The Letter People

I vividly remember an educational television show back in kindergarten

(I am 19, this was back in 1992) an entire series my teacher, Ms. Kelly, showed the class throughout the year that still stays in my memory to this very day.

This show was called The Letter People and was created in 1972 by a group in Waterbury, Connecticut called New Dimensions in Education.

The principles were simple:

This was an educational show that taught children in kindergarten through first grade how to read using puppet characters to represent letters of the alphabet.

The Letter People Theme Song was sung aloud and repeated by the students before every episode:

Come and meet the Letter People

Come and visit in the family

Words are made of Letter People

A, B, C, D, Follow me

The original Letter People were shaped in a quickly-identifiable fashion. All the consonants were called "Letter Boys," and the vowels were "Letter Girls."

It was a perfect compliment to Title IX that Letter Girls had to be in every word the Letter People made.

The Letter People television series was produced 1974-76 in the facilities of KETC in St. Louis.

That station held TV distribution rights for the series, even after a "new generation" of Letter People came about in 1997.

Now for true effects of LSD (directly from the encyclopedia)--

The effects of LSD can vary greatly, depending on factors such as previous experiences, state of mind and environment, and most importantly DOSE STRENGTH.

Effects can be felt with as little as 20 micrograms, an amount much less than one-tenth the mass of a grain of sand.

The average "street dose" of LSD typically is 50-100 micrograms, an amount equal to an entire grain of sand.

Generally, LSD causes expansion and altered experience of senses, emotions, memories, time, and awareness for 8 to 14 hours.

In addition, LSD may produce visual effects such as moving geometric patterns, "trails" behind moving objects, and brilliant colors.

LSD DOES NOT PRODUCE HALLUNCINATIONS in a strict sense. Instead the effects are illusions and vivid daydream-like fantasies, in which ordinary objects and experiences can take on entirely different appearances or meanings.

At higher doses it can cause synesthesia, which brings me back to the show, The Letter People.

Synesthesia was the topic of intensive scientific investigation in the late 1800s and early 1900s, it was largely abandoned in the mid-20th century, and has only recently been rediscovered by modern researchers.

Synesthesia derives from the Greek word syn- meaning union and aesthesis meaning sensation -- a neurological condition in which two or more bodily senses are coupled.

In a form of synesthesia known as Ordinal Linguistic Personification - Numbers, Days of the Week and Months of the Year evoke personalities.

Many people with synesthesia use their experiences to aid in their creative process, and many non-synesthetes have attempted to create works of art that may capture what it is like to experience synesthesia.

Psychologists and neuroscientists study synesthesia not only for its inherent interest, but also for the insights it may give into cognitive and perceptual processes that occur in everyone, synesthete and non-synesthete alike.

An educational show called The Letter People taught my classmates and I using puppets shaped