They say personal letter writing is a thing of the past, but maybe that is something that has just been modernized via the electronic medium. Does it really matter that the message comes on a screen instead of paper and ink?

I still have the hand written letters between me and my father that were written during the last six months of his life. It has been almost twenty years since then but I still get choked up when I read them and his responses even today. Maybe it is the fact that I can touch the paper as he did when he wrote them that adds an emotional appeal to pen & paper.

I am a history nut and one of my favorite subjects is Thomas Jefferson. He certainly had a way with words. He loved to write and to correspond with friends. His library became the core of the current Library of Congress. One of my favorite books on Jefferson was a collection of letters that he and John Adams wrote during the last twenty years of their lives. They both died on the same day which was the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson and Adams were very much different when it came to politics, but they eventually became very good friends through their correspondence. The book on their letters covered a wide variety of topics.

With the above lead up I will finally get to the point of this post. I never had a chance to exchange letter with one of the primary heroes of my life since he died well before I was born. For those of you who are new to RJsCorner, I am talking about Will Rogers. I think I have read almost everything thing he has written now. But, that took years to accomplish. But I have frequently dreamed that like Adams and Jefferson, I could tell him how much his thoughts and words meant to me.

So, with this post I am presenting yet another category here at RJsCorner. Dear Will posts will be written as a personal letter to Will Rogers. I will take one of his letters or daily posts and respond to it usually comparing it to our times. I haven’t worked out the details yet, but I guess that is my modus operandi for how I do things at my corner of the universe. 🙂