Samara O'Shea [nice name], one of those lucky souls who are able to make a career out of writing, has a website in which she will write a letter for you. Since the fee is a bit much, it might be better to buy her new book, For the Love of Letters. Her goal:
And that is what I’d like you to take away from this book—an appreciation for how powerful your words are. How powerful our language is and how effective the two can be in tangible form. Letters instigate understanding, change, and closure. Letters are a chance for all of us to live well beyond our allotted years. They can and will affect the recipient, but what’s oftentimes greater (and more surprising) is the effect letters have on the writer—who may be coming face to face with his or her thoughts and feelings for the first time. Letters have been performing acts—both ordinary and extraordinary—for several hundred millennia and I’d like to make sure they continue to do so.
The book itself is basically a how to, providing advice on how to write different types of letters (love, apology, business, for causes, etc.) with historical (e.g., Abraham Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony) and personal examples. She provides down to earth advice that might not be revolutionary (one Amazon review was not impressed), but practical and done so in a pleasant but professional matter. The sample letters are both charming and fascinating. A good gift idea.
One example supplied involves a letter to the editor challenging Madonna's blithe comment that she doesn't care for media and doesn't read it ... this is a magazine interview by a media star. This reflects the author's interest is popular culture. Two things come to mind. One, my own letter [some time ago] to the NYT (Sunday A&E) on the value of television shows to promote knowledge in particular causes. Two, how media has again foreseen and reflected fact. This involves Sandra Day O'Connor, whose confirmation followed by a few years the play First Monday in October ... concerning the first women in the Supreme Court.
The connection was not made in the article I read about the matter, but Away from Her is a recent film that concerns "a man coping with the institutionalization of his wife because of Alzheimer's disease faces an epiphany when she transfers her affections to another man." The film, which I have not seen, received good reviews. It came to mind because of a story about Sandra Day O'Connor's husband also finding such a connection, but this time the news accounts underline she is glad that he has found happiness.
More evidence that fact and fiction is not always far apart.