From One Book Lover

The world of the famous and infamous is rather small, Craig Brown proves in his delightful book Hello, Goodbye, Hello .  It's like Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon, only across genres. The book is a chain of 101 meetings: Truman Capote meets Peggy Lee, Peggy Lee meets Richard Nixon, Richard Nixon meets Elvis Presley...  The book blends from one encounter to the next seamlessly with well-recorded conversations and comments from reliable resources: published accounts, diaries, third-party accounts, all verifiable, all more honest than one would expect. But is it interesting? Mostly. The author is British, so he takes delight in a couple of politicians whose notoriety is lost on me. I could have skipped over them, but I didn't want to miss a single snarky, surprising encounter. And there are plenty. The encounters I enjoyed most were between the writers and movie actors. I'll never again see Sir Alec Guiness in the same light — his recollection of James Dean was swee...

I have come to terms with my failure. Which is a lie — because if I was okay with it, I wouldn't mention it. Still whistling past the graveyard on this one. Look, I knew A Month of Letters was going to be a challenge. I knew at least a week of my time was going to be spoken for. However, I though, "Self, how hard is it to dash off an extra note or two every couple of days?" Well, that would have been great if work hadn't exploded. Okay, that was in part my own doing. A couple of weeks off work backs up the system. In this world, we seem to have no redundancy: if I don't [fill in the blank], then it doesn't get done. I can live with that at home; I have enough socks and underwear for a coon's age for that very reason. (The "dregs" may be dicey, but I always drive more carefully when I don those.) (Kudos if you got that reference.) But work? At work, I have only the socks and underwear I have on me. I know, everyone is in the ...

I don't know about you, but I haven't written a single note. My explanation is — well, unimportant. Sure, I was traveling for the first week. Then I came home and spent three days not writing any correspondences. Then the mail arrived Friday with a stack of letters. I will remedy that this weekend. How's your postage holding up? Just checked out my first-class stamps and discovered I own "forever" stamps. My postcard stamps, however, are in need of penny stamps. Sigh. I'm terrible about picking up postage, which is why I purchase a lot of postage at once (then proceed to not use it in time and have to purchase penny stamps). And me with lots of photos for photo postcards! Don't be daunted. One letter every day the mail is delivered is doable. If you're behind, grab a few postcards to catch up! Use your favorite note cards. Your recipients will be glad you did. Have you found it a challenge to pick up the pen? Decide who's on...

 February is tomorrow: are you ready? More importantly, is your postage ready? It appears the U.S. Postal Service is increasing the cost of mailing a letter by one cent. ( Find out more here. ) That means I'll be the person at the post office purchasing another pack of penny postage. Sigh. Be that as it may, consider accepting the challenge: write and mail at least one piece of correspondence every day in February the U.S. Postal Service delivers mail. That's about two dozen letters, cards, postcards, photo postcards — can you dig it? I'll be more than glad to exchange a letter or two with you in February (or beyond). E -mail me your address and we'll write to each other. If we wrote to each other before, send me your address again. Write back atcha!

When was the last time you wrote a letter? If you can't answer that question, consider joining me for A Month of Letters . It's easy: send 23 letters in February. Okay, so it sounds daunting, but it really isn't. Send one letter every day there is postal service. Write back to everyone who writes to you. Find those lovely notecards you were given that year for Christmas and use those. Drop a note in a friend's birthday card. Send a postcard. Print a few photographs and send them to someone who hasn't seen them. (And yes, you know at least one person who hasn't seen them.) There are plenty of ways to participate. Give it a shot. You'll be glad you did.