Fundraisers for libraries and learning organizations often have fantastic auction baskets with reading themes. Recently, NestingCards® was the winning donation-bidder of a “writing letters” collection of books, movies, a collectible pen, stamps, and Letters to My Future Self, a novel journal book. What fun to both support a literacy cause and open this basket of surprises.
Letters to My Future Self (Chronicle Books, 2014) prompted a new way to use the seven nested cards in each NestingCards set. They could be used to write a series of journal-style notes to your future self. One card about your favorite book of the year; another about the best thing that happened this month; yet another about the healing work you’ve done recently and would like to remember and celebrate. One card to yourself about any of seven distinct, or related, themes and topics, to open a year from now, or for loved ones to open at a future date of your choosing.
Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1998) is a Whitbread Prize winning book of poetry and was included in the basket. This book of poems and love letters includes Hughes’ recollections of his life and times with the poet Sylvia Plath. While all of us may not pen poems or prose that is award-winning, all of us can write a note, verse, or story to share with a friend or family member. The act of writing a personal note is what is remembered.
84, Charing Cross Road – the book by Helen Hanff and the Anne Bancroft, Anthony Hopkins film both were among the basket surprises. Fun because I haven’t read or seen them. The book itself is comprised of letters sent from Helene Hanff and Frank Doel of Marks & Co Booksellers to each other in her quest to locate a list of books. Curl-up reading and watching is ahead!
Letters stand alone in celebration, congratulations, and hello sentiments. Letters can thread together in connected and ongoing conversations – much the way that email-threads or text-threads do today. Writing letters in a connected sequence may document history or might become the biography of a person’s life. Connected threads of letters might also prompt memories later in life that serve the sender and receiver well, evoke emotions, and create celebrations anew. NestingCards can be used to create a thread of letters to-and-fro when tucked two-together – one written upon and one blank self-addressed-stamped-envelope to be returned to the first sender. What creative ways are you sending NestingCards?
Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience compiled by Shaun User (Chronicle Books, 2013) is a volume of more than 125 letters from well-known and less-well-known people sharing stories and baring their souls. Usher calls this a museum of letters from deceased as well as still-living notables and everyday people. I’ve just begun the journey of reading the compilation which includes images of original handwritten, typed, and doodled-upon letters along with history notes that provide context for understanding the letters. Four years of compiling resulted in this “museum” of letter writing.
What letter writing and card sending are you ready to pen?
NestingCards videos here: Welcome to NestingCards – YouTube
Photo note: Learning Lab, Inc’s auction basket of letter writing mentioned today is pictured here.
Nesting shares ideas for using NestingCards® and tips for creating keepsake memories on these cards which are printed with original images and paintings on fine papers. The written word shares joy, creates memories, and can envelope a sense of home!
Enjoy browsing and shopping www.NestingCards.com for fun, for gifts, and for joy-spreading possibilities.
NestingCards® is a registered Trademark, United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Jana Kemp
