Here is a great presentation from Ted.com where Lakshmi Pratury speaks of the lost art of letter writing and the importance of a value legacy.

I email my parents a lot these days. It’s become my primary source of communication. (So much so, that my penmanship has morphed into a series of scratches and scribbles.) Thankfully, my step-mother is the computer pro and is subsequently the family hub. She has made the leap into technology seamlessly. On the otherhand, my father- a retired teacher, prefers not to touch the computer- I imagine it’s like his attitude towards reading: ‘I’ve read for the last 40 years of my life.’ He is wonderfully stuborn (a trait I’m sure I’ve picked up from him).

My father is skilled in the art of woodworking. I have several items he’s made including a coffee table he built and I know that on the underside there’s a burned-in stamp that says that it was handcrafted by him.

My biological mom died before computers made their way into homes, before laptops, Facebook, email and msn, before wireless and cellphones and before digital video cameras could capture her movements or the sound of her voice. But in my closet I have two watercolours that she had painted and a guitar that she once owned.

To me, these are my parent’s value legacies. What will our generation leave for the next?