I am intricately involved in Sylvie’s quite unique mail system. On any given afternoon, she is to be found in the Mansion hallway, writing letters to  her now numerous friends and correspondents. Her method is distinctive. Most days, there is a huge pile of letters freshly returned from the U.S. Post Office because Sylvia forget to put the return address on the envelope, or put a stamp on it.

As a supplier of her notecards and stamps, I can tell you she has her own original ideas about messages.

Sometimes she forgets to put the letters in the envelope, sometimes she puts the stamps on the letters, not the envelope. When letters comes back, she says she just considers each message a prayer sent out into the world. She doesn’t resend it or rewrite it, is God’s work to get the message out there.

I often sit with her to help, but she doesn’t want too much help with the letters, they are important to you and she reads  every one, and she answers every one but do not worry or be surprised if her thank you and follow-up letters do  not arrive. it is not for lack of trying or caring. And many times, they do arrive.

I’ve gotten Sylvie stamps, all kinds of notecards, licked the stamps myself. When it comes to mail, Sylvie is something of a chaos machine. They are all prayers, she says, smiling at me, no matter how they get there.

Today I brought Sylvia a plastic bag full of notecards, of which I have a 10-year supply, courtesy of the Army Of Good. No member of the Mansion will want for notecards and stamps in my lifetime and neither will Sylvie.

If you wish to want to write Sylvie and are patient, she will write you back and her messages are delightful, interesting and original when they get there. You can write Sylvie c/o Sylvie, The Mansion 11 S. Union  Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.

If you wish to help the Mansion residents built a beautiful summer flower and vegetable garden, you can go here.