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Show v V'Vvv V __v_' ___' s J Lifestyle — 4) Monday, March 15, 1993 The Daily Herald ‘Sweet Sixteen’ has new meaning Many women think of "Sweet Sixteen" as a time of youth and innocence, a bad case of puppy love, and “the big dance." Iknow that's what I think of — even though that's not the way it happened. For me Sweet Sixteen was more like a bad case of acne and trauma on Friday nights because I never had a date. For my husband the sports nut‘, though. Sweet Sixteen has nothing to do with either puppy love or acne. It has to do with college basketball. The only “big dance" he pays attention to is the NCAA basketball tourney. It never ceases to amaze me how attached my husband can become to Conlession of a sports widow teams he has never seemed to care about before. Since we live in Provo, it makes sense that he would follow BYU. And I can see how he would care about teams in the same conference as BYU. (I 'm not sure which he enjoys more, cheering for BYU or cheering against the University of Utah.) Taking this into consideration, I can't figure out where teams like North Carolina and Duke fit in. I know they're not in BYU‘s conference. And we haven't watched ‘ ‘Fab Five' ' (whoever they are) play all year — so why the sudden interest? The national tournament of college basketball is called March Madness. They got that right. Not only is it mad, it's insane. And I may well be insane before it‘s over. It seems like every newspaper publishes the playoffbracketing so you know who plays who, and the winner of this game plays the loser ofthat game and so on. I see those schedules cut and pasted up nearly everywhere I go. They‘re at work. in the checkout stands of the supermarket, and in my own home. (Ofcourse, the one at our house has been enlarged on a photocopier until it‘s literally the size ofa poster board.) It’s as ifthe media only reports who is playing once at the very beginning of the tournament and then you‘ re on your own to figure out who won the championship. After all. there are 64 teams involved in this and the guy on the news might not be able to keep it straight. No. this takes thejoint effort and undivided attention of sports fans everywhere. Despite my feigned naivety, I realize that as soon as the team contestants are announced. many men and some women too (my little sister is one) try to guess the winner and put a certain amount of money in a pool. Whoever picks the winner or gets the most teams right wins it all. This is ofcourse illegal. (I wonder ifthere’s a March Madness pool at the police station?) So a lot of those who follow every game are doing so to protect their investment — just in case the guy in charge of Letter writing has become a fading art Editor '5 Note: "Let us read old letters awhile. " the poet Stephen Vincent Benet once wrote. Sage advice. for old letters offer new insights into history and humanity. They also afford glimpses ot‘an ancient art, fading fast in this era of phones and faxes. By NANCY SHULINS AP Special Correspondent ”You never write me," a disgruntled Napoleon once wrote Jo— sephi"; "You do not love your husband: you know the pleasure your letters give him. yet you haven’t written him six lines. dashed off casually! " Two centuries later, it's easy to empathize with the lonely emperor. In this era of cellular phones. faxes and electronic mail, the low-tech letter is becoming a quaint relic, amounting to just 2.5 percent of America's first—class mail. Per household, that's less than half a letter a week. Compare that with the four dozen letters Victor Hugo received on a good day, or the 65 letters that awaited Edith Wharton upon her return from a threeday trip in 1924. Virginia Woolf wrote 20,000 letters in her lifetime. Henry James’ correspondence would have filled 50 large volumes, before he chose privacy over posterity and burned much of it. Clearly, for them, novelists all. letters were more than a means of communication. They also were tools for honing writing skills and rehearsing plots. But what about those like Napoleon, who didn't write for a living but still wrote tens of thousands of letters? That so many of their letters also survive suggests another purpose: a painstaking record of events and relationships by prominent people who knew — or sensed - their place in history. Today‘s decline in letter-writing has been more than offset by the increased volume of credit card mail, good news for the postal service. But who races to the mailbox in hopes of finding a Mastercard bill? Most scholars agree that the graceful and leisurely 17th and 18th centuries marked the golden age of letter-writing, one reason why histories and biographies of that era are so rich. Tomorrow‘s historians and biographers won’t have it so good. “Phone bills won’t tell you much, and as a result, contempo rary history has less perspec— tive," the late historian Barbara Tuchman said, a notion amplified by writer Ian Frazier in his satiric essay, "Igor Stravinsky: The I would not give 25 cents for ) The spread of Christianity can be traced in part to a letter. So can the development of the atomic bomb. urged on in a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevent signed by Albert Einstein but drafted. say scholars. by Hungarv ian—bom physicist Leo Szilard. The letters of Paul the Apostle laid the foundation for Christiani— ty. Written during the first centu- “The purpose of letters is to reveal to us the littleness underlying great events, and to remind us that history was once real life.” — British man of letters Lytton Strachey Collected Phone Bills. ' ‘ The purpose of letters, British man of letters Lytton Strachey once wrote, “is to reveal to us the littleness underlying great events. and to remind us that history was once real life. ” Indeed: “I slept somewhat late owing to my slight cold. which seems now to have subsided," future Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius writes his lover, Fronto. He tells of gargling with honey water, going to lunch, gathering grapes, chatting with his mother. taking a bath, and enjoying “hearing the yokels chaffing one another. " Just another day in Imperial Rome; Real Life, circa AD. 144. Along with chronicling everyday life. letters provide first-person accounts of events ranging from the fall of the Eternal City to Operation Desert Storm. “These are the things the foremost men of history fought, bled, and died for — and also the things they lived by,” publisher M. Lincoln Schuster wrote in his 1940 anthology, “The World’s Greatest Letters." Through letters, we know how the image of Rome in ruins affected St. Jerome (”My voice cleaves to my throat; sobs choke my utterance The world sinks into ry, they read as though they ‘d been written last week. "I have fought a good fight.“ Paul wrote just before his death in AD. 67. ‘ 'I have kept the faith. " Besides faith. letters have inspired poetry, an, even justice. “What a clod of mud is flung upon your name " novelist Emile Zola wrote the president of France in 1898. Zola‘s letter. printed in the liberal newspaper L’Aurore, was in defense of Captain Alfred Dreyfus. the victim of a military conspiracy. Zola's words, on behalf of a man he never met, cost him his own freedom; convicted of criminal libel. he fled to England for a time. But his letter, headlined "J‘accuse.“ ultimately won Dreyfus his freedom and Zola a place in history. Novelist Anatole France called it "a moment of the conscience of man.” Some of the most beautiful lines ever written were inspired by or rehearsed in love letters. Before it ever occurred to John Keats to write “A thing of beauty is ajoy forever." he was writing Franny Brawne: “Why may I not speak of your Beauty. since without that I could never have lov‘d you?“ For centuries, lovers separated by wars. epidemics. prison walls. disapproving relatives. and all manner of misadventure. have relied on letters to fill the void. ”MW Sequestered in her convent. ban— ished to his monastery, Heloise and Abclard nonetheless kept in touch. "We may write to each other. So innocent a pleasure is not denied us." Heloise wrote the dishonored nth-century priest whose passion for her had eclipsed his devotion to God. “Had it not been for your visits. wonderful letters. and your love. I would have fallen apart many yrs ago.” Nelson Mandela wrote his wife. Winnie. from a South African prison 800 years later. Old letters tell timeless truths: Love hurts. Jealousy devours. War horrifiCs. Always. "Few men live to know what real fear is." writes a World War I soldier. “We are all scared.” writes a soldier in Vietnam. Humor helps: “We get two hot meals, break— fast and dinner." Tech. Sgt. Mike (.‘ody wrote his parents from Operation Desert Storm. "Lunch and midnight meals are MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) dehydrated. Most of them taste like a camel spit in them. " William S. Crisner of the 10th ruin "), and how the Great Pennsylvania put it this way. in a Plains looked to a weary fortyletter to his parents from Manila niner (“a barren, trackless waste in 1898: we do get bread with nice plump red ants in it and you know I was always a great boy for ants. The coffee is liken unto that bine Strohem, an enigmatic have done books where dragonfly which our mothers used to make. that is when they made it out of young woman on a South Pacific wings flap." Besides, he was adamant about roasted boot legs and dish water island. Bantock, a 43-year-old En- the envelopes. Watching that man Letters take us inside. They tell glishman, is an artist and illustra- open his airmail letter, Bantock tor who lives with his wife and says, he realized that "that Us firsthand how abolitionist John four children on an island off process of opening (envelopes) is Brown went to his execution very important to building up dra— ("with great composure of mind Vancouver, British Columbia. He says he created “Griffin & ma. There‘s a sensuality that can- & cheerfulness”); how Oscar Wilde felt upon losing Lord Sabine" as “a piece of self-in- not be built any other way. " Alfred Douglas ("The gay. gilt He thinks his books have done dulgence” he never intended to publish. With good reason. Un- well in part because they satisfy and gracious lad has gone away like other epistolary tales, Ban- that sensual craving, along with 7— and I hate everyone else“): how a budding newspaper mogul tock’s consists of actual letters the hunger for mail. Prior to “Griffin & Sabine" named William Randolph Hearst that must be pulled from envelopes stuck to the pages.The let- Bantock wrote very few letters. regarded his father's new playters, postcards and envelopes are Despite some initial writer's thing. the San Francisco Examinblock — “At first the teacher sits er ("with a'tendemess like unto lavishly illustrated. on your shoulder, and you that which a mother feels for a It took two months for Chroni— freeze" — Bantock says he puny or deformed offspring. ’ ') They tell us that in the heat of cle Books, the publisher, to find a warmed to the task of writing his printer for the first book, pub- characters’ letters, becoming passion. Russian playwright Anlished in September 1991. The more adventurous as he went ton Chekhov called his wife "my joy. my kewpie, my little scribsequel appeared a year later. along. Because his background is in Though delighted by his suc- ble.“ Zelda Fitzgerald called F. pop-up books, ”I didn’t see it as cess, Bantock seems equally Scott “Goofo. ” Jane and Thomas very outrageous to have an enve- pleased by what it's brought him; Carlyle called one another "Goody," or. in moments of lope in a book," Bantock says. “I Finally, lots of letters. Author’s letter fantasy translated to best sellers By The Associated Press In line one day at the post office, Nick Bantock watched a man open his mailbox and pull out a blue airmail envelope 'festooned with exotic stamps. He felt thrilled. disappointed and jealous. in that order. “How come I never get any great mail?” he thought. On the walk back to his studio, Bantock indulged in a bit of daydreaming. conjuring up the ideal correspondence between a man and a woman: mysterious. flirtatious, tantalizing. Just for fun. he put his fantasy on paper. A publisher caught a glimpse. The result: two best sellers, “Griffin & Sabine" and ‘ ‘Sabine's Notebook. " Together, they’ve sold 600,000 copies. Due next September, “The Golden Mean" will complete the trilogy, a love-mystery story told through the letters of Griffin Moss, a London artist, and Sa- wild abandon. "Goody. Goody." We know that Napoleon was not so busy conquering Europe that his mind didn't occasionally wander. “A kiss on your heart." he wrote Josephine. "and then one a little lower down. much lower down " In letters, enigmatic voices become clearer. “Can you not see the simplicity which is at the back of all my disguises?" James Joyce wrote Nora Barnacle. Reading his letters. we begin to see.too. Writers. of course. will continé ue to write letters. 50. presumably, will lawyers. philosophers. statesmen. But will physicists? “My dear Sarah,“ Michael Faraday wrote future wife Sarah Barnard in l820. in a letter that should forestall any debate over whether great minds necessarily produce great love letters: " .. as l ponder and think on you. chlorides. trials. oil, steel. miscellanea. mercury, and fifty other professional fancies swim before and drive me further and further into the quandary of stupidness." Compare that with the prose of poet Ogden Nash. playful as a porpoise in this letter to his future wife, Frances: “Have you heard that I love you? I’m not sure I made it clear to you. and I don't want 'to have any misunderstanding It's such a young love yet — just nine and a half months old. born November 13th. 1928 at about nine o‘clock in the evening. But it's big for its age. and seems much older This is a particularly gifted and intelligent pen. Look what it‘s writing now: I love you " It stands to reason that writers write the best love letters. Duke University professor Cathy N. Davidson points out in a new anthology. “The Book of Love: Writers and Their Love Letters. “ "For most of us. love letters are as close as we come to art. For writers. love is a first draft. " In some ways. she says. love letters are ideal vehicles for writers. because “writers are both isolated and yet excruciatingly aware of their audience. If literature is ‘a letter to the world.‘ in Emily Dickinson's phra~.e. then the love letter may be the emblem (See LETTER, Page B6) the pot miscalculates and thinks HE won. . So they start with 64 teams, and by the end of the first week the field narrows to 16, hence Sweet Sixteen. Dad’s Masonic ring becomes cherished heirloom I know for sure ifyou asked my husband this month his opinion on Sweet Sixteen, he would predict the winners ofeight basketball games. Ifyou asked him in October, when March Madness isn't so fresh on his mind, he would still name basketball teams —— but he would think you‘re crazy for talking basketball during football season. The subject of pumiy love would never come up. The next week they work their way down to the Elite Eight and the next week it's the Final Four. [have to agree here, FINALLY, there‘s only four left. And ultimately there‘s a champion. Ofcourse, by this time baseball season has already started. Even though I disagree with the concept of Sweet Sixteen because it isn‘t very sweet to me. Ido agree with the term March Madness because it sure makes me mad. In fact, I'm downright angry. I ought tojoin the NCAA. not the National Collegiate Athletics Association . but a new group that I‘m going to found. Not Crazy About Athletics. Dear Ann Landers: A heap of bravos to you for telling "Tears in Springfield" that it makes no sense to bury a person with jewelry on. You then went a step farther and told the man from White Plains it was too bad his father was buried wearing his Masonic ring because that ring would have been a cherished heirloom for a son, grandson Advice Columnist or nephew. I always admired my grandfather’s Masonic ring. He told me twarming letter. I have heard when I 'was a teen-ager that I would from hundreds of Masons and inherit that ring one day, but I‘d have to “cam“ it — that it wasn't just a piece of jewelry. He passed away when I was 22. I remembered my grandfather's words and became a Mason when I their relatives these past several days, and each has a different story to tell. Read on: From Chattanooga, Tenn: I am proud to be the daughter of a 33rd Degree Mason. My mother is a was 30 years of age. I am now member of the Eastern Star. My wearing his ring, which will go to two brothers belong to De Molay. my eldest son. but like me, he, too, The Masons raise millions of dol— will have to earn it. Thank you, lars for hospitals and have done a Ann, for reviving some wonderful lot to help victims of floods, fires and humcanes. I hope you will memories. — Rochester, N. Y. Dear Rochester: What a hear- print this. Iam l 1 years old. Riverside, Calif.: There were four girls in our family. I was the only one who joined Job‘s Daughters, an organization for girls whose fathers were Masons. When Dad died, Mom took his Masonic ring and put it away. On my 30th birthday. she gave it to me. That ring means more to me than anything I own. Washington, DC: More years ago than I care to remember, I joined a sorority at Northwestern University. A girl whom I disliked intensely was a sorority sister. 'I he first week, she wore a pair of earrings that were actually made out of two Masonic rings. My father was a Mason, and I nearly flipped when I saw those emblems being used like costume jewelry. I told her she had no right to desecrate the emblem of Masonry. and we got into a hair-pulling fight. She became extremely unpopular because of that incident and transferred to Ohio State at the end of the year. Baltimore: I was married in I969. It was a beautiful wedding and I wore the traditional gown and veil. When the minister instructed my future husband to place the ring on my finger, his best man turned white as a sheet. For some mysterious reason, the ring was not in his pocket. After what seemed like an eternity, my father. who was standing behind me. took off his own ring and handed it to the best man. It was the Masonic ring that he had worn for years. My fiance put it on my finger. and we were pronounced man and wife. MAKE PEACE WITH YOUR MIRROR Attend a FREE Women's Seminar that teaches you how to come to peace with your body and yourself. Sneaker Kathy Abbott, Phd. Elleen Jacobson, M.S. QateiIime Thursday, March 18 7:30 - 8:30 pm [To reglster call 225-7744 l l l |