On Presidential greetings

-
On Saturday, Hawthorne received a very important and exciting piece of mail:


I posted a photo of it on Instagram and Facebook, as I do, and my corner of the Internet erupted with wonder. It turns out not many people knew you could request a Presidential greeting when your baby is born, let alone how easy it is. No, we are not really close personal friends with the Obamas (I wish!) Nor did we give a large amount of money toward Obama's presidential campaigns. This greeting is open to all. For many years, you had to mail your request. Now there's an easy online form to fill out. Hawthorne's greeting arrived in less than two weeks. And you're even allowed to procrastinate--you have up to a year after the birth of your baby to request a greeting.

Greetings are also available for other occasions, including weddings, retirements, birthdays (for those over 80), and anniversaries (50+ years.) So this will be the last greeting any of us receive for many, many years. We shall enjoy it.

Comments

  1. Sam (Tiny Library)February 2, 2015 at 3:31 PM

    So jealous of this. We can get birthday messages from the Queen here, but only if you live to be 100!

    ReplyDelete
  2. MichelleFebruary 2, 2015 at 10:06 PM

    That is very, very cool. I will have to keep this in mind for my parents' 50th!

    ReplyDelete
  3. AudraFebruary 3, 2015 at 11:53 AM

    Sooooooooooooooooo glad you shared this -- just sent in our request -- I'm so excited!!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to comment. Happy reading!

Popular posts from this blog

book review: A Dangerous Place by Jacqueline Winspear

-
Image
The backstory: A Dangerous Place  is the eleventh historical mystery featuring Maisie Dobbs. My reviews of the other eleven (plus Winspear's stand alone historical novel) are in my Book Review Database . The basics: Set four years after the last Maisie Dobbs novel, Leaving Everything Most Loved , in A Dangerous Place , we meet up with Maisie in Gibraltar in 1927 during the Spanish Civil War. She gets off her England-bound ship in Gibraltar because she's not quite ready to return. Note: this review contains spoilers about what happened in those four years of Maisie's life between books, all of which are revealed in this novel's first thirty pages.  My thoughts: Sunday I wrote about the Maisie Mail I received. These postcards appear in the book itself, along with many others. After setting the stage in Gibraltar in the opening pages (Maisie stumbles upon a dead body), Winspear recounts the last four years of Maisie's life in the form of postcards, letters, an
Read more

book review: Run by Ann Patchett

-
Image
The backstory: After loving State of Wonder  ( my review ), I set out to read all of Ann Patchett's books. The basics: Run  is the story of the Doyle family: Bernard, an Irish Catholic ex-mayor of Boston, his deceased wife Bernadette, their adult son Sullivan, and their two adopted college ages sons, Tip and Teddy, who are biological brothers. My thoughts: I'm beginning to think Ann Patchett is my soul sister. Her writing reaches me deeply, and I've adored everything she's written. It was a special treat to read Run , the novel of hers I knew the least about going in. Although I had the framework of two of her novels and one memoir, I didn't know what to expect. Run  isn't as universally loved as some of her other works, so I was particularly curious to see how it measured up. Admittedly, Run  started off slowly for me. It took two chapters to really get into the heart of the story, but once it happened, I was hooked. One of the things I love most about
Read more

book review: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

-
Image
The backstory: Gilead  won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005, the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2004, and was longlisted for the Orange Prize in 2006. The basics: As Rev. Ames nears the end of his life in the 1950's, he begins a letter to his young son because Ames realizes his son is too young to really know him. Gilead  is that letter. My thoughts: Gilead  is a novel I'm been meaning to read for years. It's a character-driven, Midwestern narrative by one of our best contemporary writers. It should be a novel I love, yet I struggled to finish it and admit I was wowed by neither the story nor the writing. Gilead  seemed almost stream-of-consciousness at first. I appreciated that Robinson jumped right in: this novel is a letter from father to son; the reader's ignorance of these two characters is not the focus. As the novel progressed, more details began to be filled in, and the reader begins to understand the characters, setting and purpose. I enjoyed the fir
Read more