Letters Trellis celebrates five years of writing, connecting Winchester residents

In the time of emails and texts, imagine finding a hand-written letter in your mailbox. It’s something the founders of Letters Trellis hope brings both the recipient and writer not only a bit of joy, but a feeling of reconnection.

“When you receive a letter, with all its imperfections and content, you know that time was fully dedicated to you,” says Letters Trellis co-founder Karen Fullerton. “That person has a relationship with you that no one else has. We try to help people make that connection. Each one is so unique. It’s really meant to be seen as a gift.”

Fullerton has always been a letter writer. She was a consummate writer with her mother and would write several times a week, and even daily, when her mother was ill. In later years, on a trip to France with her French tutor, she found herself in Grignan for its annual festival of correspondence, where people wander through the village, stopping at different stations to write letters or postcards.

It showed Fullerton how to bring a long-held desire of teaching others to write letters to the general public.

“It was exciting to be in this little community,” she recalled. “It was a wonderful experience. I came back and decided I wanted to teach letter writing.”

Fullerton put together a syllabus and taught her letter writing seminar at the Andover Senior Center and then at Tufts University for adult education classes. The goal, she said, was for people to see letter writing as a nutritious art, one that feeds the soul and relationships.

“And it’s great to hold something in your hands,” she said, referencing a book called “The Hand,” by Frank R. Wilson, in which the author speaks to the anthropology of the use of hands. “He talks about the connection of something being written by hand and what it does to the brain.”

Letters Trellis begins

Fullerton and Letters Trellis co-founder Shukong Ou have been bringing letter writing to residents and farmers market attendees once a month for the past five years.

“Shukong and I discovered we had a mutual love for letters,” Fullerton said. “Then we started batting around ideas. What if we applied to the Cultural Council, would they support it? Then we brought it to the farmers market.”

That was 2019.

“It was so exciting!” Fullerton said, of receiving the Cultural Council’s grant. “It made it real. Someone thought our idea could work.”

The duo went out to a second-hand store and bought a small desk. Fullerton grabbed the two metal trellises in her yard.

“I liked the idea of the trellis,” Fullerton said, of the Letters Trellis name. “It meant support and made you feel supported and that something was surrounding you.”

And then COVID hit.

“We were in the Town Hall parking lot,” Ou said, of that first Letters Trellis outing under COVID restrictions. “We were on asphalt and people were afraid to touch. Then the news came out that it would be OK to touch the mail if you left it out for three days. So we figured people would be able to receive letters and have that tangible connection to another person.”

Ou said he and Fullerton put together kits in plastic sandwich bags that included two envelopes, a list of suggestions for topics and stamps.

“The idea was to have something in your hands in a time when people were afraid to touch one another,” he added.

That was July 18, 2020.

These days, Ou said people stop by the tent at the farmers market to talk or write a letter. He said during a recent outing there were about 30 interactions.

“Sometimes, you just have a nice long conversation with someone,” Fullerton said. “We feel that every time you engage someone, they might take a package. They may not write a letter at the market, but they could go beyond the market and write a letter.”

Fullerton said the last time out, there were 22 letters written.

“That was our all-time high number of letters,” she said. “I think that’s influenced by the market, the weather or is it busy or not.”

Writing a letter

How difficult can it be to write a letter? Fullerton said for some people, it’s really tough.

“Some don’t like writing, some people feel they don’t have a lot to say or that it takes too much time,” she said. “We try to address people wherever they are.”

Ou said letter writing is a lot like music, you can improvise.

Fullerton said her advice for letter writing is to start with yourself by relaxing your shoulders, warming up your hand and maybe thinking about an environment where you can write. As for content, she said Letters Trellis offers writer’s prompts.

“Anything to get people to sit down and acknowledge the importance of doing it,” Fullerton said.

She said the reaction to Letters Trellis has been great.

“People are very enthusiastic and excited,” she said. “They get to select their stamp and they are very careful in their selection. We’ve had people in tears afterwards, they get so emotional.”

Ou said the U.S. Postal Service offers a free service, where they scan each letter and you can check out every envelope coming to you. He said there was a little girl who wrote a letter to her uncle during a Letters Trellis event. He was so excited to see the envelope information pop up from the post office service, Ou said, that the man FaceTime’d his niece to ask what was in the letter.

Pen pal program

Two years ago, a woman named Susan Rozmanith walked up to the Letters Trellis booth with an idea.

“She was walking through the market and said, ‘Hey, what do you think about a pen pal program between seniors and middle school kids?’” Ou said. “We said, ‘Let’s do it!’ We started it and they’ve kept it going.”

He said once a month, seniors gather at the Jenks Center and write letters. Because schools are unable to give out student information, Ou said he and Fullerton delivered the letters to the school.

“We didn’t know what to expect,” Fullerton said. “In the beginning, people wondered if there would be enough to write about. But you just need someone to write that first letter. The seniors were inspired to learn about youth and the students were learning about letter writing.”

Ou said after the back and forth all year long, the pen pals finally met.

“They gave us 90 minutes and we said we didn’t know if we could fill that,” he said, of the first meeting of the pen pals. “But we found we had to drag them out!”

This will mark the third academic year of the program. Fullerton said the Jenks and schools have people who now run the program.

“The support staff has just been super,” Ou said. “We had one senior who was traveling in France and she got a [student] letter emailed to her. She was able to send a letter from France in response to the student.”

What’s next?

2024 marks the first year Letters Trellis has not applied for or received a Cultural Council grant. It’s a big step.

Ou said there’s been a lot of support from other organizations, such as the Historical Society.

“A year or so back, I contacted them,” he said. “I spoke to Hilda [Wong Doo] about getting some historical postcards of Winchester. People can come to the town common and they can write a postcard. It’s a low bar. The Historical Society has been very generous in giving us the cards.”

He added the farmers market has also not charged Letters Trellis since the duo isn’t selling anything.

“They’ve also been very generous to us,” Ou said. “They’ve been very supportive.”

Ou said Letters Trellis is at the farmers market once a month, depending on schedules, with the next outings on Aug. 3, Sept. 14 and Oct. 26.

Both Ou and Fullerton said they’re always looking for new venues for Letters Trellis.

“We did a pop up in North Andover,” Fullerton said. “Pop ups have potential. But I think we’re excited to work with other people and teach them what we do.”

For more information on Letters Trellis, visit www.letterstrellis.com.