A Quick Guide to USPS Postal Rates

Several years ago, in preparation for a Type-In and Letter-Writing Social, I put together a sheet of postal rates to help participants figure out how much postage they would need.  I posted it here, too, and recently that old post got a comment requesting an updated sheet.

Motivated by kind words and the opportunity to be helpful, I have indeed put together a new sheet.  Please feel free to download and add it to your letter-writing toolkit!

Shining with Delight: Mail Call Follow-Up

Because joy is a thing best shared, I’m passing along a follow-up on the call for cards for Miss Phoebe’s 100th birthday.  Her birthday was a few days ago and, as of yesterday, she had received 99 cards – and not just received them, but received them with delight and appreciation at being made to feel so special.

Cheryl reports that some of the cards decorate the walls and the rest are tucked into a special new box which is brought out for all visitors to admire.  To quote Cheryl, Miss Phoebe is “shining with delight” over the cards.  Thank you to all my readers who took the time to add to her happy glow.

More opportunities to make people glow with the joy of letters are on the Scribbling Good page. Happy letter-writing!

Request: 100 cards for 100th birthday

I’m signal-boosting a request from my friend Cheryl:

Miss Phoebe is turning 100 in a couple weeks.  She doesn’t want a party, but she would welcome cards.  If you have a few minutes, perhaps you will send her well-wishes as she celebrates a century of life?

Her address is:

Phoebe Anthony
Golden Rule Nursing Home
20806 Bayside Ave.
Rock Hall, MD 21661

For a little more about Miss Phoebe, visit Cheryl’s blog.

Mail Art Dabbling

There are some truly spectacular mail artists in the world.  Me? I’m more of a creative dabbler.

Recently, I’ve tried my hand at a couple projects inspired by tutorials generously shared by Lindsay at The Postman’s Knock.  Lindsay’s examples are gorgeous and precise.  My creations are rather more wobbly, but it’s such fun to play!

If you look at Lindsay’s How to Draw Lace tutorial, you can see that she has worked with great care and achieved a very balanced design.  In contrast, if you suspect that I did not follow the direction about using a ruler to measure the spacing of the ovals (or anything else), you would be correct.

My Hand Drawn Frame attempt turned out more true to the original.  I used the ruler this time!  I wasn’t sure how the envelope at hand would take watercolors, so I jumped right into bold color at the start.

Regardless of whether my attempts look like the original example, when I make mail art, my goal is to create something that didn’t exist before and enjoy the process.  Achievement unlocked!

What about you? Have you dabbled creatively recently?

Banana Love Notes

Over the past few months, I’ve received a series of love notes written on bananas. They cannot be tucked away and saved, so I have photographed them for continued enjoyment. For you inspiration, here is a small sampling.

I’m all in favor of creative celebrations of love. Have you ever received a love note in a form that delighted you as much as the message? Do you consider good nutrition an act of love? Will you now be writing someone a banana note?

Postal Present and Cati Captioning Kickoff

The slightly-dented, rusty-around-the-edges mailbox that came with the house sent many letters off into the world and welcomed quite a few to their final destination. But it reached a point where the door regularly ended up dangling from its one good screw on days when a substitute letter carrier tugged it a little too hard. Even on a good day, the door didn’t shut properly and the rust was spreading.

Given the standing tradition of postal presents, perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised to discover a new mailbox under the tree. But I was genuinely surprised–and delighted.

Yes, it did come complete with love letters already inside!

It is top of the line, sturdy construction with a door and flag that glide smoothly. It had its inaugural use this morning when I sent off my first batch of letters for the new year.  I can only imagine how impressed the letter carrier must’ve been with the upgrade.

In other news, the Cacti Captioning project is just about to launch into the postal stream.  If you signed up to participate, I’ll be in touch very soon.  If you’re feeling sad because the original post got lost in the whirlwind of the holidays and you didn’t have a chance to sign up–good news!–I still have spaces available for interested letter-writers and artists. If you’d like to join the fun, let me know and I’ll add you to the list of collaborators.

Seeking Collaborators: Cacti Captioning & Creative Alteration Project

Quite a while ago, I received a package from a friend.  Inside, I found this book:

It features photographs of saguaro cacti with captions – and space for you to write in your own captions:

“Hey, don’t go! I know what you saw, but it’s not what you think!”

I recently unearthed this book while going through a pile of Things That Have Potential and thought, The time has come for this to be the centerpiece in a collaborative altered book project!

To accomplish this, collaborators are needed!

If you would like to caption, doodle, collage, or otherwise take part in altering this book, please let me know in the comments or contact me privately by January 1, 2016.  I will kick off the new year by contacting all interested parties with details about this round robin art endeavor and together we will create the Cacti Captioning & Creative Alteration Project.

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On a related note: If the idea of captioning cacti makes you laugh and you’re a fan of quirky romances, you might enjoy the writing and humor of G.G. Andrews, the friend who found this book in the first place.

To Do: Write More Fan Mail

When I was quite small, I wrote a letter to Oscar the Grouch.*  I made the editorial decision to sign my first piece of fan mail as “Grungetta” (perhaps believing that Oscar would pay more attention to a letter from someone he knew, but more likely just because Playing Pretend is the best game ever).  I ripped up construction paper to include in the envelope, because it seemed only proper to send him some trash.

And I got a reply:

I was gleeful that the response addressed me as Grungetta — they believed I was the real deal!  (Clearly I didn’t notice the return address…)   For a very long time after receiving this letter, whenever I saw Oscar’s trashcan on Sesame Street, I wondered if the pieces of paper I’d ripped up were still on his floor.

I also wrote to Mr. Rogers whose typewriter was not full of trash:

I was deeply disappointed he wasn’t able to come over for dinner.  He’s still one of my heroes.

Jumping ahead through years that involved only very occasional fan letter writing (mostly to authors), we arrive in the present day where letter writing is one of my nerdoms and I believe in letting people know they’re appreciated.  This combination is clearly a recipe for writing fan mail.  Accordingly, I recently decided to write to the creative minds behind Pretend Wizards.  It became a fairly elaborate production.  Scissors and glue were involved and there were multiple pieces by the time I finished.

I had a few moments of wondering if I was going overboard.  But I quickly squashed that thought.  I’ve gotten many, many hours of enjoyment thanks to what this group of people has created and I really wanted to let them know in style.  So, I did.  They subsequently talked about receiving and enjoying my fan mail on the “Mail Bag” section of one of their episodes, which was awesome.

Why am I telling you about these letters I’ve written?  To encourage you to write fan mail to people who do the creative things you love and to the people who inspire you in some way.  It’s win-win.  You get to be unabashedly enthusiastic and the recipient gets tangible appreciation.  Try it — write someone a letter of wholehearted admiration.  As appropriate, include ripped up paper, a dinner invitation, or a selection of teas.  If so inspired, report back.  I predict that both you and your recipient will feel better about humanity in general as a result.

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*The idea to write to Oscar and Mr. Rogers originated from my mom who has a genius for proposing simple activities that kids adore.  If you have kids, teach kids, hang out with kids, etc., a letter writing project is an excellent undertaking.

In the spirit of literacy and letter writing

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you may recall that a while ago I recommended several books for kids featuring letters and sending mail.  Why?  Because books in the hands of children create readers and inspire new interests.  Besides, who among us doesn’t love a good book about mail?  And these have the added bonus of great illustrations!  So, in the spirit of literacy and letter writing, today I recommend four books; three about letter carriers of different flavors, and one about the era when you could mail order a house.

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Millie Waits for the Mail by Alexander Steffensmeier

You may think that dogs are the stuff of nightmares for mail carriers, but that’s only because you haven’t yet read about Millie. Oh, yes, she waits for the mail — to be more precise, she lies in wait and takes great glee in scaring the mail carrier. Oh, my.

This book has conflict and a smooshed package, but, fear not, it ends happily.

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A Letter for Leo by Sergio Ruzzier

A story about Leo who delivers the mail, makes a friend when he is kind to a stranger, and–finally!–receives a letter of his own.

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Mr Griggs’ Work by Cynthia Rylant

Mr. Griggs “spent millions of minutes of his long life shuffling through letters, watching the pictures on the stamps change, punching his First Class puncher, weighing fat brown boxes, and listening to long tales about ‘The Letter That Never Got There.'” 

Need I say more or is that enough to sell you on getting to know Mr. Griggs?  (I really love this one.)

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And the bonus book: The House in the Mail by Rosemary and Tom Wells

This one is less about mail and more about the process of constructing a mail order house, BUT it’s a great slice of history and shows what a wonder mail order merchandise was in the 1920s–something that may not have happened without the USPS’s introduction of Rural Free Delivery in 1896.

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Now, run to your library and ask for these books.  Then find a child and share.  Enjoy!

List of Letters, c. 1860

The Maryland State Archives’ newspaper digitization project aims to preserve and provide easy access to newspapers published in Maryland from the 1700s through the 1940s.  Personal experience leads me to caution you that taking a casual look at their online collection can result in a great deal of time spent reading vintage advertisements and musing that the gossipy “Personal and Social” and “Local Matters” sections are, perhaps, the analog forerunners to social media (“Dr. and Mrs. H. L. Dodd’s little daughter recently sat on a needle and was very much inconvenienced until the cause of her sickness was discovered.” Yes, this tidbit really appeared in the paper, circa 1920).

While randomly browsing the Saturday, November 24, 1860 edition of the Kent News, a “List of Letters” signed by the postmaster caught my eye.

Curious about what this meant, I did some research.  Since Rural Free Delivery did not become a universal service until 1902, in the 1860s people had to stop by the post office and inquire whether they had mail.  Because of this, there was a postal regulation requiring:

“That the postmasters shall, respectively, publish, at the expiration of every three months, or oftener, when the Postmaster General shall so direct, in one of the newspapers published at or nearest the place of his residence, for three successive weeks, a list of all the letters remaining in their respective offices”

If the addressees failed to claim their mail within three months of the list being published, the Postmaster was charged with opening unclaimed items in order to look for “any valuable papers, or matters of consequence” and then attempting to notify or return items to the sender.

Today, individual post offices hold “dead letters” for a much shorter period of time.  “Undeliverable, unendorsed standard letters or flats” land in the recycling bin on a daily basis.  Certain categories of mail and loose-in-mail items are sent to the USPS Mail Recovery Center.  If valid claims for lost mail are filed, items are returned.  If not, they may be auctioned.

Have you ever lost something in the mail?

Sources

Leech, D.D.T. (1857). List of post offices in the United States; with the names of postmasters, on the 13th of July, 1857; Also, the regulations and laws of the Post Office Department. John C. Rives (publisher). Retrieved from: https://books.google.com/books?id=6U4ZAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false

Publication 100 – The United States Postal Service – An American History 1775 – 2006 ( 2012, November). Retrieved from: http://about.usps.com/publications/pub100/pub100_001.htm

Stam, J. L. (1860, November 24) “List of Letters” The Kent News, 21(29), 2. Retrieved from: http://mdhistory.net/msa_sc2901/msa_sc2901_scm1621/html/msa_sc2901_scm1621-0006.html