As my grandparents moved on through their lives, some important friends joined them in a round robin correspondence. They had a cycle of friends who each contributed a letter to the circuit. When a group of letters arrived, after reading their friends’ messages, they removed their own and replaced it with a new bulletin and forwarded the messages on to the next person in the list.

I don’t know when the project started, but I imagine it beginning with friends from church or their careers who wanted to keep in touch as their lives progressed. Rather than leaving the people behind, they kept their community going with their communiques.

When I was collecting stamps, I found the Cover Collectors Circuit Club. An originator would pick a list of members around the world. The list would specify its own one-shot round robin so that members would forward an original postal cover to the next person in the list.

Another correspondence project is Postcrossing which enables you to send postcards to someone randomly selected from around the world. In compensation, members receive postcards from a similarly selected person from another nation.

Bill and Madelyn’s round robin project is from a different era when people were starting to disperse but still chose to keep a community going. It might be the start of my family’s legacy of building a larger community than one of parents, siblings and children. The investment needed to support a relationship can’t really be sustained by tools designed for profit motives that debase the connection possible with real contacts and sincere support. Do I really want to hear from a synthetic pen pal?

Society’s connective tissue is built out of stories shared from one person to another. When it is dangerous to tell stories, the legacy of a round robin collection of friends is torn apart. I try to keep hearing new stories. Perhaps I should start telling stories as well.