This I Believe

Every year I send out a year-end letter and a small gift to my Christmas list. The gift is something creative, maybe a self-published book I made in the past year, or a photo, or sometime personal. This year the gift was a letter that got out of hand. I got going while writing a few thoughts prompted by a book assignment and the missive got long. Once it grew, I added a few of my own photographs. The story wanted to be small in the hand, sort of miniature. It needed a design so I fired up InDesign. It wanted to be printed. Then it needed a few staples. The next thing I new it was a small 16-page booklet. I mailed it out.

Lots of folks sent back kind words. Jay Allison, independent producer, co-founder of Transom, and a friend in the radio business thought it should be on the radio, and the next thing I know, I am in the studios of KQED reading a 500-word excerpt of the letter on a show called This I Believe.

NPR sent notice that this 5-minute rant will air in the Bay Area on Sunday, February 3 on KALW (91.7FM) between 3:30 and 4pm, a fairly safe time when no one will be listening.  But you can listen to it (streaming), or download it (at least for two weeks) from here, or on iTunes.

As part of the show, they asked if they could post the letter in full, and I said okay. So a very handsome web version of the letter lives here on the NPR site. I will also put up a PDF version of the letter soon,  just because I had it and might as well round out the media choices.