{"id":31999,"date":"2016-02-25T22:46:30","date_gmt":"2016-02-26T03:46:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wendybrandes.com\/blog\/?p=31999"},"modified":"2016-02-26T01:47:47","modified_gmt":"2016-02-26T06:47:47","slug":"throwback-thursday-18-years-and-four-days-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/throwback-thursday-18-years-and-four-days-ago\/","title":{"rendered":"Throwback Thursday: 18 Years and Four Days Ago"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>How&#8217;s this for a special Throwback Thursday entry? In a stack of papers, I recently found a 1998 letter MrB wrote to me after I sent him a copy of <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/The-Diving-Bell-Butterfly-Memoir\/dp\/0375701214\" target=\"_blank\">The Diving Bell and the Butterfly<\/a><\/em>. Don&#8217;t miss his comment about Amazon.com!<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-32000\" src=\"http:\/\/wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/mrbletter-716x1024.jpg\" alt=\"mrbletter\" width=\"716\" height=\"1024\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/mrbletter-716x1024.jpg 716w, https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/mrbletter-210x300.jpg 210w, https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/mrbletter-768x1099.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/mrbletter-300x429.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/mrbletter.jpg 1218w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 716px) 100vw, 716px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Seeing this reminded me that I had also sent MrB a &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Dear_John_letter\" target=\"_blank\">Dear John<\/a>&#8221; letter telling him that I &#8220;respected him as a journalist,&#8221; meaning I had no other interest in him. I&#8217;m not sure if that was before or after the gift of the book. Several years later, MrB reminisced happily about the &#8220;letter of encouragement&#8221; I had sent him. I replied that I&#8217;d sent him a letter of rejection. He said, &#8220;No, I still have that letter.&#8221; I said, &#8220;You better read it again.&#8221; He found it, reread it and said, laughing, &#8220;This IS a letter of rejection!&#8221; I&#8217;ve always admired MrB for being a very optimistic person. He&#8217;s the kind of guy who would hear you say, &#8220;Maybe &#8230; if you were the last guy on earth &#8230;&#8221; and think to himself, &#8220;Ooh! I have a shot!&#8221; I mean, at some point, there&#8217;s probably going to be a last guy on earth, right?<\/p>\n<p>Now I&#8217;m kind of missing the days when people would send handwritten letters on stationery.<\/p>\n<p>A much more recent and totally unrelated Throwback Thursday entry <a href=\"http:\/\/indesign.jewelry\/hearts-of-gold\/\" target=\"_blank\">is this blog post that the gorgeous Tanya Dukes wrote for InDesign magazine for Valentine&#8217;s Day<\/a>. Thanks for including my Vampire Diana heart ring in your piece, Tanya.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How&#8217;s this for a special Throwback Thursday entry? In a stack of papers, I recently found a 1998 letter MrB wrote to me after I sent him a copy of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Don&#8217;t miss his comment about Amazon.com! Seeing this reminded me that I had also sent MrB a &#8220;Dear John&#8221;&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/throwback-thursday-18-years-and-four-days-ago\/\">Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32000,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[607],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-throwback-thursday","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31999"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32019,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31999\/revisions\/32019"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}