Requiem for the Written Word

The world is changing too fast for me. Along with the loved ones I’ve laid to rest, I mourn the exit of a multitude of things my grandchildren will never experience: small grocery stores that allowed you to run in and out in a few minutes, Sunday dinners at Grandma’s house, road trips where you saw something besides the highway, churches that look like churches, graduation ceremonies with some decorum, birthday parties with homemade cake and pin-the-tail on the donkey, neighborhood games on summer evenings. All are gone—as surely as Grandma, and like Grandma--living only in my memory.

I’m all for modern technology which has made our lives easier. I do like my Swiffer. I would hate to give up my Cuisinart Food Processor. The vibrating mascara wand saves all that unnecessary wrist action, and I don’t miss the laborious task of typing footnotes at the end of each page of a term paper. But if I have to give up the printed word, I won’t do it without a fight.

The written word is not dead yet, but believe me, it is very ill, struggling and gasping for breath as I write. Beloved family members are being called to the bedside to find the last ditch effort that might prevent its demise.

Imagine the world without books, magazines and newpapers—no morning paper with your coffee, no libraries, no waiting anxiously for the mailman, and no small bookstores with resident tabbies draped over the backs of well-worn reading chairs.

No handwritten letters from a loved one long gone, no diaries to be stumbled upon by surprised grandchildren—who think you were never young, no recipes scribbled on scraps of paper in (now-faded) lead pencil by a beloved great-grandmother.

The children of the coming generations won’t find Bibles with underlined passages, postcards from faraway places, letters home from a lonely soldier, notes in the margins of text books, or bundles of love letters bound in blue ribbons in the bottom of a cedar chest.

Instead of sharing a dog-eared book with grandchildren who are still enthralled with its magic ability to take them to a different world, we’ll say “Go get Grannie’s Kindle and I’ll read you a story.” Or, "Let’s gather round the computer to read an e-book.”

Book lovers, unite to save the printed word.

“I don’t care what they say.
I won’t stay, in a world without”
….books.

How you can help in the next post.