The Daily Drop Cap is an ongoing project by typographer and illustrator Jessica Hische. Each day (or at least each WORK day), a new hand-crafted decorative initial cap will be posted for your enjoyment and for the beautification of blog posts everywhere.
posted by HumanComplex on Oct 30, 2009 - 19 comments

"In April 2009, we sent a personal, handwritten letter to each of the 467 households in the small Irish village of Cushendall." Now, Michael Crowe and Lenka Clayton (previously on MeFi) intend to send a letter to everyone on the planet.
posted by creeky on Oct 30, 2009 - 63 comments

"Promoting the Love and Study of American History." The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History has many resources on its website, including over 50 free lecture podcasts, a collection of war letters throughout history, a Lincoln bicentennial page, and a new John Brown exhibition. [more inside]
posted by Hargrimm on Oct 17, 2009 - 7 comments

Vincent van Gogh's letters have been published online before, but never like this. In facsimile, when wanted. And accompanied by images of the drawings and paintings he was writing about. Sided by a weblog too. [more inside]
posted by ijsbrand on Oct 8, 2009 - 9 comments

Letters of Note reproduces and transcribes letters from the famous, the infamous, and the not-so-famous.
posted by Horace Rumpole on Sep 21, 2009 - 7 comments

The Letter Repository contains hundreds of personal letters from the early 18th Century through the Second World War. A large portion of the letters are from periods of conflict, the largest chunk being from World War Two, though there are also sizable numbers from the First World War and the American Civil War. There are also quite a few love letters. You can both see scans of the letters (and photographs or other materials) as well as transcriptions, which you can edit should you spot errors. One of my favorite collection of correspondance is the one between a Herbert Beyer, who served in the Air Force in World War Two, his darling Cleo and his parents.
posted by Kattullus on Aug 25, 2009 - 11 comments

The White House receives over 60,000 letters to the President every day. A new video from the White House briefly shows the process of selecting the ten of them that the President reads, three or four of which he writes responses to, every day.
posted by XQUZYPHYR on Aug 3, 2009 - 74 comments

"I'm dressed as a piece of chocolate because you're allergic to chocolate. But I'm a piece of chocolate you can have!" Psychotic Letters from Men.
posted by Optimus Chyme on Jul 15, 2009 - 159 comments

Soldier's Mail: Letters Home from a New England Soldier, 1916-1919.
posted by Pater Aletheias on Jul 9, 2009 - 11 comments

Joshua's Alphabet Dominoes: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
posted by twoleftfeet on May 20, 2009 - 41 comments

Letters to the President- and his responses. The story of the President's mailman. A peek inside the White House mail room.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero on Apr 19, 2009 - 35 comments

Field Force to Lhasa 1903-04 Captain Cecil Mainprise accompanied General Sir Francis Younghusband's expedition to Tibet in 1903. He wrote 50 letters home which trace the expedition’s progress into Tibet. Read this insider's account on the day they were written some 105 years later. Final post is 18 November 2009. [Via]
posted by Abiezer on Apr 4, 2009 - 8 comments

John J Marley (Gloria's husband) is Northern Ireland's answer to Lazlo Toth -- writing actual posted mail from his home at Comfydown Cottage, Carryduff, Belfast, to correspond with a variety of corporations and heads-of-state. Whether it's asking Irwin's Bakery to employ his wife Gloria (he's her husband), asking Virgin Atlantic if Gloria could take one of their 747's for a spin, or petitioning Kellogg's for adult-themed cereals, he always (well, almost always) receives an appreciative reply to his polite yet bizarre correspondence. [via cjorgensen; previously]
posted by not_on_display on Mar 10, 2009 - 21 comments

What if you wrote to Alpo to ask if they have a senior citizen's blend, or to the AARP to inquire about the living status of Abe Vigoda? And what if they wrote back? That's the purpose of Jackassletters.com, part mischief, part mayhem, from MeFi's own cjorgensen. History has demonstrated the fun of hoax letter writing, for instance Kitty Piddle Soda from Avery's Beverages. Someone has to carry on the tradition. Tweaking the noses of power and fame. (via MeFi Projects)
posted by netbros on Mar 3, 2009 - 59 comments

I love you because you play awesome songs on the jukebox. Who are you? Come here, we can talk. That's Number 165 from 300 Love Letters (but there are really 400 and here's why, and here's an explanation of the project itself). Asia Wong's other projects.
posted by amyms on Sep 7, 2008 - 26 comments

In the First Person "is a free, high quality, professionally published, in-depth index of close to 4,000 collections of personal narratives in English from around the world. It lets you keyword search more than 700,000 pages of full-text by more than 18,000 individuals from all walks of life. It also contains pointers to some 4,300 audio and video files and 30,000 bibliographic records." (Description from website.) You can also browse by repository, collection, subject and several other ways.
posted by cog_nate on Aug 7, 2008 - 9 comments

"Dear Mr Clarke... I had been a great admirer of your books for quite a time and had always wanted to discuss with you the possibility of doing the proverbial really good science-fiction movie." Excerpts from the letters of Stanley Kubrick. [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha on Jul 15, 2008 - 19 comments

Hello Hello Finally a myspace blog post worth seeing: funny window messages about neighbors with trash disposal concerns, vaguely reminiscent of the window messages in "You and Me and Everyone Else We Know" [more inside]
posted by srs on Jul 13, 2008 - 15 comments

RelationshipFilter, 1873. An online archive of letters from a wife to her husband, which include an intimate look at their relationship crisis. [more inside]
posted by amyms on May 26, 2008 - 37 comments

FamilyTales started out as an online archive of letters from a few families but has since expanded to contain letters from many historic figures. [more inside]
posted by ozomatli on Apr 16, 2008 - 2 comments

Postcards from Yo Momma.
posted by chunking express on Apr 4, 2008 - 36 comments

ABC3D is an elegant pop-up book featuring the letters of the alphabet. Plus: a flip book that generates a rainbow.
posted by tepidmonkey on Mar 24, 2008 - 16 comments

I wanted to call you tonight. Predictably enough I was in one of those confusing states of mind somewhere between desperation and liberation--too wound up to do anything about my condition. So, me being me, and me being in some city where the street corners don't mean shit to me, I set off walking trying to find God in the neighborhoods or in traffic or in the laugh of some homeless guy. Mainly though, I was trying to get lost... From Letters I Never Sent, a site "for Lovers. Liars. Crybabies. Sweetheats. Strangers. Best Friends. Old Friends. Exes. Enemies. Night Owls. Loners. Inmates. Vampires. Surfers. Soldiers. Jumpers. Writers. Widows. Ballerinas. Bastards. Gods."
posted by amyms on Mar 5, 2008 - 8 comments

Physical Review Letters' 50th anniversary retrospective promises to be an interesting survey of the physics landscape for the past half-century.
posted by Wolfdog on Feb 27, 2008 - 6 comments

Letman : Job Wouters is a Dutch designer known for his two-color flyers, which emphasize manic color and hand-lettering. His sketchbooks (White, Gray, and Black) are full of fun letter design.
posted by klangklangston on Jan 16, 2008 - 7 comments

"Dear Miss Breed..." the letters begin. Clara Estelle Breed was the children's librarian at the San Diego Public Library from 1929 to 1945. When her young Japanese American patrons and their families were forced into relocation camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1942, Miss Breed became their penpal and their lifeline, sending them books and supplies, assisting with various requests, and "serving as a reminder of the possibility for decency and justice in a troubled world." [more inside]
posted by amyms on Dec 1, 2007 - 10 comments

Open Letters to People or Entities Who Are Unlikely to Respond. start anywhere.
posted by milestogo on Nov 7, 2007 - 25 comments

After the Flatbush Pavilion theater in Brooklyn closed down, people started rearranging the letters on the marquee to spell their own messages. [more inside]
posted by tepidmonkey on Oct 11, 2007 - 25 comments

"John Adams and Abigail Smith Adams exchanged over 1,100 letters, beginning during their courtship in 1762 and continuing throughout John's political career. These warm and informative letters include John's descriptions of the Continental Congress and his impressions of Europe while he served in various diplomatic roles, as well as Abigail's updates about their family, farm, and news of the Revolution's impact on the Boston area." The Adams Electronic Archive has transcripts [example] as well as high-resolution scans [example] of the letters. You may be familiar with some snippets of their correspondence from the movie musical "1776" ("Til Then" and "Yours, Yours, Yours" scenes on YouTube).
posted by amyms on Sep 30, 2007 - 17 comments

At rivertrout.com, the goal is to bring together people who nurture a passion for an old, and yet exquisite, form of literature: The writing of letters.
posted by netbros on Aug 28, 2007 - 12 comments

According to a new study in Biology Letters (Royal Society journal), plants respond competitively when forced to share their pot with strangers of the same species, but when placed in a pot with their siblings are more accomodating. PDF, HTML.
posted by christopherious on Jun 17, 2007 - 41 comments

Darwin wrote to 2000 people during his life; 14,500 of these letters still survive. The Darwin Correspondence Project is putting annotated transcriptions of these online, and they've covered about 5,000 so far, including a letter written when he was 12 after he had got into trouble with his sister for not washing regularly while at school. There's an intro here. See also Darwin Online, discussed here. And the prolific network theorist Albert-Laszlo Barabasi has co-authored a paper on statistical similarities between Darwin's and Einstein's correspondence (#51 on the list).
posted by carter on May 16, 2007 - 11 comments

Army men as alphabet (Warning: serious plastic army men carnage).
posted by miss lynnster on Apr 2, 2007 - 17 comments

“The thing about the Kraut and me is that we have been in love since 1934, when we first met on the Île de France, but we’ve never been to bed. Amazing but true. Victims of unsynchronized passion.” Author Ernest Hemingway and actress Marlene Dietrich met while traveling across the Atlantic. Their friendship lasted until the Nobel Prize-winning author's death in 1961. In 2003, the JFK library received a donation from Marlene Dietrich's daughter of 30 letters, cards, and other documents that had been written to her mother by the author. Hemingway's estate had already donated 31 letters from Dietrich. These letters have now been unsealed and are set to go on view.
posted by miss lynnster on Mar 29, 2007 - 24 comments

Duclod man uncovered. Sarah Aswell uncovers but does not name the author of bizarre letters. "As early as 1992, students at Grinnell College, a small liberal arts school in Iowa, began receiving strange, anonymous letters in the mail. The letters contained homemade greeting cards with crudely drawn pictures—men crawling on the ground, toilets and trash cans, twin closet doors—and jokes that didn’t make any sense." Previously on Metafilter, plus this blip.
posted by Mo Nickels on Mar 12, 2007 - 156 comments

How's the weather? Is it polluted? Do you have plenty of rainforests? Send someone a Geography Information Postcard and tell them about where you live by filling out infographics. (via)
posted by divabat on Jan 31, 2007 - 1 comment

Zvukovye Pis'ma: Musical letters from the Soviet Union during the 1950s, with images and audio. More information for those that can decipher it.
posted by monju_bosatsu on Dec 31, 2006 - 4 comments

Saddam's farewell letter.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Dec 27, 2006 - 46 comments

Bag Of Prayer Letters Plucked From N.J. Surf. One man wrote from prison, saying he was innocent and wanted to be back home with his family. A woman wrote that her boyfriend was now closing the door to her daughter's bedroom each night when it used to stay open, and wondered why. One unwed mother wrote that her baby was due in four weeks, and asked God to make the father fall in love with her and marry her so the child would have a father. The minister died two years ago at 79. How the letters, some dating to 1973, wound up bobbing in the surf is a mystery.
posted by 445supermag on Nov 3, 2006 - 27 comments

Fergis Writes Letters to such notable recipients as the new Canadian $20 bill, 666, and the single reader that subscribes to his RSS feed.
posted by leapingsheep on Jul 25, 2006 - 7 comments

Letters by Badsey Council School children describing life in a market gardening community in 1933. A great insight into their lives and some excellent penmanship to boot. [via]
posted by tellurian on Jun 19, 2006 - 12 comments

Have you ever wondered why we don't harvest milk from pigs? Or why the Amoco Corporation is always leaving all the lights on in their building in such an energy-inefficient fashion? What the hell is the Grimace anyway? What does Ruth Bader Ginsburg think of the legal problem of Siamese twins, when one is retarded and the other commits a felony? What are the qualifications of the buzzer-pressing "judge" on "$100,000 Pyramid"? Can you crash on the Sultan of Brunei's sofa when you're in town? For many years, Guy Petzall attempted to get answers to questions like these. Sometimes he succeeded.
posted by Gator on Apr 1, 2006 - 43 comments

Forty-nine published plays. Four Pulitzer Prizes. Three marriages. A suicide attempt. A celebrity for a father. A drug-addicted mother who blamed her habit on her son. A daughter estranged, a son who committed suicide. A Nobel Prize, the only ever awarded to an American playwright.
Eugene O'Neill from inside out: a documentary film for American Experience. More inside.
posted by matteo on Mar 30, 2006 - 16 comments

He complained to [Kingsley] Amis in 1943...that "all women are stupid beings" and remarked in 1983 that he'd recently accompanied Monica [Jones] to a hospital "staffed ENTIRELY by wogs, cheerful and incompetent." ...His views on politics and class seemed to be pithily captured in a ditty he shared again with Amis. "I want to see them starving,/The so-called working class,/Their wages yearly halving,/Their women stewing grass..." For recreation he apparently found time for pornography, preferably with a hint of sado-masochism".
John Banville on Philip Larkin.
posted by matteo on Feb 6, 2006 - 30 comments

Fsaturday Flash Fun: CryptoQuote. Other word games featured at East of the Web are the Tetris-like PopWord (and its multiplayer companion [beginner and advanced, respectively]), the MasterMind-like CodeWord, and the vaguely Scrabble-ish 8 Letters in Search of a Word.
posted by Gator on Jan 7, 2006 - 6 comments

Ring of Letters
The Einstein-Freud Correspondence (Einstein furthers the cause of peace)
The Freud-Jung Correspondence (Freud is Jung's father-figure)
The Jung-Pauli Correspondence (A QM founder buys into Jung's synchronicity)
The Pauli-Heisenberg Correspondence (The Uncertainty Principle was a letter to Pauli)
The Heisenberg-Bohr Correspondence (Was Heisenberg a Nazi?)
The Bohr-Einstein Correspondence (What is the fundamental nature of reality?)
posted by vacapinta on Jan 6, 2006 - 33 comments

Webctionary Using typography as comic art. Portuguese version by the same creator.
posted by divabat on Dec 31, 2005 - 10 comments

Letters If your screen isn't facing anyone, it looks like you're doing work. Happy flash friday everyone!
posted by BuddhaInABucket on Nov 11, 2005 - 34 comments

Dear Mrs Bergman,
... I want you to know how deeply I wish to translate those ideas into images, just to quiet down the turmoil of my brain... Yours very truly and devoted,
R. Rossellini
Roberto Rossellini writes to Ingrid Bergman.
The Swedish movie star had written a fan letter to the Italian Neorealismo director Roberto Rossellini, expressing her desire to work in one of his films: "If you need a Swedish actress who speaks English very well, who has not forgotten her German, who is not very understandable in French, and who in Italian knows only "ti amo", I am ready to come and make a film with you".
This is how he responded -- by writing a part for her in his 1949 film "Stromboli." It was the beginning of one of the most famous love stories of the twentieth century. More inside.
posted by matteo on Oct 31, 2005 - 14 comments

Who will send this -er- Apology letter to us- um left belowers if all the predispensationalist and milleniest fundies are raptured? via the awesome growabrain
posted by svenvog on Sep 28, 2005 - 35 comments