The Letter Exchange - Links Related to Issue 16

	THE LETTER EXCHANGE
	Connecting Penfriends Since 1982

Links related to Issue 16, Summer 2008

The Letter Exchange, Summer 2008

A letter is a piece of life.
— Adolf Deissmann

Man Drawing
	Walter Jack Duncan, who drew the image on page 1, contributed illustrations to numerous magazines including Harper's, as well as working with the U.S. Army in World War I. Christopher Morley, whose collection of articles this drawing is taken from, was an editor, reporter, columnist, and novelist, as well as founder of the Sherlock Holmes fan club The Baker Street Irregulars. Look for an essay from Mr. Morley in an upcoming issue of LEX.
Bandit-B-Gone
	Eager to get those bandits out of your mailbox? Two organizations mentioned in the Federal Trade Commission article on page 7, the Philanthropic Advisory Service and the National Charities Information Bureau, have merged to become the Wise Giving Alliance. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service has a web site with information on identity theft, child exploitation, and mail theft as well as mail fraud. You can also reduce the quantity of junk mail by writing to the Direct Marketing Association's Preference Service, although the sleazier junk artists, the ones this article is mostly about, aren't likely to be deterred by such niceties. And don't forget Prohibitory Order Form 1500, which prohibits companies from sending you erotic mail – a term the Supreme Court has affirmed is up to you to define and the USPS to enforce no matter what mail material you use the form for.
The Non-Specialty of Mr. Craig
	If you enjoyed Pat Craig's article (page 10), you can check out more of his writing here.
Star Routes
	The National Postal Museum, part of the Smithsonian Institution, features both physical and online exhibits on subjects ranging from stamp collecting to mail delivery to historical letters, tips on philately, and learning materials for children.
Books About Letters
	No access to a library that has Letters of the Century: America 1900-1999, or want to read it for longer than a library checkout? It's available at Powell's. So is Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman. So are the letter-related books reviewed on page 19, Two Gardeners: A Friendship in Letters and A Very Long Engagement. If the topic for next issue's Letters to LEX sounds interesting, a Powell's search for "collected letters" brings up more than 200 results; just "letters" gives well over 10,000, although some of those are novels with the word in the title, or refer to literature (the traditional phrase "arts and letters"). Remember, if you get to Powell's from a link on our web site, any book or DVD you buy (not just the item in the link) gives LEX a commission to help advertise for more Lexers!
The World of Letters
	There are lots of collections of pioneer letters, both in book form and online, but not all of them have the wide appeal of Letters of a Woman Homesteader. First published in 1914 in Atlantic Monthly, it's still in print, its popularity helped by the drawings of artist N.C. Wyeth (father of Andrew Wyeth). The book provided the basis for a 1979 film, Heartland (though Zebbie isn't listed in the credits on Internet Movie Data Base). The original letters weren't written deliberately for publication as far as is known; Letters on an Elk Hunt by a Woman Homesteader, published in 1914, were. Stewart's life is also the subject of Adventures of the Woman Homesteader: The Life and Letters of Elinore Pruitt Stewart by Susanne K. George. In case you're wondering, Zebbie left home and became a mountain dweller after being wrongfully accused of killing the brother of a young woman he was courting.
Postcards Through the Ages
	There are numerous histories of postcards on the web, many of them based on the same source as the article on page 22. If you're interested in collecting historical postcards, or just want to see examples of early cards, good places to start include Deltiologists of America and the UK's Postcard Traders Association. The University of Maryland's National Trust Library has a Historic Postcard Collection of nearly 20,000, many of which are viewable online. Ancestry.com has a collection of postcards by state, and an example of how extensive the popularity of postcards once was is a collection of hundreds of postcards of views in and around Mount Holyoke College, or the many special-topic collections such as the one of early aviation postcards.
	If you really get bitten by the deltiology bug (third only to stamp and coin collecting, according to some estimates), check out the Open Source Project's extensive listing of postcard sites, or the one at Postcardy.net. Collections of the postcards produced by some of the companies mentioned in the article also exist, such as the Curt Teich Postcard Archives at the Lake County Discovery Museum in suburban Chicago. Kihm Winship, whose article on letters appeared in Issue 14, has a collection of postcards of post offices. And finally, check our blog entry for November 5, 2006, for more information on the "Real Photo" postcards, including information on how to tell an authentic one from a modern reproduction, and Postcrossing for another way to send and receive postcards.
	Clicking on most of the books on this page will take you to Powell's, the world's largest independent bookstore. You can also use the search engine to the left. Any purchase you make by following one of these links will help support LEX – not just these items but any book or DVD in their inventory.
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