, I was delighted to learn of your paint by numbers exhibit. Yesterday I dragged my husband onto the Blue Line Metro for the express purpose of visiting this gallery. I was not disappointed. Born in 1949, I reached age 12 at the precise moment paint by numbers was in full bloom. I spent countless hours painstakingly applying paint by numbers to board (and countless others cleaning it off my wrist.... paint took longer to dry than I realized at that tender age). Apparently, I was in good company: Dwight Eisenhower, J. Edgar Hoover and Ethel Merman shared my enthusiasm. So there, critics of paint by numbers . . .

This mandates a call to my mother in California to inquire if any of my masterpieces paint by numbers still exist in the recesses of her garage. Perhaps the walls of my suburban Washington D.C. apartment will yet be graced with exact replicas of three which hang on the wall of a Smithsonian Museum. And so I shall be the envy of my associates!