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Ron Paul: I Didn't Write That 'Race War' Letter

Dustin Lushing — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 16:21:05 CST

A rep for Ron Paul would like the clear things up—or at least one thing: The candidate did not pen a 1993 direct mail letter that warns of a "coming race war in our big cities" and a "federal-homosexual cover-up on AIDS." The eight-page letter was a promotion for...

Capitol Hill Buried in Avalanche of Angry Mail

Kate Schwartz — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 09:41:05 CDT

Could the USPS' last great hope be angry Americans? An avalanche of letters and emails are pouring into Congress, with offices reporting that they're dealing with, in one case, as much as 1,422% more constituent-penned correspondence than they did in 2002. Politico reports that House offices are seeing an...

John Lennon's Letters to Be Published

Mary Papenfuss — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 03:22:00 CDT

"Society only likes dead artists," John Lennon once wrote in a heartbreaking letter. "I'm afraid Yoko and myself cannot oblige." That note was scooped up by a private collector for $13,000, but soon some 200 other letters, postcards, and doodles of Lennon's will be available to the public in...

God Is Getting More Snail Mail This Year

Matt Cantor — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 13:43:30 CST

Letters to the North Pole are common, but this year has seen notable quantities of letters to a different address: Heaven. “In the 10 years I've been doing this, I've seen maybe two or three letters addressed to heaven," one Florida postal worker tell the St. Petersburg Times . "This year,...

What Happens When You Write to Obama

Kevin Spak — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 12:53:00 CDT

When Jennifer Cline wrote her letter to Obama, she treated it like a diary entry. The 27-year-old Michigan mom had recently lost her job, gone bankrupt, and been diagnosed with cancer, but she told the president things would get better soon. She didn’t expect anyone to read it. But Obama...

Letters Reveal Byron's Feud With 'Turdsworth'

Jason Farago — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:40:18 CDT

A collection of letters written by Lord Byron to a clergyman, some of them unpublished, sheds new light on the Romantic poet—who discloses his sexual escapades with servants and angry opinions of fellow writers. Several letters refer to a serving girl whom he took as his mistress; he dumped...

My Pen Pal, John Hughes

Matt Cantor — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 10:43:02 CDT

For one teenage fan in the 1980s, John Hughes was more than just a director; he was her pen pal. "He made me feel like what I said mattered," a grieving Alison Byrne Fields writes on her blog. They corresponded for 2 years, and "he loved knowing that his words...

Grandma Hates Email? Snail Mail Service to the Rescue

Neal Colgrass — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 18:50:50 CDT

If grandma is too obstinate or tech-befuddled for email, a few services have cropped up to help, Jeninne Lee-St. John writes in Time . The latest one, Sunnygram, actually prints up emails and photos in a weekly newsletter and mails them. Others, like Presto and Celery, deliver messages via fax and...

London Library Yields Lost Ben Franklin Letters

Wesley Oliver — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 15:40:35 CDT

More than two centuries after his death, Benjamin Franklin has more stories to tell, CNN reports. An American professor conducting research in London unearthed facsimiles of 47 letters the Founding Father wrote and received when he lived there 250 years ago. “I just about shot through the ceiling I was...