How One Letter Made My Week
Today is the best day ever. I went on a post office run with my coworker (and friend), Beth, in anticipation of receiving a package from my sister, Cam Ly. She had recently been through Hong Kong and I begged her to get me multiple packages of my favorite lip balm in the world that I’ve only ever seen there. Well, she obliged and said she was going to mail them to me, so I was looking forward to receiving a package slip. I opened by mailbox – I have one of those drawer ones that slide out – and found buried beneath my New Yorker, my Trinity Reporter, a Bobs’ circular, my credit card bill, and a reminder to have my annual eye exam a letter sized envelope that was hand addressed. I got instantly excited and quickly scanned the return address for some recognition. I saw that it was from France and I looked harder at the name attached. It took me a few seconds to process it, but once I did, I literally screamed in the post office – it read Sedaris.
I’ll back up a little bit. I wrote to David Sedaris back in July inviting him to Wrangell, and I hadn’t heard back from him, and pretty much thought I never would. But there it was in my mailbox, and now it sits on my work desk – a white envelope with the words “Pour ouvrir pincer et tirer” printed on the back right hand corner next to a perforated quarter circle, and a large horizontal stamp from France. I love everything about it.
Here is the letter I sent to David:
20 July 2007
Dear David,
I’m your ordinary fan. I’ve read all of your books with the exception of Holidays on Ice. I have Live at Carnegie Hall in my iTunes, which I’ve listened to at least 15 times, as well as an assortment of other recorded readings. When I get my New Yorker, the first thing I do is scroll the contents to see if there’s anything by you in it.
The one thing that may set me apart from other fans of yours is the simple fact that I live in Wrangell, Alaska, which is an island of 1,973 people located in southeast Alaska. The closest point of reference to where I live is its proximity to Juneau, which is a 12-hour ferry ride away or about an hour plane ride.
I haven’t always lived in a rural town. I’m from Chappaqua, New York and went to school in Connecticut, which is where a professor widened my world by introducing you into it. Before moving to Wrangell, I lived in Hong Kong. While I’ve gotten more so, I am not accustomed to living in such a remote location and not having access to museums, theater, live music, readings, bookstores, dance performances, etc. It’s tough. It’s really tough.
What I have done since living here is fished, a lot. I’ve never fished prior to living here and thought getting myself involved with this kind of culture would be enriching. And it has been, but it doesn’t quench my true passions. Most recently, I’ve been fishing even more because my boyfriend of almost 5 months, Scott, loves it and takes me on these weekend trips to beautiful, secluded spots to fish. As he’s shared parts of his life and what he loves with me, it pains me somewhat that I can’t reciprocate fully. Sure, I send him articles from the NYT online that I find interesting, I burned him a copy of Live at Carnegie Hall, but these things are simply not the same as actually experiencing watching a dance performance with him or walking through a museum exhibit with him.
He suggested we take some time to go to Seattle, which is the closest big city to Wrangell, and share some of what I love together. I’ve started doing some research and I see that you will be in Seattle Friday, October 26. While Seattle is close, it still means a $500 dollar round trip airline ticket, staying a hotel, and other costs. And on my newspaper reporter salary, this is a lot.
So, I would like to invite you to Wrangell. I see that your appearances schedule is full until November so, while it would the most practical as you’ll be so close, I’m not suggesting you come to Wrangell in late October when you’re in the Washington state vicinity. I invite to you come whenever is good for you. I know this is totally far fetched and the chance that you’d ever come to Wrangell to do a reading is essentially nonexistent, but I couldn’t help but write and extending the invitation anyway. I’ve wanted to do it for almost two years actually, since December 2005, when Juneau’s Perseverance Theater performed SantaLand Diaries in Wrangell’s own Nolan Center.
I can’t offer you a plane ticket but I would be able to offer to put you up at Wrangell’s best B&B, Rooney’s Roost, which is really quite nice, and I could take you out for meals and/or cook for you. I could guarantee that you’ll catch a huge fish (if this entices you at all) and eat a lot of seafood. I could also guarantee a unique, beautiful visit to rural Alaska. And I could guarantee you a big crowd (by Wrangell standards, that’s more than a hundred), even if it means going door-to-door to share with my community who you are, and how you coming to town is a once in a lifetime experience. You would make Wrangell history.
Plus, I would just love it. And I know Scott would also, as well as my other friends.
To perhaps entice you a little more into coming, here is something I wrote a while back about Wrangell:
Despite the majority of my everyday life in Wrangell being contained within the same few miles of town, I still find myself marveling at the beauty of the ocean and mountains surrounding this island, even during cloudy, foggy days, which are frequent here.
About a month ago I found myself looking out towards the water at a particularly startling sunset. The backdrop looked too amazing to be real – the gradation of the colors of the rainbow starting from the red behind the mountains and ending in a deep blue of the night sky, where the first evening stars had appeared. It is at these moments that the urban mouse in me shuts up and just breathes.
It’s been almost a year since I moved to Wrangell, Alaska, after recently inhabiting Hong Kong for two years and, prior to that, living a northeast American experience growing up in the suburbs of New York and then attending college in Connecticut.
Now, I live among a population of fishermen and hunters, which is completely brand new to me. They know about and use nature in ways I will never fully understand or relate to. Nature to me was always something to observe, merely look at. I never learned how to read the tides or how to identify animals by their scat. For locals here, that kind of stuff isn’t learned; it’s innate.
I’ve also never cared about nature the way people here do, in terms of it determining my happiness. For one example, they care about the mighty Stikine River (which locals consider ‘Wrangell’s backyard’) so dearly and so much that when uninhibited access to it is threatened, the town rallies in hordes against authority. Quality of life here is acutely and fiercely tied to their natural surroundings, and people here will not settle for anything less.
The sense of community is what I love the most about living here, what I most value, what keeps me here. I may be somewhat clueless to nature, but I know something about human relationships, and the ones made and fostered here are of the highest quality. I never thought community was that important to me. Through living here, I've come to notice that a community of people so in tune with nature is in tune with each other.
Please consider this invitation. I may sound like I’m joking, but I’m very, very serious, and very, very starved for some literary enlightenment.
Sincerely,
Lisa Phu,
Reporter for the Wrangell Sentinel, the oldest continuously published newspaper in Alaska, and, Biggest David Sedaris fan in Wrangell, possible in all of southeast Alaska
P.O. Box 1260
Wrangell, Alaska
99929
(907) 874-4350/ (907) 874-2301
And this is what he wrote back. He signed it at the end:
August 9
Dear Lisa,
It’s funny that you mention the mighty Stikine River. Hugh and I always use the word “mighty” when referring to a river: The might Seine, the mighty Tay, etc.
Thank you for your kind invitation. I was in Alaska last April, and stayed for two days. I don’t know when I’ll return but should I wind up in your neighborhood, I’ll be sure to let you know. The Bed and Breakfast you mentioned in your letter, the place called Rooney’s Roost, is out the question though. I only stay in hotels, and they have to be good ones. It makes it sort of difficult to visit the wilderness, but there you have it.
As for Hong Kong, I went a year ago, and was impressed by the number of trash cans there were. Every ten feet or so you could find one with an ashtray on top of it. While there, I stayed at the Peninsula.
If you happen to make it to Seattle this fall, please stop by the book signing table and say hello.
Sincerely
David Sedaris
I’ll back up a little bit. I wrote to David Sedaris back in July inviting him to Wrangell, and I hadn’t heard back from him, and pretty much thought I never would. But there it was in my mailbox, and now it sits on my work desk – a white envelope with the words “Pour ouvrir pincer et tirer” printed on the back right hand corner next to a perforated quarter circle, and a large horizontal stamp from France. I love everything about it.
Here is the letter I sent to David:
20 July 2007
Dear David,
I’m your ordinary fan. I’ve read all of your books with the exception of Holidays on Ice. I have Live at Carnegie Hall in my iTunes, which I’ve listened to at least 15 times, as well as an assortment of other recorded readings. When I get my New Yorker, the first thing I do is scroll the contents to see if there’s anything by you in it.
The one thing that may set me apart from other fans of yours is the simple fact that I live in Wrangell, Alaska, which is an island of 1,973 people located in southeast Alaska. The closest point of reference to where I live is its proximity to Juneau, which is a 12-hour ferry ride away or about an hour plane ride.
I haven’t always lived in a rural town. I’m from Chappaqua, New York and went to school in Connecticut, which is where a professor widened my world by introducing you into it. Before moving to Wrangell, I lived in Hong Kong. While I’ve gotten more so, I am not accustomed to living in such a remote location and not having access to museums, theater, live music, readings, bookstores, dance performances, etc. It’s tough. It’s really tough.
What I have done since living here is fished, a lot. I’ve never fished prior to living here and thought getting myself involved with this kind of culture would be enriching. And it has been, but it doesn’t quench my true passions. Most recently, I’ve been fishing even more because my boyfriend of almost 5 months, Scott, loves it and takes me on these weekend trips to beautiful, secluded spots to fish. As he’s shared parts of his life and what he loves with me, it pains me somewhat that I can’t reciprocate fully. Sure, I send him articles from the NYT online that I find interesting, I burned him a copy of Live at Carnegie Hall, but these things are simply not the same as actually experiencing watching a dance performance with him or walking through a museum exhibit with him.
He suggested we take some time to go to Seattle, which is the closest big city to Wrangell, and share some of what I love together. I’ve started doing some research and I see that you will be in Seattle Friday, October 26. While Seattle is close, it still means a $500 dollar round trip airline ticket, staying a hotel, and other costs. And on my newspaper reporter salary, this is a lot.
So, I would like to invite you to Wrangell. I see that your appearances schedule is full until November so, while it would the most practical as you’ll be so close, I’m not suggesting you come to Wrangell in late October when you’re in the Washington state vicinity. I invite to you come whenever is good for you. I know this is totally far fetched and the chance that you’d ever come to Wrangell to do a reading is essentially nonexistent, but I couldn’t help but write and extending the invitation anyway. I’ve wanted to do it for almost two years actually, since December 2005, when Juneau’s Perseverance Theater performed SantaLand Diaries in Wrangell’s own Nolan Center.
I can’t offer you a plane ticket but I would be able to offer to put you up at Wrangell’s best B&B, Rooney’s Roost, which is really quite nice, and I could take you out for meals and/or cook for you. I could guarantee that you’ll catch a huge fish (if this entices you at all) and eat a lot of seafood. I could also guarantee a unique, beautiful visit to rural Alaska. And I could guarantee you a big crowd (by Wrangell standards, that’s more than a hundred), even if it means going door-to-door to share with my community who you are, and how you coming to town is a once in a lifetime experience. You would make Wrangell history.
Plus, I would just love it. And I know Scott would also, as well as my other friends.
To perhaps entice you a little more into coming, here is something I wrote a while back about Wrangell:
Despite the majority of my everyday life in Wrangell being contained within the same few miles of town, I still find myself marveling at the beauty of the ocean and mountains surrounding this island, even during cloudy, foggy days, which are frequent here.
About a month ago I found myself looking out towards the water at a particularly startling sunset. The backdrop looked too amazing to be real – the gradation of the colors of the rainbow starting from the red behind the mountains and ending in a deep blue of the night sky, where the first evening stars had appeared. It is at these moments that the urban mouse in me shuts up and just breathes.
It’s been almost a year since I moved to Wrangell, Alaska, after recently inhabiting Hong Kong for two years and, prior to that, living a northeast American experience growing up in the suburbs of New York and then attending college in Connecticut.
Now, I live among a population of fishermen and hunters, which is completely brand new to me. They know about and use nature in ways I will never fully understand or relate to. Nature to me was always something to observe, merely look at. I never learned how to read the tides or how to identify animals by their scat. For locals here, that kind of stuff isn’t learned; it’s innate.
I’ve also never cared about nature the way people here do, in terms of it determining my happiness. For one example, they care about the mighty Stikine River (which locals consider ‘Wrangell’s backyard’) so dearly and so much that when uninhibited access to it is threatened, the town rallies in hordes against authority. Quality of life here is acutely and fiercely tied to their natural surroundings, and people here will not settle for anything less.
The sense of community is what I love the most about living here, what I most value, what keeps me here. I may be somewhat clueless to nature, but I know something about human relationships, and the ones made and fostered here are of the highest quality. I never thought community was that important to me. Through living here, I've come to notice that a community of people so in tune with nature is in tune with each other.
Please consider this invitation. I may sound like I’m joking, but I’m very, very serious, and very, very starved for some literary enlightenment.
Sincerely,
Lisa Phu,
Reporter for the Wrangell Sentinel, the oldest continuously published newspaper in Alaska, and, Biggest David Sedaris fan in Wrangell, possible in all of southeast Alaska
P.O. Box 1260
Wrangell, Alaska
99929
(907) 874-4350/ (907) 874-2301
And this is what he wrote back. He signed it at the end:
August 9
Dear Lisa,
It’s funny that you mention the mighty Stikine River. Hugh and I always use the word “mighty” when referring to a river: The might Seine, the mighty Tay, etc.
Thank you for your kind invitation. I was in Alaska last April, and stayed for two days. I don’t know when I’ll return but should I wind up in your neighborhood, I’ll be sure to let you know. The Bed and Breakfast you mentioned in your letter, the place called Rooney’s Roost, is out the question though. I only stay in hotels, and they have to be good ones. It makes it sort of difficult to visit the wilderness, but there you have it.
As for Hong Kong, I went a year ago, and was impressed by the number of trash cans there were. Every ten feet or so you could find one with an ashtray on top of it. While there, I stayed at the Peninsula.
If you happen to make it to Seattle this fall, please stop by the book signing table and say hello.
Sincerely
David Sedaris
posted by Siapiau | 3:07 PM
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