because i don't want to do work i rummaged in my newly-arrived boxes of books (hello, books! after more than a year of separation!) and picked up e.b. white's collected letters, always a good book to dip into, and of which i am almost sure i have two copies, one probably in singapore, which i'm happy to give away if found, but tax me with this when i get home. today i opened it at:

dear miss gravely,

i don't know where to begin. i am five feet eight inches tall - but that's an odd place to begin. i am fifty years old - but that's a dreadful place to begin. i ate too much for lunch - but nobody would want to begin there. as for my work, the only thing i can tell you about it is that a lot of it has been published, all of it was hard, and some of it was fun. haven't got a photograph. maine, incidentally, is not my native state: i was born in new york state, but now live much of the time in maine.

sincerely yours
e.b. white.

see, if any of you become famous writers that's exactly the kind of letter you should write back to students, but of course in ten years' time high school students won't be writing letters to authors anymore, i suppose.