The design of Clouds was taken from a joke by cartoonist Jack Ziegler in the book Hamburger Madness. Clouds is 4.5 x 17 inches, and its working title was “Long Skinny Letter.” On one side is a call for friends to join the Fitzpatrick-O'Dinn Foundation. On the other side is the story “Clouds” by William Gillespie. The letters were printed in color on light blue paper, rubberstamped with clouds in rainbow tempera ink, folded into squares, and put into translucent blue six by six-inch envelopes, the most expensive part of the mailing. They were mailed on 20-02-2003, our anniversary, bearing colorful love stamps. Beyond the unconventional size, the design idea was to color the text using a vertical gradient: blue to purple to blue, with the purple reaching its maximum intensity two thirds of the way down the page, corresponding to the fiery explosion in “Clouds” and the actual pitch of the fundraising letter. This was a solution to the problem of using colored text effectively, since the effect of making discreet words or phrases a solid color is often jarring and clunky. I managed to make about 45 of these before the Art Coop ran out of translucent blue square envelopes. Actually I had had my eye on those envelopes for many months, trying to think of a use for them. They were manufactured by Crestwood Paper, but have been discontinued. A particular blue, luminescent, vibrant. Same with the light blue tabloid-sized paper, which I happened to come into a small supply of: the thought of that paper remained in my mind until I fixed upon a use for it. I wrote the story in late 2002. It really has nothing to do with the letter, it has to do with the sky, which is blue. The text of “Clouds” is not available on the Web. Heh heh.