New influences kept many from writing more than the perfunctory communication in the 21st century.

Some emigrants in the 19th and pioneers in the 20th wrote only very occasionally and the number who wrote regularly in both centuries was perhaps smaller still. The email certainly resulted in an explosion in the sheer quantity of written communication from pioneers and among the general population and I am confident that this sheer quantity would one day be reflected in the letters and emails of pioneers. Further, the importance attached to the act of writing to people on either side of the Atlantic and/or the Pacific varied from family to family and changed over time. For so many families, one of the most intense consequences of emigration was disintegration or, perhaps the word ephemeralization, is better. The situation was often created in which connections with family and friends were broken or they became tenuous at best. There were also other important elements to the process of maintaining correspondence that could complicate matters and even restrict the letter’s effectiveness in keeping families together and keeping friendships alive. If letters were chains that bound distant kith and kin and connections with Baha’i communities of origin, they were often fragile or poor links for many a pioneer. Even when the links were strong, the letters and emails were often thrown away and became of no use to future historians.

Pioneer and migrant correspondence was a multi-faceted, complex and sometimes ambiguous, even contradictory phenomenon. There is no doubt that the relationship between the letter writing of some emigrants and some pioneers was characterised more by apathy, neglect and avoidance than by emotional intensity and deep psychological need. Some people preferred gardening, watching TV and engaging in any number of a cornucopia of activities that popular and elite culture had made available in the late twentieth century. The hobby apparatus of many a leisure time activity became immense as the 21st century turned its corner. So many people really did not like to write and when they did they saw its only significance in personal tetms.

This was only natural.

Personal preference and circumstances as well as factors far beyond the control of emigrants/pioneers and their families could limit the effectiveness of the letter/email as a means of communication. Yet, for other transnational families, the letters received in and sent from the country of origin were all as precious as life itself. Written correspondence was the principal means of sustaining that transnationality and a future age would collect and analyse this sustaining force and this often ephemeral reality.

The practice of writing, receiving and responding to letters in the 19th century and, say, until what Baha’is called the ninth stage of history beginning in 1953--to a country of origin from, say, America, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Patagonia, South Africa and elsewhere was an essential element in the process of emigration and pioneering and the lived experience of emigrants/pioneers. It had a centrality that was lost, though, in the second half of the twentieth century and the second half of the first century of the Formative Age(1971-2021) as the letter was challenged by mass use of the telephone and, later, e-mail, and by cheaper and faster overseas travel. I would suggest that because of their richness as literary artifacts, their symbolic importance and their revelatory power, the position that the written communications of pioneers beginning in the nineteenth-century and continuing until, say, 1953, should occupy, is prominent. These letters should be found, if not the very best place in the house of the Baha’i literary heritage, then at least a significant one that might draw the visitor’s eye as the threshold is crossed. Further, like families and friends in nineteenth-century, we need to bring emigrant and pioneer letters out to study them more often, to pass them around and scrutinise and discuss their contents. My view is that it will be some time before this kind of scrutinizing takes place. In a very real sense those large and laden letters that take wing across the oceans, still await — and deserve — our responses—perhaps our children’s children!

I was pleased to get at least one response to my series of posts at this site, "The Forum." I was pleased, too, and it may surprise the author of the posting, that someone was concerned enough about my religious proclivities to make mention of them. Perhaps, I will comment in more details in another posting. My wife has just claled me to dinner and I don't like to keep her waiting as she is my main form of personal interaction these days. Thank you for writing, though. Life is long, I trust, and I may get back to you on the subject of religious beliefs at another time.-Ron Price, Tasmania.

Bahaichap,

This is purely a technical question, but it could easily be mistaken as intendedly barbed. Let me assure you it is not meant that way. I am myself a new participant in this forum. When you click on the "new post" button, do you get a small display listing the rules as to how many posts can be made, both to one topic, and to the forum at large, in any 24 hour period? I have noted a change in recent days to the number allowed when I post-it was formerly four to any one topic and ten in aggregate across the forum, but today is two and five respectively. What did you get today?

I am not trying to be any sort of 'forum policeman', but simply checking to see whether all participants are being treated equally. The thought has crossed my mind that differential post limits could be used as a form of secret censorship. So far as I understand the OLO site, the only place one can get to see the post limit rules is when one actually commits to post-the limits do not appear to be on open display to all readers, as opposed to posters. Neither did I see the rule change notified on the "show all comments" page. It is possible I have missed the obvious, but I would appreciate your feedback. Hope I cause you no embarrassment-I have no issue with any of the content of your posts. Welcome to the forum.

PS Blow me down-as I go to post the limits are back to 4 and 10!

I find that I get a notice, after I have posted 2 or 3 postings, to say I have reached my limit. I have no trouble with this; at worst it is a little inconvenient if I have a long article--like the one I have just posted here. It just means I have to finish the exercise the next day and the next. I have no other convcerns in this process.-Ron Price, Tasmania.

PS Just a note for a previous correspondent in this thread. If he would like to become more informed about the Baha'i Faith he can go to the official international Baha'i site at: bahai.org