I’ve shared stories with you before about people who had been penpals for many, many decades. Here is another one I ran across about two women who have been writing to each other since they were pre-teens and are now in their 70’s. How remarkable! Enjoy!

Read: Across the Pond…

Kids from Valley Park Schools in St. Louis had an unlikely project for their P.E. class… writing letters! Apparently the philosophy at Valley Park is to frequently integrate writing into the curriculum wherever they can, even sports!

So the kids were directed to write essays about sports figures who inspire them. They then sent the essays and letters to the athletes and have actually gotten a great rate of response.

You can read more about this inspiring article at: STLtoday

Who inspires you? Why not write a letter to someone who inspires you? And how about sending it? Even if you don’t get a response, won’t you feel great sending some great vibes their way? Jot me a note and tell me who inspires you and why. We can all use a little inspiration!

[photo credit: Erik Charlton]

Imagine a man on a train, traveling at high speeds toward an uncertain future. It’s war time and he’s on a death train to Auschwitz.

He’s worried about his daughters, from whom he is separated, and scribbles on a note to friends. He then throws the note out the window hoping that someone will find the note, put it in an envelope and mail it for him.

You can read the rest of this interesting story here: HamptonRoads.com

Here’s a nice story about some middle school children writing to the President and getting an answer back. Sweet!

Metro West Daily News

In Ohio, Fairland Elementary has created a small post office inside their school. Modeled like a real post office (as near as possible) it is operated by kids and each classroom and grade has their own address.

What an awesome way to teach kids about letter writing!

You can read the story at the Ironton Tribune.

[photo credit: peppergrasss]

I once wrote a complaint letter to a hotel and got a free weekend stay on my return visit. Once I wrote a complaint letter to a bleach company and got a replacement skirt for a co-worker who had her clothes ruined by an exploding bleach bottle. A well-written complaint letter can be a powerful tool.

I ran across a complaint letter recently that actually got an answer from Richard Branson himself. It’s highly amusing.

Two pieces of news:

On the last postal news entry I mentioned the idea of the USPS reducing delivery service due to some of the cost constraints and significant losses they are suffering (to the tune of about $3 Billion).

Today there was a news story about the salary of the Postmaster General which was pretty astounding. Check out ABC’s version of the story on video. I’d like to hear your thoughts on that.

Second:

Christine, who is a part time rural mail carrier, said that February 14th to March 14th is an important time to send mail because this is the time all the mail is counted for benchmarking or performance (or something like that) for the year. You can read her remark in the comments section of that same entry. Go look and go send some mail!

I was recently reading this post on the postal service rate increase coming up. Personally, I always hate to see it, but know it’s a necessary evil of the times.

However, this article in particular was really depressing. They said the effects of the rate increase are a “drop in the bucket”. I own my own business and it’s second nature to me to automatically think about how I could improve and optimize anything related to my business and this habit also slops over to other people’s businesses too. (And unfortunately results in me handing out a lot of unsolicited advice much to my husband’s dismay.)

So, I was thinking, what could be done to save the post office in this changing world of mail? There is an evolutionary turn happening in that industry and I thought about several things — first of all the future of letter writing if the post office is in serious trouble and second, what would I do if I was in this type of business? It’s not a simple fact of just changing some business practices… the real problem is that if you don’t have a crystal ball, how do you know how to evolve your business when your entire industry is flipping on its axis?

It’s a really tough question! Maybe we need to come up with some of our own ideas. We can march to Washington with our list and wait outside the Postmaster General’s office. It may take letter writers to save them.

What should they do? How about:

1. Celebrity endorsements like the “got milk?” campaign. Good grief, if drinking milk can be made to look cool, how hard could it be to make letter writing cool?
2. Create a more profitable division of the USPS such as a product division where you can have a lot of low wholesale cost, high profit merchandise. This has been done to a small extent, but not done nearly as well as it COULD be.
3. Have you noticed how well the U.S. Mint is doing? Take a clue from the Mint and capitalize on the needs and desires of collectors.
4. Hook the children early. A snail mailer’s club with quarterly or monthly newsletter. Get kids excited about sending letters and chances are it’s a love that will stay with them all their lives.
5. Encourage and promote mail art. Support mail artists and their showings. Marketing department needs to highlight more interesting things that go through the mail.
6. Grass roots campaigns. Utilize passionate local citizens to do your marketing for you. Enthusiastic volunteers can teach letter writing classes through local libraries — from nuts and bolts how-to classes to more creative and free-spirited methods of communicating by mail. This one has limitless possibilities and could be a good money maker since the only investment would be in coordinating the program. The cost on a local level is nearly nothing since it’s all done on a volunteer basis.
7. More school outreach, also on volunteer basis.
8. Form an unpaid advisory commission of passionate and enthusiastic and knowledgeable letter writers to meet 2-3 times per year to help plan and design low-cost, high return programs.

Okay, those are my ideas… please add your own in the comments section. If you will do your part and help brainstorm ideas I will put them all in a professional format and petition to Postmaster General to heed our call for change at the USPS. Let’s do it in time for the rate hike in May. Let’s get to work!

Michelle Herrmann, an elementary school teacher, began a tradition of having her classes write letters to veterans of the Vietnam War.

In a news story from Beloit Daily News, Herrmann describes the value to the children and to the Veterans. The children get to learn about history, patriotism and giving. The Veterans learn that we have never forgotten the sacrifices they made by serving in an unpopular war.

Do you know of a teacher in school that might be inspired to start a project like this? Consider printing out the story and sharing it! Or if you are into philanthropy, consider donating to a project like this. Even with the cost of stamps on the rise it’s still a pretty cheap hobby!

[photo: horizontal integration]

Have you seen the news story about the Postmaster General asking the government if they can cut mail delivery back to five days per week?

It’s scary to think about such a big change in something that has been the same every day of our lives. When I heard about a rate increase in some of the services I was wondering how long it would take for them to recommend cutting mail delivery. I don’t know what portion of their cost is for delivery, but undoubtedly it’s huge. I live in a rural area and I know how far they have to drive here to get mail to people.

My mom recently switched to a post office box because someone in her neighborhood was blowing up mailboxes! They haven’t been able to catch the people who are doing it. She was too unnerved to wait around for something to be done about it so now she just stops by the post office to get her mail.

What do you think about this possible change with the mail delivery? Are you okay with it? Do you hate it? Does it make you nervous? Advantages? Pitfalls? If you were Postmaster General how would you save the postal service? Three billion dollar loss… heck yeah, something needs to be done. Tell me your thoughts.