Here’s a great story I ran across today over at the Sharpie Blog (which I madly adore). Check out this sad and wonderful, inspiring story:

http://blog.sharpie.com/2009/11/2553/

As fans of letter writing we love getting mail of any kind — letters, notes, secret messages, postcards. Doesn’t matter! A frequent complaint is that we send a lot of letters out but don’t always get many letters back.

Keith and Nancy Stubblefield found an interesting way to get mail. On their excursions around the country and the world they have hidden postcards with instructions that when someone finds the card they are to write something on the back and send it to the address provided.

Their web site, Postcards from Strangers, has the collection of cards they have received. Go check it out and tell them how fabulous you think they are. Let it inspire you to go out and do some epistolary madness of your own!

I ran across this great blog post that has letters to soldiers written by kids. It’s got pictures of the letters and drawings. Really cute! This is a great idea to do if you’re going to send a care package. See if a local school will let you include letters or drawings from the kids. Great idea!

Go see: Stadelbacher’s Adventures

[Sidenote: Today is my father's birthday. He's no longer with us, but served his country as a Marine for 20 years until he retired. He worked as an air traffic controller and was near the front lines during Vietnam. Happy Birthday, Dad.]

Liss over at A Memory Forever is making a new meme or game or pay-it-forward or whatever cool name you want to call it.

She’s asking people to become Snail Mail Angels and for them to inspire others to do the same. Who knows what it will turn into, but let’s give her a hand in encouraging people to write more letters.

Head over to her announcement post.

I ran across a blog called “Please Don’t Eat Sushi! Love, Mom”

Once I got there I couldn’t stop reading. It’s a collection of letters curated from this fella. All the letters are from his mom and they are strange… short, intense, surreal, possibly crazy. I can’t decide if I’m looking at “real” crazy or just someone who is strangely quirky with a sense of humor. Right now I’m leaning toward plain old garden-variety crazy. No offense to the son, of course. Anyway, definitely worth a read.

I had my own bit of letter writing crazy with my dad’s mom. I have them all somewhere and hope to unearth them one of these days and share them. All she did all day long is write letters. Hers were long, page after page, and filled with newspaper clippings with scribbles in the margins. Sometimes other people’s letters were included and those were scribbled on, too. She always had a running commentary on life and now that I think about it would have made on awesome blogger had she been born later.

She’s gone now and I miss her brand of crazy. Who in your family writes you letters? Do you have any good stories you can share with me?

Trivia Time! What year did the first image of a woman on a stamp appear? And who was the lucky lady? And what year was the first American woman honored on a stamp?

You can find the answer to these questions and more at the National Postal Museum’s virtual presence called Arago. They have a great exhibit called Women on Stamps.

One of my favorites is the Betsy Ross stamp issued in 1952. It has a great image of her sitting in a chair working on the flag. The detail is lovely. Another of my favorites is the Women of Progress stamp of 1948. A lot of my favorite stamps in general are from the late 40’s and early 50’s. I love the style of stamp artwork during that time.

Go check it out and let me know what your favorites are!

Remember last month when I said, “Hey everybody… let’s freak someone out!” Well, I don’t think it really freaked her out as much as completely and utterly thrilled her which is WAY BETTER than actually freaking someone out anyway.

I got email from Erin Delaney recently and she has given me permission to post it here. Ironically, you will notice that she mentions she doesn’t have my snail mail address. I was probably one of the last ones to write her (my bad) and I’m hoping the problem is that she just hasn’t received my note yet and not that it was waylaid by the U.S. Postal Service. (I might have really made the Postmaster General mad with all my marketing brouhaha from a few weeks ago.)

Anyway, here is Erin’s note. I am sure you will be as thrilled to read it as I was. How delightful. This was so much fun we’re going to do it again with another unsuspecting victim.

Wendy,

If I had your snail mail address, I would have mailed this message to you. I must say that it was one of the most exciting moments to get a call from my boss who had five letters all addressed to me from Flower Mound, TX; Chicago, IL; Pittsburgh, PA; Newport, RI; and Rochester, NY. I have to say that it was definitely a “freakout” moment! The excitement of opening each letter was overwhelming. I actually opened all of them then just looked at each trying to decide which treasure to plunder first.

Of course your dedicated readers mentioned your website, which I happily took a look at. I noticed that one of your readers, Stephanie, mentioned that she was overseas in Austria and that it posed a problem for proper timing for the full “freakout” effect, but I’d tell her that a good letter is worth the wait!

After reading each letter and reviewing your website, I was compelled to email you and let you know that I am going to write a follow up article for the Weekender based on your website, letters, and readers soon. It’d be great to talk with you (or even correspond with you) and I will keep you and your readers posted on when it will go to press.

Please let your readers know that I loved the letters and that I will respond to all of them that I received. I’d even love to correspond with even more of them! Furthermore, thanks for letting me know that letter writing hasn’t become a lost art.

Feel free to post this on your site if you’d like and check out my blog as well!

Erin L. Delaney
Read my blog at: www.erindelaney.blogspot.com

Did you see this recent story in the news? It’s amazing! ABC’s Person of the Week

Go look… I’ll wait for you to come back.

Okay, if you go to the Wish Upon a Hero site you can search for wishes that involve sending cards or letters. Grant any wish you want, but be sure to also send some cards and letters while you are there. You’ll make someone’s day!

Hannah Nicklin, the lovely English playwright, wants to write more letters. Through her I recently discovered the web site postletters.org — “a UK-based, worldwide movement to encourage, promote and take delight in the activity of writing letters and sending post.”

If you go over to the site you can request to join the movement and at some time in the future you will be sent an interesting missive that will hopefully inspire you to write more letters. In fact, that’s the whole purpose of the web site — to get you fired up and get to writing.

Zip over there ASAP and enjoy yourself. Support the movement! Support letter writing!

The Plug is cool (and weird). I was over there cruising around and the second link I happened to click on lead me to what Jay refers to as the Desperate Penpal Experiment. (Volume II, actually, but I have no idea what Volume I is about. I haven’t found it yet.)

Jay got all wild and crazy with a phone book and started writing random people across America to see what would happen. The results, while not extensive, were amusing and worth a look. It’s a fun, fun site.

You know, if there were more people like Jay in the world life would be way more interesting than it is right this moment.