The internet is so alluring, so easy, so accessible, how can I resist it? And how on earth (?) can people spare the time for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or whatever? The wonders and knowledge of the world are at one's fingertips, but oh, how time-consuming it all is. Every day, but more on Sundays, I come across names, book titles, URLs, intriguing ideas I want to follow up on, and I do. I have all these scraps of paper I scribble on to lead me to clarification and enlightenment.

Ai me.

I won't burden you with leads to knowledge you may not want. You have your own agenda and desires. Go to it. I do not mean to complain. Like you, all my life i have wondered about so many things, things peripheral to my life but that I wanted to know more about. And now it's possible. The trouble is that the things I want to know more about keep on increasing in number and complication. I am happy but distracted.

I'll let you know what I learn this week.

Oh, BTW...

Happy Labour Day.

I love paper. I have always loved paper. Among papers that I love are hasti-notes. That's a cute name that Hallmark or someone coined for cute little, quicky, short letters that brides (and others) used to say thank you. They were cute, still are, even beautiful. I joined the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York not because I get to NY to see the exhibitions (they look lovely), but because I get catalogues online and a discount on purchases. I have a friend who saves all my Met thank-you notes and pins them on a bulletin board, not because I write great notes but because I write on great notepaper. I got carried away recently and bought more really pretty ones and now I have a large collection that I must use soon. I wish someone would have me for dinner, so I could thank her.

But I worry about the future of letters. Wonderful collections of letters by famous people to other famous people are being published, dating from a time when people chose to write rather than twitter. Well, twitter didn't exist, of course. On the other hand, neither did blogs. Maybe those who would have been letter-writers are communicating via blogs now. I can believe that. I'm having trouble keeping up with everything I have to write these days: my diary; my correspondence (with people my age who don't have commuters although they are catching up with iPads and beginning to write) ; notes for my mentee; regular generic letters (I wrote one in August, haven't mailed it yet, either e- or snail-); my blog and, of course, the book I am trying to finish.

Anon, anon....