JOURNAL
documenting
&
discovering joyful things
What to say when you're writing a letter
Actually don't ask me, ask American teens Wally and Nora, direct from a kitchen table in 1950. This movie is SO BAD but actually quite helpful, with simple tips like:
* Write conversationally, as though you're talking to the person * Illustrate what you're saying with stories and anecdotes and other bits and pieces to bring the words to life * Imagine how the recipient might be reacting to your letter, how it will make them feel (* Think how you WANT them to feel, and write to create that feeling in them) * Make your letter look nice (!)
Ok let's meet Wally and Nora:
Yours sincerely, Naomi xo
ps. I first discovered this video via Post Whistle blog
Oh hello famous person, what do you think about snail-mail?
"Two of the cruelest, most primitive punishments our town deals out to those who fall from favor are the empty mailbox and the silent telephone." Hedda Hopper (actor, gossip columnist)
“If it takes the entire army and navy to deliver a postal card in Chicago, that card will be delivered.” Grover Cleveland (22nd & 24th President of the United States)
"I love the rebelliousness of snail mail, and I love anything that can arrive with a postage stamp. There's something about that person's breath and hands on the letter." Diane Lane (actor)
"This is the Night Mail crossing the Border, Bringing the cheque and the postal order, Letters for the rich, letters for the poor, The shop at the corner, the girl next door." W.H. Auden (poet)
“To write is human, to receive a letter: Devine!” Susan Lendroth (children's book author)
"There is a huge pleasure in writing a letter, putting it in an envelope and sticking the stamp on it. And huge pleasure in receiving real letters, too." Tom Hodgkinson (writer, editor, socialist)
"When I was a kid, the high point of the day was to go to the mailbox and see if any mail came for me, and I'm still stuck in that mode." Jim Beaver (actor)
"I get mail; therefore I am." Scott Adams (cartoonist)
ps. Envelope pictures are of some of my latest outgoing letters. But you already knew that.
ps. have you heard about my new letter-writing and mail-art e-course?
Over four weeks, I will guide you through multiple methods of making beautiful mail-art and creative, handmade stationery; teach you the art of writing and storytelling; help you forge personal connections in your letters and find pen-pals if you want them; and share time-management tips so even the busiest people can enjoy sending and receiving letters. Register your place or find out more information right here.
19 ways to make snail-mail (even more) fun
A little while ago I mentioned I was making a zine about things you can do with snail mail. Things that help you connect with other people (both strangers and friends), to play games, practice creativity, and show you care. Every page has a call-to-action, like a website you can visit or key words to Google or an address to write to.
I made 11 copies of the zine, and sent them off to some lovely blog readers. I wanted to make more, I truly did, but I don't have a double-sided printer and I just couldn't get the fronts and the backs to line up (do you know what I mean?), so I had to cut and paste all the individual pages and each zine literally took me HOURS to make.
In for a penny in for a pound, so I also hand-made some little envelope homes for the zines, out of last year's old calendar (it was SUCH a beautiful calendar - I wish I had one like it this year!). I finished the whole thing off with a wax seal, as you do.
If you'd like your own copy of this zine and can help me figure out the photocopying conundrum, let me know. Or maybe I should make it available as an e-book? What do you think? Would you like that? In the meantime, I made this little movie so you can see what's inside.
Yours truly, Naomi xo
How to be a good journalist
There is a lot of talk around the Internet (and coffee shops and gyms and office kitchens) at the moment about the failure of the media to query anything, even the most basic of details, about wellness entrepreneur Belle Gibson's claims of surviving countless "terminal" illnesses through diet. As Belle's business and reputation and apparent lies tumble around her, publicly and completely, we are all left wondering, and picking her story apart. WHAT WENT WRONG, everyone wants to know.
And, why didn't anybody ask the right questions?
I'm not going to weigh in on this, other than to say that the whole situation leaves me feeling a bit sick and dirty. Tainted, somehow. And deeply, deeply saddened for everyone involved and everyone whose good nature was callously used. Even for Belle herself, and definitely for her baby boy. I try to put myself in her shoes and I can't but, clearly, something is deeply, deeply wrong.
ANYWAY.
When I started out as a journalist in the 1990s, my first job was in rural commodities. I was a radio reporter, broadcasting daily news stories on scintillating topics like wool futures and cattle markets and whether cotton prices were bullish or bearish (those are real things).
This was a challenge because I felt I could barely count, let alone provide reliable economic analysis and commentary to people who relied upon it for their livings. I think said as much to my Editor, who had taken a massive punt on me in the first place and hired me over more than 100 other applicants.
And that's when he gave me the best advice I have ever received in my entire journalistic career.
Are you ready?
"You don't have to be the expert. You just have to find the expert, and ask the right questions."
It's that simple. To be a good journalist, you only need to do two things.
1) Find an expert. An ACTUAL expert, not a fraud, so do your due diligence. 2) Ask your expert the right questions. Think: what do people need to know? What do people WANT to know? And if you're thinking, "Why does that work," or "How does that work," or simply "I don't get it," then ask those questions, because maybe (probably) your readers will be thinking the same things.
Don't worry about appearing silly, because it's ok. You're not the expert. You're not supposed to be the expert. They are! So just go ahead and ask the right person the good questions and ask them the dumb questions and then put all the answers together into a story that is honest and informative and possibly entertaining and… did I mention honest?
That's it. Now you know how to be a good journalist.
Image credit: Sergey Zolkin, licensed under Creative Commons
Outgoing mail art
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Hello! I'm just popping in quickly this morning because we have 10 people coming to our place for lunch today. I'm not cooking (I wish I was, because I love cooking for friends), but the house is a MESS and there is play dough in my hair and I just discovered my black pants have a hole in one knee.
Before I bundle the kids off to daycare and change my clothes and start the mammoth clean, I thought I'd share some of the mail art I've been sending all over the world. Mostly to blog readers who subscribe, but also a little sneaky letter for Pip Lincolne's "52 Hellos" project. Have you written to Pip yet? Would you like to join in?
Have a lovely weekend, dear friends!
ps. Did I tell you I'd made a gallery of all my past mail art? At least, the ones I remembered to photograph? I did, and it's here if you'd like to have a gander
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The Most Beautiful Letter You Have Ever Written
Come join me and a host of gentle, creative, like-minded people in my five-week letter-writing and mail-art course, delivered entirely online. This course is all about creativity, personal connections, and spreading joy to others through the old-fashioned postal service. Learn more or join in here.
Dear friend, email vs snail mail (+ mail art)
Dear friend,
Why do you think we set up email and snail mail against one another, as if one was superior to the other? Electronic versus paper. Fast versus slow. Wireless versus tangible. Really they’re all just ways to communicate with one another, aren’t they? To reach out, to stay connected, to be part of… more.
I love that the movie You’ve Got Mail, a movie about falling in love - anonymously - over email was based on The Shop Around the Corner, which was a movie about falling in love - anonymously - over letters. You’ve Got Mail pays homage to The Shop Around the Corner in a hundred different ways, even in the style of writing used by two sets of pen-pals, almost 60 years apart.
But it also shows that there’s really not a lot of difference between the two forms of letter-writing, when it comes down to it. Both movies are light-hearted fun but as viewers, it’s not beyond our imaginations that two people might just fall in love with one another from their words alone, regardless of the medium through which those words are shared.
I guess that’s because humans are the ones doing the letter-writing, so the heart remains the same.
Still, I wonder.
“I would send you a bouquet of newly-sharpened pencils, if I knew your name and address,” Joe Fox wrote, via email, to his pen-pal Kathleen Kelly in You’ve Got Mail. But if their movie had been about snail-mail instead of email, well, then, he could have gone ahead and sent her those newly-sharpened pencils. And newly-sharpened pencils would be rather nice to find in your letterbox, don’t you think? (If you are pondering whether or not to send me pencils through the mail, don’t hold back.)
Did I just disprove my own point, dear friend? It’s entirely possible, but then I’m still not so sure. I guess it’s something think about. I’ll write again soon.
Hope you are well. Yours truly, Naomi xo
ps. The letters below are from another batch of mail-art I recently sent to blog readers. You can see more here.
This, but also that
Ugh. We have been sick all weekend. First it was Ralph, who went to bed just fine on Wednesday night and within four hours had produced enough mucus to fill a swimming pool. By Thursday night Scout had joined that club, and managed to sneeze INTO my mouth not once but twice while I was rubbing Vaporub onto her chest. And lo and behold, by Friday night I was sporting a tell-tale sore throat…
We are all feeling sniffly and foggy-headed and sorry for ourselves, bunkering down with copious quantities of berries and freshly-squeezed orange juice, and garlic-y foodstuffs. The house looks like a bomb hit it, the floors and all visible surfaces thick with toys, tissues and craft supplies: fallout from a weekend spent with two children sick enough to need to stay home but well enough to need constant entertaining. I could tidy up at night, but I’m too busy lying on the couch and moaning and sipping lemon-honey tea.
Also, I’ve been watching some of the movies on the Snail Mail Movie Club list. Here’s an update so far:
The Postman Why do people keep paying Kevin Costner to make movies?!?, BUT, I kind of like the premise that in times of war or oppression, communication becomes a powerful weapon
The Shop Around the Corner Sweet and I loved how closely You’ve Got Mail referenced it in both style and substance, BUT I could have wished for more of the actual pen-pal correspondence - I think they did that better in You’ve Got Mail
Letters to Juliet Super cheesy and WHAT were they thinking with the utterly cardboard romantic-interest guy (I can’t even remember his name - the blonde one), BUT a completely beautiful (and real-life) practice of writing letters about love to Juliet Capulet, AND Vanessa Redgrave - I want to be her, at any age!
84 Charing Cross Road Followed the book quite closely and just made me happy really, BUT occasionally a weird thing would happen where sometimes the actors, while reading their letters out loud, would look straight at the camera
Still to watch:
* Il Postino * We’ve Got Christmas Mail * The Night Mail * In the Good Old Summertime * PS I Love You * Message in a Bottle * Air Mail * Poste Restante
What am I missing? Any other movies about snail mail? And have you seen any of these? What did you think?
And how are you? How are your loved-ones? Hopefully sore-throat and mucus free!
Image credit: horses (totally unrelated to this post but I liked them) by Bethany Legg, licensed under Creative Commons
Love letters
Earlier this week when I posted about the Snail Mail Movie Club, a number of people gave me some wonderful recommendations for snail-mail-themed movies to watch. One of them was Letters to Juliet, which I duly watched on iTunes a couple of nights ago.
Have you seen it? The premise is that people write letters to Juliet Capulet (of Romeo and Juliet fame), mostly about their love-lives, and leave them on a wall opposite the balcony in Verona where once the original Juliet sighed and pondered “What’s in a name?” (It doesn’t seem to matter to them that Juliet is a purely fictional character.)
So far, it’s just a kind of sweet “passing through” tradition, like leaving a padlock on the Pont des Arts in Paris. But the best part of THIS story is that a group of women who call themselves the “Secretaries of Juliet” hand-write answers to each and every letter.
After I finished watching the movie I looked this tradition up and, with a lovely sense of “rightness” in the world, I found out it was true!
Apparently it all started more than 100 years ago, when visitors began to leave notes at Juliet’s supposed tomb. But the tradition really found its feet in 1937, when the then-custodian of Juliet’s tomb, Ettore Solimani, began replying to the notes, simply styling himself “Juliet’s Secretary.”
In the letters, which came from all over the world but were predominantly from adolescent American girls, people told Juliet their hopes and dreams. They shared their stories. They asked for her advice, they asked for her help.
“Help me! Save me!” one Italian woman wrote to Juliet, after her husband had left her. "I feel suspended on a precipice. I am afraid of going mad.”
Juliet, through Solimani replied, “Men have moments when they are unable to control themselves… Have faith… The day of humiliation will come for the intruder, and your husband will come back to you.” I hope everything worked out for her, whether he returned or not.
(That exchange came from a 2006 article in the New York Times, taken in turn from the book Letters to Juliet by Lise and Ceil Friedman, which I’ve ordered online but not yet read).
I love Solimani’s extravagant eccentricity in taking on the role of Juliet’s Secretary, a title he held for 20 years until he retired in the late 1950s. Stories tell that he created a series of rituals for visitors to the tomb, inviting them to make wishes that he promised would come true, and training turtle doves to alight on female visitors.
These days, the Secretaries of Juliet are a team of letter-writers, volunteers engaged by the City of Verona, called the Club di Giulietta. They answer all the letters, in every language, contracting translators if necessary. If you want to, you can even volunteer as a secretary yourself!
If a self-funded trip to Verona is a bit beyond the budget right now, you might still want to share your stories and dreams with Juliet, or seek her advice, at any time.
"Who knows if Juliet can really solve the problems in the matter of love, if she can make a dream come true or give hope to lovelorns… Sure is that this phenomenon has taken on global dimensions and has become part of the collective imagination,” her Secretaries say.
If you’d like to write to Juliet, simply addressing your letter to “Juliet in Verona” will be enough, but her formal address is:
Giulietta Capulet Club di Giulietta Via Galilei, 3 Verona Italy
The snail-mail movie club
Let me explain.
I’m writing a book about snail mail. One that celebrates snail mail in the modern age, and has a lot of fun with all the ways you can write and create and send snail mail, to brighten others’ days, not to mention your own. Since I’ve been researching this book, I’ve also got to thinking about snail mail in popular culture, like books and TV and movies, and that’s where you come in.
I’ve made a list of all the movies I can think of that celebrate snail mail. Perhaps you know some others? What I’d love is for you to watch one or more of these movies, or one you know about that I haven’t shared here, and send me your impressions, either in the comments or privately via email (nabulger at gmail dot com) by the end of this month (February 2015).
If this was a proper club, we’d watch one movie a month together, or something along those lines. But at that rate, my book wouldn’t get written until about 2018! So instead, just pick one or as many movies as you’d like to watch this month, and go for it!
It doesn’t have to be a full review. You might just want to send a couple of words. Or one sentence. How the movie makes you feel about snail mail, something that surprised you, something that inspired you, something that made you go WHAAAAAT?! Pretty much anything!
Hopefully I’ll have enough movie responses to be able to share little comments and quotes when I talk about all the snail mail movies in my book. I’ll use your first and last name unless you’d rather be anonymous (just let me know and I’ll make a name up), and if you have a blog you’d like me to share I’m happy to do that too.
What do you think? Will you watch a movie (or two) with me? Maybe you could have a snail-mail movie night with friends, while writing and decorating letters (Valentine’s Day is coming up - does Grandma deserve a love letter?).
Meanwhile, I’d really appreciate it if you could share this post around your social media and other networks, so that as many people as possible might be able to be part of this.
Yours sincerely,
Naomi xo
The movies:
(Top row) 84 Charing Cross Road // Message in a Bottle // Night Mail // We’ve Got Christmas Mail (Bottom row) Air Mail // Poste Restante // The Postman // The Shop Around the Corner
ps. I actually haven’t seen any of these myself, so if you’re in the same boat we’ll be watching along together for the first time. Some of them look really bad, don’t you think? But that’s half the fun. The two I’m looking forward to the most are the The Shop Around the Corner and 84 Charing Cross Road (brilliant book!)
ps2. Here’s where you’ll find some of my old snail mail and mail-art posts
ps3. My last book, called “Airmail,” is a novella about two strangers who are connected by letters and stories. You can find out more about it here
Stationery crush
How beautiful are these letter sets, designed and published by Zetta Florence? The images were sourced from the State Library of Victoria. They’re beautiful to look at, and the stock is thick and heavy and wonderfully textured. I love that the artwork is all on the envelopes, leaving the cards clean and free to write (or draw) your own message however you like.
What you're looking at:
The building: "State Library of Victoria architecture, The Public Library, Museums and National Galleries of Victoria, New Reading Room and Stack Rooms (detail), Bates, Peebles & Smart, architects, 1909, collection of the Public Record Office Victoria"
The hummingbirds: "John Gould, A monograph of the Trochilidae, or, A Family of Humming-birds, London, 1849-61, Rare Books Collection, State Library of Victoria"
The street map: "Melbourne and its Suburbs (detail, enhanced), James Kearney, draughtsman, 1855, Rare Printed Collection, State Library of Victoria"