Letters to Esther

And now for something completely different…

I started a sister blog today. It isn’t art related and the content isn’t even written by me. It’s a collection of transcribed letters written to a woman named Esther Munro. She was born in Illinois around the turn of the century. When she was a small child, her family moved to Geneva, Indiana. In the 1920s, Esther attended Indiana University, where she received a degree in elementary education.

Esther died in 1997 and her letters were sold at an estate sale. I stumbled across them a couple of years later at a flea market, where the vendor was selling them piece-meal. I thought it was criminal that he was splitting them up, so I asked him what he wanted for the whole lot. I ended up paying $20 for an orange crate crammed with hundreds of letters–her entire life’s worth of correspondence.

I haven’t even read all of the letters yet. Some of the letters are from friends, some from family. Many are from college sweethearts. They all help to paint a picture of the people around Esther. Interestingly, they don’t tell us much about Esther herself. I have an interactive art project in the planning stages that will help remedy that. Esther should have a voice, too, I think. But, for now, I’m working on transcribing these boxes and boxes and boxes of letters. I’m hoping to add a couple more each day, time permitting. I’m also trying to find related information on-line (e.g. the links to the Panama and Pacific Exposition and the PBS special on the 1918 influenza epidemic). If anyone comes across information or websites that they think would be informative, please let me know.