An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience

I loved the subtitle of Letters of Note (ISBN 9781452134253) edited by Shaun Asher, so much that it is THIS entry's title! A collection of one hundred twenty-five letters spanning thousands of years -- it couldn't have been easy to narrow it down. Open this book at any point and you're likely to find Queen Elizabeth giving her recipe for drop scones to President Eisenhower, a fan letter written and delivered twenty-one years later, a notice advising the BBC to not produce this show called Fawlty Towers (and if you haven't seen this top-drawer comedy, I feel for you) ... okay, that's just the twentieth century, but the letters do start (chronologically, as I wish this book DID) with a fourteenth-century BC letter of praise and petition for help to Pharaoh Amenhotep IV and also includes what we could call a cover letter by Leonardo da Vinci looking for work in the late fifteenth century as well as the "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" letter, last decade of the nineteenth.

It was easier AND cheaper to check this book out of Minot Public Library and it's likely worth it to own; unfortunately, my own mini-library at the house and my office will likely not bear the strain of many more books that I don't read again and again. I'll likely scour it again anyway before I have to return it ... the 27th, I believe, for some nuggets I missed before. AND while I was waiting for the computer I type this on to be less of a mess, I got to read a politically correct version of "Twas The Night Before Christmas", Judith Viorst's A Visit From St. Nicholas (To A Liberated Household) (ISBN 0671228684) -- even for the mid-70s when it was released, it's not too crazy. It's really the second half of February we're in? Today here in the USA it's Presidents' Day, so my kids are off school and I had to bring them to Grandma Sharon's house for the day -- I'll meet them with the rest of the fam at Zion Lutheran tonight where several area choirs are performing.

One of those things Martha decided to tell me about the day before (though she'd known about it for two weeks) but that's ok for now ... I just want our life more abundantly to be about more than music. Yesterday at church Sarah, Jeffrey, and I stayed through most of the second service after we had Sunday school with our last rotation lesson on Saul's conversion. I had the other class of second graders and it made me among other things very grateful at how well Sarah and Jeffrey can read! (Some don't, and I could get why.) Note to self: start work on Emmaus play, even though Sunday school director Karn said last week I'd likely not have to do it. Two days now as I type to the beginning of Lent, and I have the idea I will give up buying new books (which we got the kids at Barnes & Noble for a post-Valentine's Day present -- they asked for them!) for the season. Something I can do, as I've got plenty to read now!

David