Newsletters Dispatches from when the newsfeed was refreshed once a year O N CHRISTMAS DAY in 1948, Marie Harris published the mid-century equivalent of a status update. In June that year, “lying on the beach watching the waves of the Pacific roll in”, she and her husband Bob had decided they needed more space for their young family. Through an ad in the local paper they found just the place: a rambling old farmhouse with green shutters in rural Shedd, Oregon. They swapped their crowded city digs for a retreat worthy of Instagram: five acres of land, thick with boysenberries, apple, pear and walnut trees. But apart from the 17 chickens, three geese, two cats, a cow, a duck and a collie called Mac, Shedd was not a sociable sort of place. So Marie’s three-page bulletin ended with something akin to a friend request: “We have lots of animals,” typed the 28-year-old, “but would like company of a more human sort—and mail.”