The Letter Exchange - Links Related to Issue 6

	THE LETTER EXCHANGE
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Links related to Issue 6, Winter 2005
	The story of Owney, the dog who traveled the world as a favorite of postal clerks.	Do those enigmatic computer acronyms (see page 6) confuse you too? Many sites such as PC World offer a guide. In Issue 6, LEX prints the first of 3 excerpts from 3 books in the Self-Made series (page 8). The series actually includes 4 books: the one LEX didn't use is Old Gorgon Graham, More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son, written by George Horace Lorimer, first published in 1903, and published online in 2004 by Project Gutenberg. As firmly ensconced in the American cultural consciousness as the Pony Express (page 13) is, it's hard to believe that it only operated for a year and a half. The National Park Service has established a Pony Express National Historic Trail spanning eight states, and here's a map showing Russell Majors Waddell Park. If you'd like to read more about the process of sending coupons (Page 14), there's an article at About.com, and a discussion forum contains a list of numerous base addresses where coupons can be sent. (The Web site given in Issue 6 is no longer active.) PostalWatch (page 15) calls itself "Watchdog Over the US Postal Service", and reports on rate increases as well as many other topics. Fascinated with Emily Dickinson (page 18)? You might want to check out the Dickinson Electronic Archives, the Emily Dickinson International Society at Case Western Reserve University, the Emily Dickinson Museum operated by Amherst College, or the complete online poems. Fascinated with Lewis Carroll (page 19)? You might want to check out the Lewis Carroll Society of North America, the Lewis Carroll pages at The Victorian Web, or the British Lewis Carroll Society. You can also make your head swim with the Gutenberg edition of Carroll's The Game of Logic. Sometimes more than your mailbox gets stuffed. Owney, the famous postal clerks' dog (page 22), is on display at the National Postal Museum. The book that the story of Owney is taken from, The traveling post office; history and incidents of the railway mail service by William J. Dennis, is long out of print but may be found in libraries. The National Park Service presents a brief history of the Stone Arch Bridge (shown on page 26 and described on page 29); current photos of the bridge in use as a pedestrian and bicycle path can be found here and here. The official name of the bridge is the St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba Railway Bridge. In October lighting was completed underneath the bridge to give it a nighttime presence. This is the cabin where Lonna read her grandmother's books as a child (see From the Editor, page 29). The middle section is a genuine log cabin; in 1918 it was taken apart at its original location and the logs numbered and pulled down Rapid Creek to be reassembled where it is now.
	Emily Dickinson was a prolific letter writer; she was also, of course, a poet with an idiosyncratic style all her own that doesn't always make it unedited into collections of her works. Much has been written about her, including the continuing controversy over just how much of a recluse she really was.
	Charles Dodgson, who wrote under the pen name Lewis Carroll, is best known as the author of Alice in Wonderland, but he also carried on a voluminous correspondence, particularly with children, and was a well-known writer on logic, puzzles and mathematics.
	The Self-Made series of George Horace Lorimer, despite (or perhaps because of) its quaint, earthy advice, has been in and out of print for the last 100 years, most recently reprinted this year.
	Charles Eustace Merriman's continuation of the Self-Made series adds an even breezier and sometimes more pointed style; these books have also been recently reprinted.
	The Pony Express is probably the most famous of the ways that mail has been delivered in U.S. history. The legend continues to inspire fictional stories as well as historical accounts.
	Bring Warm Clothes, a look at Minnesota's history as told through the letters, diaries and photographs of people who lived it. Discover what Minnesota was like for her people – explorers, farmers, homemakers, socialites, children, laborers, lawyers and lumberjacks.
Clicking on the links in this column will take you to Powell's, the world's largest independent bookstore. Any purchase you make by following one of these links will help support LEX – not just these items but any book or DVD in their inventory.		Back to Issue-Related Links
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