Real Mail Fridays update, December 2024: All Real Mail Fridays sessions going forward will be online via JCBA Zoom. More about this in our updated Real Mail letter, below.


Real Mail Fridays

Every Friday (unless we have to cancel for other virtual events)
2 to 5 PM Eastern
From Wherever You Are, via Zoom

ZOOM LINK & PASSWORD

Here is the link and password for our virtual Real Mail Fridays letter writing socials:
https://fau-edu.zoom.us/j/82597798220?pwd=cmVUbWYyQjJGUVVialJHWjhFdTZVdz09

(And in case you need it, the Meeting ID is 825 9779 8220 and the passcode is Kh51f6.)

Dear Friends,

We've built such a wonderful global community since we began beaming Real Mail Fridays out to the world through our weekly online JCBA Zoom socials, and it is truly humbling and heartwarming to see friends join us each week and new folks, too, from all corners of this vast planet. In that spirit, we have no plans to end our weekly Zoom version of Real Mali Fridays.

We did make a valiant effort at resuming in-house Real Mail Friday sessions since December 2023, and all through 2024, but the reality is that very few people attended these sessions in-house (we've had 5 at the most, and only 1 person in October), and the set-up for these monthly events is no small task. Meanwhile, the Zoom version of Real Mail Fridays continues to be very popular. So, what's gone wrong with the in-house version? We don't think the concept is so bad, but the problem could very well be a simple marketing one. With that in mind, here's our new plan:

We have suspended in-house Real Mail Fridays, effective now (November 2024). We are looking into creating a brand-new in-house social that will be monthly and that will be distinct from Real Mail Fridays. A whole different name, and a whole different concept––not a letter writing social, but one that is still based in creative endeavors but more rounded and perhaps more relevant to our students and local Book Arts Enthusiasts. The new social will meet in the Bindery at the Jaffe Center for Book Arts and hopefully will be ready for launch by early spring, 2025.

Meanwhile, please do join us online at JCBA Zoom each Friday from 2 to 5 Eastern. What to expect? Three hours of a very Jaffe soundtrack. Friendly faces from across the US and Canada and very often other parts of the globe, too (Scotland, Romania, and the Philippines are well represented most Fridays). Time for yourself, in the company of other like-minded folks, to get things done. We do bill Real Mail Fridays as a letter writing social, but the folks who join us each week do all kinds of interesting things during the social: some do write letters, but others are crocheting, some are binding books, some are figuring out paper engineering problems. Some are baking and you can almost smell the cookies as they come out of the oven. We've watched Real Mail friends as they shovel snow in Anchorage and as they garden in the Hudson Valley. We've seen lots of cats, many dogs, and a moose. People join in from home and from work and from airports and cars. They come and go as they please over the course of the three-hour social, and you may do the same. We've become a global family that cares for each other and looks out for each other in good times and bad. Some folks tell us it's the best part of their week. It is a supremely heartwarming time.

We welcome you to be part of our global Real Mail Fridays family.

Sincerely yours,
the Staff of Jaffe Center for Book Arts
at Florida Atlantic University Libraries

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JCBA programs are all brought to you by you. Please support us if you can with a tax-deductible gift. At our donation portal, you may make a gift to the Jaffe Support Fund, which helps us acquire new artists' books and prints for the Jaffe Collection, or the Jaffe Center for Book Arts Education Fund, which supports all of our educational programs. Thank you!