Every night, after his kids go to bed, Brian Forrest writes a letter, thanking someone whose work he appreciates. The next day, he puts the letter in the mail.
“It’s not anything fancy; there’s no art or any unifying thing. It’s just something that I’ve been doing,” Forrest said.
The letters go to anybody in Vermont who Forrest thinks is doing good work. He has sent letters to some of the stars of the pandemic, such as health care workers, but also to people whose work has been entirely behind the scenes this year.
“So far, it’s mostly just been me sending these out to conservation organizations and museums — anybody that I tend to think might not be getting the fanfare throughout the pandemic, maybe you don’t hear about them as much, but they could still use a pick-me-up,” Forrest said.
The idea came from a project Forrest worked on a few years ago. A local artist designed graphics of natural landscapes, and he put them on T-shirts with phrases like “be nice to mountains” and “be nice to oceans.”
He sold a few of the shirts and gave many more away to friends and family — then largely forgot about the project.
But the idea of “being nice to” someone has become very important during the pandemic, so Forrest dusted off the old box of T-shirts and decided to breathe new life into the project.
Last month, Forrest launched the website UBENICETO, where people can arrange for Forrest to send handwritten notes with the click of a button. They can type their message into his website, and he delivers a simple handwritten thank-you on an index card. The service costs a flat $5.
Forrest says while he’s offering a service people could do for themselves, it’s a convenience that he believes people will pay for.
“I think people tend to think they want to do something like this, but it’s so easy to just forget and brush it off or not do it,” Forrest said. “I mean, how often today do you get a letter in the mail that’s not a bill or advertisement?”
The other perk of Forrest’s system? The notes can be sent anonymously.
“I’m just asking the question of who you’d like to be nice to, and then I let people run with it and interpret it to see what feels good to them,” Forrest said.
Forrest hopes to inspire a few more people to give others a boost in tough times.
“I’m just taking this wherever the breeze sends it,” he said. “It’s pretty informal, but it’s fun and it does a little good, and hopefully it inspires other people to do a little good too.”
