθὴ μὲν ἡγεμὼν ἅπαντος λόγου, μάλιστα δὲ ἐπιστολῆς·**

- Philostratus

**Clarity is a good rule for all speech, but especially for a letter.

Two handwritten letters penned by JRR Tolkien have been discovered for the first time, almost 50 years after the death of the Lord of the Rings author in the The National Archives in Kew.

The previously unrecorded documents were unearthed by a volunteer working at The National Archives in Kew ahead of Tolkien Reading Day on 25 March 2023. Written in 1945, shortly after Tolkien’s appointment as Professor of English Language and Literature at Merton College, Oxford, the letters are part of an exchange with the British Council about funding for his research into early English languages.The correspondence centres on Tolkien’s research collaboration with Simonne d’Ardenne, a former student of his at Oxford, who shared his academic interest in historical languages.

[oh-dear-so-queer]

Sexual activity between women, which had previously been ignored, glossed over or referred to only in discreet private letters, started to be discussed more widely, and gossip and accusations published. Women lovers of women were called 'tommies' in slang, but the classically educated spoke of 'sapphists' – from the Greek poet Sappho who wrote of her love for women.

"Normal Women: 900 Years of Making History" - Philippa Gregory

[pathfinderproject]

To: Ensign Farley Jakobsdottir

From: Baate Rocen

Dear Farley,

I know it has been a very long time since we spoke and we didn’t part under the best of circumstances, to put it mildly. I am fully aware that is my fault and I can only apologize but won’t ever expect your forgiveness.  

All those years ago, I heard through the old Maquis grapevine that you ended up on the ship that got lost and likely destroyed in the Badlands. I mourned your death, Fay. I said my prayers and hoped you had found peace. Even though it had been so long, the thought of you just being gone hit me hard.

Hearing you were alive, those little bits of that whole crazy story that actually reached me… I am so very glad you made it. I don’t know how much you are aware of what we have been dealing with back here, but I keep thinking maybe despite it all you got lucky. You get to explore. Oh, I hope you get to see so many amazing things. All the new exciting stuff that I promised you and never delivered on.

I am currently serving a ten-year sentence in the Federation penal colony in New Zealand. Apparently your pilot used to be here. Funny how small the galaxy can be. I have put in a request to have this letter sent to you and hope you will receive it.

I don’t expect to hear from you in return. You deserve so much more than what I gave you. But maybe out there is that vast and exciting universe you can be happy.

I may not have brought you the happiness you deserved but I will never regret my time with you. So if there is any point to this letter it is me telling you that I am so very sorry for the pain and heartache I caused you. I should have told you in person, and maybe we are lucky that one day you will let me do so.

Fay, go explore cave-systems nobody could have ever imagined. Write all the scientific papers you always wanted, but most of all, be happy.

Rocen

@farleyjakobsdottir

[margonews]

Ex-Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson are being accused of turning their former home into a “pawn shop” after the former Duke of York was stripped of his...

[hennethgalad]

reading about the end of handwriting, just like to say that it’s very difficult to hack a piece of paper.

[revivalofwomenwriters-blog]

“Is Love Divine?”

When reading Kate Chopin’s Private Papers edited by Emily Toth and Per Seyersted, I was particularly drawn to a section that showed responses to the question “Is Love Divine?” by well-known women (219-220). Of the women who answered, Kate Chopin was one. Her response to the proposed question was as follows:

It is as difficult to distinguish between the divine love and the natural, animal life, as it is to explain just why we love at all. In a discussion of this character between two women in my new novel I have made my heroine say: “Why is it I love this man? Is it because his hair is brown, growing high on his temples; because his his eyes droop a bit at the corners, or because his nose is just so much out of drawing?”

One really never knows the exact, definite thing which excites love for any one person, and one can never truly know whether this love is a result of circumstances or whether it is predestination. I am inclined to think that love springs from animal instinct, and therefore is, in a measure, divine. One can never resolve to love this man, this woman or child, and then carry out the resolution unless one feels irresistibly drawn by an indefinable current of magnetism. This subject allows an immense field for discussion and profound thought, and one could scarcely voice a definite opinion in a ten minutes talk. But I am sure we all feel that love - true, pure love, is an uncontrollable emotion that allows of no analyzation and no vivisection.

I have always been a hopeless romantic, and for better or for worse, have always believed in soul mates. I don’t necessarily believe one is “destine” to end up with and live happily ever after with a soul mate. It very well could happen, while it very well may not. I think your soul mate is someone who is put in your life to make you feel incredibly alive - someone you love completely and passionately. Someone that encourages you to be the absolute best you that you can be. I especially like how Chopin refers to love as being an “uncontrollable emotion that allows of no analyzation and no vivisection” because it is such an indescribable feeling that everyone does feel, in one way or another. 

[mochafortissimo]

Dear Santa

Send me one “Dear—” and I’ll write a [private] letter to this person.

Dear Santa,

I wrote my first ever Dear Santa letter last year, and considering that I did have the strength to make it a Very Merry Christmas for everyone, and I think that I was pretty successful, I might as well write another this year.  Obviously it wasn’t just me, I had a lot of help, but I think I was able to show people that I love them.

I want the same thing this year…but I also want something even more selfish…

What I want, I want to have my whole family together for Christmas.  All of my family.  Altogether at some point.  Me and Aleis. Freddy and Mozart obviously.  Susie and Todd.  Mata and Pita.  Allie (and Oliver?).  Mason and Zach.  Aaron and Ty.  Gram and Gramps and Uncle Natesh.  Emily.  Especially Emily.

Maybe I’m asking for the impossible.  Especially this soon.  That’s only 2 months away after all.  And they all have other families of their own.  And they’re busy.  And there are other reasons why all those people might not end up under the same roof…but I still really want it.

And if it doesn’t happen this year…I will keep asking for it until it does happen.  Because  I want it, yeah, but there’s also someone who I really really want that for even more than myself…someone who I need that for.

♫ Sochi ♫