Columnist Susan Snyder: Exercising her right to write

Friday, June 22, 2001 | 3:53 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column also appears Tuesdays and Fridays in the Las Vegas Sun. Reach her at snyder@vegas.com or 259-408

Nothing says "you're morons" like a letter.

People can rant over the telephone, pitch a fit in the lobby or hurl flaming e-mails through cyberspace.

But there is something more pointed about a person taking time to sit down, collect her thoughts, write them out in longhand, find an envelope, a stamp, your address and then walk to the mailbox.

"What's with the press?" the letter asked.

The author was aggravated with the media hype and hoo-ha at Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh's execution in Terre Haute, Ind. She likened it to the O.J. Simpson murder trial, where every and any angle would do after the day's actual news had been reported, dissected and analyzed.

"The newest twist is print media representatives being TV anchor-type stars. Probably most people die with their eyes open. So what?!"

See, you don't get that kind of flogging with an e-mail. Maybe it's the handwriting. Type is so impersonal. But handwriting is deeply personal, and not many people bother to learn to do it well anymore.

"One hundred thirty of the 'best' print media milling outside -- way outside -- a stark brick building for four days," the author wrote. "I would be more interested in knowing how they killed time or why they were there in the first place. And Larry King never did say the 'Haute' part of 'Terre Haute' correctly. Nuts!

"Love ya, Mom."

"Your mom writes you letters?" a friend asked in astonishment.

Sure. She writes everybody letters.

"I was dating age during World War II. All the young men were overseas. There wasn't anything else to do," she said recently of her propensity for prose.

I recall as a child getting up in the middle of the night for a drink of water and finding her alone at the dining room table, pen flying across paper. She wrote to her mother, her sister, her sisters-in-law, nieces, nephews, old friends. She still corresponds with a cousin who now lives in California and is 63 years old.

"I haven't seen her since she was 19," Mom wrote last week in a letter that included her cousin's most recent handwritten missive.

My college friends made me wait to open her letters so they could be read aloud during meals. Other moms sent care packages of cookies and new underwear. Mine sent pages packed with stories about the people in the Florida apartment complex my parents managed.

We'd laugh until our sides nearly split as we visualized such people as the retired sea captain, who stood on his balcony barking orders at those walking below because he sometimes thought he was still on the ship.

Nationwide cell phone service and e-mail are the letters of today's society. I'm a huge fan of both.

But neither replaces the finality of the word written on paper. A letter sits on the table begging to be read and reread. You don't have to log on or submit a password. You can't argue with it or delete it by pressing a button. It's portable. It's permanent.

It's art. The Declaration of Independence wouldn't look nearly as cool as an attachment.

"Maybe the 'media' boils down to 'Everything the same with a twist.' Sort of like a martini."

LOL.

She's right. We're morons.