Tag Archives: letter writing

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Snail Mail from an Inland Valley Daily Bulletin Reader

What a wonderful surprise to find this delightful card in my mailbox! She wrote in response to my December 12, 2021 column titled “Writing Someone a Letter Would Be the Gift of a Lifetime.”

The writer shared her lifelong enjoyment of corresponding with “Pen Friends.” She remarkably maintains correspondence with twenty people around the world.

She spends an hour-and-a-half to two hours writing each letter with a BIC pen, whose six-sided barrel she praises for its non-slip grip. Her immaculate penmanship supports her claim.

What a pleasure to connect with someone who enjoys my love for correspondence! I hope she will let me join her global group of Pen Friends.

I will definitely treasure her letter to me as a gift!

Note: Her stationary is designed by Yoshiko Yamamoto and printed by the Arts & Crafts Press.

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Drop Box Satisfaction

I feel a certain pleasure in letting

go of a letter after it has teetered

on the edge of the drop box’s slot

after I’ve nudged it with a flick of my fingers.

I listen for the landing. Is it

a resounding from the bottom of an empty

box? Or the soft shuffle of envelope

sliding on to a haphazard stack of other

sealed envelopes? Either way, my letter

is on its way. My words are written.

I am content to wait for the possibility

of a reply.

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Keeping My Letters Neat

To keep my margins straight as I hand write a letter, I use an under-sheet that I created on my computer with a bold-lined frame. To help me find my centerline, I use a folded sheet of stationary overlapping from the right-hand side. These two simple tricks keep my letters neat.

My folded sheet, under sheet, and letter-in-progress spread apart.
My left hand firmly holds the stationary overtop the under sheet while I write.
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The Letter that Made Me Write

My mother’s failure to write me for three months after she had written me regularly for over thirty years scared me.  I feared I had received my last letter from her.  My Inlandia Literary Journeys column this Sunday, December 14th in the Press Enterprise came from my personal reflections and research into the world concern about the decline in personal letter writing.