One a day is enough for me

I heard President Obama mention recently that he reads 10 letters a day...he receives 40,000 a day. Wow!

Before I started researching the Presidential letters, I never knew there was "White House Correspondence Office." I guess if I'd ever thought about it, I would have realized that someone had to be in charge of all that mail.

An article on The Washington Post Web site tells how the President makes time each day to personally read 10 letters. He does it, the article says, to keep himself grounded and to remind him about what's going on beyond the White House walls.

According to Jake Tapper's ABC blog, the president sometimes copies and distributes certain letters to his staff, so that they, too, understand what's happening in "the real world." That particular article/blog entry says that President Obama responds to two or three letters a day "in his own hand." It's an effort for me to get my one letter a day written!

With all he has to do, I realize it must be a struggle for President Obama to read those letters and respond to a few, but I hope that he continues to do this throughout his presidency. Not only will it help him achieve his goal of staying in touch with the American people, but it also will help promote letter writing, personal correspondence and good communication between people.

For myself, I think I'll just stick to my goal of one letter a day.

If you would like to send the President a letter, his address is:

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

More presidential letters

Last week, my family and I traveled to Little Rock, Arkansas, and while we were there, we visited the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum.

It was a very interesting place with complete replicas of the the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room. According to the statistics, the library and museum houses about 76.8 million pages of paper documents from Bill Clinton's administration.

Included in the museum were large displays with a timeline showing key events and highlights of Mr. Clinton's eight years in office. His daily schedules were located in binders below the timeline, and on the back of each timeline display were glass cases filled with letters he sent and received during his presidency.

There were letters from Fred Rogers (of "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" TV fame), Tony Danza, Sheryl Crow and many others. In some cases, there were copies of Mr. Clinton's replies to the letter writers. There were also letters to Hillary Clinton when she was First Lady. She received letters from Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama and others.

Reports that came out last week indicate that President Barack Obama may be the first U.S. President to use e-mail while in the White House. I hope that won't diminish the number of letters he sends or receives. A glass case full of printed-out e-mails just won't be the same as the handwritten and hand-signed letters that are in Mr. Clinton's library.

To me, that part of the Clinton Library was just one more celebration of the importance of letters in our lives.