The importance of two American manufacturing companies helping us express our feelings

At the organic grocery store today, I was invited by two young college students to use a free blank greeting card to mail a message.   They let me select a card and gave me a  Forever stamp.  And they were collecting cards to be mailed from the Solon, OH post office.  The young man told me he was born in Hillsborough County, NH, where my childrens' Taylor ancestors lived during the Revolutionary War.  The young man and woman are college students in Boston and they explained that the company blog encourages people to send personal paper letters and greeting cards in place of email messages.  

They also endorse the continuation of cursive writing. I’ve had discussions about cursive penmanship over the past year and am still convinced of the importance of using and reading cursive letters.  I read old letters for my genealogy research and find it fascinating to see how people formed letters.  The writing and calligraphy is a beautiful art and I am all for perpetuating it.  I also find that when I write in longhand, the letters form on the page quickly.  Much more rapidly than if I have to print them.

I love to study the vocabulary used and how people expressed themselves in hand written letters.   It’s fascinating how one’s character is developed and expressed in letter writing.  Historians and amateur family researchers find them of great value.

The young representatives with whom I talked told me about the company’s “green” origins.  The recycled paper cards are produced in Keene, NH, using designs of professional artists.  https://www.tree-free.com is the Home URL for the company.  I signed up for their blog mailing as I want to hear about their adventures driving across the country promoting the company's products.  I provided some tips about off tollway stops and they were very grateful.  They like history and are looking forward to visiting Fort Meigs in NW Ohio and Fort Wayne in Central Indiana.

They may have been interested to know the importance of greeting cards in Cleveland.  In 1905 Jacob Sapirstein, with the aid of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, departed Bialystock, Poland for Boston.   In 1906 he had arrived in Cleveland and began selling postcards from a horse drawn wagon.  He started the Saperstein Greeting Card and began manufacturing cards in 1930.  Sapirstein, who lived to 102, saw his company grow into American Greeting Cards, a billion dollar company.