Such quaint artifacts as postal letters have new significance in a time when free, instant, global, indelible publishing is available to us all — when the default setting for our existence is public, so much so that the term “publishing” has begun to sound obsolete. What we need in a time of consummate publicity is privacing: deliberate steps to create pockets of privacy in our overexposed lives.As my father's executor, I noticed that letters from banks in Switzerland and Luxembourg came in hand written envelopes with personal return addresses.