Inquiring minds want to know.....Why did Tom DeLay choose Friday, June 9 as his last day in Congress? It was not the end of a pay period. It was not the end of a session. It was the end of the week, but that is the only thing I can see unless I’m missing something. We know why he didn’t announce that he wasn’t running until April 4. That was to try to insure that Republican officials could choose the person to replace him on the ballot. It hasn’t really worked out that way, but I still want to know. Why June 9?

It’s never over.......Most of my faithful readers know that I am in the throes of moving from one house to another. I don’t know if I will ever get unpacked and straight. I called my brother in Memphis last week and told him to make plans to spend Christmas someplace else besides Houston.

“Why?” he asked. “Because I’ll still be moving!”, I shouted in his ear.

Other moving thoughts.....During this packing and unpacking, I spent the time going through my mothers things. She has been gone several years, but when she moved to Houston a couple of year before she died, we just moved all her stuff and figured we would go through them at some later date.

That later date has arrived and I resolved not to move a bunch of stuff I wouldn’t have room for anyway. Imagine my surprise to find old letters from my daughter and I that she had kept. I never dreamed that she had kept them because as the years went by we used the telephone more and more (cheap long distance) and didn’t write as much.

The letters were interesting for me because they provided a slice of life about what we were doing at the time. Things I had certainly forgotten. But it made me think. What with the internet and emails, we will lose that letter-writing part of our life.

Emails don’t lend themselves to long, chatty letters filled with everyday occurrences.

Emails are short, pithy, and usually sans capital letters. Lots of initials, like lol (laugh out loud) or IMHO (in my humble opinion-took me a long time to figure that one out as I haven’t had a humble opinion in my entire life).

One just doesn’t save emails. It would be impossible. All the printing, all the paper--and how many times has your computer crashed and you lost everything.

No, we are losing a wonderful source of information for future archeologists. Maybe they can dig up old hard drives to find the way we lived, although I’m not sure we put all that in emails, like we used to in letters.

In re-reading some of Mom’s letters from us, I realized how she enjoyed them. It got kind of boring in Ballinger (“You have no idea,” she used to say) but she could take out our letters and re-read them or read them to my father. Gave them something to talk about after 60 years.

So if you have an elderly relative, sit down and write them a long, newsy letter--something like that Christmas letter you send out once a year. It’s a small thing that brings such joy.

And another thing.....Except for boxes of dishes and clothes, the next most boxes I moved were....family pictures. Our family has always been shutterbugs. My mom told me that when she and my dad were courting, they would take his convertible and go “kodaking” with other couples at local landmarks. That’s what they called it---kodaking.

Pictures are another thing that the internet is destroying. Oh, we still take plenty--even more than we used to take because digital pictures are so cheap. There is no developing costs and you can just throw them on your computer and choose the ones you like.

I suppose some people take their digital pictures in to be developed, but I must admit that I don’t anymore. I take so many in my business and just leave them on my computer until it gets too full.

But where will my grandchildren look for our family pictures? Are they going to be left with a bunch of computer discs? Printed pictures seem to stop at this generation.

In the newspaper business, digital pictures are a boon. When we have someone’s mug shot, we can store it under their name and it’s right at our fingertips when we need it again.

But the only permanent view of life in Fort Bend is in the printed pages we produce as we don’t archive any photos except appointed and elected officials.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my computer. I’m sitting here in my pjs, eating Raisin Bran and typing up this little epistle. When I finish, I’ll email it to my office and with any luck at all be able to completely avoid the office. Then I can unpack some more boxes.