TuttleTree.com

This was kind of rushed, but it is what it is. I'm sure I've not remembered all of the animals he knows (I forgot bunny!) and I forgot to have him do Touchdown, which is also adorable…

My how far we've come since last March…

Alternate Title: OMFG!

It's no secret that Bill Bryson is my favorite author. Recently I got the idea that it would be amazing if I could get an autograph from him — ideally on one of my own copies of one of his books. I set about scouring the internet for a P.O. Box or a contact through one of his publishers, and much to my surprise I found his email address listed plain as day on a Bill Bryson forum. I was cautiously optimistic, because it was posted on that forum in mid 2008, and on top of that, it was being posted second- or possibly third-hand by someone who said it was shared with him in December of 2006; and considering the short-lived nature of things on the internet these days, there was a good chance it would be long outdated. But it was worth a shot!

I spent a long hour composing a short message to Bill, proofreading, rewriting, proofreading, and ultimately rewriting again. Eventually this is what I decided to send:

Subject: A humble request

Hello Bill,

I hope this finds you in good spirits, or at least finds you at all. I found this email address posted on the Bill Bryson forum, second- or third-handed by someone who said you had shared it at a talk in Buxton in 2006 and welcomed email from anyone on any matter.

As the subject suggests I do have a very humble request, but first I would like to explain why. You are my favorite author, and in addition to that you cured my complete distaste for reading. I believe it was some time in 2005 that a good friend of mine told me about an amazing book he was reading, and he was compelled to read me a passage he had recently completed — something about bowling balls and the density of the sun, if memory serves. I was excited by his enthusiasm and went out the next day to buy my own copy of A Short History of Nearly Everything, and promptly devoured it, after having done quite literally zero recreational reading since grade school. I loved it so much that I bought a few more of your books and continue to read them and share them with my friends with the same zeal my friend originally shared with me.

I have decided that the sign that you are my favorite author is that if I were sure nobody would ever find out, I would plagiarize your entire catalog of work. In fact, I often find myself channeling your wit and style when writing my own works. I hope that is a good thing.

So with that said, here is my humble request: If I were to mail you my copy of A Short History of Nearly Everything, would you do me the honor of signing it? I understand that you live in England again, and I live outside of Philadelphia, but I would be happy to include return postage.

My warmest regards,
Adam Tuttle

Several days went by with no response, and I started to feel as though the address actually was outdated and that Bill never received my email. Then, this morning, I checked my email and found a wonderful surprise: A response! Again with cautious optimism I opened the message, half expecting to see a form letter from a publishing company intern or an "Inbox full" type of error. As luck would have it, I was wrong. Bill had taken a moment to reply to me, and I hope he won't mind if I share that with you.

Dear Adam,

Many thanks for your letter and kind words. I am delighted you have enjoyed my work. I'm so sorry to tell you that I can't sign and return a book. The number of requests I receive to do various things like sign and mail books or birthday cards, provide advice or endorsements, etc., is way beyond what I can manage. (It was about 3,500 requests last year.) I am truly sorry, but I would spend my life doing little else, so I just can't. But I do wish you a very happy new year and far beyond.

Forgive my haste now, but thanks again and best wishes.

Yours sincerely,
Bill Bryson

So while this was obviously not the response I was hoping for, it has definitely made my day, possibly even my week, just to hear back from him. I can only hope that he will continue to write books and possibly go on a book tour, and do a signing, so I can stand in line like one of those people I've never been able to understand and wait for an hour for the pleasure of a moment of his time and a signature on my tattered copy of one of his books.

There's a quote from a commencement speech by scientist and astronomer Carl Sagan (one of my many idols), just a hair on the outside of 7 months before his death in 1996 wherein he famously referred to the Earth as a "Pale Blue Dot", with a composite photograph taken by the space craft Voyager1 in 1990 from 3.7 billion (with a B!) miles away for context. From time to time I re-read this portion of his speech and every time it evokes some powerful emotion inside me. It still makes me feel tiny; and along with me, it makes my problems, and in a way, my joys, feel tiny too.

Tonight I ran across a youtube video that emulates something similar, but on a much grander scale. I dare not embed it here, because the size and quality wouldn't do it justice. Go watch the video here: The Known Universe by AMNH.

The first difference is that this is a simulation, of course. By the time we could send a video camera that far out (or close to it — I guess you probably can't send a video camera outside the known boundaries of space and time) and back, our world could have been created and lived out its entire existence several times over.

But the other thing that struck me was just how much more there is than I was even considering in the context of Sagan's remarks. So yeah, we're a bunch of mites on "a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam." But even that seems big when you think that the sunbeam in question is a tiny fraction of our galaxy — more than 100,000 light-years across, which is a tiny fraction of our universe — about a million light-years across, which is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of current known limitations of space and time (which I don't claim to even begin to understand!) — more than 13 billion light years away from us.

Ok, ok, 13 billion light years away from us is a long, long time. How long, really, though? That means that light we see coming from the farthest edges of space and time started its journey more than 13 billion "years" ago. I quoted "years" because in this scale, it seems silly to me to use a unit of measure somewhat arbitrarily defined by us dust-mote-dwellers.

So there you go. Happy Friday. You're tiny. Maybe your problems don't seem so significant now, eh?