When I was about 10, I wrote a letter to my aunt, who lived in Oklahoma. I’d never written a letter to anyone before. For a kid in Ashdown, Arkansas, Oklahoma might as well have been China. I just knew that I didn’t see her or my uncle much, and I told my grandmother I missed them. She suggested I write them a letter. So, I did. That is, I wrote a letter after my grandmother got out her good stationery, envelopes, and stamps. Stationery used to be serious business.