I'm something of an obsessive letter writer. I've been writing to my representatives in a fairly regular manner for the last three months. I wrote to Eddie Grant's record label to ask about the process behind the licensing of his song "Electric Avenue" for use in shampoo ads. I wrote to the "What Would Jesus Drive" people to ask them where non-Christians should turn for spiritual guidance in making transportation choices. I write to my friend in Ireland any time anything remotely interesting happens in my life and sometimes when nothing interesting is happening at all. I'm always excited to go down to get the mail or to log on to email to see who has written back.
The nice people at SC Johnson, the manufacturer of the Ziploc bag wrote to me recently to ask me if I'd like to be on their mailing list. I thanked them kindly for their invitation, but I declined, partly because when I wrote to them the first time, they didn't really answer my question. I wanted to know who had invented the Ziploc bag. They were kind enough to share the history of the Ziploc's feature development, but they failed to name the inventor, perhaps preferring to leave that unsung scientist's accomplishments out of the limelight, allowing the heirs to the Ziploc fortune to live their scandals in peace.
Today I got mail from Phillips Electronics and Senator Patty Murray. Real mail in envelopes with stamps and everything.
Patty Murray thanked me for contacting her with my opinion about granting war powers to the President of the United States. She was kind enough to detail her thought process during the difficult times leading up to the vote. She told me who she met with during that time, what her opinions are about Saddam Hussein and the situation in Iraq. It's a very thoughtful letter and it's signed in blue ink. Maria Cantwell hasn't written to me at all. Neither has Jim McDermott, but I forgive him because we've talked in person.
Phillips sent me a FedEx pick up slip. I wrote to Phillips about my HD7612. To the rest of us, that's a coffee pot. I like my HD7612, but I don't like the way the carafe is designed. The handle is the wrong place and there's something about the geometry of the carafe that just doesn't work when you get to the bottom of the pot. Phillips has a satisfaction guaranteed clause on their products and it turns out they stick to it. They offered to issue me a check for the going retail price of the HD7612. I just wanted them to tell me that yeah, the HD7612 was going to be redesigned in the HD7613, but I can't fault their service.
Oprah Winfrey sends me mostly auto replies, but I forgive her, just like I've forgiven Jim McDermott. After all, she's really busy with that five-day-a-week TV show and everyone writes to her. She probably has a staff that reads her mail. When I write to Oprah I try really hard to be concise and some what hysterical at the same time in the hopes that Oprah herself will actually get my mail. She hasn't written back to me yet.
I've written to the Bon Marche about the poor quality of their flannel sheets and to Northwest airlines about the travesty of flying coach. I've written to the editors of the local press over and over and sometimes I end up on the letters page. I've written to Metro transit to thank them for putting bike racks on the busses and I've written to Talvin Singh to thank him for playing that terrific acoustic set that night when his sound guys totally screwed everything up.
Once I wrote to the CEO of MCI, the notorious Bernard Ebbers, because I was so infuriated about how my service had been cut off because of a late payment. I received a very nice letter from his assistant. The CEO of QWEST, a company with which I was equally furious, did not write back to me, though they did have a tech support expert (who, in the end, could not help me) call my home to "make things right."
About 20% of the letters I send out get a response. That seems pretty low to me. If I've sent email, I often end up on some oddball mailing list, rather than getting a response - this could explain why I keep getting release mail for new Bollywood films in New York and very personalized special offers for Saran Wrap. That's not what I want. What I want is a response. It doesn't always have to be exactly the right one. There's something about letter writing to large anonymous corporations that I find oddly appealing. Some person somewhere has the job of answering them. They have to go look for the design specs for the HD7612 or find the history of Ziploc bags or say to the Senator, "Was it Colin Powell that told you that? Or Donald Rumsfeld? I want to get this draft right." I want Oprah, who gets to tell me all about what she thinks and does, to know what I think and do. (Don't tell me Oprah's not a large corporation. She absolutely is.)
Sometimes I really do just want to know something and I'm disappointed when my inquiry doesn't get a response. Would it have killed Eddie Grant's record exec to send me a mail saying, "Yeah, that's the craziest thing we've ever seen, a song about race riots used to sell shampoo to white girls! Man! Licensing. It's crazy. Sorry, I don't know what Eddie thinks, but yeah, it's insane."
I think this started a long time ago. When I was ten or eleven years old, I really wanted to be a marine biologist. (I love looking at fish.) I wrote to Jacques Cousteau, he was still very much alive then, though he must have been getting up there. I received a reply, a beautiful letter from France in a striped airmail envelope with stamps on it, not just any stamps but stamps with pictures of tropical fish that must have been a special edition of Cousteau society stamps put out by the French post. The envelope was addressed by hand and the letter inside had been typed on an old style typewriter on pale and fragile onion skin paper "We are sorry, " it said "but Mr. Cousteau is off on expedition right now and can not answer your letter directly. We wish you continued enthusiasm in your studies. The world will always have a place for those with a love of nature and science." And it was signed, in ink, by Cousteau's son.
