Lovely Handwritten Notes

Reclaiming the lost art of sending handwritten letters through the post. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-30487031-1']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();

[lovelyhandwrittennotes]

A Farewell, of sorts

Over four years ago, April 2012 to be exact, I found myself tired from the quick pace and bite-sized character of digital communication. At the same time, I became more aware of the joy I found in slowing down and writing handwritten notes of love, life, and reflection to family and friends. Knowing the smiles I found myself in when I received a letter in the mail, I wanted to get more of those smiles moving through the postal system to individuals both near and far.

I started Lovely Handwritten Notes to facilitate this, to foster a larger community of letter-writing cheer. I created this blog on Tumblr, as well as a Facebook page and Twitter account, to document this project and grow its audience. The internet is great for this. Social media is great for this. Today, we have the ability to connect more people from a greater range of locations in a fairly quick way. I was humbled and thrilled by the beautiful people who began quickly reaching out, sharing the project’s posts, and sending in letters.

But, as time progressed, I noticed something in my chest. Rather than that warm fuzzy feeling this project’s beginnings initially brought me, more and more, I felt a pang of stress and guilt. Keeping up the project’s digital presence took a lot of work, even after I procured the wonderful help of two great pals. I found myself in front of my computer screen too often, trying to capture and share letters I’d received and other interesting postal bits to keep the site’s audience engaged. My longer, more meaningful posts about the handwritten craft turned increasingly into the bite-sized digital communications that had left me tired in the first place.

You see, there’s something a little ironic about turning to the digital world to try to preserve thoughts intended to move at the pace of a snail (though, as an aside, I continue to be impressed with how fast the U.S. Postal Service can actually get a letter I write to the other side of the country).

(snail postcard above from Snailmailcool)

There’s a pressure in our society to always keep growing, to keep up, to get bigger, to look for what’s next, to be quick, to be “something.” I’ve tried my best to measure up, but I’ve also found myself stepping back and looking closely for the spots that bring me the most joy.

In the process, I’ve found that I experience joy in longer-form writing. I feel joy in honest human connection. I discover joy in having to take some time to think critically about an issue. I know joy in finding a letter in my mailbox and immediately curling up to read it with tea, as if opening a treasured gift. I create joy in taking my notepad and heading into the forest to write a letter in response about how the leaves on the trees look at that point in the season where I am.

I’ve found myself, in turn, asking: How can I slow down? How can I make this weight smaller? How can this, right here, be enough?

And, well, this brings us to why I’m writing this post in the first place.

After some consideration, my team and I have decided to closeout the online portion of Lovely Handwritten Notes. It has been a beautiful ride, and we’re so grateful to everyone who has participated in each of the individual ways you have. Decisions like this are hard to make, especially when you stop to think of all of the many, many good parts you’ll miss about it. But, the project’s mission has always been: to reclaim the lost art of sending handwritten letters through the post—and, so, we’re going to shift direction a little back to just that.

While we’ll no longer be sharing content on our website and social channels, we will still be writing letters. You won’t hear from us on here, but you will hear from us in the mailbox. If ever you find yourself in need of a lovely note of handwritten cheer, please visit our contact page and shoot us an email with your mailing address—and, you can rest assured that we’ll take the time to sit down and truly write you out some of our hearts; but, do be patient, as, you know, the snail thing.

For now, we’ve also closed out our P.O. Box and are no longer receiving mail, but that could change. If it does, we’ll share that news here—and there’s a chance we may also share some longer-form blogs from time to time on what letter writing means to us.

This project has been such a wonderful ride! Thank you all for being involved.

Signing off the web now to go find my fountain pen—

Yours, Korrin of LHNotes

[lovelyhandwrittennotes]

Time to Slow Down

This silly Montana postcard is in the outbox! I like how its humorous critique of the fast-paced information age fits nicely with our preferred snail mail method of communication. Maybe it’s time to leave the city and move out to the Montana country?

[lovelyhandwrittennotes]

Postcards from the Boys

Selections from Ringo’s collection of postcards sent to him by his fellow Beatles. His photo on the cover is therefore holographic, turning into...

There is also a limited edition version that comes with actual postcards, postage stamps, etc. It slides into a British mailbox sleeve with Ringo’s eyes peeking out from the slot.

A few of the postcards:

“We send all our love” From Paul, Linda and Heather McCartney, 1969.

Ringo comments, “Looks like Willie Nelson cooking breakfast after the IRS had finished with him.”

From John Lennon and Yoko Ono, 1969.

1971

Ringo comments, “I’ll name that flute player in two notes.”

George and Olivia’s own photograph postcard, 1978.

[lovelyhandwrittennotes]

Leo & Doris

Just finished reading Want Not by Jonathan Miles, a three-story-line novel entwined primarily by the many connotations of “waste.” Quite elegant and thoughtful on a subject that is neither. 

As well as its thematic layering, Want Not’s strength is its complex characters. They’re all messed up/wrong/damaged, but all have their moments of being totally convincing/right/personally strong. So there’s no overall siding with one character over another, and the written perspective constantly shifts.

The reader’s split sympathies are pulled in a scene involving letters. The letters appear in the story-line of a righteous freegan squatter couple, Micah and Tal. Their minimalist existence is challenged when Tal’s old friend, reckless bro Matty, moves in. 

Excerpt from page 334:

With a laptop, he thought, life would be different. He could watch movies instead of captively listening to Micah wank that goddamn banjo or, worse, in the evenings, listening to her and Tal read aloud from a trove of ancient letters they’d scrounged from that nursing-home dumpster. His insides would go flopping when he’d see one of them tweezing a letter from that foot-long wooden box on the sidetable. Half of them were written on gray Red Cross stationery that was so thin you could almost see through it. Tal liked to stress that they were from World War II--”combat letters,” he’d say--as if the minor balls of that fact outweighed the extraordinary pussy-ness of the letters’ content. To Matty it was awful beyond compare: “Does she comprehend the made depth of my devotion?” Talmadge would read, in character, as the Leo to Micah’s Doris. “Does she think of me as I think of my Doris, restlessly, hungrily, so constantly that even sleep and combat are no’--I can’t...is it, repair? No, reprieve-- ‘are no reprieve? When she thinks of the future does she see only me, as I see only her? Not only me versus other men, no no no, but me versus everything. Me only, the way the moon covers the sun in an eclipse.’” And then would come Micah, fifty times worse: “ ‘In my eyes there is only Leo Vakolyuk.’” (”Leer Vac-you-luck,” in her hillbilly pronunciation.) “I breathe you, I hear you, I am more closely attached to you than I am to God (you will object to this but I can only speak heart’s truth). You say I am brave. I am not! It’s just that my fears are all concentrated. Facing a day without a letter from you, facing the thought of losing you--this and only this is what produced genuine terror.’” Because Micah objected to Matty sticking his finger down his throat to pantomime retching, he’d taken to plugging in his earbuds to drown the readings with scads of Russian death-metal. But you could only endure so much of chainsmoking while watching human beings--one of them, for fuck’s sake, your old ace boon coon, your best friend--melting themselves down to pathetic candlelit puddles via their self-enacted dumpster soap opera.

Despicable Matty is totally right, it sounds excruciating! I’d rather listen to Russian death-metal too. But unlike Matty, I can appreciate that these are the words of real people in love, written privately, not written to be judged. And props go to Micah and Tal for rescuing the historic trove from the trash. 

--Allison of LHNotes 

[lovelyhandwrittennotes]

Dan Eldon: Bridging the Distances

If you haven’t seen this stuck-on-a-desert-island-and-you-only-get-three-books worthy selection, it consists of selections from the seventeen collage journals of a young artist/traveler/humanitarian, Dan Eldon.

Looking at Dan Eldon’s collages, one sees new details every time. There’s always more to this body of work. What stood out upon one viewing was the prevalence of postal ephemera. Eldon worked with postage stamps, address labels, postcards, etc., conveying his delight in cultural detritus, an extension of his fascination with the chaotic world and love of its breadth of people. 

Born in London in 1970, Dan and his family moved to Nairobi, Kenya when he was seven. (His British father was an information technology specialist, and his American mother a journalist.) Able to explore freely, the boy was enthralled with his new homeland. Between the locals he quickly won over and the international school he attended, Dan developed a rich cultural view.

When he was fourteen, his class visited a Masai clan. Assigned to create a scrapbook of the field trip, Dan returned with feathers, beads, photographs and more, ultimately creating a dazzling volume. This was the first of seventeen collage journals he produced over the course of his life. The young artist filled the black bound books with mixed media records of his life and his vision of the world. And only his closest friends and family were allowed to see them.

Publicly, Eldon focused his visual sense on photography. He accompanied his mother on interviews for Kenya’s major English language newspaper, earning his first photo credits when he was fourteen. His mother encouraged him to use photography as a means of storytelling.

At the same time, Dan’s passion emerged for helping others. He designed clothing, ran bakesales and threw parties to raise money for a native Kenyan child in need of heart surgery. He also befriended a Masai family who lived in isolation twenty miles from Nairobi. The mother struggled to feed her children making beaded jewelry. So Dan started hitching rides out to their barren land to buy sacks loaded with her creations. In the weeks following each visit, he’d persuade every teacher and student at his school, every family friend and tourist to buy a bracelet or necklace.

When he was seventeen, the emerging photographer earned a fashion magazine internship in New York. His journal from the time reveals his homesickness for the warmth and color of Kenya, a new cynicism and distrust, and confusion at being apart from his family. (He was particularly close with his younger sister Amy, who appears in many of his works.)

Three months later, Dan fled back to Nairobi, where he bought an old Land Rover. Ready to embrace Africa, he and two friends traveled through Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe. In Malawi, they came upon a camp of refugees from Mozambique. These displaced people without any resources remained on Dan’s mind as he continued alone from Malawi to Cape Town.

After traveling to Berlin following the fall of the Berlin Wall, Eldon flew to California, where he enrolled in Pasadena Community College. He told his friends at PCC about the refugees he met in Malawi, and they started an organization called Student Transport Aid, raising $17,000 for the people in the camp.

At the end of that school year, Dan and thirteen friends of seven nationalities, aged fifteen to twenty-two, arrived in his home of Nairobi. Purchasing a second Land Cruiser there, they headed south to Malawi to where they used the money they raised to fund two wells for the camp, along with tools and blankets.

The intrepid humanitarian followed with similar missions throughout Africa. He also visited Moscow–his journal pages there hard and angry–and Japan, where his work took on eroticism. He was never afraid to leave the tourist thoroughfares, and wherever he went, his camera came with. At twenty-two years old, Eldon became the youngest ever Reuters photojournalist.

In the summer of 1992, Dan heard rumors that a town in Somalia was suffering from famine. He and a friend from the Philadelphia Inquirer drove north to find out for themselves, discovering things were far worse than any of the reports. His photographs of the scores of starving people and the dead were among the first to break the news to the world of the conflict in Somalia.

He returned again and again to the troubled country, getting to know everyone from aid workers, to street thieves, Marines, to local children, earning the nickname “the Mayor of Mogadishu.”

He wrote in a 1992 article: The hardest situation to deal with is a frenzied mob, because they cannot be reasoned with. I try to appeal to one or  two of the most sympathetic and restrained looking people with the most effective looking assault rifles, but I have realized that no photograph is worth my life.

But on July 12, 1993, a mob took Dan’s life anyway. He and three colleagues arrived at the scene of a UN bombing of a house believed to be General Aidid’s headquarters, that injured and killed over a hundred bystanders. As the photographers began snapping pictures, the furious crowd turned their anger on the foreigners, stoning and beating them to death. 

The 22nd memorial of the 22 year-old’s death is this weekend. Like the world’s mail systems, Dan Eldon devoted himself to bridging distances, both over land and between people.

[lovelyhandwrittennotes]

LHNotes posted this last year, and it didn’t get the love we feel it deserves. So today, the 23rd anniversary of Dan Eldon’s tragic death, we thought we’d share it again, because we know it will make your day that much richer.

[lovelyhandwrittennotes]

Saying Thanks

I just moved to a new town and received an outpouring of support from family and friends--from home-cooked meals to last-minute rides to Ikea. A week later, I’m mostly settled in, which means it’s now time to say thanks.

I’m all for homemade cards, of course, but what does a thank you card look like? There isn’t the standard body of imagery that goes with birthdays, graduations, Christmas, etc. The example set by store-bought cards is vague--floral patterns, or just “Thank You” spelled out. There’s no excuse for vagueness when you’re making the card yourself. This led me to the realization that a great thank you card relates to the thing or experience you’re thanking someone for. 

One of the people on my list was the artist Terri Friedman, who hosted me one night on my drive between towns. Terri let me see her latest body of work--exuberant patchwork weavings up to the ceiling! Her studio itself was eye-popping, with skeins of yarn everywhere! And so the card came to me:

Then there were my cousins. Among the many things I had to thank them for was a set of mugs they decided to pass onto me because I happened to make myself tea with one of them and complimented it. Additionally, my new town is a coffee capital, and one of my cousins is quite the java aficionado. So their card became:

Thinking up a good thank you card changes the task from a to-do item to an affirming reflection. You just may come away feeling well-loved all over again!

--Allison of LHNotes

[lovelyhandwrittennotes]

Dear Joesan

Before becoming the world’s most visible gay politician in the 1970s, Harvey Milk was a guy ever looking for work. The other constant in his life from 1956-1962 was his partner Joe Campbell. In 1961, when Milk began traveling (partly in search of work, partly related to his ailing father), he took to writing home to Campbell--gushy love letters, descriptive travelogues, and always with the Japanese honorific “-san” added to their names. Milk and Campbell remained friends after their breakup, and the letters also continued. 61 of them now make up a collection at the San Francisco Public Library. A selection can be viewed online with transcriptions here.       

In these days following the Orlando nightclub shooting, a common denominator jumps out between the massacre and Milk’s assassination: A religiously regressive, possibly/apparently closeted man with a gun (or two). 

With the Florida shooting reminding us how far we have to go (ahem, blood donation laws), a section of one of Milk’s letters to Campbell from Miami stands out as a reminder of how far we have come:

“...the police here are always after the gay set--raiding the bars (which is unlike NY’s raids--here they take in most of the people and publish the names in the newspaper)--they also put out plants as hitchhikers, and in coffee shops, and sometimes even raid the gay beach!!!!” (April 5, 1963)

“As Always Love Harveysan”

[lovelyhandwrittennotes]

Sweet 16 Inspiration

My step-sister just turned sixteen and I need to make her a card. Thought I’d share some inspiration from Etsy for anyone else with a sixteen-year old waiting by the mailbox!

MANvsGeorge

SarahLovellCreations

PatchyPeanut

TheGurdCardShop

ThisRosyLife

Kabinshop

--Allison of LHNotes

[lovelyhandwrittennotes]

We’re Seeing Threes

Our email inbox had three requests in a row from snail mail fans living in Poland!

So we got to writing some postcards.

We’re excited for them to reach each of these three lovely beings.

And we’re maybe hoping just a little bit that we’ll receive some great Poland postcards in return.

One letter is certainly great to write.

But three is so fun indeed!

Magdalena, Marek, and Oliwia, thanks so much for requesting a note! We hope you enjoy them—and feel free to send one back!

Would you like a lovely handwritten note sent your way? Drop us your address at [email protected] and we’ll have one on its way!

[lovelyhandwrittennotes]

Bridges of Portland

I’m moving to Portland, Oregon soon, so with that on my mind, thought I’d share this set of postcards from Red Bat Press.

Reminds me of Sleater-Kinney’s ode to Portland “Light Rail Coyote.” “Let’s meet in the city where/The rivers cross bridges there...”

And aren’t bridges a metaphoric visual for the postal medium?

--Allison of LHNotes

[lovelyhandwrittennotes]

I Spy Mailboxes

In May of last year, Lovely Handwritten Notes’ creator Korrin relaunched the project and invited me on board. One of my posts that first month featured creative mailboxes. In the year since, I’ve found myself paying more attention to mailboxes. Here are some that caught my eye. 

Solana Beach, CA

Solana Beach, CA

Atwater, Los Angeles

Silverlake, Los Angeles

Silverlake, Los Angeles

Silverlake, Los Angeles

Bank of the West, Pasadena, CA

Crossroads of the World, Los Angeles

Chinatown, Los Angeles

Joshua Tree, CA

Here’s to another year! Allison of LHNotes

[lovelyhandwrittennotes]

Handwritten Poems

Sometimes when you can’t find the words, scrawling those of a poem that can speak for your heart offers just as beautiful of a treasure to the recipient.

WILD GEESE

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

—Mary Oliver

What poem speaks for your heart? What is one of your favorites? Scrawl it on some stationery or a postcard or even just some scrap paper, and mail it our way to share the beauty!

Lovely Handwritten Notes P.O. Box 2674 Washington, D.C. 20013 United States of America

[lovelyhandwrittennotes]

Clayton Lewis: Letters To Rosie

(Photo by Al Seib, Los Angeles Times)

A recent article on the artist Clayton Lewis’ former homestead drew my attention to Lewis’ letters. 

In 1964, Clayton Lewis was 49 years old, had received no recognition as an artist, and had apparently ruined his family life with an affair. It was at that time he discovered the vacated (ie. evicted) Coast Miwok native settlement of Laird’s Landing on California’s remote Point Reyes. There Lewis would spend the rest of his life (till 1995), living off fish he caught and vegetables he grew, repairing the cabins (adding personal flourishes), and holding court as a sage-in-the-woods figure to the Central Coast’s bohemian scene.

In 1980, Lewis began sending letters to his ailing mother, Rose Baldwin in Washington. It was the letters’ illustrated envelopes that would posthumously make his name as an artist. The illustrations were autobiographical, humorous, and sometimes surprisingly racy for letters-to-mother. And Lewis incorporated the postage stamp in clever ways, often in places other than the proper corner. But the woman at Marshall Post Office was accommodating. The artist rowed across Tomales Bay to the town of Marshall sometimes several times a week to mail his letters. In the following five years, he’d create over a thousand of them. (Information from this exhibition review in The San Francisco Examiner.)

See envelopes closeup here!

(Photo by Al Seib, Los Angeles Times)        

[lovelyhandwrittennotes]

D.C. Monuments

This is a favorite, but there are many more. While this one might already be on its way to the Netherlands, we’d like to send the others your way! Would you like a Washington, D.C. postcard? Shoot us an email at [email protected] and let us know, along with your mailing address, and we’ll get one off to you!

[lovelyhandwrittennotes]

Carried Away by Hearts

Hello Send a card to a friend day gives me every reason to send you one of my cards from one of my crafty moments. You know those times when a heart punch becomes a 30 min. craft idea, that turns into making 10 cards! I found this card on YouTube. I must say, it was alot of fun.

Every day in the month of February Im going to send a card to someone. I have a post office in walking distance which gets my walking miles in for the day. I put the idea up on my blog, in hopes, that someone will send me their address because Im not sure I have 29 people to send a card too. Im always trying something new.

Happy card writing, Myra

[lovelyhandwrittennotes]

Call for People who Need Letters!

Hey! Check these out.

They’re bright and cheerful cards that we want to send to people who you think could really use one about now.

Do you know someone who is going through a hard time and could simply use some lovely, kind, handwritten words in their mailbox? 

Feel free to email us their mailing address at [email protected] and we’ll make sure to get one off to them soon! Let’s all help make sure that cheer gets to where it needs to be.

[lovelyhandwrittennotes]

Snow Day

“Firecracker Plant”

Jan 23, 2016

Dear Friend,  We’re snowed in here in New York, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to send you a note.

Maybe it’s because I lived overseas before email was available, but the mail--in the mailbox has always been important to me. I love it when a hand-written envelope arrives! I regret that many schools no longer teach hand writing. I write a blog and occasionally discuss cursive writing. Check it out: www.hintsandechoes.wordpress.com. If you type cursive in the search box, it should take you to the post.

I’m glad lovely handwritten notes makes it possible for us to reach out--with our handwriting!

Best Regards, Mary