Mail Archives - Page 8 of 9 - Social Correspondence

Letters in the New Year

Welcome to 2015. Holiday cards and letters have been filed away, wrong sizes or colors have been exchanged, and now we must play catch up - pay bills, mind our New Year’s resolutions, and most likely, watch our waistlines, after some good holiday eating. Each new year, I vow to be more on top of things, but somehow, the late year holiday frenzy always gets in the way. But I am happy to report that I hand wrote, stamped and mailed all of my year-end greetings this year, even though Social Correspondence suffered. After all, the…

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January 20, 2015

Handwriting / Letter writing / Mail

Winter Mailbox

It’s that time of year again. As fall moves into winter, the days grow shorter, darkness comes early, the weather turns gloomy and our mailboxes are filled to capacity, thanks to a series of cyclical events. First, election season mail begins as early as August and generally ends the first week of November. Campaign flyers and brochures, endorsement cards and newsletters pile up quickly. Smiling candidates, often posed with adorable children, become familiar faces. The closer and more heated the race, the more likely it is that the direct mail pieces will multiply and take on…

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November 21, 2014

Mail / Postal Service

Mail Privacy

Americans value their privacy, and the privacy of the U.S. mail is, for the most part, not only guaranteed, but also taken for granted. It is spelled out in the privacy policy of the U.S. Postal Service, and is codified through various federal laws and regulations. Recently, however, new information has emerged about the mail cover program, through which the postal service makes copies of the exterior of every piece of mail processed in the United States. First noted by The New York Times in 2013, this practice apparently dates back more than a century. Letter…

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November 11, 2014

books / Letter writing / Mail / War letters

War Letters: Kayla Williams

Letters written and received far from home during wartime have special meaning for people who serve in the armed forces. From the letters on display at the Smithsonian’s Post Office Museum in Washington, D.C., dating from the American Revolution to 2010, to the iconic Sullivan Ballou letter written during the Civil War, featured in the Ken Burns film, The Civil War, produced by PBS, the impact of such letters and their personal and historical significance cannot be overestimated. Kayla Williams is of a new generation of women soldiers, who now make up 15 percent of today’s…

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October 13, 2014

Letter writing / Mail / Postal Service / War letters

Stories of the Week

Letter writing may be on the wane, but each week, stories turn up from around the globe on letter writing, the postal service, handwriting and other related topics, both as features and as news stories. Here is a sampling of such stories published Aug. 24 - Sept. 6. Postal Service's big delivery edge: no parking tickets. SFGate.com, Sept. 6, 2014. FedEx and UPS are unhappy at the U.S. Postal Service plan to slash prices during the holidays. The postal service already has an advantage, say the competitors: they don’t have to pay parking tickets. Illegal parking…

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September 9, 2014

Jury Service / Mail / Postal Service

Jury Service: A Social Contract

Each of us, as a member of a democratic society, is party to a social contract that requires us to respond to a summons to court to serve on a jury. Recently, I served as a juror in a criminal case that was tried in San Francisco. There are many levels of communication in a jury trial. When called upon as a potential juror, the first correspondence one receives is the summons, which is sent by U.S. Mail. A jury summons in San Francisco may come as a result of holding a California State Driver’s License,…

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August 21, 2014

Letter writing / Mail / Postal Service

How To Save a Post Office

The people of Berkeley, across the Bay from San Francisco, know how to put up a good fight. Their most recent battle is to save their historic post office building from being sold by the United States Postal Service. Berkeley, as is often the case, is going against the grain. Post office buildings and postal sorting centers around the country have been consolidated, sold, leased and downsized as the U.S. Postal Service struggles with monumental debt. Different jurisdictions react to these sales in different ways. Palo Alto, another Bay Area city, made an offer to…

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August 5, 2014

Letter writing / Mail / Postal Service / Twitter

Indiscreet Letters

This has not been a good week for the legacy of Warren G. Harding, 29th President of the U.S., 1921 –1923. Harding’s failures as President have been extensively documented. His short-lived administration was rocked by corruption and scandal overshadowed his accomplishments, resulting in his rankings being consistently the lowest of all of the U.S. Presidents. And now his indiscreet letters have been revealed. The Library of Congress has unsealed his previously unpublished letters to his mistress, Carrie Fulton Phillips, the wife of one of his close friends. The letters, mostly written prior to his Presidency, are…

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July 21, 2014

Letter writing / Mail / telegram

The Telegram

, More than thirty years before Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone, Samuel Morse found a way to transit messages through electrical pulses across a series of wires. It was 1841, and communication by Morse code became the foundation for the telegram system, and later was adapted for radio communications. Throughout history, telegrams have played an important role. President Abraham Lincoln used telegrams to communicate with his Generals during the Civil War. According to George Mason University’s History News Network, “When Lincoln arrived for his inauguration in 1861 there was not even a telegraph line to…

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July 15, 2014

Handwriting / Letter writing / Mail

Celebrating the Joys of Letter Writing

Books to Read Signed, Sealed, Delivered by Nina Sankovitch When Nina Sankovitch and her husband went house hunting “years ago,” they find a run-down house on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, built in 1888, but unoccupied for the past15 years. The house includes some old, dusty furniture, rotting floors and obsolete plumbing and electrical systems, but somehow, it is just right for them. Despite escalating real estate values, their offer is accepted, despite better offers that come in after their bid. Thus begins the saga of Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Celebrating the Joys of Letter Writing (not…

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June 24, 2014