Salutations...as Charlotte would say

Friend here. I've been pondering the question of where to begin and I settled on the traditional: from the beginning. By the raise of hands, who's seen Eat, Pray, Love? ... Okay, that was useless. Oh well, useless doesn't necessarily mean worthless. Anyway, there is a bit in the movie where the main character and some friends are deciding what their 'words' are. I laughed quietly to myself and thought: "I thought of that first!" Well, perhaps not first, but definitely before either the book or the movie. But the question is an interesting one: what is your word? How about just favorite words? And yes this has something to do with the premise of this blog, hold on, I'm getting to that. But really, what are they? Shatter? Silk? Ember? Alizarin and polyester and taut and cream? Those are favorites. My word? Ibidem. Ibidem. Ibidem. I love to say it. Ih-bee-dem. It is an adverb from the Latin and means 'in the same place,' as in the same book, chapter, etc. and is used in reference to making a reference. Cheeky, yes? In the same place. And how did we get to this place. Well, I'll tell you. We are here for the writing of letters, yes? And letters are meant to communicate. We communicate via language, which is made up of words. But really, language just represents ideas and pictures and essences. Which is what your word is: an essence. Which is what you want to write. So simple. So complicated. So wonderful. What's your word?

Welcome

Welcome to the Art of the Letter.

A few months ago, one friend said to another, "Wouldn't it be neat if we wrote a blog about all the things we love? Letters and notes and pens and paper and ephemera and maybe even typewriters." And lucky for me, my friend said yes.

That was the birth of the idea for the Art of the Letter. We've been talking about it, planning, but just never got it off the ground. Until now. Today, I'm feeling bold, and I want to share the feeling and kick things off.

Like I said above, this is going to be all about the things we love. Letters and notes and ephemera and the sheer joy of writing. We want to share that with a world that sometimes loses track of how cool these things can be.

So, I leave it now to M to continue where I've started from. Once again, welcome, and we hope you enjoy.

A.