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on Gopher (inofficial)
URI Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI My mother declared my bedroom a disaster area (1984)
blueflow wrote 1 day ago:
What tf did Reagan do that every other comment has a "Reagan bad"
section?
tiptup300 wrote 14 hours 29 min ago:
oh yeah to begin he got real popular on being very pro union.
later on he fundamentally destroyed unions in America. unions have
not recovered since all of what he did.
anewhnaccount2 wrote 1 day ago:
Okay, I'll bite, although I'm afraid it's unlikely this will lead to
much substantive discussion.
* "Trickle Down Economics": Large tax cuts for the wealthy while
simultaneously dismantling social programs which benefit everyone
else
* Arming authoritarian and far right militia in South America
* Environmental deregulation
* Giving a voice to the religious right and their anti-gay/anti-woman
agenda
r00fus wrote 1 day ago:
Reagan's administration did all that, and not to mention they
side-channelled with Iran to not release the hostages so Carter
couldn't have the win. Just pure machiavellian thought process.
Also: regulating ketchup as a "vegetable serving" (so school
lunches didn't need to have fresh veggies).
Just thinking outside the box on how to completely F up government
to serve their agenda.
blagie wrote 1 day ago:
The basic problem is that everyone makes mistakes. I feel bad if
people do things maliciously or in bad faith. None of those, as
bullets, feel that way. He did a lot of big things, some of which
will invariably be big mistakes.
Expanded from bullets (e.g. Iran-Contra) there was badness, but
what would be helpful would be to:
1) Expand those out a little bit, to where we can see the bad.
2) Compare to other presidents for level of bad.
On the whole, I have complex feelings here. The quality of recent
presidents and presidential candidates has been very, very low. I
think I'd take Reagan over Hillary Clinton, Trump, or Biden. On the
other hand, I think I'd take Obama, Romney, and probably McCain
over Reagan.
hobs wrote 1 day ago:
The right's obsession with trickle down economics alone and the
no new tax pledge is enough to think Reagan was a bad president.
We see an entire portion government apparatus effectively
obsessed with killing the government, but only performatively.
This is what I see as a Reagan special.
blagie wrote 1 day ago:
I agree about the harm that caused by that movement, but as
much as Reagan was part of it, I have a hard time attributing
the whole movement to him.
FWIW, as much as a president has a soapbox to advocate from,
budget and tax policy are set by congress.
pantulis wrote 1 day ago:
It would have been so cool if the mother had subsequently written a
letter to Reagan requesting the funds!
paganel wrote 1 day ago:
I wouldn't have expected pro-US government propaganda coming from
lettersofnote.com, but it is what is, this New Cold War demands
sacrifices.
shuntress wrote 1 day ago:
It's a cute interaction for sure but it's frustrating to see this sort
of "I'm doing my best to make our government useless" attitude from the
president.
A better response would have been "Sorry but your mother does not
actually have the authority to declare federal disasters"
UberFly wrote 1 day ago:
This is a strange take on a very light-hearted interaction. Non of it
was all that serious.
DennisP wrote 1 day ago:
I'm aware that Reagan maybe had that attitude in general but I don't
see it in this particular letter. He mentioned lack of available
funds due to an excess of disasters, and promotes volunteerism, which
I'd say is a pretty important component of a well-functioning society
regardless of how well your government is performing.
Your "better" response isn't funny and violates the basic rule of
improv comedy, which is that you go with what the other person gives
you, instead of contradicting it. As an actor, Reagan was certainly
familiar with this.
vidarh wrote 1 day ago:
I'm pretty much the opposite side of the political spectrum to
Reagan - as a European left winger he was pretty much the bogeyman
for us in the 80s - and I still found it funny.
It's pretty much what people would expect Reagan to write if it had
been a serious request warranting a reply. What isn't expected, and
makes it funny, is the humour of actually replying and pretending
to take the letter seriously.
I think it'd lose its humour if it was markedly out of character
and didn't sound like a serious reply.
totetsu wrote 1 day ago:
Richest country on earth and still there not enough money to clean
up this child's bedroom.
tombert wrote 1 day ago:
This doesn't appear to be a thing you can easily do anymore now that
social media has sort of supplanted it, but I used to email members of
bands that I really liked when I was between the ages of ~12-16, so
this would have been around ~~2003-2007 or so.
The band members wrote back with a surprising frequency, and were
extremely polite and grateful for fanmail. I remember that I had a
fairly in-depth email session with Justin Pierre, the lead singer for
Motion City Soundtrack, where I asked him about how he comes up with
songs and what touring was like.
Now, obviously, there's reasons that kids should absolutely not ever do
this, because there's a lot of really crappy humans who might try and
exploit the kids or do otherwise horrible things, but I was lucky
enough to where that never happened to me, and everyone who wrote back
to me was very professional and seemed flattered that anyone liked
their music enough to write a fan email. I think email was still a new
enough thing to where most people weren't writing fan emails.
It's something I reminisce about occasionally, and while I don't really
agree with any of Reagan's policies, I will acknowledge that him
writing back to this kid was genuinely a kind of cool thing to do.
ETA:
Before anyone goes judging them, I should point out that my parents did
not know I was doing that, and would likely have told me to stop if
they did, precisely because they would have been afraid of me being
coerced into something horrible as a minor. I don't think they realized
at the time that it was even possible to directly contact band members
via email.
lostemptations5 wrote 22 hours 50 min ago:
People should never, ever write letters? You're kidding me. What is
going to happen over the mail?
When I was a kid I wrote letters all the time to anyone I met and
kept up some good correspondences. I felt it really enhanced me as a
character and grew my literary skills.
Anyways the point -- I'm sure -- is moot as no one does that anymore,
I'll bet.
tombert wrote 3 hours 48 min ago:
I was speaking mostly with the concern that the famous person may
try and solicit nudes from the kid, which is bad for obvious
reasons.
I will acknowledge that I was speaking a bit too broadly, I have
clarified a bit in sibling threads. I do think itâs a perfectly
reasonable precaution, especially for very young kids, to ask them
to CC the parents.
michaelcampbell wrote 1 day ago:
Before even then, when Cliff Burton (Metallica bassist) died in an
auto accident, I wrote some physical mails to his parents expressing
my sympathy. I forget how I got their address, but regardless they
wrote back - by hand! and we had a few back and forth physical mails.
Nice folks, and totally genuine.
GJim wrote 1 day ago:
> Now, obviously, there's reasons that kids should absolutely not
ever do this,
And what are they?
FYI: Teaching children to live in fear (as you yourself clearly are)
and to be afraid of strangers is wrong. You should instead be
teaching them how to tell a good stranger from a bad one.
tombert wrote 1 day ago:
> Teaching children to live in fear (as you yourself clearly are)
Well I don't (and can no longer) have kids so there's not much risk
of me teaching children anything other than computer science at a
school, and considering that I was the one sending the emails
before, I don't think that I'm "living in fear".
I mostly agree though, I shouldn't fear-monger, most people don't
suck. I guess I was just saying that because I've seen enough
true-crime and creepy Hollywood casting couch and child
exploitation that I just felt the need to put a bit of a
disclaimer. Obviously those are generally outliers (that's why
they're noteworthy enough to make into a documentary or something),
but I do think it's probably a good idea to supervise/monitor kids'
outgoing emails, especially very young kids.
I don't think it's "teaching them to live in fear" to give some
very basic safety precautions, but I acknowledge that I didn't make
that clear in the original post.
drewdevault wrote 1 day ago:
Agreed. This is ridiculous.
latexr wrote 1 day ago:
> And what are they?
Theyâre in the rest of that sentence that you abruptly cut off
while quoting, for some reason. Youâre free to disagree, but
leaving them out then acting like they arenât there doesnât
feel like arguing in good faith.
> FYI: Teaching children to live in fear (as you yourself clearly
are)
Furthermore, this is incredibly judgemental to lob at a (presumed)
stranger. You shouldnât assume someoneâs life from a snippet on
a comment on a random forum.
You whole argument could have been distilled without attacks to:
> Teaching children to live in fear and to be afraid of strangers
is wrong. You should instead be teaching them how to tell a good
stranger from a bad one.
Gormo wrote 1 day ago:
It's reasonable to presume that a long-term implication of
inculcating a "never talk to strangers" mentality into young
children is the gradual decline of social trust, potentially
leading to the collapse of civil society generally.
I think a t least some of the intense polarization, "culture war"
acrimony, paranoia, and institutional dysfunction we're seeing
today is attributable to the coming of age of people who were
raised this way.
tombert wrote 1 day ago:
I really think this is a pretty large extrapolation from me
saying "don't let your kids talk to random celebrities on the
internet", claiming that what I suggested will lead to some
kind of moral decay.
I agree that I probably should have clarified (and have in a
few sister threads, you can find it if curious), but I don't
actually think it's 100% analogous to say that being cautious
when talking to famous people is the same as "don't talk to
strangers". There's a pretty huge power differential between a
kid and someone that they really admire vs some random
stranger, and there is probably at least some degree of
selection bias of people who pursue positions of power and have
the desire to abuse it. I don't have kids, but if I did I
probably wouldn't let them hang around a lot of people who
actively pursue power completely unsupervised, e.g. basically
any politician, religious leaders, etc.
You can call it paranoia if you want, but I think it's just
being aware of selection bias; I probably wouldn't let a kid
into an Incel Support Group for the same reason, because
there's going to be selection biases towards justifying
horrible stuff, even if a vast majority of incels are just
dorky dudes who probably wouldn't do anything inappropriate to
a child.
Most famous people are just average humans, and are perfectly
professional and courteous, and I feel like I did at least kind
of mention that in my original post when I said that nothing
bad happened to me, but I don't think that implies you just
throw caution to the wind and just let kids reach out to every
stranger they want. I also don't think it's leading to a moral
decay to think that parents should supervise very young kids on
the internet.
randomdata wrote 1 day ago:
> there's reasons that kids should absolutely not ever do this
In the same way kids should never go outside on a sunny day because
there is an exceptionally small chance that they could be struck by
lighting? Back in my day writing letters like this was part of the
elementary school curriculum.
Zathman wrote 1 day ago:
I continue to reach out to at least one independent band or artist
each year, even now in my mid-30s. Around the end of each year, I
review my top artists and songs to see which truly resonated with me
as part of my life's soundtrack. Whether through email, SoundCloud,
Facebook, LinkedIn, or VK, I take the time to express my appreciation
for their workâsharing which songs touched me and why. Amazingly,
nearly every artist responds. One memorable instance was when an
artist, who hadnât produced music in over a decade and was going
through a tough divorce, told me a year later that my message had
inspired him to return to music and embrace life anew. Your
engagement with musicians can have a profound impact, perhaps even
inspiring them to rediscover their passion. Keep reaching out and
sharing your love for their artâit truly makes a difference, no
matter your age!
drones wrote 1 day ago:
Whenever I go out to see live music, I always make it a point to
let the performing artists know they had a great set, even if the
music itself isn't for me. In a world consumed by negative
engagement, it's a small yet disproportionately effective way to
keep the human spirit alive.
steve_adams_86 wrote 1 day ago:
Haha, I used to harass bands I loved as well. Like you, I got mostly
positive and polite responses. I suppose my emails were constructive
and kind so they appreciated it and reciprocated to some degree.
I learnt a fair bit about music from some of these exchanges. It was
good fun. A relic of the old internet says I guess. These days
youâd just look for content on YouTube or something instead. Still
awesome in its own right, but different.
swatcoder wrote 1 day ago:
> there's reasons that kids should absolutely not ever do this,
because there's a lot of really crappy humans who might try and
exploit the kids or do otherwise horrible things
I know you're just making a CYA disclaimer, but that's not an
effective approach to creating future adults. It just produces old
children.
Good on you for doing this and hopefully your parents would have
assisted you in staying safe (and polite) rather than stopping you.
cm2012 wrote 1 day ago:
My wife as a teenager wrote a letter to a romance novel author,
sincerely asking about the fates of some characters. I thought the
author was a legend, she responded she just writes the books for
money and doesnt think about it at all afterwards. Lol
pnw wrote 1 day ago:
Sounds like Gary Oldman giving an interview about any character he
has played in a movie!
p3rls wrote 1 day ago:
I didn't think even Justin Pierre would know how Justin Pierre wrote
music
tombert wrote 1 day ago:
These are like 19 year old memories, so theyâre a bit hazy and I
cannot seem to find the emails, but he mostly said he took
inspiration from history with drug addiction, and that he usually
starts with the melody.
pea wrote 1 day ago:
Oh man I totally did this. I got really nice emails back from Jello
Biafra and Sole from Anticon as an angsty teenager.
EdwardDiego wrote 1 day ago:
After reading a sci-fi novel I really enjoyed, I emailed the author
to let him know how much I appreciated his imagination, and received
a rather lovely reply.
Absolutely didn't expect it, but it was really nice to get.
(Adrian Tchaikovsky, and his Children of Time series).
dekhn wrote 1 day ago:
I was wondering if he was a real, individual human being because
that author writes far more text in a short period of time than
anybody I've ever seen.
I really liked Cage of Souls, it was like a Jack Vance revival.
And it's always fun to reach Tchaikovsky and Alastair Reynolds
books back to back.
starlight_nomad wrote 1 day ago:
I also really liked Cage of Souls. It seems like most of the
people I know who have read any Tchakovsky have just read the
Children of Time, and not any of his other prolific work.
vidarh wrote 1 day ago:
Look up Georges Simenon (Maigret novels). Some people just write
fast. Simenon used to write his novels in a week, and that isn't
particularly unusual.
It certainly varies with genre, and the short writing periods
tend to be more common in genres where people write series and
the genre has very specific expectations (e.g. romance, crime
mysteries) and where huge levels of originality isn't needed. NOT
suggesting that is the case for Tchaikovsky.
I've written two novels, and when I first get myself to sit down
and write (that's the hard part), I fairly consistently write 2k
words an hour. A 200 page novel is in the 60k-65k word range, so
30-33 hours of writing.
If I could get myself to sit down and just write more
consistently, I could churn out a lot too (of course whether it'd
be good enough and/or commercial enough is another matter - most
authors sell peanuts).
That ability to make themselves sit down and write with some
degree of consistency is the most impressive part to me with
authors who produce a lot, but that probably reflects what I
personally find hardest (my second novel took three weeks from
synopsis to first draft, and another four of editing; I'm now two
years and 40k words into my third novel despite having planned
the plot out in detail)
autoexec wrote 1 day ago:
> I was wondering if he was a real, individual human being
because that author writes far more text in a short period of
time than anybody I've ever seen.
I've wondered the same thing about Stephen King. I figured it'd
be easy enough for him to put out outlines and then make edits
after others he trusted to write in his style wrote most of the
words.
s1artibartfast wrote 1 day ago:
Seems OK to me and I would be fine with my kids doing the same. Risk
for email is very low, especially when the child seeks out an adult,
opposed to the other way around.
Ironically, my elderly father does the same thing today! He cold
emails ivy league professors and writers from the WSJ, and I'm always
surprised on how engaged they get with corresponding. They send
preprints, lab data, and all kinds of followup.
Spooky23 wrote 1 day ago:
Professionally it really works well as well. If you have a good rap
and interesting questions you can connect with interesting people.
Think about it, most email is a pit of despair. Interesting human
contact is rare.
Years ago I was working with a client on a really obscure bug with
a storage system. I emailed a dude from the manufacturer who posted
on an listserv about some similar-ish scenarios.
We emailed a few times and he ended up calling me. Turned out he
was on the east coast for a conference an hour away and we ended up
meeting up at the customer site unofficially, and he realized that
whatever we were doing was outside of their test coverage in error.
We both learned a lot and stayed in touch for a few years.
suoduandao3 wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah, I recently got a response to a cold email to Dr. Karl
Friston. Definitely a fanboy moment!
Regarding the risk of a minor doing this kind of outreach, 90% of
all child abuse happens with someone known to the child and/or
their guardian, and I doubt many of the remaining 10% are just
waiting around for a child to contact them first. I'd say reaching
out to people you admire is a useful enough skill that it's
definitely worth honing as soon as there's an interest, though of
course involving one's parents in the process is a good idea.
mturmon wrote 1 day ago:
In the 90's I used to listen to Ian Masters' radio show Background
Briefing which was a very pointy-headed, left-leaning examination
of various issues.
At the time it was just a show run by a very competent host out of
a public radio station in LA (KPFK - not an NPR affiliate). I think
it has expanded since then.
Several times Ian said he was surprised to usually get a "yes" when
he asked some relatively high-profile journalist, think-tanker, or
university professor to be interviewed on his show. (Typical
interview was 15-20 minutes of airtime - not just a sound bite.)
Basically, these folks seem to be surprisingly willing to chat when
cold-called by an interested person.
tombert wrote 1 day ago:
In 2015, I found the phone number to radio host Jesse Lee
Peterson's office, and around the same time had seen a clip of
him saying that the "biggest mistake America ever made was
allowing women to vote". I called the number to leave a message
that I thought he was an "ignorant, sexist moron". [1]
The intern that answered the phone said "do you want to tell him
yourself?", to which I quickly said "yes".
Jesse answered the phone, and I said "hey, Jesse Lee Peterson, I
think you're an ignorant moron".
He replied back with "do you want to say this on the show
tomorrow?" to which I said "absolutely". A producer reached out
to me via email, and the next day I spoke to him on the radio for
about 20 minutes. I doubt I convinced him or any of his listeners
of anything, but at least I got to say my piece, for a lot
longer than I thought I was going to.
While I still think he's an ignorant and sexist moron whose
opinions have only gotten more radical and scary, I guess I'll
give him a little credit for being a bit open to alternate
arguments.
[1] Even if you disagree, don't try and convince me otherwise
here, because you will not convince me otherwise in this case. If
you don't know who he is, I advise that you don't Google him if
you don't want to get depressed.
octopusRex wrote 4 hours 38 min ago:
Kudos to you. But I don't think it was open mindedness. I think
he wanted you on his show so he could use you as a foil.
Took a lot of bravery for you to do that.
mysterydip wrote 1 day ago:
Similarly I've done research on some of the more obscure older
games, and cold emailing developers when I find contact info has
resulted in a suprising number of successful correspondences.
bigstrat2003 wrote 1 day ago:
I don't think it's really that bad for kids to do this, nor for
parents to let their kids do this. Obviously parents should supervise
somewhat to make sure that the kids aren't being manipulated by some
predator, but otherwise I think it's fine. The solution to "there are
bad people in the world" isn't to shut out the world, it's to watch
out for bad people.
tombert wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah, fair; I guess what I was getting at is that kids shouldn't do
stuff like that unsupervised, especially really young kids. If
it's just politely interacting with a singer, that's fine, but if
the conversation gets too bad that can shut it down.
ycombobreaker wrote 1 day ago:
If the kid CC's their parent it's usually obvious that the
conversation is supervised. A thoughtful and respectful
individual will Reply All.
tombert wrote 1 day ago:
Completely agree, I think that's a very reasonable precaution
that doesn't really "restrict" the kid, but hedges a bit
against the famous person doing anything inappropriate. I also
feel like nearly any famous person who isn't a creep would
understand as well, within some degree of reason.
camillomiller wrote 1 day ago:
You might like Nick Caveâs newsletter, the Red Hand Files
OJFord wrote 1 day ago:
Amazing, hard not to think (if you've seen it) of the 'I declare
bankruptcy' scene (surely you've seen a gif if not the show?) of the US
remake of The Office.
whyenot wrote 1 day ago:
The "best regards to your mother" at the end seems so innocent.
Nowadays, it would read like a reference to an SNL skit starring Andy
Samberg and Mark Whalberg.
jh00ker wrote 1 day ago:
"Say hi to your mom for me." -- Biff Tannen, Back to the Future
pvg wrote 1 day ago:
"Word to your mother" was a thing around the time this was written
and the history of potentially ambiguous maternal reference is
probably about as long as that of language itself.
EdwardDiego wrote 1 day ago:
I'm pretty sure Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake did that at the
start of their song about threesomes they did with Lady Gaga.
And if I recall correctly, one of their mothers was played by Susan
Sarandon?
kirubakaran wrote 1 day ago:
> Andy Samberg and Mark Whalberg
Andy Samberg AS Mark Whalberg :)
anon35 wrote 1 day ago:
Wahlberg lampooned himself in a follow-up appearance with Samberg:
[1] . So: "and" is also correct.
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYcHxF_cO8o
kzrdude wrote 2 days ago:
Is the image composition fair use? The website is commercial. I would
argue the reagan borrow is fair while taking the whole room picture is
probably not.
bhaney wrote 1 day ago:
Do you seriously care?
kzrdude wrote 1 day ago:
Why not, it's a theoretical musing like much else on this forum.
jader201 wrote 1 day ago:
FWIW, this mostly falls under one of the guidelines of things not
to do:
Please don't complain about tangential annoyancesâe.g. article
or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage.
They're too common to be interesting.
URI [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
kzrdude wrote 21 hours 3 min ago:
It's not a tangential thing, it was mentioned explicitly as a
point in the text by the author.
sdeyerle wrote 2 days ago:
I'm trying to figure out where 539 hurricanes is coming from? That's
over an order of magnitude more than there's ever been in a single
season...
hedora wrote 1 day ago:
The letter looks like pretty typical republican playbook:
It implausibly overestimates the scope of problems, then claims that
the private sector / volunteer organizations have more capabilities /
funding than the federal government.
Iâm hoping it was self-parody and not just a canned form letter
response.
js2 wrote 1 day ago:
It's likely a joke, but it sure stands out. Could also be
transcription error. The letter itself contains a typo ("if you will
privide") which is fixed in the transcription. (It should have been
transcribed as is with "[sic]" added to note the original typo.) Too
bad there's not an image of the reply.
BTW, the letter was shared to reddit 7 years ago and a redditor
replied that it was his uncle Andy: [1] A photo of Andy: [2] The
story has been circulating the Internet at least since 2004:
URI [1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/5a95b8/til_i...
URI [2]: https://imgur.com/gallery/tsWkg
URI [3]: https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2004/spring/c...
Thorrez wrote 1 day ago:
There's an image of the reply in that imgur gallery you linked. The
image says 539.
OJFord wrote 1 day ago:
> A photo of Andy
What kind of amazing self-parody is 'Irmo man wrote letter'! That's
brilliant
m463 wrote 1 day ago:
maybe from a list of funding requests? :)
tasuki wrote 1 day ago:
Isn't all of the letter a joke?
Detrytus wrote 1 day ago:
It being a joke does not justify POTUS lying to US citizens :P
IncRnd wrote 1 day ago:
It's good to keep things in perspective. After all, there are
16,384 misunderstood comments each minute on this very website.
_carbyau_ wrote 1 day ago:
And that number immediately triggers my "Nice neat power of 2
answer? Seems unlikely..." suspicions. :-)
fancyfredbot wrote 1 day ago:
I misunderstood this comment initially, thinking that there
can't be so many comments on HN. But then I realised each
comment can be misunderstood more than once. Seems plausible.
Pleased to have done my part.
aspenmayer wrote 1 day ago:
If your comment is sarcasm, does my comment affect your
calculations?
If my comment is sarcasm, does my comment affect your
calculations?
re wrote 1 day ago:
Also curious that the letter was from May, before the start of the
1984 hurricane season. Per Wikipedia, 1984 did go on to have the
highest activity since 1971, while 1983 the lowest since 1930. But
1983 caused more damage with Hurricane Alicia crossing Texas.
The Texas drought reference does appear to be accurate.
URI [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/16/us/crushing-drought-in-te...
knute wrote 2 days ago:
I'm thinking it must be tornadoes. There were 907 tornadoes across
all of 1984.
[0]
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tornado_events_by_year
freitzkriesler2 wrote 2 days ago:
I enjoy cheeky letters and even moreso, I really enjoy cheeky responses
to said letters.
The staffer who replied probably enjoyed writing it.
demondemidi wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah Iâm pretty sure Reagan didnât write this reply. Spending
decades on social media has made me not trust anything I read that is
âfeel goodâ.
Merad wrote 1 day ago:
Around 2017-2018 I remember reading a really interesting article
about how the Obama White House handled letters to the president.
The vast majority of letters (hundreds per day, IIRC) were answered
by staffers, but each day they would select 10 letters that Obama
would read himself. He didn't personally write out a reply, but
he'd make notes for the staff about how he wanted to respond. No
idea how Reagan's team handled it, but it's at least possible that
he was personally involved in the reply.
mlyle wrote 1 day ago:
Reagan's administration worked in the same way. But Reagan
himself was a prolific correspondent, and personally dictated a
much greater share of those replies than most 20th century
presidents.
(Reagan also was known for reading articles and scribbling notes
to staff about a note to send "from him" about the content--
quite a few journalists and essayists received Reagan letters).
octopusRex wrote 4 hours 30 min ago:
Would like to see responses from the Alzheimer's years. He got
pretty bad towards the end. Biden sounds like a 20 year old in
comparison. Trump is still off in cofeve land.
mwcremer wrote 2 days ago:
This is one of my favorites:
URI [1]: https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/i-am-unable-to-accept-your-...
fifilura wrote 1 day ago:
There is a reference to a "small grammatical error" in the
rejection from Harvard, but I did not quite understand what he was
referring to.
Was that obvious from his reply and I missed the point?
I am guessing it must be in the form of "Please accept our letter
of rejection" or similar?
lostlogin wrote 1 day ago:
I like the Arkell versus Pressdram.
URI [1]: https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/arkell-v-pressdram
mauvehaus wrote 1 day ago:
That is excellent, and if you enjoyed it, you might also enjoy
the Cleveland Browns one:
URI [1]: https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/very-truly-yours
hodgesrm wrote 1 day ago:
The cc: to Art Modell [0] was a nice touch. He was a real
character. I imagine he thoroughly approved of the response,
assuming he didn't think of it himself.
[0]
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Modell
kzrdude wrote 1 day ago:
that was lovely. Sure enough the letter writer has a wikipedia
article as Paul Devlin (filmmaker)
DIR <- back to front page