it's in the mail

 A few days ago, as a favor to a friend, I addressed and mailed one hundred letters for a local candidate.  The reasoning behind this exercise was that people are more likely to open letters that are hand addressed that those that are machine addressed.  This may be true, and as I said I only did this because a friend asked me to, but the truth is I don't appreciating opening mail that I think might be personal only to discover that it's a plea for something.  It might be for a charity or for a politician or to offer me some amazing savings on something I don't want.  Whatever, my first reaction is annoyance.  While it's true that I do open the envelope. I almost always pitch whatever is inside without reading it all the way through.  In my opinion, assuming these mass mailings are effective at all, a post card is a better bet, hand addressed or not.  People will almost always look at both sides of a postcard and, if we're thinking politics here, are bound to at least read the candidate's name.  People are also more likely to keep post cards and glance at them again.  They do make handy little book marks after all.  And speaking of postcards. I received a good one today.  It was machine addressed to "a registered voter" at my address, very impersonal, and yet I flipped it over to look at the other side.  There I discovered a list of the dates and locations for early voting.  It's not just at the coliseum as I had thought from TV news reports.  Starting October 26 I will be able to walk to a site near my home to cast my early, in person ballot.  So hooray for postcards bearing good information.