Dear Readers,

We must tell you about Abby Shachat. When Abby was a kid at summer camp, her mom used to write letters to her. Abby loved her mom’s letters. Reading them made it feel like her mom was sitting right beside her. “She was a pretty ‘no nonsense’ kind of person,” Abby told me recently. “Her letters were great because she wrote as if she were talking to me. When I read them—as a kid and now as an adult—I get to hear her voice, which is really amazing.”

No matter how many emails fill your inbox, or how often your phone beeps with an incoming text message, chances are none of them compares to the magic of a handwritten letter. There’s just something special about them—how they capture the essence of the writer and convey a simple, profound message: “I’m thinking of you.”

Abby has come to appreciate her collection of summer-camp letters even more in the decades since her mother’s passing. “They’re one of the most precious things I have,” Abby said. Simply knowing that her mom touched the same paper gives them soul and depth. Those of us who are fortunate enough to have letters and journals in our family archives know that they’re among our most treasured heirlooms. That’s why it’s so important that they be shared in meaningful ways.

We work with handwritten documents all the time. Our book and film projects place a family’s handwritten pieces in the context of life stories, making them more poignant and accessible. After all, it’s much easier to open a book or watch a film than to sort through boxes of documents in the attic. Which means that someone like Abby can return to her loved one’s words—drawing strength, wisdom, and inspiration—whenever she likes.

We’re currently working with a woman named Susan in Manhattan to bring her dad’s World War II letters to life. The final product will be a coffee table book with scans of the original letters alongside easy-to-read transcriptions, as well as beautiful photographs from her dad’s time in the service. Soon, Susan will be able to hear her dad’s voice again and share the book with friends and family.

Late last year, the Connecticut Post wrote an article about our work with another storyteller, Phoebe Ford. We integrated Phoebe’s parents’ World War I diaries into a 30-minute film that features footage of Phoebe reading from her parents’ diaries, including the incredible story of how they first met. Click here to watch a clip from Phoebe’s film.

We hope you’re having a swell summer, be it at summer camp or somewhere else that pleases your soul!

Yours truly,

StoryKeep

P.S. Thanks to Abby for speaking with us about letter-writing! Abby is a friend of StoryKeep’s and the principal at AJS design/s, a wonderful architecture and design firm.

My magazine-editor friend occasionally sends me advanced copies of books she likes. Her latest offering was Touch by Courtney Maum, which has since been released. It’s been over a month since I finished it, and I’m still thinking about the main question it raises—whether in-person interaction will cease to be important.

The main character, Sloane, is a powerful, well-respected trend forecaster for fashion, lifestyle and tech companies. At the beginning of the book, she declares that “The world is overpopulated, and with unemployment, college costs, and food prices all on the rise, having children is an extravagant indulgence.” A major tech company hires her to lead their annual conference, a celebration of “the voluntarily childless” as a new target market.

Maum impressed me with her ability to imagine a future, 10 years from now, that’s just two or three steps ahead of our current reality, teetering between now and almost-now.

Not far into her contract, Sloane begins to sense indisputable signs of a movement against the hyper–use of technology. She predicts people will instead embrace compassion, empathy, and ‘in-personism’ again. Her newly realized predictions are now hopelessly out of sync with her employer’s mission. And to push things even further out of whack, she admits that her closest personal relationship is with her self-driving car…

(Sloan’s car is pretty cool! It has a sense of humor and asks her some rather heartfelt questions. Reading it, I thought about how cars fulfill our deepest desire to explore; they’re technology and humanness riveted together by steel.)

For the remainder of the book, we watch Sloane follow her instinct and blow up her life.

The books speaks to something the world needs and StoryKeep aims to offer: in-personism. We’re about affirming a person’s value, clarifying a person’s purpose, sharing a person’s impact, listening in-person, documenting in-person.

In person. We ache for it. And it’s not too late to create a future that values it, too.

(You can buy Touch at your local bookseller or order it on Amazon here.)

The StoryKeep team was in Montreal earlier this month working on a film about an incredible woman named Ann. The film is about Ann’s most important relationships, as well as her amazing collections of paintings and clothing. We’re nearly done with the film, and coming to the end of the project feels a bit like the end of summer camp—bittersweet and sentimental.

On the day of the May shoot, which was devoted to Ann’s brother (such a fine fella, I tell ya!), Ann came to us with a quote from a book she was reading:

“The trouble is that you think you have time.”

Nearly a year ago, we were working with Ann on a different project, documenting the stories of a man named Angus. For decades, Angus took care of Ann’s family lodge in rural Canada, which had been passed down through five generations. His memories of her family and his own life stories were invaluable to her.

When Ann conceived of the project, we debated about when to film. We could shoot in January, when it would likely be snowy and cold, or in July, when it would be sunny. After considering the pros and cons, we went with the bolder choice: January.

Angus was admitted to the hospital before summer came and passed away some months later. Our film played on loop at his funeral. When it came time for the priest to speak, he said simply, “I didn’t know Angus, but after watching the film, I wished I would have met him. I can clearly see what a special man he was.”

After Ann read the quote, we all looked at each other. “Yep. The trouble is that you think you have time.”

Carpe Diem.

Lunch is paramount at StoryKeep. Lunch, you say? Yes, lunch.

To me, lunch is a critical component to producing good work. Sharing a meal with the person or family we’re interviewing restores our energies. Perhaps more importantly, it gives us all a moment to reflect. We discuss what has been documented so far and what we want to capture after lunch. We often find ourselves swapping stories “off the record” over lunch, and in so doing, we build something bigger: trust.

I’m an avid cook, so maybe that’s why, in addition to lunches “on set,” I host quarterly dinners for the StoryKeep team. In the same way that families invite us into their homes to share their stories, I invite my cadre of film and book artists into my home to share a meal. We talk about what Storykeep projects we’ve been working on, why they matter to us, how we can improve, and what’s next. We raise a toast to the fact that we are immensely fortunate to do what we do – work that matters deeply and for so many reasons.

We look forward to sharing lunch with you sometime this year. Happy spring!