(HOST) There’s a new history mini-series beginning this weekend on HBO. And Vermont Humanities Council executive director and commentator Peter Gilbert has discovered an interesting connection between the series – and the U S Postal Service.
(GILBERT) On an envelope that came in the mail recently, smudged over the postage stamp celebrating that distinguished and venerable cartoon superhero "Iron Man," the cancellation read, "’Let us dare to read, think and write.’ John Adams, 1765." And then came a website address.
A couple days later, I saw the same cancellation on another letter, mailed from a different state. What’s this about, I wondered.
It turns out that those letters are just two of no fewer than three billion letters and a hundred million post office receipts that will bear that message this month and next. That’s because the US Postal Service is collaborating with HBO to promote letter writing – and a seven-part HBO miniseries about John Adams, which begins March 16th. The miniseries is based on David McCullough’s Pulitzer-prize winning biography of Adams, which relies heavily on Adams’s voluminous correspondence. Adams, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and second president of the United States, exchanged over eleven hundred letters with his wife, Abigail. It’s in one of those letters that she famously admonished him in 1776 to "remember the ladies" in any newly established, independent government.
For better or worse, HBO didn’t pay anything for the cancellation, which directs people to a Postal Service website entitled "power of the letter." It, in turn, promotes the John Adams miniseries, in the hope, a Postal Service spokesperson explained, of raising awareness of the importance of letter writing. The spokesperson told the Washington Post that they were studying whether to charge for such promotional messages in the future.
David McCullough’s biography of Adams is, like his biography of Truman, terrific. I hope the miniseries does it justice. Because even though the book is 650 pages, in the hours it will take to watch the miniseries, one could make at least a good dent in it.
The inspiration in Adams’s exhortation to "dare to read, think, and write" rests in the fact that for him those three activities are related – and chronological. It encourages us first to learn by reading – a letter, perhaps, or a book; then to think about what we’ve read, and in turn, to write – to compose a letter in reply, perhaps, or a diary entry or essay outlining our thoughts about what we’ve read. In that way, we enter into thoughtful dialogue with the author, we clarify our thoughts, and we preserve them – for ourselves and perhaps others.
Too often today, we just read, uncritical and passive. Sometimes we read, then skip the thinking step before writing; email and blogs encourage this tendency. Often we read and think but don’t write or even discuss – but then the results of our activity remain wholly internal – and fleeting. Adams’s words encourage us to be not readers who are merely passive recipients but reflective, active participants in the world of words and ideas.