{"id":128,"date":"2009-07-15T12:01:38","date_gmt":"2009-07-15T12:01:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/yourcharmedlife\/2009\/07\/a-beautiful-letter.html"},"modified":"2009-07-15T12:01:38","modified_gmt":"2009-07-15T12:01:38","slug":"a-beautiful-letter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/yourcharmedlife\/2009\/07\/a-beautiful-letter.html","title":{"rendered":"A Beautiful Letter"},"content":{"rendered":"

I already knew I missed writing and receiving real-letters-on-paper, but I was just reminded how much I miss them. I was looking through old photo albums for pictures of commedian\/activist Dick Gregory. (He’ll be in NYC tonight and tomorrow night at Caroline’s on Broadway, a comedy club. I knew him back in the 70s and did a fast-for-world-hunger with him in Atlanta thirty years ago. I thought he’d like to have some of the pictures.)\u00a0<\/p>\n


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But in addition to photographs in those much-traveled albums, I found a letter dated March 8, 1977. I’d saved it because it came from a real writer’s writer, Sloan Wilson, author of A Summer Place<\/span> and The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. <\/span>I’d written him a fan letter and was so thrilled that he wrote back, I saved the letter all these years. The stationery, 5 x 9, was engraved with his name and an address in Ticonderoga, New York. (“All the best\u00a0writers live in New York,” I thought, back in Kansas City and aspiring to write books, too). The letter was typed and had one error, which he’d corrected with a pen.<\/span><\/div>\n

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Mr. Wilson passed away a few years ago. I read the obituary in The New York Times<\/span>. But I have his letter, and it is such a grand example of this nearly lost art that I’ve decided to share it with you in its entirety. I don’t know why, maybe so you’ll write a letter. Maybe so I’ll write a letter. Maybe so we’ll at least print and save the brilliant emails, although frankly if I got an email from a perfect stranger with family new, et al, I’d wonder why this person was telling me\u00a0 \u00a0extra stuff I don’t need to know. Maybe I want to share it because letters, and engraved stationery and fountain pens, like cloth napkins and Sunday strolls and calling non-intimate Mr. and Ms., were lovely. I’m glad I was around for them.<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
SLOAN WILSON<\/div>\n
po box<\/div>\n
street address<\/div>\n
town<\/div>\n
____<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
phone<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
March 8, 1977<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
Dear Victoria Mucie; (*that was my maiden name)<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Thank you so much for your letter about my books. It is certainly an honor to be a favorit of so literate a letter writer!<\/div>\n

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\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0I hope you emerge from your on-the-verge times. Editors and publishers appear to be changing their customs even more than other people, and the changes rarely are of value to writers.<\/div>\n

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\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0We had our first real spring day here after a long winter. I have a stroy to finish and a book to start and a mountain of mail and a daughter who must be chauffeured from her school to the dentist, but my wife and I took a walk this noon anyway and waved at friends and glared at enemies the way people in a small town do.<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I already knew I missed writing and receiving real-letters-on-paper, but I was just reminded how much I miss them. I was looking through old photo albums for pictures of commedian\/activist Dick Gregory. (He’ll be in NYC tonight and tomorrow night at Caroline’s on Broadway, a comedy club. I knew him back in the 70s and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":177,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spiritual-adventuring"],"yoast_head":"\nA Beautiful Letter - Your Charmed Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/yourcharmedlife\/2009\/07\/a-beautiful-letter.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Beautiful Letter - Your Charmed Life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I already knew I missed writing and receiving real-letters-on-paper, but I was just reminded how much I miss them. 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