Letter #173 from Maryland

Letter #173 comes from Angela in Maryland.Angela lives in a suburb of Washington,DC called Wheaton.Angela works as a librarian (yes,another great librarian!). :) Wheaton is 12 miles from DC and is one of the stops on the Red Line of the Metro (subway) that serves DC.Her city is very walkable and she is close to many places.She says it's really nice when it snows because when the roads aren't passable,she can still walk to most places.

One of her favorite places to visit is Wheaton Regional Park,which includes Brookside Gardens,which is a flower garden/conservatory.She says it's a great place to go to enjoy nature since the city is an urban area.She says they have a yearly event called "Wings of Fairy", where they release the butterflies in the conservatory building so they are free to fly all around.Everybody gets to walk among the butterflies,which must be really nice because butterflies are so beautiful and unique.

Angela also enclosed some printouts about Wheaton,which I will summarize below:
Wheaton is an unincorporated community in Montgomery County that started out as a crossroads in the 1700's.Wheaton was named after the Union General Frank Wheaton,who defended nearby Fort Stevens and Washington,DC in the Civil War against Conferderate General Jubal Early's attack in July 1864.

The first U.S. television license operated out of Charles Francis Jenkins' home in Wheaton,in 1928.Wheaton became the birthplace of the first television transmissions from Jenkins Broadcasting.

After WWII,a massive influx of Federal government workers moved to the metropolitan area.Prior to 1947 only 29,000 people lived in Wheaton,mostly on farms and large estates.The number doubled in 1950,then again in 1960,creating unprecedented growth.

In 1954 building began on Kemp Mill Estatesof the Heitmuller Tract,which opened in 1959 as Wheaton Plaza Shopping Center.At that time it was the 6th largest in the nation,and has since had major redevelopment as Westfield Wheaton.

In 1958 the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission began buying land to create Wheaton Regional Park,now a 536 acre sanctuary.

Along with her lovely letter,Angela included brochures from Westfield Mall,Brookside Gardens, a Metro Pocket Guide, and since she remembered we are collecting books in different languages,she said that her library sells used books that also includes books in several languages,thanks to the diversity of her area.She included the book,"Spot", in Arabic,"The Very Hungry Caterpillar", in Yiddish,and a Garfield book,which neither of us were sure about the language,I think it could be Dutch,but maybe somebody can click on the picture below and tell us if that is correct or not.Thanks!

Thank you so much Angela for your lovely letter,brochures and books (we really love them & didn't have books in those languages,so thanks a bunch!).We also loved the new "Go Green" stamps,our post office didn't have any as they only get a few of the new stamps. :( They can all be seen below:

Letter #65 from Maryland

Letter #65 comes from Mary who lives in Maryland.She lives close to Baltimore.She has been involved with mail projects for about three years now.She's visited Virginia before.She recommended that we visit the Visionary Art Museum since it's her favorite place.Even though we have been to DC a few times,we never went to Maryland since we weren't sure what to see since most of our trips were last minute trips since we live about 4 hours west of DC,so it's not too far for us to take day trips.

Mary works at a psychiatric rehab center where she teaches classes to adults with mental illnesses and she also attends college.She is a psychology major.

Mary's favorite form of mail is postcards....ours is,too. :) Well,I have actually stopped but my daughters still exchange postcards on postcrossing...it's always fun to get a postcard from a suprise country.We also have traded on the forums for postcards that we really like.So far,we have well over 100 postcards at last count a few months back,but we have gotten many more recently so maybe we could have 200 by now.

Mary loves the color yellow and loves glitter (me too!).My oldest daughter just won a book titled Waking up in the Land of Glitter....we're excited to read about anything dealing with glitter. :) She said she would be taking a picture of our letter and posting it on the 365 days of mail art challenge website,so we need to check that out.Thanks so much for helping spread the word,it's much appreciated and really needed to reach our goal.Here is Mary's letter below:

Letter #23 from Maryland

Letters are coming in daily now and it's so exciting!Here is what the lovely Cyndel from Maryland shared with us.She lives in a suburb of DC,but came from a small town in Indiana with less than 500 people....I'm sure that must have been a big change to get used to.She wasn't exposed to much diversity but now gets to enjoy living around people from all over the world.I can definitely relate to you as we have moved from the south,to the north & back down south again.When we lived up north,we lived in a very diverse area, but now we don't. :( I actually just read in our paper that our county is the whitest county in the state at 90%. (We were told before moving here that it is very diverse,but I haven't seen much diversity myself.) It's a big change from here to Arlington,VA which is 3.5 hours from us.I feel that living in a diverse area is very important to our children.I see many kids here that are racist because they haven't grown up with kids of different races like they have where we came from,so it makes a big difference.I think people are always afraid of what they don't know,so they need to expose themselves to different things so that they can learn and realize that there is no need to fear others different than themselves.

Cyndel met her boyfriend is college and told me that his mother is from Swaziland,which sounds so exotic.She enjoys her food (you better...wink,wink!) :) and her stories.It's so wonderful to know somebody from another country that can share such interesting things with you that you might never know about otherwise.

Cyndel is a wonderful model citizen.She has spent a year as an AmeriCorps Vista,worked full time as a program assistant in an Adult Education and ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) and has done many volunteering jobs.She also mentions that the illiteracy rate in adults was quite high and didn't even know that until she started volunteering.Many times we have "tunnel syndrome" and think that everybody is like us,whe in reality there are many people needing our help.I do think we all should try to do some form of volunteering...even if it's just helping your elderly neighbors.We should be examples for our children.If we all chipped in,the world would be a much better place to live in.

If you love horses and the beach,Cyndel says that we should visit Assateague Island off the Eastern shore of Maryland.It's home to many wild horses.I think it would be amazing to see wild horses.She also loves to visit the museums in DC.We went to a couple of museums last summer and it was truly amazing.We stayed a few days,but that's not enough time to enjoy all of DC,so we have been back a few times.Even if you went only to walk and admire the buildings,it's worth the time because Washington,DC is absolutely beautiful!Cyndel loves living in her town because she doesn't need a car at all.She is in walking distance to the stores and a lovely park...what more do you need,right?I hope she is close to a library,too...we love libraries. :)

She recommended two books for us to read. ( I LOVE book recommendations for both myself and my children,so send them in)She has recommended The Secret Life of Bees (we saw the movie) & Three Cups of Tea (we bought the book,but haven't read it yet).Thanks for sharing!

Below is Cyndel's lovely letter along with a cute pic of her and her boyfriend,her fave place to eat Chili and 2 postcards...one from Indiana and one from DC (we actually visted the World War II Memorial but didn't get a postcard,so thanks so much...we thought it was such a beautiful memorial....if you haven't seen it,you must go!Thanks again Cyndel for the letter,pictures & postcards!Maybe we could meet when we go to DC next time. :)