Have you ever had a penpal? When I was a kid growing up on the extreme south of the world, aka Tasmania, Australia, it was all the rage to have penpals. There was even some kind of club where you had forms to fill out. We are talking snail mail, years before email.
I ended up with penpals in Bruges, Belgium, Glendale, California, USA and Trondheim, Norway. Sadly I lost contact with Belgium and Norway over the years and the house moves – but I stayed in touch with my beloved Glendale penpal K and we are now in touch on Facebook. K went on to have six boys and then finally a girl. Amazing, huh? I haven’t discussed it with her, but I believe we have very differing political opinions, but that’s ok with me.
K opened my eyes to the world, in a way. It was back in the days when the closest I would get to California was watching the Brady Bunch on tv in Hobart, Tasmania. Then we got in touch. We wrote a lot. We had a secret language – for example the way we would sign off:
h2hfus = Hope to hear from you soon!
I loved seeing her envelopes with her lovely American writing and American stamps.
After a few years of writing, we made a few big deal overseas phone calls. Finally, at 14, when in LA with my Mum, Dad and sister, I was allowed to go and stay with K in California for a few days and even got to go to school with her.
It was great on two levels.
1. it was just like being in a US tv show and
2. K was every single bit as lovely and even lovelier in real life as as she was in her gorgeous letters, as were her family.
These days I don’t have penpals really. So perhaps I like doing these lists because it’s almost a bit like having penpals. I send out about 70k newsletters a month via my 4 main lists, talking about astrology to people interested in astrology.
People write back to me, from time to time, hopefully to say something lovely, or at other times to report glitches on the site… Sometimes they have a website address which they give me – which is always fascinating. I can’t keep up with all all the emails but I definitely read them ALL and enjoy reading them. You won’t be surprised to hear there are some amazing people on these lists, as you would expect!
So anyway, this is what came to mind today when I sat down to write about my newsletters, to let you know about them, in case you want to sign up for any which you’re not on!
Daily newsletter – this is basically a daily feed of the Daily Moon message and the latest blogs from my site – please click here if you want to sign up
Weekly newsletter – my very popular Cosmic Column sent to you direct – this first appears the day before in the Sunday Telegraph. Please click hereif you want to sign up
Monthly newsletter – Please click here ” if you want to sign up
Have a great day, wherever you are and feel free to reply letting me know where you are in the world…
Yasmin x
