A Month of Letters is a challenge with two parts: mail something (anything!) every day the post runs in February and respond to every letter you get.
posted by naturalog
on Feb 1, 2012 -
23 comments
From lettersofnote.com : In July of 1931, author and philosopher
Will Durant wrote to a number of notable figures and asked, essentially, "What is the meaning of life?" His letter concluded:
Spare me a moment to tell me what meaning life has for you, what keeps you going, what help—if any—religion gives you, what are the sources of your inspiration and your energy, what is the goal or motive-force of your toil, where you find your consolations and your happiness, where, in the last resort, your treasure lies. Write briefly if you must; write at length and at leisure if you possibly can; for every word from you will be precious to me.
Durant received many replies, a selection of which were compiled in the book, "
On the Meaning of Life." By far the greatest response, in my opinion, came from the great
H. L. Mencken. It can, and should, be read below.
(Description above taken straight from the linked post, as it summed it up pretty well)
posted by datter
on Feb 1, 2012 -
30 comments
Beautiful Type is a patchwork of photos and illustrations having a relationship with typography.
AisleOne is focused on graphic design, typography, grid systems, minimalism and modernism.
iABC is a collection of beautiful letters.
Inspiration Bit has a nice archive of articles about web typography.
Nicetype is about fonts, logos, posters and software.
Twenty-Six Types celebrates the beautiful letters.
Typenuts is type-themed iPhone and desktop wallpapers.
Typoretum is about typography, letterpress and printing history. Enjoy.
posted by netbros
on Nov 6, 2011 -
5 comments
"... if children could go to the polls then perhaps Fred Nile, the leader of the Christian Democratic Party in NSW [
New South Wales, Australia], wouldn't have the power that he has today." An 11-year old
Charlie Fine writes about an issue that affects children across the Australian state of New South Wales.
[more inside]
posted by vidur
on Aug 1, 2011 -
58 comments
In 1971 a children's librarian in Troy, Michigan wrote dozens of letters to various celebrities and political leaders and asked them to send back inspirational messages to the children.
Ninety-seven of them wrote back.
posted by gman
on Jun 7, 2011 -
33 comments
I have, by now, got rather fond of Mr. James Bond. I like most of the things about him, with the exception of his rather deplorable taste in firearms. In particular, I dislike a man who comes into contact with all sorts of formidable people using a .25 Beretta. This sort of gun is really a lady's gun, and not a really nice lady at that. If Mr. Bond has to use a light gun he would be better off with a .22 rim fire; the lead bullet would cause more shocking effect than the jacketed type of the .25. -
The letter that changed James Bond's gun, and gave his armourer a name.
posted by Artw
on Jun 2, 2011 -
102 comments
For 140 years rare manuscripts that record the private thoughts and opinions of David Livingstone, the Victorian explorer and missionary, were hidden from the public eye due to their fragile condition and frequently indecipherable text. Today a trans-Atlantic academic and scientific team, launches a major project with the publication of Livingstone's Letter from Bambarre – a spectrally-imaged 'lost' letter from Livingstone's final African expedition, written to his friend and future biographer Horace Waller.
posted by notsnot
on Feb 4, 2011 -
4 comments
Johnny Depp
reads letters he received from Hunter S. Thompson while filming "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."
posted by WhoseVoice
on Apr 13, 2010 -
22 comments
Valentines from E.B. White, Mark Twain, Katharine Hepburn, E. E. Cummings, Alexander Hamilton, and Zero Mostel. From libraries and archives around NYC, via the NYT (
more info here).
posted by Miko
on Feb 14, 2010 -
11 comments
Ursula Nordstrom—the "
Maxwell Perkins of the Tot Department"—was, from 1940 to 1973, head of the Department of Books for Boys and Girls at the New York publisher Harper & Row, and until 1979 had her own imprint there, Ursula Nordstrom Books. A
legendary editor known to her authors as UN, she published the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Margaret Wise Brown, Shel Silverstein, Maurice Sendak (whom she is credited with discovering) and,
to not a little controversy, E. B. White (
previously). One of "the last generation of devoted letter writers," she wrote
nearly 100,000 during her five decade career at Harper, of which 300 of the most amusing, acerbic, and illuminating are collected in
Dear Genius by Leonard S. Marcus, the first hundred pages of which
can be read at the Harper website.
[more inside]
posted by ocherdraco
on Jan 6, 2010 -
8 comments
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
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
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
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
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
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
"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
