Posts Tagged ‘letters’
Kids say the darnedest things…
click here, and again, for larger image
[TotH to Happy Place, via reader KL]
As we unfurl our umbrellas, we might send slap-happy birthday greetings to comedian, actor, singer, film producer, screenwriter, film director, recipient of the French Legion of Honor, and nominee for the Nobel Peace prize Jerry Lewis; he was born (Joseph Levitch) on this date in 1926.
From the time that his success allowed it, Lewis– something of a clothes horse– gave away suits rather than having them cleaned and refused to wear a pair of socks more than once.
With hope that you will be in Heaven thirty minutes before the devil knows you’re dead…
From Liz Danzico and her bodacious blog Bobulate:
Forget what you’ve heard about first impressions; it’s the last impressions that count. Last impressions — whether they’re with customer service, an online shopping experience, or a blind date — are the ones we remember. They’re the ones that keep us coming back. But there’s one kind of final impression that people seem to forget.
The closing line of email — that line that you write before you type your name — has been all but forgotten.
Danzico proceeds to offer a kind of taxonomy of ta-ta’s:
If a closing line can be so meaningful, so important, why are emailers squandering the opportunity, putting no thought in the closing? Time, perhaps, iPhone-finger exhaustion, multi-tasking—they’re all possible excuses. And many times, acceptable ones. We can’t be expected to neatly tie up every email every time. But once in a while, it would be delightful if people applied the same sincerity to the last impressions that we do to first ones.
Enjoy Danzico’s analysis at “Second Chance for a Last Impression.”
Your humble and obedient servant,
(R)D
[TotH to GMSV]
As we concentrate on the complimentary close, we might recall that it was on this date in 490 BCE that– because there was no postal service, and thus no facility for sending messages with closings of any level of courtesy or creativity– Pheidippides of Athens set out on the run that inspired the Marathon. Pheidippides was on a mission seeking military support from Sparta in defense against the invading Persian army. Tradition (that’s to say, Herodotus) holds that he ran the ran 246 km (153 miles) between the two city-states in two days. The Spartans, constrained by religious law, were unwilling to help until the next full moon. So two days later, Phidippides ran the return leg alone.
Pheidippides then ran the 40 km (25+ miles) from the battlefield to Athens to announce the Greek victory over Persia in the Battle of Marathon; he uttered the word Nenikékamen (“We have won”), collapsed, and died on the spot from exhaustion.
Statue of Pheidippides on the Marathon road (source)
Keep those cards and letters coming…
for larger version, click image above (or here), and then click again
Readers will recall earlier visits to Letters of Note (“correspondence deserving of a wider audience”). That wonderful site now has company– and official company at that.
The letter-of-request above*, and tens of thousands of other historically- and politically-interesting documents can now be found at the Online Public Access Prototype of the National Archives.
* One notes that, while the Vice President’s response to Disney was “schedule too tight,” later President Nixon used Disney World as the venue for his “I am not a crook” speech…
[TotH to GMSV]
As we sharpen our quills, we might recall that it was on this date in 1972 (months before his Disney World performance) that President Nixon signed the bill authorizing $5.5 million to develop the Space Shuttle program– NASA’s main focus from that point until President Obama’s recent redirection.
Nixon with NASA Administrator James Fletcher and a model of spacecraft-to-come (Source: NASA)
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