Becoming a Literary Citizen

I have always been an avid reader of fiction and I always thought that was enough. However, recently I read a blog post from The Bird Sisters, and it is an article by Cathy Day who teaches at Ball State University. She calls the readers to become part of a "literary community" and then gives steps on how to achieve that status. There is about six steps altogether but the one that I really liked was the first one: "Writer 'charming letters' to writer's" and I loved this step because I thought of doing this before. At first I figured that the writer's would think I was some really weird stalker, and just throw my letters away rather than reading them. I am actually going to do it now! I am in the process of compiling a list of writer's whose writing I have really enjoyed so I can send them Thank You notes. I would rather send them by snail mail, because not enough people get fun mail anymore. Besides its easy to skim an e-mail, delete it, and not give it a second thought. A physical letter however, is pretty hard to ignore, and if somebody went through all that trouble to send you something it must be important right? I am very sad though, that a lot of my favorites authors are now deceased. Ray Bradbury died this past summer which I was most grieved to hear about, so when I come to the issue of one of my author's not being with us anymore, I will simply do a blog post about them. After all just because they're dead doesn't mean that I can't appreciate them. I will just do it electronically. Maybe all the signals that get shot up will hit an angel and pass along my appreciation post to the author (who knows? Stranger things have happened).   Here a link to the blog,
http://thebirdsisters.blogspot.com/2011/03/literary-citizenship-by-cathy-day.html
however, if there is some difficulty reaching that website, if you just google "Cathy Day Literary Citizenship" then you will find the post. I really hope that all my friends who have a passion for reading will take a look at it. It is inspiring to read it. Had it not been so close to the end of the school year, I would have dropped everything and started doing all of her recommended steps immediately. But, alas, time is not on my side right now so I shall simply begin with Thank You notes.