I have a new project! And it’s all thanks to my friend Guan. 🙂 Just yesterday, Guan announced via Twitter that he was starting a new project of his own: Live Lincoln, a live-tweeting project that will chronicle the daily events of Abraham Lincoln’s presidency over a century later, beginning with the Republican Convention that convened on May 16, 1860.

    Pretty darn cool, huh? I thought so. When he announced his plan yesterday, I was so inspired by the idea that after volunteering to help him out in any way that I could, I got to thinking about the potential for other such projects. Since I’ve always been especially fond of Thomas Jefferson, I thought perhaps something similar could be done in his honor.

    That’s when I thought of a book that my parents recently gave to me – a collection of the correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Their letters span the early days of our country, the founding of who we are, and contain so much insight to who these men were, what they believed in, what they stood for, and they history they helped create. I instantly thought it could potentially be an interesting blogging project to mirror the work that Guan’s doing to bring the lessons of Lincoln’s presidency to the 21st century, using the tools of modern social media.

    After thinking about it for a while, I pulled out my book filled with all the letters written between these two men, wondering when the very first letter was sent. I figured hey, maybe I could think about it for a while and maybe set it up in a few months, maybe even a year…

    Much to my surprise, the very first letter sent by Thomas Jefferson to John Adams was sent on May 16, 1777.
That gave me one day to pull together a blog and bring this newborn idea to fruition. I had to hustle.

    So I hustled. And here it is.

    I was up all night long. I’ve come up with a plan, thought up a name, designed a blog, registered domains (which still haven’t come through… slowest domain registration process I’ve ever seen!), and I’ve even come up with ideas to expand this project in the future. There are still a lot of rough edges that will need to be refined, but I’m excited to see how this will grow and develop over time.

    The website’s finally up, although at a temporary alternate domain name until the proper one – www.FoundingLetters.com – is finally done registering. The first letter from Jefferson to Adams has been published and I can’t wait to kick this thing off!

    So check it out, won’t you? For now it’s at http://FoundingLetters.HeatherShow.com. Please do bear in mind this was incredibly rushed, so I’m sure there are things that still need to be tweaked, fixed, and refined. But I would love to know what you think of it! In the coming days I’ll be sure to talk about what other ideas are cooking up in my head right now for the future of the project, but for right now, I think I’ve earned some sleep. 🙂

    Thanks again for the inspiration, Guan! You’re awesome! 🙂 Everybody else, be sure to check out his Lincoln project at www.LiveLincoln.org. Night, night, everybody!