Pen Pals | June 28

Several years ago — sometime in 2007 it would appear — I signed up on a penpal website. I think what stopped me was that they wanted you to pay like $5 for five addresses. Something like that, so I guess I just never bothered. Only, I had completed my profile and uploaded a picture. There was a free membership of sorts. Hell, it was two years ago, who knows.

Anyway, I get an email this morning from a young woman in Singapore. Well, not exactly. I get an email from the website, saying a young woman from Singapore wants to write to me. Sure. I go to the website and there are several other offers I've gotten since 2007 including two french men about the same age as me, married with kids...the works. I wrote them all back.

We'll see.

I like the idea of corresponding with people through the written word. And not so much email. I think it needs to be mailed letters. Something you look over more than once before printing it out, finding an envelope, getting a stamp and dropping it in the mailbox.

I read something on the website about the benefits of snail mail. One reason is that, especially in international situations, it can take up to a couple of weeks for a letter to reach its destination. Assuming you take a little time to write a response, and send it back, you take out the instant reaction of email. It takes longer to get there, so it had better be good. I think that's a valid position. I'm hoping this works out with at least someone.

Actually this started because I wrote an email to an author I was reading this morning. This is my new thing. If I like the book, I write the author. So far, everyone has written me back and I've stayed in touch with a couple of them. It's astounding really.

The author I wrote to this morning is Heather Lende and she wrote a book called, "If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name: News From Small-Town Alaska". It's great. I wrote her to tell her how much I liked it, but that I'm only on page 69, which means I've barely started it. Which is true. I only cracked it last night and picked it up again this morning. But you can tell.

The Los Angeles Times called it, "Part Annie Dillard, part Anne Lamott" and USA Today says, "If you like the stories on Prairie Home Companion or Northern Exposure, you'll love some real news from small-town Alaska."

The New York Times had previously called Haines, the town where she lives with her husband and three children, "the real Northern Exposure". According to Lende, "Haines is so full of local color, that if they made a movie about us, no one would believe it. There's the controversial new Presbyterian pastor who's arms are covered with tattoos. The sewer plant manager who rides a Harley and has a ZZ TOP beard. The school principal is a Roy Orbison impersonator, who dresses all in black and sings "Pretty Woman" at fundraisers."

Other than the isolation, lack of medical care, and extreme weather, it sounds like a nice place.

P.S. I just finished the book. Basically I read it in a day. I cried like a little girl at the end. I highly recommend it.