Tag Archives: Italy

Day 182: Katie

Katie is a friend and former colleague of mine. I’ve been living vicariously through her this past year as she is attending the London School of Economics and traveling to fun places throughout Europe.

Day 182

I added some washi tape to the top of this paper as well as to the back of the envelope to dress it up a bit. Also, another recycled envelope liner that I made from a Paper Source bag.

Katie,

I hope my letter finds you well. And who knows when you’ll get this because you seem to be quite the traveller (see I used the British spelling for you!) these days. I’ve followed your jaunts around London, your travelling adventures to Italy (I also loved Cinque Terre…and a charming little town called San Gimignano, I don’t think you went there), Portugal, Spain…you do such a wonderful job of sharing interesting images and story – it’s almost as if you bring us along with you.

While you’re on your fantastic year-long tour of Europe, I hope that on occasion you find the time to discover an absolutely splendid place called the London School of Economics – I hear it is a remarkable institution. Seriously, I hope you are enjoying this experience. I know it wasn’t an easy decision to quit your job and take this giant leap of faith across the ocean, but I doubt that you question it one bit now as you look back. We often overestimate what we have and underestimate what we can gain by trying something new. I’ve lived I’ve lived abroad in three different countries and loved each experience.

I look forward to getting together sometime when you are back on this side of the pond. Until then, enjoy the rest of your time in Europe!

Reed

P.S. I saw that you were selected to run in the NYC Marathon – that’s awesome!

Sunday Notes & Letters


Wow, this project takes a lot more time than I thought! Don’t let that discourage you from writing your letters though. If it was just writing a letter now and then that would be fine. But writing the letter, photographing it, creating the social media posts for it – all that takes time! That being said, I’m enjoying this adventure very much.

Today, as I do on Sundays, I take a break from sharing my daily letter with you and share with you a story about handwritten letters. Today’s story comes from BBC News Europe.

michelangelo

teachhub.com

It’s about a handwritten letter by Michelangelo that was stolen from the Vatican. Yep, a former Vatican employee pilfered several 500-year-old letters and is now demanding money, lots of money, for the safe return. A ransom note, made to the cardinal in charge of St. Peter’s Basilica, asked for €100,000 – or about $105,000.

The odd thing is these letters went missing nearly 20 years ago and the Vatican never reported them stolen. Either they didn’t know they were missing, which doesn’t bode well for their tidiness and security, or they kept it a secret which begs further questioning.

Michelangelo_menu_fish_bread_wine_1518

This is reportedly Michelangelo’s handwriting. Not the letter in question here – there does not seem to be a copy of that, but this seems to be a grocery list. Still very cool to see someone’s writing from 500 years ago. Credit: openculture.com

In any event, this is particularly interesting because there are very few letters in existence penned from the hand of the great renaissance artist. According to Il Messaggero newspaper in Italy he typically only signed his name and had one of his many assistants do the laborious tasks of putting words on paper.

Whoever you are, you are a thief. Just put the letters in an envelope and mail them back to the Vatican and be done with this.