Ted Kaczynski’s Correspondence with Lydia Eccles

From Lydia to Ted — August 24, 1997

Theodore Kaczynski
c/o Scharlette Holdman
529 Castro Street
San Francisco, CA 94114

Dear Ted:

I wanted to write to let you know that I am going to cease organizing efforts around the trial unless called upon by you or Scharlette. Unfortunately I just sent a huge batch of stuff to you, which I’m sure is unwelcome, and I’m sorry about that. I hope that I have not been harmful to you. Just so you know, I have never represented to anyone that our organizing efforts are approved of or connected to you in any way. I think I’ve told you that last year’s “campaign” originated from the manifesto and the fugitive “FC” in September of 95, and was always kept separate from you.

It has been difficult to know how or whether to proceed, and and I guess I made the wrong decision. But I was equally afraid that sitting still would be a wrong decision too. I will understand more as events unfold, and I hope that you manage to control the trial according to your goals. I do not, and may never know whether or how you are related to the work I’ve been doing, and that uncertainty and non-connection has been part of the paradox of doing it. I realize that I am only one element in the public response that you have had to deal with and that I have been operating in the dark. Actually, I feel pretty bad about my judgment at this point.

I hope you also realize that my long-term concern with the ideas raised by these events is my sincere motivation. I will continue working on this in other ways, and I think I will do better work for having gone through these past two years. I will probably continue to use an ‘arty’ goofy approach because it’s a conscious, rational tactic which I believe generates some unique possibilities.

I may pop you general interest things now and then, because I still assume it’s nice to get mail, but just as a member of the well-wishing public from now on-not the kind of personally demanding letters I’ve sent you in the past. I wish you all the strength and firmness symbolized by my little heaven symbol on the posters.

Sincerely and with good wishes,

Lydia

From Ted’s Lawyer to Lydia — September 18, 1997

Quin Denvir
Federal Defender

Dennis S. Waks
Chief Assistant Defender

September 18, 1997

Lydia Eccles
P. 0. Box 120494
Boston, Massachusetts 02112

Dear Ms. Eccles:

We have received your latest letter to Mr. Kaczynski regarding your organizing and publicity efforts. We appreciate the fact that you are being so cooperative in this respect. There is no need for you to worry about your past publicity efforts; no harm has been done.

Mr. Kaczynski appreciates your messages of support. Perhaps Mr. Kaczynski will be able to correspond with you directly at some time in the future.

Sincerely,
[signed]
Quin Denvir

From Lydia to Ted — November 4, 1997

Theodore Kaczynski
c/o Scharlette Holdman
529 Castro Street
San Francisco, CA

Dear Ted:

John tells me that the trial begins on November 12, and that he will be there. I am a bookkeeper, so I am very tied up with year end things for my “clients” (!) (they have to spend all their money before the year end, float checks, then rush money back into their bank accounts in time to make the first payroll in January), therefore I am hoping to come at some point after Christmas. I really am not interested in seeing the prosecution at work anyway. Of course, after writing to you about the insanity defense I then read that you were not cooperating with prosecution mental examiners, so obviously I don’t really know what the heck is going on! Sorry to be presumptuous as usual.

I hope that you are not having to be medicated to support your legal defense. I feel that one of the most important points (and ignored points) made in the manifesto is the manipulation of human identity through drugs and ultimately genetic “therapies”, which to me are just a logical extension of the internalization of coercive authority (from police to propaganda to physicians). I am studying this right now as it unfolds in Massachusetts, where Elli Lilly, manufacturers of the pacifier PROZAC, have just given grants to the state to fund state public service announcements advocating drug therapy for depression. Elli Lilly is very actively engages in crossing the line to genetic manipulations, and is partners with Monsanto, global “pioneer” in agriculture genetic engineering and administration of drugs to farm animals, bovine growth hormone, etc. “We are the veal” indeed! Anyway, it occurred to me that perhaps your strategy might entail being prescribed anti-schizophrenic drugs, and I know that that could be very discouraging, since of course it makes it impossible to think clearly, concentrate, remember, etc. Hope not! But even if so, surely it would be temporary.

I continue to receive communication from people who are concerned about your situation and who wish to express solidarity with you. I wouldn’t want to overstate the numbers — most people do just accept the media point of view without much skepticism — but those who see through it really see through it, and care very deeply.

Well, I just wanted to write you a note before you have to step into the limelight of the trial to say stay strong, fuck the media, and very best wishes to you and Scharlette. I hope you’re not overwhelmed with dread. Thinking back to the time of your arrest, you have the capacity to radiate dignity and strength under any circumstances. As to personal stuff, however bad it gets, at least you re not Bill Clinton! Well, I don’t know what else to say, just want you to know that as the trial proceeds I will be thinking about you. I will try to send you interesting things, but I don’t really know what would hit home at this point. Maybe later I can get my friend Taylor Stoehr to dig up some unpublished Paul Goodman material for you. Or maybe some copies from a catalogue of German visionary artist Joseph Beuys. If I meet Scharlette I’ll ask her if you’d prefer literature, or maybe John can ask her what kind of things you enjoy getting. Or I could just tell you incredible and smutty gossip about my insane friends! I’ve been alienating them all lately, because I’ve been so depressed and impotent and enraged. Just read the SCUM manifesto. GOOD LUCK!!!

From Lydia to Ted — Winter 1998

THEODORE JOHN KACZYNSKI
#04475–046, P.O. Box 8500, Florence
Colorado 81226–8500 USA

I let myself go, very, very gradually, letting my arms take the strain, till I reached the ground. There was no moonlight but the sky was brilliantly clear...

-La Vida-

BENVENUTO CELLINI was born in Florence in the year 1500, where he spent the early years of his life training to be a goldsmith. With his love of beauty — especially the beauty of the human form — went a delight in craftsmanship and difficult achievement. Even his liking for warfare was a delight in dramatic execution and skillful effect. His “Life” has taken its place as the most notorious of all autobiographies.

From Ted to Lydia — December 21, 1998

Dear Lydia,

Merry Christmas and happy New Year. (Consider this a Christmas card.)

Here’s my version of Perseus with the head of Medusa. --->

(Do you think Cellini would have approved?) I imagine that your Perseus will be rather better, though.

Crazy things going on now. Problems, worries. I’m getting along alright, though.

From Ted to Lydia — April 19, 1999

Dear Lydia,

I just received yours of April 13 and I am delighted with your greeting-card design. It is great. THANK YOU!

There is only one change that I would suggest: I would prefer that you omit my name and address from the front of the card. It strikes me as too ... er ... narcissistic that I should have my name and address on the front of the card. Apart from that your design looks perfect to me. Once again, I'm delighted with it. ...

P.S. I keep taking your card out to look at it because it is a feast for the eyes. - T.

From Lydia to Ted — August 20, 2012

Lydia Eccles
P.O. Box 201
Allston, MA 02134

Theodore John Kaczynski
Fed Reg #04475–046
USP Florence AdMax
P.O. Box 8500
Florence, CO 81226

August 20, 2012

Dear Ted,

This letter is in response to the letter you wrote to Mark Cohen. You are stating explicitly something I’ve known and assumed implicitly for a long time, so I would like to tell you in detail how it’s looked from my side.

I have been corresponding with you since a month or two after your trial and sentencing, a period of over fifteen years. Over these years I have corresponded with or had phone conversations with many other people corresponding with you, including the archivist at University of Michigan, lawyers, publishers, authors, academics, philosophers, filmmakers and other artists. You have also sent me, on many occasions, carbon copies of your correspondence with others in which you expressed ideas you wanted me to also be aware, to save you the time of transcribing them by hand. I’ve read many letters which you asked me to forward to others, for your convenience or to save postage. I’ve transcribed correspondence from you to send by email to others. I’ve had phone conversations or even met in person with others whom you had periods of intensive correspondence with, and who had also gotten to know you quite well.

So I have had broad exposure to your communication with others, and have long observed the nature of people’s interest in communicating with you. Throughout this entire time period, the purpose of this communication has been the exchange of ideas and critical dialogue about the political problem of unrestrained technological development and its impact upon humanity and the natural world.

Many of your correspondents have explicitly stated that they disavow the acts which led to your imprisonment, but feel that the critique you express concerning the fate of human dignity, wilderness and the planetary life system is the central challenge our democratic society, and global society, must face.

Many of your correspondents are actively engaged in producing political or artistic public expression in one form or another, including books, journalistic articles, academic teaching, films or visual art. I’m also aware of visual artists who have exhibited work inspired by your ideas without ever having directly corresponded with you.

You have frequently written to me of your disgust when people write to you because they are interested in you as a “notorious criminal” and of your aversion to personal fame or a focus upon your personal history rather than your ideas. You ignore such correspondents. You have also steadfastly refused to talk to the press, even though all the major press have contacted you for interviews, since you feel they are not interested in dealing serious with the social questions you raise.

On no occasion in my experience have you or any of your correspondents discussed, advocated, invoked or encouraged illegal actions in any form.

Your correspondence arises through interest in the ideas and political philosophy expressed in your essay “Industrial Society and It’s Future,” and personal friendships that result from political dialogue. Your dialogue has social and historic import, which is why the La a le Archive is collecting your papers. I intend to donate my correspondence with you to the Labadie so they will be available for academic research. Engagement with your ideas has been and is very important in my own political development and has inspired and informed my art projects. And this all makes sense to me, because public expression of ideas concerning human welfare and entering into a our collective thought process seems to me to have been your true aim all along.

Love,
[SIGNED: Lydia]

From Ted to Lydia — Summer 2012

Dear Lydia,

Thanks for your letters of 5/22/12 and your letter of 5/24/12. But I’m disappointed that you — like a lot of other people, apparently — misinterpreted my entry in that Harvard alumni book....

From Lydia to Ted — October 5, 2020

Dear Lydia,

Thank you for returning that Atlantic article ...

From Lydia to Ted — December 18, 2022

December 18, 2022 [sending late as usual]
Dear Ted,

I recently came across this long forgotten picture of me in my loft space taken in 1993, taken when I was working on a first amendment lawsuit brief against the subway system to prevent them from installing loads of advertising televisions in the subway station. I was working with my collaborator Wendy; we saw this state-sponsored system as a good chance to talk about advertising in general as diffuse propaganda; we had a lots of fun torturing the subway system with a myriad stickers satirizing “progress” under the project name, “You’re Soaking In It!” You can see the obvious pink, black and white reason I got excited about ISAAF when I got hold of that New York Times insert!!!

While many of your predictions are coming to pass, I am glad that you were wrong last December about not making to another Christmas. I hope for still another Christmas, at least, and that your writing and support network will be harmonious and productive in 2023... let me know if you want a book.

Love from Lydia [P.S. I am also sending you the card I made for Betsy this year.]

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!