Here’s a great site: www.lettersofnote.com. As the site says, “Letters of Note is an attempt to gather and sort fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos. Scans/photos where possible. Fakes will be sneered at. Updated every weekday.”
The blog is only a few months old. The person behind it is freelance writer Shaun Usher. The documents include a letter Jim Morrison of The Doors wrote to a fan who wanted to pain an album cover for him, Elvis Presley’s handwritten note to President Nixon asking for a meeting, and a nasty note from Hunter Thompson to a film producer.
In an interview with Laura Nathan on the true/slant site, Usher said, “What’s interesting is the contrast between generations with regards to correspondence. Generations before us only really had letter writing, and it was very much a private affair, from one person to another. When you write a letter to someone you don’t expect anyone else to read it and therefore you tend to open up to the recipient. These days most people seem to communicate via Facebook status updates and Twitter messages; communication methods which are the very opposite to private; and so it’s interesting to wonder whether private correspondence will soon be a thing of the past, let alone letter writing. It would also be interesting to know how many people have stopped using email since Twitter and Facebook arrived. Maybe that’s the next dying art.”
He adds, “It’s the visual aspect of written correspondence that really grabs me. The creases of the paper, the handwriting, the odd few extra thick letters where the typewriter’s been bashed too hard.”
When's the last time you wrote a letter? Who would enjoy the surprise of getting one from you?
