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John Byrne was installing a new central heating unit in his home in Dublin in 1992 when he found a letter in the fireplace. It was a little scorched, but still readable.
On Christmas Eve 1911, a brother and sister, who signed their names, “A or H Howard”, penned their personally designed letter to Santa with their requests for gifts and a good luck message at their home in Oaklands Terrace, Terenure (or Terurnure, as the children spelled it) in Dublin.
They placed it in the chimney of the fireplace in the front bedroom so that Santa would see it as he made his way into the Howard household in the early hours of the morning.
A check of the 1911 census lead Byrne to believe the children were 10-year-old Hannah Howard and her seven-year-old brother Fred, who lived at the address with their parents and older sister. Link -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Eric Luke)
Neither
snow nor rain nor bad handwriting will stop the post office from delivering
mail. But how exactly does the postal service deal with bad handwriting?
With humans. Lots of them.
Barry Newman of the Wall Street Journal tell us what happened to the letters whose addresses are deemed indecipherable by the post office's automated sorting machines:
Computers have since learned to see words in scrawls and squiggles the way voice-recognition software hears them in hemming and hawing. The Postal Service says their reading score today is 95%.
What's left over is the handwriting from hell. It pours into just two remaining RECs—here and in Wichita, Kan. Their 1,900 clerks cope with machine-unreadable mail from the whole country. Last year, that included 714,085,866 chicken-scratch first-class letters.
In late afternoon, when volume peaks at the Salt Lake center, a blinking panel showed 67,000 letters awaiting attention—from San Juan, Paducah, Los Angeles, Kokomo. A clerk wearing a headset had hit a patch of pen-pal letters from pupils in Memphis. She was decrypting them at a rate of 800 per hour, down from the desired 1,100.
"We ought to teach kids how to address letters," said Bruce Rhoades, a manager looking over her shoulder. His boss, Karen Heath, stood watching beside him and sighed, "A lost art."
Link (Photo: Barry Newman/The Wall Street Journal)
This is a triangular letter. During World War II, Russian soldiers folded their letters home in a way that required no envelope -it’s actually quite easy. And it was also easy for censors to open and read them before sending them on. Families back home were excited to see this shape arrive in the mail. Read about the letters and the men who wrote them at Poemas del río Wang. Link -via Metafilter
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Justin Lee of Auckland, New Zealand, received a speeding ticket in the mail in 2004. He noticed a typo in the facts that stated the offense took place in 1974. Since that was a long time ago, he asked his mother for his alibi details. Then Justin wrote back to let the police know exactly where he was on June 23rd, 1974.
Firstly, the ‘date of offence’ is listed as the 23rd of June 1974 with the time being at or around half past six in the evening. This is of grave concern to me because I was not issued a drivers license until sometime in 1990 and I have no desire to be charged with driving while not legally licensed. I do not have a clear recollection of very much at all before I was three and a half years old, so I rang Mum to see if she remembered what I was doing that day. She said that – coincidentally – I was born that day!!
Mum mentioned that I was born at around five o’clock in the evening on that day in Porirua, which is not far from Wellington. She also said Porirua was a bustling suburb of young, low-income people who were trying to get ahead. Back in the 70′s, people were coming to terms with oil shocks, high-inflation and wage freezes, but that’s not important right now.
There’s more to his entertaining letter. And how did this episode turn out? Find out the final disposition of the case at Letters of Note. Link
Frank Sinatra wrote this letter to New York Times editor Eugene Maleska. The correspondence between them began in the early 80s after he was featured in a crossword puzzle, which he could complete in half an hour.
Link -via Letters of Note
Some people really know how to write a letter and get to the point, with the result of pleasing the recipient.
Despite never being published in the paper, the following brief letter — sent to the offices of The Times in 1946 by the famously eccentric Lt. Col. Alfred Daniel Wintle — was so adored by staff, it has apparently been preserved ever since. It’s easy to see why.
I won’t spoil the surprise by putting the transcript here, so go read the whole thing at Letters of Note. Link
Actress Marilyn Monroe was born on June first, 1926. If she hadn’t died in 1962, she would be 85 years old today. In 1961 Monroe was committed to a mental hospital in New York. She stayed four days, during which she wrote a six-page letter to her psychiatrist. Here is just a part of one passage:
I didn’t sleep again last night. I forgot to tell you something yesterday. When they put me into the first room on the sixth floor I was not told it was a Psychiatric floor. Dr. Kris said she was coming the next day. The nurse came in (after the doctor, a psychiatrist) had given me a physical examination including examining the breast for lumps. I took exception to this but not violently only explaining that the medical doctor who had put me there, a stupid man named Dr. Lipkin had already done a complete physical less than thirty days before. But when the nurse came in I noticed there was no way of buzzing or reaching for a light to call the nurse. I asked why this was and some other things and she said this is a psychiatric floor. After she went out I got dressed and then was when the girl in the hall told me about the phone. I was waiting at the elevator door which looks like all other doors with a door-knob except it doesn’t have any numbers (you see they left them out). After the girl spoke with me and told me about what she had done to herself I went back into my room knowing they had lied to me about the telephone and I sat on the bed trying to figure if I was given this situation in an acting improvisation what would I do. So I figured, it’s a squeaky wheel that gets the grease. I admit it was a loud squeak but I got the idea from a movie I made once called “Don’t Bother to Knock”. I picked up a light-weight chair and slammed it, and it was hard to do because I had never broken anything in my life — against the glass intentionally. It took a lot of banging to get even a small piece of glass – so I went over with the glass concealed in my hand and sat quietly on the bed waiting for them to come in. They did, and I said to them “If you are going to treat me like a nut I’ll act like a nut”. I admit the next thing is corny but I really did it in the movie except it was with a razor blade. I indicated if they didn’t let me out I would harm myself — the furthest thing from my mind at that moment since you know Dr. Greenson I’m an actress and would never intentionally mark or mar myself. I’m just that vain.
Read the rest of the missive at Letters of Note. Link
What’s the best way to deal with a rejection letter? Crumple it up and throw it in the trash? No, that’s too pedestrian. What you really need to do is tear it into tiny pieces all while making your baby laugh hysterically.
McArthur says he’s finishing up his doctorate at SLU and applying for professor jobs. When he received yet another rejection letter he ripped it in half and baby Micah started laughing uncontrollably, so he started ripping credit card statements and the sweet sounds of laughter continued.
Eight-year-old Teresa Juniso mailed off $12 to the Wil Wheaton fan club and never received anything she was promised. Twenty-one years later, she wrote about the experience. That made Wheaton look like a bad guy, even though Juniso meant it as a humorous post. But he made it right by sending the promised fan club items and a letter from himself as the 15-year-old Star Trek: TNG actor to the 8-year old Teresa. So the story has a happy ending after all. See the letter and a transcript at Letters of Note. Link -via Codename: Beryllium
Nearly 140 years ago, famed explorer David Livingstone was stuck in a remote village in present-day Congo, suffering from a particularly nasty disease that consumed his flesh and skin. Most of his expedition had either died or deserted him, when he wrote a feverish letter to his friend Horace Weller.
Out of paper and ink, Livingstone tore pages from books and made his own ink from the seeds of a local berry. Now, using spectral imaging technique, researchers had teased out Livingstone’s original text:
Researchers say that the letter — which required state of the art imaging techniques to decipher — helps round out the picture of a man traditionally cast as an intrepid Victorian hero, revealing the self-doubt that tormented the missionary-explorer in one of his darkest hours.
"I am terribly knocked up but this is for your own eye only," Livingstone wrote to close friend Horace Waller in the newly revealed correspondence. "Doubtful if I live to see you again."
Livingstone was a national hero when he set off to find the source of the River Nile in 1866, but by the time he composed his four-page missive he was at the lowest point in his professional life, according to Debbie Harrison, a researcher at Birkbeck University of London.
The explorer was stuck in the village of Bambarre, in present-day Congo, in February of 1871. He was a long way off from his intended goal, most of his expedition either died or deserted him, and he was still suffering the effects of pneumonia, fever, and tropical eating ulcers — a nasty condition that consumes skin and flesh.
Adding insult to injury, Livingstone, a crusading abolitionist, had been forced to seek help from Arab slave traders while he waited for outside support. Bedridden for weeks on end, Livingstone had read the Bible several times over and started hallucinating.
"He’d gone slightly mad by this point, to be honest," Harrison said.
Back home, Livingstone’s supporters were going mad with worry. No one had heard from him in years, and as Livingstone recovered, search parties set out into the interior to discover his fate. He was eventually located near the eastern shore of the massive Lake Tanganyika by journalist Henry Morton Stanley, whose memorable quip, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" immortalized their encounter.
Links: Story at Yahoo! News | Livingstone’s Letter at Early Manuscripts Electronic Library
You don’t have to have a printer to make your own envelops, but if you do, you can print a Map Envelope! Enter your location, print out and fold, and your envelope will have a Google Maps image of the place the enclosed letter (or whatever) originated on its inside. You can even add a message for a little something extra for your recipient. Link -via the Presurfer
Is the art of the love letter dead, or just dying? If more people knew about the great love letters of the past, maybe a few would take the trouble to put pen to paper and create something that the recipient will keep as a treasure. President Woodrow Wilson wrote beautiful love letters to his wife Ellen Louise Axeson, and after her death wrote to Edith Bolling Galt, who married him in 1915.
While wooing Edith, Wilson penned a series of love letters, some signed “Tiger” (Wilson was a Princeton alum, but this was before the university took on the tiger as its mascot.) In one, Wilson wrote, “You are more wonderful and lovely in my eyes than you ever were before; and my pride and joy and gratitude that you should love me with such a perfect love are beyond all expression, except in some great poem which I cannot write.” In another, he pines, “Please go to ride with us this evening, precious little girl, so that I can whisper something in your ear—something of my happiness and love, and accept this, in the meantime, as a piece out of my very heart, which is all yours but cannot be sent as I wish to send it by letter.”
You’ll find more examples of great love letters at mental_floss. Link
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I’m a little late in posting this, but it’s too awesome to pass: Shaun Usher’s Letters of Note has a copy of a 1905 letter sent by Mark Twain to a patent medicine salesman who tried to sell bogus medicine. Twain was furious to have received the pitch as he was recently widowed after his wife suffered heart failure:
Dear Sir,
Your letter is an insoluble puzzle to me. The handwriting is good and exhibits considerable character, and there are even traces of intelligence in what you say, yet the letter and the accompanying advertisements profess to be the work of the same hand. The person who wrote the advertisements is without doubt the most ignorant person now alive on the planet; also without doubt he is an idiot, an idiot of the 33rd degree, and scion of an ancestral procession of idiots stretching back to the Missing Link.
Read the rest: Link – via The Litter Box
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Letters of Note has a form letter from the 9th century found in western China produced by the Dunhuang Bureau of Etiquette. They had insisted officials issue letters of apology to dinner hosts after any embarrassing drunken escapades. The offender was supposed to recopy the characters in their own hand while inserting the recipient’s name. The translation:
Yesterday, having drunk too much, I was intoxicated as to pass all bounds; but none of the rude and coarse language I used was uttered in a conscious state. The next morning, after hearing others speak on the subject, I realised what had happened, whereupon I was overwhelmed with confusion and ready to sink into the earth with shame.
Saatchi & Saatchi Singapore has come up with a clever new marketing campaign in a search for new recruits for the Singapore Navy. They sent over 6,000 letters containing a fold out uniform to help the students better imagine themselves as Navy officers.
The mock uniforms are to help the students better imagine themselves dressed for success. 6,000 direct mailers were mailed to graduating ‘A’ level students in December 2008. 4.7% of them responded, considered a higher than average response rate compared to previous direct mailers sent out.
“We sent out direct mailer packs, which opened out to be the ultimate uniform – a crisp, white Naval Officer’s jacket, complete with medals and decorations. A business reply card was placed in the breast pocket.”
Link – via campaignbrief
From the Upcoming 
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