Signed, Sealed & Delivered: My Letter to You
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Let me tell you what’s sitting in my mailbox.
An automatic printed bill from the electric company, some kind of offer from my employer and a receipt for payment on a medical bill. They’ve been sitting there a while, unopened. But today something new landed in that little square space protected by a little door that can only be unlocked with a key: a letter from me with an illustrated envelope.
I dropped it off at the post office 350 feet away from me Monday. Forty-eight hours, it boomeranged across the street (courtesy of a mail truck) into my mailbox. I know what that letter says. It’s all typed in a nice inky ribbon from Ribbons Unlimited. It’s filled with encouragement. Wait, it has a bit of pathos in it about a pint of shiitake mushrooms I ate raw this past weekend while watching a YouTube video….during which I read online that these particular uncooked ‘shrooms can cause a rash. (More on that in a bit)
Forget the angst for a minute, think about what it might feel like to get a letter in your mailbox. Something that’s not an advertisement, a bill or a receipt, but an actual letter. Maybe’s handwritten or typed. You instantly recognize the sender (stampfans.com) so you immediately slip it out for immediate reading in the elevator, with a a cup of hot tea or maybe a cocktail later.
Here’s what you might receive from me with the stampfans.com logo in the upper left corner.
Or you might receive like this:
Now that type is crooked (an issue that’s actually fixed on my Selectric now), but if you got a letter like that you’d know there’s a human being behind the missive. You’d know for sure AI had nothing to do with the typing. You’d be certain that a passionate (and possibly nutty) writer, eager to drop a letter in the mail, typed out this letter.
In both above letters, I not only used an electric typewriter but a letterpress printing press. I used old wood type and an old typewriter block to create the funky and very unique letterhead. Nearly no one uses personal letterhead these days.
Forget my personal correspondence for a moment. Instead of getting a letter from me, you might receive a letter from the past (in this case, 1912). Authors are always talking about time travel. In this case, this letter would be true time travel. This letter, typed on a hotel stationery in 1912, landed in my hands at an antique shop in 2023. I uploaded it my laptop, and well, you might get this or something very similar in your mailbox in 2025, 113 years after this letter was typed and sent!
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Now those mushrooms. I’m fine. Nothing happened (and my brother, who’s hooked on eating raw shiitakes confirmed this). So darn Internet! Can’t trust it even when it comes to dermatologists! As for the letter itself, I plan to take all these letters and their envelopes and turn them into a book. Something along the lines of From Ted to Tom: the Illustrated Envelopes of Edward Corey.
Do you want to see the illustrated envelope that landed in my mailbox today? Let me know in the comments.