New York City
January 1, 2001

Dear Readers,

Today’s letter comes from B., an Open Letters reader in Brooklyn, New York. She has chosen to remain anonymous.

B.’s letter rings in this auspicious and suspicious new year and kicks off a special week of open letters about beginnings and endings (but mostly about endings). It may not turn out to be the cheeriest week of letters we’ve ever published, what with all the death and divorce and bankruptcy, but it’ll certainly be one of the more dramatic. Plus, a bonus: it will conclude, on Thursday and Friday, with new letters from two of our most-clamored-for correspondents: Sharon O’Connor, in Cabot, Vermont, and Winnipeg’s mysteriousX., both of whom have maintained a Salingeresque silence in these pages since August, when their last letters appeared.

Also, some news: We’ve chosen this week’s theme with more than just the end of a year in mind: This will be the final week of Open Letters, in its current incarnation at least. On Sunday, our final weekly issue (with a cool new west-coast design, we hope) will go out tosubscribers, and the web site will transform itself into an archive of the 106 daily letters, 6 conversations, 112 editor’s letters, and 24 weekly issues that we’ve published.

But, wait: why are we quitting, at the very moment that we finally got written up in USA Today? I’ll try to answer that question this week, in my four remaining editor’s letters, and I’ll also lay down a few thoughts, from me and from some of our readers, on where this project might go next.

Happy new year, and please stay tuned. If you were away last week, holiday-making, don’t forget to read last week’s letters- they are five golden rings. Tomorrow: death, and an airport limo, pay a visit.

Yours truly,

Paul Tough