Viva Snail Mail!

As I have mentioned, I am using stamps from my Grandpa’s collection as postage. Yesterday I tore off two 29 cent “Wild Animals” stamps from a 1991 booklet, licked the backs and stuck them on an envelope. My son came over and asked if he could have one so I tore off a white bangal tiger stamp for him. He ran over to his desk to make a card but came back a moment later and asked, ”Hey, how do you work this thing?”  I replied, ” You have to lick the back. That gets the glue wet.”

Today the Postal Service is issuing these beautiful Hawaiian rainforest stamps.

They’re self adhesive.

This was a good week for mail. I got 2 wedding invitations, a postcard from Biskit, a letter from HT, a thank you note, and a package. Plus 2 mail related projects came my way. The first was from my friend Randi Cecchine, who is sending back the mail she has received from people over the years. She is calling it “The Letter Project” and boy was it fun to open an envelope and find postcards that I had written to her in 1992. Look for an interview with Randi soon.

The second was a request from my sister Allison to her family elders to write letters to ourselves at her age and mail them to her. She was inspired by a story on the radio called What would you say to your 20 year old self? So I sat down and wrote to myself at age 26 and then sent the letter off to Allison. Hopefully she can cull some wisdom from it and if not, at least she’ll get some mail. I loved the process of writing the letter, decorating the envelope and dropping it in a blue mailbox. It felt like art therapy and I recommend it.  In fact I think I may ask my elders to write letters to their 40 year old selves, as I approach that milestone this year. Receiving some perspective might soften the blow of becoming a muthahflipping 40 year old!

And if not, at least I’ll get some mail.

Its the last day of April. Have you sent out a letter or card? Or a poem about spring or taxes? If you have, I adore you. And if not, well, you’re in luck! It turns out that National Card and Letter Writing Month extends to Mother’s Day so its actually National Card and Letter Writing Month and nine days. Here’s the card I found for my mother. Mom, if you’re reading, sorry for the spoiler. Oh look. Its actually an Easter card. Perfect.

April is National Letter Writing Month. Its also National Poetry Month. Its also the month that tax returns are due to the Internal Revenue Service. And its the month that Spring is full on here in Brooklyn. Thank you perky daffodils, tulips, and Callery Pear tree blossoms. You have arrived just in the nick of time.

I don’t know who makes up these dedicated months and I wish letter writing and poetry didn’t need their own month to remain relevant. But enough grumpiness. My Viva Snail Mail challenge to you is to write a letter to someone and include a poem about spring or taxes or both. You can find poems about spring at poetry.org, an excellent website from the Academy of American Poets. Thank you to Tina Cane for that bit of information. Her poem, Butterfly Catcher, is included in the list. My google search for poems about taxes brought up a few rants so you’re on your own to find one or write one on that subject.

And here’s a little perspective to hopefully serve as a motivator. If paper and pen and envelope and stamp feel like work compared to email, here is a letter written and carved by an Ancient Egyptian on a clay tablet.

40 years ago today my dad wrote this letter to his dad from the island of Crete, where he and my mom were living for a few months while traveling around Europe in their VW bus. He found it amidst my Grandpa’s stamp collection, ostensibly saved there due to its interesting Greek aerogramme postage. Reading this letter was like being given a glimpse into my own history. You see my parents had decided to make me on Crete so I was a tiny fetus snug in my mom’s womb on March 29, 1970. My dad’s descriptions of Crete in Spring as a paradise of wildflowers, friendly people, and fresh oranges made me cry, mostly out of appreciation that I could read what this era of family lore was like for him at the time.

I also began to think, once again, about how much memory and history will be lost in this generation of digital transition. When my husband and I traveled in Europe for several months in 2003 my dad the graphic designer diligently saved and typeset all my emails to him. He gave them to me as a booklet when we returned to the States. How sweet to have those emails, those travel records, but who else does that?  I have followed my friends travels via email and Facebook but haven’t gotten a postcard or letter from anyone overseas in ages. We are losing out here and so are our kids and grandkids and those historians who will want to use our correspondence as primary sources.

Traveling heightens the senses and inspires me to write and share what I am experiencing. Travel writing, both in letters and diaries, is its own colorful tradition and genre. I hope that we can find a way to save these words, whether they are written on paper or pixels.

I saw the trailer for the movie, Dear John, on TV a while back and it caught my fleeting interest because it seemed like the story had some correspondence between a soldier and the girl back home during wartime. But it was one of our wars and they weren’t using email or Skype. Blame it on sleep deprivation or wishful thinking but when I saw the book that the movie is based on at the bookstore I bought it, without so much as cracking the cover to see if there were any letters inside.  This book was not what I had hoped. There is one letter in it, and the rest is the boring schmaltz of the Nicholas Sparks mileau, of which I had been previously ignorant. I kind of wish I had remained so.

So you can imagine the pleasure I felt upon opening up a book in the children’s section of the library called Peace, Locomotion by Jacqueline Woodson and finding an entire story made up of letters. “Dear John” was dull compared to 12 year old Lonnie’s letters to his little sister Lily while they are living in separate foster care families in Brooklyn. After the death of their parents, Lonnie, aka Locomotion, tries to stay connected to his little sister by writing letters to her and being “the rememberer” of the family while they are apart. In the process he shares with her his thoughts about family, friendship, war, and peace. The story is beautiful and I strongly recommend it for middle school age kids. Or people like me who like to read letters.

Do you have any favorite books that include letters?

We’re having a cozy snow day with pancakes and bacon and valentine making. When I asked my 3 and a half year old son who he wanted to make a valentine for, he said Dan Zanes. So he did and we’re mailing it today. That’s love.

Speaking of love for famous New Yorkers,  The New York Times city room blog has published some Valentine’s Day inspiration with love notes like this one from Zero Mostel to his wife Kate. Enjoy. 

Have you been to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam? On our way there in 2003 my husband and I stopped by one of Amsterdam’s many cafes and partook in its herbal offerings so we had a GREAT time at the museum. Recently the museum published Van Gogh’s letters in digital and bound book versions. Apparently Vincent was an avid correspondent. The web site, www.vangoghletters.org, allows you to view over 900 letters to and from Van Gogh. Its pretty fascinating, if you like to read other people’s mail.

Remember how I posted a few months back about the upcoming Triboro Postmark? The one that would replace the individual neighborhood postmarks in Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island? Well I have some new information. According to Bob Twombley of the USPS Triboro District’s customer relations office, outgoing mail dropped in blue boxes, started to get phased in with the Triboro postmark on August 24th. The postal service hopes to complete this transition by October 5th.  As of October 5, 2009, any outgoing mail that is placed in a blue collection box within the confines of Brooklyn, Queens, or Staten Island, will get the new “Triboro District” cancellation. However, Mr. Twombley assured me that every local postmark will remain available at the post office. If you want to have a local postmark with the town name and zip code, all you need to do is bring your outgoing mail to the post office of your choice and request it. Now who has time to stand in line for that, I do not know but it somehow takes a bit of the sting out of losing our neighborhood specificity on our outgoing mail.