Social Correspondence

Letters 4.23 – 4.28.14

Dear Correspondents, It has been incredibly satisfying to receive such a strong response to last week’s launch of socialcorrespondence.com. It seems that many of us are nostalgic for the mail of the old days, but still prefer to conduct our social correspondence by e-mail or social media, and limit our snail mail offerings to thank you, sympathy and sometimes birthday notes. Perhaps if we all committed ourselves to writing one short letter a week, hand written and sent through the mail, we would regain that sense of satisfaction upon hearing the arrival of the postal carrier…

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April 28, 2014

Standard mailboxes have been removed throughout the country

Digital Publishing / Letter writing / Mail / Uncategorized

Letters in the Mail

“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…

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April 22, 2014

In store display: Papel New York, Brooklyn

Typewriter repair / Typewriters / Typing

Typewriter Musings

Manson Whitlock, often described as America’s oldest typewriter repairman, passed away in Bethany, Connecticut in August 2013 at the age of 96. He began repairing typewriters in 1930 in his father’s New Haven bookstore and continued in this profession until a few months before his death. His obituary in the Washington Post notes several of his prominent clients, including authors William Manchester, Robert Penn Warren, and Archibald MacLeish. For decades, Manson Whitlock repaired typewriters for students and professors from nearby Yale University. The New York Times Magazine noted that he "fixed more than 300,000 of them…

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April 17, 2014

Digital Publishing / Handwriting / Letter writing / Postal Service / Stamps / Typewriters

Welcome to Social Correspondence

Welcome to Social Correspondence! This blog is dedicated to the art of letter writing. Too few of us actually receive “real” letters in the mail. For the most part, we don’t write them either. Letters in the mail were once a lifeline for people. Rather than placing expensive phone calls or using hand delivered missives, the U.S. Postal Service was the primary means of staying in touch with friends and loved ones and for business transactions. Today communication comes with many options. We can text, email, and use social media. We even can look at one…

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February 27, 2014