Category Archives: Sunday Notes

Sunday Notes & Letters for Week 18

Posted on April 26, 2015 | 1 comment

Sometimes a handwritten letter can make things seem better. A note from our grandmother or a long letter from a friend living overseas, they tend to lift our spirits and connect us with the person who sent it to us – if even for just a few moments.

Photo: Garance Nelson

Myles with his letter from Vice President Biden as well as note from Rep. Gwen Moore for sharing his idea to make the world safer. Photo: Garance Nelson

I ran across a story this morning about a 7-year-old boy named Myles Nelson from Milwaukee who made my day a little brighter. Little Myles was affected by all of the gun violence he hears about and started to think of ways to make the world a safer place. Finally it came to him. He had an idea and decided he should share it with the White House and other government officials.

The Wisconsin youngster sat down and wrote out some letters. He wrote that he thought that “guns should shoot out chocolate bullets. Then no one will get killed and no one will be sad.” It took a while, but he got a handwritten response from none other than Vice President Joe Biden.

Here’s a shot of Biden’s letter to the young problem solver.

Photo: Huffingtonpost.com

Photo: Huffingtonpost.com

I like the way Myles thinks…I’m expecting big things from this kid when he grows up. And I’m hoping that Hershey’s or MARS picked up on this story and sent him a serious care-package of chocolate!

 

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Sunday Notes and Letters for Week 17

Posted on April 19, 2015 | 1 comment
Me mailing the letter to Steve Carell from his hometown of Newton, MA. It was about 0 degrees when I snapped this photo.

I do have a lot of fun with the Year of Letters. Here’s a shot of me mailing a letter to Steve Carell from his hometown of Newton, MA on Day 7.

There are two things that are becoming very clear through doing the Year of Letters. The first is that if you are already pretty busy with work and you are writing a book, doing a blog that also involves writing is probably a terrible idea. My work on the book has definitely suffered from this project. It’s odd too, because I thought it would actually help me think creatively every day and sit me down to write.

I envisioned that it would take me 20-30 minutes every day to write the letter, take a quick photo and post everything, but you can probably double that time at a minimum. Maybe I’m just slow and inefficient. It often takes up to two hours to do everything involved with writing the letter and posting it online. I’m not complaining, just telling you how it is.

The other thing I learned is that something is really messed up down at the Post Office. Most of my letters go to places within the United States and I would estimate that the average letter takes one week to arrive. That in and of itself seems higher than I would have imagined. And on top of that some letters have taken nearly a month. Ironically a letter I sent to Finland arrived within a week – they seem to know what they are doing over there.

usps-Property-of-USPS-croppedLast week I received an undeliverable letter. It was a letter I sent on January 24th! It took nearly 3 months to be sent back to me. It was a letter to the manager at a FedEx Office in Ft. Lauderdale, FL – telling him how impressed I was with one of his employees. I know FedEx is a competitor to the USPS but come on, deliver their mail for crying out loud.

Anyway, as luck has it, I will be back in Ft. Lauderdale this week and my hotel happens to be across the street from this very FedEx location, so I will go hand deliver it myself. Ms. Postmaster, please be on the look out for my invoice to you for the delivery charges that I am incurring to deliver this letter on your behalf.

Stay tuned this week to hear what happens.

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Sunday Notes & Letters for Week 16

Posted on April 12, 2015 | Leave a comment

Yesterday I celebrated my 100th handwritten letter of the year. I use the term “celebrated” loosely – I had a small pour of bourbon and reflected on the past 100 days. Realizing that it had been almost two months since I updated the statistics page, I sat down and tallied the numbers on my letter-writing journey so far.

This is a very nice bourbon that my boss gave to me.

This is a very nice bourbon that my boss gave to me.

I’m averaging about one handwritten response for every ten letters I send out. While that sounds low, it’s a vast improvement over the numbers I reported earlier this year. One out of three letters I am sending out is acknowledged in some way – either by email, Facebook, a phone call or tweet. Friends and family make up about 34% of the recipients while celebrities and known individuals account for 20%.

I’ve been surprised about some of the people I have not heard back from. Usually when you write to someone holding a public office, you get a response. I didn’t receive even a standard form letter back from Muriel Bowser, our city’s new mayor. Equally silent were the CEO of Trader Joe’s, the folks at FitBit, the U.S. Postmaster General, Lazlo Toth and Teddy. That’s ok – I’ve received some very nice responses and even a handful of letters from people I’ve never met but who found inspiration in the blog to start writing more.

Speaking of inspiration – this beautiful weather is inspiring me to get outside. Enjoy your Sunday.

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Sunday Notes & Letters for Week 15

Posted on April 5, 2015 | Leave a comment

april5I am over one-fourth of the way through my letter-writing journey. I hope I can make it. I’m having a blast but this takes time! You’d be surprised how much time it takes to write (and rewrite from time to time) neatly, emboss stationery, take photographs, upload them to the blog, write something thoughtful or funny. Thankfully I have a decent supply of whiskey that will hopefully get me most of the way through the year – I am accepting donations to help make sure I don’t run out.

Seriously, I hope I can keep this up. What’s great is that you keep sending me more and more letters. It’s working. People are sitting down and going old school on keeping in touch with me. Thank you to all those of have sent letters.

Muriel Bowser-3

A copy of my letter to the new Mayor of Washington, D.C.

And I can’t remember if I have mentioned this or not here, but stay tuned, I’m going to throw a party at the end of the year for everyone who has either received one of my letters or sent me a letter. So if you haven’t written me yet, drop me a handwritten note and I’ll make sure you get on the invite list.

Baseball season officially started today with the St. Louis Cardinals shaming the Cubs at home 3-0. Tomorrow, the Washington Nationals play their home opener against the New York Mets. I’ll be there in the Mayor’s Suite – I wonder if Mayor Bowser will be there. I sent her a letter on Day 2 and have not heard back from her. I’ll be sure to remind her if she’s there.

Here are a few hints about who tomorrow’s letter is for. This person missed the first season, but has been to every Nationals home game after that. He is the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and is blind in his left eye due to a boxing injury.

 

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Sunday Notes & Letters for Week 14

Posted on March 29, 2015 | Leave a comment
Photo: sineadgleeson.com

Photo: sineadgleeson.com

I got a few letters back this week. The first one was a response to my letter on Day 65 to House of Cards creator Beau Willimon. I use the word response pretty liberally. I actually heard from Netflix. It was a form letter thanking me for being such a huge fan of Netflix – which isn’t exactly true, I’m fairly indifferent to Netflix. My letter was to Mr. Willimon and had no reference to me being a fan of their service. I’m sure Mr. Willimon will be writing back shortly – after all I did tweet at him.

Another letter was from my Aunt Kay who I wrote to on Day 52. She thanked me for my letter to her and let me know that she would probably be back in DC in the next couple of weeks. That’s great – I always enjoy spending time with her.

Finally I got a letter from my friend Aimee from Day 5 thanking me for my handwritten letter and absurdly late wedding gift. You may recall that I couldn’t remember whether or not I had sent them a gift or not for their 2013 wedding! Yep, I was really late…more than Emily Post’s “you’ve got a year” advice.

So all in all it was a good week. Well, with the exception of an irritating email from Google Adsense that informed me that they were terminating my agreement with them due to a violation of their terms and guidelines and that I was banned for life. Furthermore, they reneged on their promise to pay me for allowing companies to advertise on my blog. It’s not a ton of money – trust me I’m not quitting my day job – but it would have helped offset the cost of postage, stationery, etc. They won’t even tell me how I violated their terms and guidelines – that’s the most annoying part. In response to my appeal, they just offered some snooze-inducing stock language that says they’d love to tell me why they’ve taken this action against me BUT….they can’t:

We understand that you may want more information about your account activity, however, in order to protect our proprietary detection systems, we are unable to provide further details. Thank you for understanding.

Well, thanks for nothing Google. And shame on you. I expected more from a company who touts the phrase “Don’t Be Evil” as their motto and states their mission as, “facilitating access to information for the entire world” – well, unless of course that information is about Google themselves.  I will be looking for other advertising ideas to help offset the costs of the website. If you have any suggestions of reputable, honest (i.e. won’t keep my money!) marketing partners – drop me a note.

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