Return to Sender

Shortly after I started this project, I realized that my project was just that...MY project, not everyone else's project. Although the letter writing process takes considerably more time than phone calls, e-mailing and texting, in the long run, it all happens fairly quickly. I write a letter and mail it off. A friend or family member gets the letter and writes me back...it all takes a week or two. Especially if we haven't seen or talked to one another for awhile, we generally catch up our lives in those two letters. Then what?


Like I said, this is my project. Just because I wanted to write a lot of letters this year, doesn't mean everyone I know wants to write a lot of letters or that they have time to do so. If I send off a speedy second letter, my letter's recipient might feel obligated to write again, even if he or she doesn't have time or much to say.

As I searched for more and more people to write to, I tracked down the addresses of "old" friends and acquaintances, many of whom I've never heard back from. Maybe my letters were lost in the system; maybe they just didn't have anything to say in reply. In all fairness, some of the letters went to people I haven't seen or heard from since high school.

All that is to say that I soon began looking for other people to write letters to. That's how I found the pen pal blogs, Web sites and forums. I've made some lovely new friends this way and have written a lot of letters without overburdening my close friends and family with too many letters.

Yesterday, after all these months of writing letters, I got a "Return to Sender" notice. I sent out a card and an introductory note to a girl whose name and address I found on sendsomething.net. She's probably been too busy with her life to update her profile, and I know that's always a chance I take when send off a letter to a stranger.

The most amazing thing to me (besides the fact that the old-fashioned "Return to Sender" rubber stamp is still used) is that I've only received one such notice. I've sent out so much mail, I wouldn't have been surprised to have gotten more returned letters.

What a delight!

This weekend, I received a letter from a friend I've known for quite a few years. It was a surprise and a delight...I'm sure I owe her a letter, so I wasn't expecting anything in the mail from her.

But, here it was...just a letter letting me know that she was thinking about me. She mentioned a movie that she knew I'd like and a writer she's recently discovered.

That makes at least two "old" friends I've reconnected with through this letter-writing projects. In both situations, we still kept in touch intermittently, but we're now writing quite regularly. I've also made a lot of new penpal friends, and a few friends are now e-mailing more often!

What fun!

New Letter-writing Sites

I've recently found a couple of new letter-writing Web sites/blogs that you might find interesting.

We Love Snail Mail offers a chance for fellow letter writers to connect with each other. Once you join (no charge), you can post your mailing address in the Forum section, as well as see the addresses of the other members. Then, you can start sending and, hopefully, receiving mail.

Over at the blog Save Our USPS, Linda is offering up suggestions for helping the U.S. Postal Service stay in business. After yesterday and today's news about the Post Office (closings, dramatic financial losses), it seems the USPS might, indeed, need saving. I'm sure Linda will appreciate it if you visit her site and leave a comment or two with some more suggestions for helping out the Post Office.

If you like sending and receiving "real" mail, these two sites are worth your time!

Fun discovery

Sometimes, I am just amazed at how things link together, providing us with more information and enlightenment.

For me, this letter writing thing isn't something new. From letters to and from friends and relatives when I was a kid, to world-wide pen pals when I was a teenager, I've always been interested in communicating with other people.

While working on the 365 Letters project, I keep coming across newspaper clippings that I've saved through the years.

Recently I found an undated but yellowed newspaper article by Mike Harden with the Scripps Howard News Service. It was clipped from the Dallas Morning News, and the headline reads: "Letter-writing leader seeks pals, not lovers."

The article is all about Steve Sikora, who at the time lived in Albany, Calif. He published a three-times-a-year magazine called "The Letter Exchange."

According to the article, Mr. Sikora never intended for the pen pal service to be a match-making service. In fact, he's quoted as saying, "Meet minds through these pages, not bodies... Writing to at total stranger is both exciting and risky... Don't get caught up in a fantasy world."

However, the article goes on to explain, sometimes love bloomed after all. At the time the article was written, Mr. Sikora said "a couple dozen" of the thousands of pen pals he had connected had married each other.

After all these years, I still found the article interesting. And, now, with Google so handy, I checked to see of "The Letter Exchange" was still being published.

What a nice surprise! Although Mr. Sikora retired from the magazine in the year 2000, just three years later, it was revived by Gary and Lonna, who were involved with what is known as LEX in its earlier years. They are still publishing the magazine, with the next issue slated to come out later this month. And, they have a Web site for The Letter Exchange now. And, I see from some information on the LEX Web site that some of my fellow letter-writing bloggers know about LEX.

Here's the gist of the magazine....you subscribe and send in a listing about yourself. Your listing is published in the magazine without your name or address; you're identified by a LEX number. Then, other people who read the magazine, pick out listings that they're interested in and send letters to LEX. The letters are then forwarded to the appropriate person, and a penfriendship is established.

The Web site lists the current subscription prices as ranging from $21.50 to $26.50, depending on the type of delivery you want and where you live.

It looks like a great project!

My stamps arrived!

As I've ventured more and more into the 21st century penpal world, I've remembered some things from the past. When I was in high school and had penpals from all over the globe, I often used the less expensive self-mailers that the post office sold. The postage was pre-printed on the all-in-one stationery/envelope. If I didn't use one of those blue mailers, I most likely used a standard U.S. Postal Service airmail/international postage stamp.

Maybe I didn't realize I didn't have to use those particular stamps; maybe I just didn't fully comprehend the popularity of "stamp art." I remember one penpal writing and asking me to use some different stamps. I'm sure he or she was collecting stamps and wanted something new for the collection.

After reading some comments on letter writing blogs and forums, I've once again realized the fun in using a variety of stamps. So, I logged on to the U.S. Postal Service's Web site and ordered some stamps.

What fun it was! I calculated all sorts of postage rates and picked out stamps in several different amounts.

It took my order a week to arrive, but to be fair, I did place the order on the Friday of a three-day weekend. Now, I'm having fun choosing just the right stamp for each envelope.

Pens and paper and cards!

One thing that seems to be common among letter writers is our love for all the trappings that go with writing letters...the paper, the pens, the envelopes, the stamps...and the cards, oh my, the cards! It's all just so much fun!

I have my favorite pens, including a silver Parker pen that I gave to my grandmother and then I inherited after she passed away. No one else likes to write with it because it's skinny and slick; they think it's hard to hold, but I never have a problem with it. I don't like rollerball pens; I never can get the ink to flow smoothly. But, I do love a good fountain pen. Problem is, right now, my fountain pen leaks ink, and I haven't figured out out to solve the problem yet.

On the other hand, I also find it hard to pass up fun pens. In my purse, I have the Parker pen and a collection of very inexpensive colored pens. And, just yesterday, I splurged and bought a large package of multi-colored Sharpie brand pens. I don't yet know what I'll do with them, but I couldn't resist the "Limited Edition Cafe Colors"! Who can walk past pens with names like "Earl Gray" "Pomegranate" and "Mocha"?

And, the paper. Oh boy do I have paper! I'm hoping this 365 Letters project will help me whittle down my stationery collection. I have lined paper, plain paper, hotel stationery from places I've never even been, special "onion skin" paper I bought way back in high school when I had all the overseas penpals and needed thin paper to cut down on postage costs. I haven't bought stationery in years, yet, still, my paper and card collection fills to overflowing a large under-the-bed box!

Speaking of cards...who can resist them? I have the standard greeting cards — Happy Birthday, Hope You're Feeling Better, Sorry I Missed Your Birthday, etc. And, then I have notecards, blank cards with pictures or drawings on the front and lots of room to write on the inside. And, just in case I ever run out of decorated notecards, I have plenty of really blank ones that are just waiting for me to decorate.

I'd say envelopes are the least exciting part of my letter-writing paraphernalia. When I was a teenager, I worked for American Greetings, keeping up the card rack at a retail store. When cards were damaged, lost or stolen, the envelopes were left over, so I built up quite a collection of odd-sized envelopes. Nowadays, my daughter and I enjoy making our own envelopes from magazine covers, calendar pages, old books and even yellow legal pad pages.

Hopefully by the end of this year, I'll have used up quite a bit of all this stuff...then I'll go shopping for more!

Pen Pals in the 21st Century

Back in my high school days, I had several pen pals, people who lived in different countries and exchanged letters with me. People I had never met.

To tell the truth, that was quite a few years ago, and I really don't remember all the details about how I got all the pen pals. It seems that there were some sort of services that we sent our name and address to and they matched us up with pen pals. I'm sure it was free. I had pen pals in England, Japan, Denmark, Malaysia, a couple of African countries and maybe Korea.

One time, my pen pal in Denmark sent me information about getting a pen pal in Yugoslavia. We both sent our names in. As it turns out, it wasn't a pen pal service, it was, apparently, the most popular teen magazine in Yugoslavia. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Yugoslavian teens read our request for pen pals and had our addresses. I received dozens, maybe hundreds of letters. I don't remember how many I responded to, but in the end, I had several Yugoslavian pen pals.

One of the funniest stories involved a cute Yugoslavian boy who wrote to both me and my pen pal from Denmark. One time, he inadvertently mixed up the two letters and sent mine to her and hers to me. Problem was, they were identical...and he was declaring his undying love and desire to meet both of us. I think we both dumped him.

Of course, this was in the 1980s, before e-mail was invented, so it took several weeks for that scenario to play out across the miles.

I tried recently to find out if there are still such things as pen-and-paper pen pals. It seems in this day and age, there aren't many. First of all, the Internet, along with e-mail, blogs, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, etc., makes possible instantaneous communication with just about anyone in the world. Secondly, with fears of stalkers and child abductors, I think very few people are willing to participate in a program that sends kids' names and addresses out to unknown people.

Still, I did find a few of sites that might be of help to anyone looking to write "real" letters to someone else. Of course, I had to weed through a bunch of dating sites and prisoner pen pal sites, but these seem more legitimate. But, if you're looking for a pen pal, please investigate any service thoroughly before you send them anything. I'm not recommending these sites, just sharing what I found. And, I have never used any of these sites myself. It looks like most of these services have fees.

The publisher of this site, Friendship-by-mail.com, has a newsletter that you can subscribe to.
International Pen Friends says it's been around since 1967, connecting pen pals around the world.
Student Letter Exchange says it's been around for 70 years, and it has an "Adult Pen Pal Directory" section.

There may be more pen pal services out there, but I haven't found them yet.