“Everyone likes getting real letters in the mail.”
These words, written on a simple but elegant postcard featuring a classic mailbox, promote the Letters in the Mail service offered by the online magazine The Rumpus. The postcard was offered this past summer at DigiLit, a digital publishing conference sponsored by Litquake.
Here is how it works. Paid subscribers, currently thousands, receive three or four letters a month, penned by well-known writers, through the U.S. Postal Service. According to a CBS news interview posted on the Rumpus site, over 200 subscribers signed up for the service in the first two hours after it initially was posted.
If your mailbox is void of “real” letters, this is a way to make it happen! Another way, of course, is to initiate your own letter writing ritual, to friends and relatives, the people who care. See what you get back!Litquake returns to San Francisco Oct. 10 – 18, 2014. The 2014 DigiLit conference will be held on June 21 at University of California’s Hastings College of the Law. Check for up-to-date information at www.litquake.org.
Chet Roaman
22 Apr 2014Wow! Have you seen Spike Jonze’s “Her” ? In the near futures, personal, handwritten letterwriting is the 9 to 5 occupation of our hero. He works in a futuristic (but not sterile) office that shows lots of other employees. His lifestyle seems quite comfortable and not “out of the ordinary” to others in his life in the movie.
I think you’ve stroke your pen on something relevant.
Marcia Schneider
24 Apr 2014Thanks, Chet! Haven’t seen the movie, but sounds intriguing.