I have a lot of experience writing letters to strangers, because when I was in college, each year the members of my fraternity would divide up the names of the incoming freshmen class and write to each person. This usually meant writing about 50 or so handwritten letters to strangers per year, but one year I was stuck in Rochester for a summer internship and got so bored that I wrote to over 100 people. Although I got a reputation for getting a relatively high response rate, that was still just 5 to 10%. So it was with some uncertainty but a number of tried and true rules of thumb that I began this task.

(A presidential election ago, I also participated in a letter writing campaign that asked people in more liberal states to write personal letters to voters in split states. I didn't get any responses, and the Republicans ended up winning the presidency, so that wasn't really a great write-to-strangers experience.)

Anyhow, I started this task by writing letters to four women and one man who live in five different nearby senior housing facilities because I thought that retired people might have more time and inclination to write letters. I also tried to make it easier for them to write back by including a self-addressed, stamped postcard in each letter. I followed my rules of thumb that each letter should have only 3 short paragraphs. The first explains who you are and why you are writing. The second asks the person a question that is reasonably interesting but not too personal. And the last includes some information about yourself.

The questions I asked were (1) What was a favorite food your family made when you were young? (2) Where is a place you visited on vacation? (3) What is the farthest place you have ever gone from home? (4) What is your favorite holiday and why? (5) What was your favorite subject when you were in school? For each letter, among other things, I told them that I like playing a game called SF Zero. It would be awesome to attract some (more?) senior citizens to this game!

It has been pointed out to me that my letters sound like they came from a kid, but that wasn't really my goal. I was surprised how much doing this task made me excited about checking the mail each day. After 2 weeks, I got one response, and one letter returned with no forwarding address known.