quote: Some of the letters are comical (a man asking God to let him win the lottery, twice), others are heartbreaking (a distraught teen asking forgiveness for an abortion, an unwed mother pleading with God to make the baby's father marry her). The letters — about 300 in all, sent to a New Jersey minister — ended up dumped in the ocean, most of them unopened.
The minister died two years ago at 79. How the letters, some dating to 1973, wound up bobbing in the surf is a mystery.
Edited to fix title
-------------------- Nico Sasha In between my father's fields;And the citadels of the rule; Lies a no-man's land which I must cross; To find my stolen jewel. Posts: 4912 | From: VA | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
Ack!! Thanks for catching that... I read that as 3000 not 300
That shows me I shouldn't post on a Friday afternoon
-------------------- Nico Sasha In between my father's fields;And the citadels of the rule; Lies a no-man's land which I must cross; To find my stolen jewel. Posts: 4912 | From: VA | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
Yea, that was in the Trenton Times this morning. Sad, but also slightly creepy. They were stuck in a plastic bag with flowers on it. How bizarre!
-------------------- It is, after all, the dab of grit that seeps into an oyster's shell that makes the pearl, not pearl-making seminars with other oysters. -Stephen King Posts: 481 | From: North Brunswick, NJ | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
I know there was a thread for this already, but now I can't find it. Perhaps it was in a thread on the dream board?
Anyway, I can't believe that he would do such a thing. Those letters were never meant for the public. If he wants to follow the sender's wishes (that the letters be read), he should turn them over to a church.
posted
I believe that thread was on the dream board, NeeCD. In fact, if I remember correctly, it was about the first new thread posted there.
Seaboe
-------------------- Education is not the filling of a hard drive, but the lighting of a bulb. -- Yeats via Esprise Me Posts: 5562 | From: Seattle, WA | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
Thanks, that would explain things. I wasn't even able to find it using a Google search, and that's usually a foolproof method of finding the obscure threads. I wonder how many other things will catch me up like that in the next few days. Oh well, doesn't matter, I like it here.
posted
Actually, I think, technically the letters are the property of the authors. If one of the people writing them gets in touch, there could be huge problems.
-------------------- There are people who drive really nice cars who feel that [those] cars won't be as special if other people drive them too. Where I come from, we call those people "selfish self-satisfied gits." -Chloe Posts: 6995 | From: New Mexico | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
On the dream thread I posted that I was a church secretary for one year. Part of my job was compiling all the prayer request cards people dropped into the offering plates or e-mailed the church onto one typed list. The list then went to the pastors and who met once a week to pray for the church and its congregants. I was the only person besides the pastors who saw the requests.
Some of the things I read were heartbreaking. I'll never forget one woman's wrenching divorce saga, from the card that said she'd caught her husband cheating to the one that vividly depicted the day in court that dissolved her marriage. So many people wrote things that were shocking to see committed to paper- I'm not sure I would have wanted the evidence around, even if it was supposed to be confidential. The hand-written requests were even more touching because the humanity of their scrawled, pinched, or careful writing brought made them that much more vivid.
I cannot imagine how someone could read similar letters and think, "I'll sell these on Ebay!" If he really thinks they should be read and acknowledged, he should give them to local pastors. Whoever festooned the bags with flowers and sent them out to see had the right idea. It seems like the perfect combination of ceremony and privacy such letters deserve. It's too bad they did not sink to the bottom of the sea.
-------------------- This used to be the life, but I don't need another one. MyBandwagon Posts: 3254 | From: small town Texas | Registered: Jan 2004
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quote:Originally posted by TurquoiseGirl: Actually, I think, technically the letters are the property of the authors. If one of the people writing them gets in touch, there could be huge problems.
In a similar case, Janis Joplin's 1965 love letters to her former fiance have been bought and sold on eBay for years. Most fans feel the Joplin estate (her surviving brother and sister) should own the letters, because they were written by her, but I'm not sure what the laws are on that (if there are any). Oddly enough, they seem to own the copyrights because some of these letters were recently printed in a new 2005 edition of a biography by her sister Laura Joplin.
The set of half a dozen letters has been broken up over the years, first selling on eBay as the entire letter (all pages) and later being sold again as just individual pages. It makes me very upset, because these are private letters Janis wrote to her fiance, which were first put on sale on eBay without the Estate's knowledge or consent. I don't know how or why the letters were released from whoever first had them in their posession, but I think her former fiance may have died, and the heirs decided to auction the letters off without consulting the Joplin estate. I don't know what the legalities are of publicly auctioning off private letters written by someone who's deceased, without consent of their estate. On one hand, it seems the letters should belong to the person to whom they were sent, and that they should be allowed to do what they want. On the other hand, it just seems...wrong.
-------------------- "There is no constitutional right to sleep with endangered reptiles." -- Carl Hiaasen Won't somebody please think of the adults! Posts: 8254 | From: Florida | Registered: Oct 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Starla: On the dream thread I posted that I was a church secretary for one year. Part of my job was compiling all the prayer request cards people dropped into the offering plates or e-mailed the church onto one typed list. The list then went to the pastors and who met once a week to pray for the church and its congregants. I was the only person besides the pastors who saw the requests.
Some of the things I read were heartbreaking. I'll never forget one woman's wrenching divorce saga, from the card that said she'd caught her husband cheating to the one the vividly depicted the day in court that dissolved her marriage. So many people wrote things that were shocking to see committed to paper- I'm not sure I would have wanted the evidence around, even if it was supposed to be confidential. The hand-written requests were even more touching because the humanity of their scrawled, pinched, or careful writing brought made them that much more vivid.
I cannot imagine how someone could read similar letters and think, "I'll sell these on Ebay!" If he really thinks they should be read and acknowledged, he should give them to local pastors. Whoever festooned the bags with flowers and sent them out to see had the right idea. It seems like the perfect combination of ceremony and privacy such letters deserve. It's too bad they did not sink to the bottom of the sea.
I agree, Starla. I think it is wretched that this man is trying to sell the letters. Firstly, who would want them? And secondly, why? They are so incredibly personal it is a crime to exploit it. I guess the best we can do now is to hope that whomever buys them will turn them over to some pastors.
-------------------- "I bet a funny thing about driving a car off a cliff is, while you're in midair, you still hit those brakes. Hey, better try the emergency brake." -Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey Posts: 245 | From: Gladstone, MO | Registered: Apr 2006
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posted
I'm not easily offended, and I'm not even Christian, but I think selling people's letters to God is really wretched. How could anyone think that would be an acceptable solution?
Posts: 439 | From: Redondo Beach, CA | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Originally posted by TurquoiseGirl: Actually, I think, technically the letters are the property of the authors. If one of the people writing them gets in touch, there could be huge problems.
The physical letters are like any other property. Since the letters were thrown away and then found, they're not stolen property and the person who found them is the legal owner.
The letter writers maintain copyright over the letters, so no one else can broadcast, reprtint, sell, distribute, etc. the content of the letters without permission. But unfortunately, to assert these rights the letter writers would likely have to file civil suit, thus exposing themselves and admitting to letters they likely do not want traced back to them.
As long as the person doesn't violate copyright, I think he's legally in the clear.
Morally, not so much.
-------------------- Thinking about New England / missing old Japan Posts: 2603 | From: Virginia | Registered: Mar 2001
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quote:Originally posted by RelicMan: Isn't the damned person who dumped the letters in the ocean in the first place just as bad??
Depends on their motives. What else do you do with them? Toss them? Burn them? Maybe they thought they were doing something beautiful and romantic, assuming the letters would never be found.
If so, they feel pretty wretched about it now.
-------------------- The technical term is narcissism. You can't believe everything is your fault unless you also believe you're all powerful.--House Posts: 2684 | From: Budapest | Registered: Sep 2005
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