Another Flashback to 1986

While in the depths of yet another session of questioning my writing abilities, a friend of mine handed down simple advice: “Writers write,” and being a photographer he added “and photographers…photog. But you know what I mean.”

I definitely did.

Yesterday, I was scanning some of Anthony’s art that he did in art class when I asked if he had ever seen any of my work. He didn’t (or more than likely, had forgotten). Knowing where a few of my older pieces were, I went into the garage and grabbed them.

I’m glad I did—years of improper storage was causing the paper to deteriorate. But while searching through this old Pee-Chee of art I also came across a lot of stuff that I had written either by hand or on a number of typewriters I had owned over the years.

Much of what I found were lyrics to songs that were on my mind at the time but others were a bit more intriguing.

So I decided that I might as well share one of them with you and when you read it, you’ll see that even though I had no intention of how this message would be broadcast or to whom it was for, the format seems very “bloggish” in that I’m speaking to an audience, much in the way I am now.

Here’s the letter: a review of the year 1986, when I was a junior in high school.

Some of the highlights of the letter include:

• The Challenger Shuttle disaster
• The mid-air collision that happened in nearby Cerritos, CA
• Libya bombing and shipping arms to Iran
• The non-stop, around-the-world flight of the Rutan Voyager

(click to embiggen)

I still own the Brother typewriter that I used to compose this letter. It’s got a thermal ribbon that cost a fortune back in the day for a 3-pack, and it also has a 15-character LCD display so you could sort of see what you were typing as you went along. It would also “beep” when you reached the end of the line.

But I used that thing until 1993 when it I met Ann, who had computers all her life. I then switched to Notepad and it was all downhill since then.

Regardless of its capabilities, I think it says a lot that I would go through all of this trouble to bang away at the keys of that typewriter to remember the news of the year, without benefit of Googling any of it—just for the sake of doing it.

Writers write.

And even though the media has changed, 25 years later they still do.