The Death Of Cursive

[Madelaine McMasters]

[Madelaine McMasters]

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Helium Loon wrote:

I have to say I'm appalled at all the support for dropping cursive.  A few points to clarify why it's important:

 

1)  The cerebrum part of the brain is a pattern matching machine.  It's a BIG part of how our higher brain functions work....by recognizing and matching patterns.  Learning (and using) cursive helps train that part of our brains to be BETTER at pattern matching.  While there IS a standard for cursive, every single writer using it varies their writing of it in small (or sometimes large) ways.  By learning cursive, the brain learns not only to recognize the basic patterns, but also develops the flexibility to still match subtle differences.

Surely cursive is not the only way to improve our brain's pattern matching capabilities, Helium. It was not invented for that purpose. 

If the time spent learning cursive handwriting could be used to do something even more effective for brain development, then cursive should be abandoned as a tool for that purpose and kept only by those who value the original use. There are many ways to challenge the brain's pattern matching machines, with greater future applicability than learning cursive.

2)  History and tradition.  As another noted, if you can't read cursive, reading many historical documents is closed to you.  Old letters your parents, grandparents, ancestors might have written?  Unreadable if you don't know cursive.  The US Constitution (for americans) is written in cursivve, as is the US Declaration of Independence.  Old records?  Filled with cursive notes and signatures.

I've seen old family letters. My ability to read cursive is of limited use to me there. On my father's side, many of the letters are in German or Polish. My maternal grandmother could not read. 

Historical documents have never been as available as they are today, witness 

Project Gutenberg

. I understand the connection one feels when holding a letter in hand and reading the words, but I get warm fuzzies reading old e-mails from Dad. By the time I moved out of the house, we'd already been texting between his office and my bedroom (within yelling distance) for years. I have a letter Dad wrote to me in 2003, when he first learned he had Alzheimers. It was his goodbye letter, written while he was still able to do it. It's beautifully composed in Garamond, laser printed and signed with his Palmer method signature, bearing signs of tremble.

In the age of the Internet, translation and transcription services are available to virtually anyone who can access the web. The real value of the Declaration of Independence is in the meaning of the words, not their shape. It may be that scholarly analysis of the handwriting could reveal some additional texture, but few of us would have the background to work that out, as that requires knowledge far beyond cursive handwriting. Let people with a passion for such analysis do it, and bring us the results... via the Internet.

I'm even more appalled by those who are pleased to see it being dropped because 'it was too hard' or 'I know print, why should I have to learn another writing style?'  Think cursive it hard?  Ask Japanese students about what THEY have to learn, writing-wise.  TWO basic sets (hiragana & katakana), and then over 2000 pictograms (kanji) just for basic literacy.  And they have to use those EVERY DAY.  And it's more complex than that, since each kanji can have anywhere from 2 to 10 different ways it can be read.....

I wish I could find the article I read, perhaps 20 years ago, that claimed that the Chinese alphabet may reduce creative thinking in young Chinese (I imagine the argument would apply to Japanese as well). The 3000+ pictograms of the Chinese alphabet have very little functional, or even metaphorical, connection to the ideas they represent. The authors claimed that so much of a Chinese child's youth is spent memorizing the connections between symbols and meanings that their intellect is steered in the direction of rote memorization. This was seen as a structural disadvantage for the Chinese. That may have been my first introduction to the much argued theory of "

linguistic relativity

", though I think it's one step removed.

I found that article provocative, though I don't know if it's at all true. I have added it to the constellation of ideas I've filed away to give me other perspectives on the ideas I'll encounter tomorrow.

Education in the US is rapidly becoming a joke.  The whole 'No Child Left Behind' movement, along with litiginous parents who don't bother doing much (if any) parenting is killing the educational system here.  Parents don't want to accept that BY DEFINITION, half of the kids (including theirs) are BELOW AVERAGE intelligence.  Let's face it.....as the late George Carlin so eloquently and accurately assessed:  "Kids are like any other group of people....a few winners, a whole lot of losers."

Certainly parts of our educational system are in a shambles, but not all of it. And the decline has been going on for some time. My parents home schooled me, partly because I was "precocious" and partly because they did not like the direction public education was going. That was 40 years ago.

I love George Carlin, and the irony of that quote for an audience that believes itself above average 

(the 

Dunning-Kruger

 effect), as most Americans do. It's not as much that way in Europe, and backwards in Asia. I wonder if he'd have gotten applause with that idea in Beijing. I'd love to see a Dunning-Kruger chart for the history of the US.

Every child is not a 'special snowflake.'  Every child is not smart, clever, cute, beautiful, witty, or any number of other superlatives.  Some are.  But most, again by definition, are average.  And, like any other bell-curve population, there are a few geniuses as well as some real idiots.  Accept it.  Teach them that with hard work and application, they can still achieve success.  We need to quit filling their heads with this nonsense so that when they do get out in the real world they aren't completely unprepared to deal with it.  Too many are already out there, with an entitlement attitude that is only made worse by this kind of nonsense.  Success is earned, not deserved......

I believe success should be earned, but that's never been the complete reality of it and never will be. Success is a complex mix of fortune, fortunes, ability, effort, attitude, ethics, etc. 

I'm conflicted about the "special snowflake" treatment. Our goal should not be to endow children with high self esteem, and maybe not even with accurate self esteem, but with healthy self esteem (whatever the hell that is). We must encourage them to reach beyond their grasp, to accept and learn from failure, and find happiness in doing so.

Curiously, I'm seeing this attitude of entitlement arise in some of my elderly friends. We're never too old to learn?

Cursive was, and is, a pain to learn.  So was memorizing multiplication tables, learning fractions, and memorizing spelling.  Should we drop those too?  After all, we've got spell-checkers, calculators, and more now.......

We should not add or drop the learning of skills based on difficulty, but rather on their cost/benefit ratio. This is a squishy metric, as both cost and benefit are often difficult to recognize and evaluate and are constantly changing. I think cursive is under attack because the cost/benefit ratio has eroded.

Just becuase we have easier ways to do things thanks to technology doesn't mean a prior method loses value.

I'm as susceptible to nostalgia as the next person, but I think that's what this is. I believe in preserving the knowledge of our collective history, and there comes a time when old methods are best abandoned to it. The value of doing math in systems which had no zero absolutely declined when it finally arrived in force around 1500 years ago. Tilling with humans, horses and steam are much the same. Sometimes remembering is better than doing.

(Edited typos)

(Imagine if you'd handwritten this! ;-)

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[Madelaine McMasters]

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Studio09 wrote:

 Madelaine, both your and AveryGriffin's videos were very interesting.  I have also seen some of the teaching practices from Avery's video in a "hippy" style private school, a private school for students with learning differences and in a one room k-12 classroom in the Alaska bush.  In all of these situations the results were very positive due to a great extent to the dissolution of grade-level boundaries, the increased ratio of teachers/aides/student-tutors to students, the encouragement of independent study and projects and unconventional teaching techniques.  The only problem I have with the predictions of that video is the allocation of the money available.  Instead of paying few teachers a lot of money I think it should go to paying for more teachers.  But in either case I think the school facility infrastructure would need to be changed since much of the money is wasted on the current model.   I better stop now 'cause I could go on and on.

Being a tech person I found your video very interesting but I couldn't help getting flashes of Battlestar Galactica throughout the talk. :smileyhappy: 

I don't have such an optimistic view of the future unless mankind's spiritual development (I'm not saying religion, more ethics) is as fast our technological development.  Much of technology came about because of wars, military advancement or greed.  Who spends the money to advance technology?  The government to improve their military and companies to make more money.  Unless that changes I don't see technology filtering down to the really poor people.  So yes technology will advance providing utopia for some but dystopia for others.

 

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Call me Maddy, Ms. 09!

As the only kid in the class, with a teacher/student ratio of 2+/1, unconventional teaching techniques, and tons of hand-in/on/under/through experience, I want to believe the results were very positive. But, that's probably the Dunning-Kruger effect.

I agree that much of the funding for our current public education model is wasted and that more teachers would be better than more expensive teachers. Kahn academy is doing interesting things and the Singapore school system is attracting lots of attention. According to the World Bank, the US spends 23% of GDP on education. Singapore? 12.3%. I think Milwaukee, near me, spends more per student than most places in the nation, producing the worst performing students.

Something's broken.

I'm an optimist overall, but share your concerns about our spiritual development keeping up with technology. Another thread here has been discussing the "erasing" of posts by young people who come to regret them. People are wired to forgive and forget. That seems crucial to our ability to progress. If we retained exact memory of everything that ever happened to us, we'd soon bog down in recollection and re-analysis of all that information, and absent some kind of depreciating mechanism, ancient wrongs would weigh too significantly against recent rights.

Our legal systems contain mechanisms for rehabilitating our reputations. Single misdemeanors can often be expunged from a criminal record, wiping the slate clean. Until recently, the Court of Public Opinion often worked similarly. But the internet never forgets and it seems unlikely we'll figure out a way to give it our kind of amnesia. So we're going to have to grow our empathy to accomodate this perpetual public memory. Can we do it? I hope so.

Here's a reason I'm optimistic and have a huge crush on Hans Rosling...

[Pie Serendipity]

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AveryGriffin wrote:

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People who use non-conversational language in a well...message board usually are the same ones who use superfluous words in essasys to make them look longer/make the writer look smarter is all I'm saying. :B

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Erm, and your evidence for this far-fetched product of an apparently jealously inferior mentality is what, exactly?

Perhaps you are recommending that literate forum participants should dumb down their contributions to the sub-literate reading level of the majority, deliberately peppering posts with mis-spellings, grammatical howlers and typos, as you have done?

Sorry, I have no intention of satisfying the lowest common denominator, and will continue using the right words to communicate my specific meanings, polysyllabic or otherwise.

ETA: I have just discovered that you are a kid avatar; your desire for short words and simple sentences now makes sense. Congratulations on beating your lisp though.

[Pie Serendipity]

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

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Given your own apparent senescence, your Mom's letter must be very long, or she's an extremely slow typist . . .

ETA: Hell, I just used another one of those supposedly superfluous words that will confuse people and make them pick up a dictionary, just to make me look smart; like "superfluous" - which, in my opinion, is just unnecessary.

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

A thought here, would you feel slightly cheated if your birthday/christmas/valentine's card had machine print instead of somebody's handwriting inside it?

[Pie Serendipity]

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Profaitchikenz Haiku wrote:

A thought here, would you feel slightly cheated if your birthday/christmas/valentine's card had machine print instead of somebody's handwriting inside it?

 

 

 

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Hmmm, do people nowadays really still use snail mail when ecards are so much more convenient?

[Czari Zenovka]

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Profaitchikenz Haiku wrote:

A thought here, would you feel slightly cheated if your birthday/christmas/valentine's card had machine print instead of somebody's handwriting inside it?

 

 

 

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This reminds me of people I knew in years past who prided themselves on sending Christmas cards to their innumerable "friends" that were lovely and likely expensive.  I imagine these people paid extra for their names to be pre-printed inside.  No handwritting, cursive nor printed, as a personal touch was added.  But, what is this?  Ohhhhh yes, here's the "personal touch" - an included lengthy (often several pages) " annual update" on the activities of them and their children;  of course all 1,000 of their "closest friends" were just waiting to read this picayune minutea.  Often a list of everyone within their immediate family, that apparently encompassed a circle to the sixth degree of separation, who had died in the past year was included.  Since I received a number of these cards (it was during the years I was married and received cards from everyone my husband's family had ever greeted on a sunny day), by the end of the holiday season I was depressed at all the deaths.

Edit: Grammar

 

[Madelaine McMasters]

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Czari Zenovka wrote:

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Profaitchikenz Haiku wrote:

A thought here, would you feel slightly cheated if your birthday/christmas/valentine's card had machine print instead of somebody's handwriting inside it?

---

This reminds me of people I knew in years past who prided themselves on sending Christmas cards to their innumerable "friends" that were lovely and likely expensive.  I imagine these people paid extra for their names to be pre-printed inside.  No handwritting, cursive nor printed, as a personal touch was added.  But, what is this?  Ohhhhh yes, here's the "personal touch" - an included lengthy (often several pages) " annual update" on the activities of them and their children;  of course all 1,000 of their "closest friends" were just waiting to read this picayune minutea.  Often a list of everyone within their immediate family, that apparently encompassed a circle to the sixth degree of separation, who had died in the past year was included.  Since I received a number of these cards (it was during the years I was married and received cards from everyone my husband's family had ever greeted on a sunny day), by the end of the holiday season I was depressed at all the deaths.

Edit: Grammar

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Oy, I need to clean my glasses, Czari. I thought you'd gone and quoted something from Edith Grammar.

I get a couple of those family portrait cards every Xmas, along with the annual letter from a friend in Michigan. The rest are Hallmark style cards. I don't care if they're handwritten or laser printed, I still think fondly of whoever sent it.

[Bree Giffen]

I just asked my nephew about learning cursive. His answer was "Yeah, they taught us that back in third grade." So I guess that actually learning cursive is not that time consuming or difficult. My niece overheard us and told me, "They tell us to write everything in cursive in grade school but in middle school the teachers say they'll flunk us if we try to write our reports in cursive. All of the kids in class were all: WHAT?"

So there you go, cursive gets kicked to the curb in middle school.

[Studio09]

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

...

Here's a reason I'm optimistic and have a huge crush on Hans Rosling...

---

 Another fantastic video, Maddy.   And I can see why you have a crush on HR - very good speaker and showman.  His data showing that better health does not need to be dependent on better economics gives me more hope.  But I am still concerned with shifting from spending on the development of technology for economic growth to spending on the development of technology to improve the environment.

 

[Czari Zenovka]

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

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Czari Zenovka wrote:

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Profaitchikenz Haiku wrote:

A thought here, would you feel slightly cheated if your birthday/christmas/valentine's card had machine print instead of somebody's handwriting inside it?

---

This reminds me of people I knew in years past who prided themselves on sending Christmas cards to their innumerable "friends" that were lovely and likely expensive.  I imagine these people paid extra for their names to be pre-printed inside.  No handwritting, cursive nor printed, as a personal touch was added.  But, what is this?  Ohhhhh yes, here's the "personal touch" - an included lengthy (often several pages) " annual update" on the activities of them and their children;  of course all 1,000 of their "closest friends" were just waiting to read this picayune minutea.  Often a list of everyone within their immediate family, that apparently encompassed a circle to the sixth degree of separation, who had died in the past year was included.  Since I received a number of these cards (it was during the years I was married and received cards from everyone my husband's family had ever greeted on a sunny day), by the end of the holiday season I was depressed at all the deaths.

Edit: Grammar

---

Oy, I need to clean my glasses, Czari. I thought you'd gone and quoted something from Edith Grammar.

I get a couple of those family portrait cards every Xmas, along with the annual letter from a friend in Michigan. The rest are Hallmark style cards. I don't care if they're handwritten or laser printed, I still think fondly of whoever sent it.

---

Except I was getting them from people I didn't even know just by being married to a man whose parents were wealthy and socially prominent.  :matte-motes-sour:

[Madelaine McMasters]

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Czari Zenovka wrote:

---

Madelaine McMasters wrote:

---

Czari Zenovka wrote:

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Profaitchikenz Haiku wrote:

A thought here, would you feel slightly cheated if your birthday/christmas/valentine's card had machine print instead of somebody's handwriting inside it?

---

This reminds me of people I knew in years past who prided themselves on sending Christmas cards to their innumerable "friends" that were lovely and likely expensive.  I imagine these people paid extra for their names to be pre-printed inside.  No handwritting, cursive nor printed, as a personal touch was added.  But, what is this?  Ohhhhh yes, here's the "personal touch" - an included lengthy (often several pages) " annual update" on the activities of them and their children;  of course all 1,000 of their "closest friends" were just waiting to read this picayune minutea.  Often a list of everyone within their immediate family, that apparently encompassed a circle to the sixth degree of separation, who had died in the past year was included.  Since I received a number of these cards (it was during the years I was married and received cards from everyone my husband's family had ever greeted on a sunny day), by the end of the holiday season I was depressed at all the deaths.

Edit: Grammar

---

Oy, I need to clean my glasses, Czari. I thought you'd gone and quoted something from Edith Grammar.

I get a couple of those family portrait cards every Xmas, along with the annual letter from a friend in Michigan. The rest are Hallmark style cards. I don't care if they're handwritten or laser printed, I still think fondly of whoever sent it.

---

Except I was getting them from people I didn't even know just by being married to a man whose parents were wealthy and socially prominent.  :matte-motes-sour:

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I was really answering Profaitchikenz's question and should have made that clear. :-(

I wonder how such people as you've described can avoid tripping over their own pretension. I've got some hoity toity neighbors who spend lavishly to impress their friends and nickle and dime everybody else. I can't get away from them fast enough.

[cinda Hoodoo]

My grandmother was one of the most lovely women I've ever known,  she had a pen pal for decades, another lovely lady, she'd never met, overseas in England. How this came about was this English lady, was one of the children from London that were sent to the country sides by train to avoid the city bombings during the war. They corresponded by cursive all the rest of their lives.

There were times my grandmother had incessant insomnia, and the only thing that seemed to relax her was a fresh page of stationary, a good pen, and her pen pal. Pages of cursive across decades of time, celebrations, sadness, the baring of  souls in their darkest hours.

Upon her death I found the boxes of letters, neatly kept by year, and when i wrote the pen pal of my grandmothers passing and received the most beautiful letter back.

The last sentences summed up their entire experience:

"My sadness at your grandmothers parting although selfish, means the days of the post man waiving the envelope with your grandmothers strongly elegant handwriting has come full circle. Once I was alone and frightened in a dark and depressing world, and those envelopes once opened held the sunshine of her life in line after line of curling, daring handwriting that made me strong in ways I never knew possible."

So perhaps there is more to cursive than we imagine, it may be part of our character that perhaps would be missed otherwise.

[Madelaine McMasters]

Studio, just to prove I'm not a blind optimist (just a TED addict)...

As a Wisconsinite, the locations of all those li'l red USA dots bother me, but I can take some small comfort (and you can beam over your Alaskan "hippy" style schooling) that our states are better than average in high school dropout rate (@8:05).

I recommend Matt Ridley's book "The Rational Optimist" for a countervailing perspective.

And finally I'll drag out Henry Ford once again to say...

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” 

[Pie Serendipity]

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

I recommend Matt Ridley's book "The Rational Optimist" for a countervailing perspective.

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I wouldn't take any notice of a word Ridley said. As has been pointed out by an innocent bystander: "As chairman of Northern Rock, he was responsible, according to parliament's Treasury select committee, for a "high-risk, reckless business strategy". Northern Rock was able to pursue this strategy as a result of a "substantial failure of regulation" by the state. The wonderful outcome of this experiment was the first run on a British bank since 1878, and a £27bn government bail-out."

Not someone whose views on society, morals and business I would trust.

[Dillon Levenque]

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

I'd

probably

be kicked out of the board room before I could vote, which is more satisfying to me than abstaining.

;-)

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The discussion has moved on, forgive the retrogression.

Probably? That would indicate there's some possibility you'd not be kicked out. I think you overstated your chances. For the record, I actually was briefly part of a local school 'advisory committee'. They'd asked for volunteers from the community to join professional educators and I applied and was accepted. I only attended one meeting. I never got invited back.

Funny you should mention abstaining. The first version of my sentence was written "...I'd not vote to remove cursive..". I changed it to "...I'd vote not to remove cursive..." before I posted. I know you'll agree: abstention is for weenies.;-)

[Madelaine McMasters]

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Dillon Levenque wrote:

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

I'd

probably

be kicked out of the board room before I could vote, which is more satisfying to me than abstaining.

;-)

---

The discussion has moved on, forgive the retrogression.

Probably? That would indicate there's some possibility you'd

not

be kicked out.

I think you overstated your chances.

For the record, I actually was briefly part of a local school 'advisory committee'. They'd asked for volunteers from the community to join professional educators and I applied and was accepted. I only attended one meeting. I never got invited back.

Funny you should mention abstaining. The first version of my sentence was written "...I'd not vote to remove cursive..". I changed it to "...I'd vote not to remove cursive..." before I posted.

I know you'll agree: abstention is for weenies.;-)

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It's that damned illusory superiority again, I can't help myself.

Although I'm inclined to agree that abstention is for weenies, I think that's what I'm most often accused of doing... not taking sides.

Mom and Dad were also invited to be on the school board "advisory committee". The board wanted input from home schoolers.

Until they got it.

Sound familiar?

[Storm Clarence]

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Dillon Levenque wrote:

..

. I only attended one meeting. I never got invited back.

... I know you'll agree: abstention is for weenies.;-)

---

Your post reminds me of when I first golfed Shinnecock CC on Long Island.  They invited me back, but it was only to apologize. 

No weenies were served.

 

 

shinnacock

 

[Czari Zenovka]

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

---

Czari Zenovka wrote:

---

Madelaine McMasters wrote:

---

Czari Zenovka wrote:

---

Profaitchikenz Haiku wrote:

A thought here, would you feel slightly cheated if your birthday/christmas/valentine's card had machine print instead of somebody's handwriting inside it?

---

This reminds me of people I knew in years past who prided themselves on sending Christmas cards to their innumerable "friends" that were lovely and likely expensive.  I imagine these people paid extra for their names to be pre-printed inside.  No handwritting, cursive nor printed, as a personal touch was added.  But, what is this?  Ohhhhh yes, here's the "personal touch" - an included lengthy (often several pages) " annual update" on the activities of them and their children;  of course all 1,000 of their "closest friends" were just waiting to read this picayune minutea.  Often a list of everyone within their immediate family, that apparently encompassed a circle to the sixth degree of separation, who had died in the past year was included.  Since I received a number of these cards (it was during the years I was married and received cards from everyone my husband's family had ever greeted on a sunny day), by the end of the holiday season I was depressed at all the deaths.

Edit: Grammar

---

Oy, I need to clean my glasses, Czari. I thought you'd gone and quoted something from Edith Grammar.

I get a couple of those family portrait cards every Xmas, along with the annual letter from a friend in Michigan. The rest are Hallmark style cards. I don't care if they're handwritten or laser printed, I still think fondly of whoever sent it.

---

Except I was getting them from people I didn't even know just by being married to a man whose parents were wealthy and socially prominent.  :matte-motes-sour:

---

I was really answering Profaitchikenz's question and should have made that clear. :-(

I wonder how such people as you've described can avoid tripping over their own pretension. I've got some hoity toity neighbors who spend lavishly to impress their friends and nickle and dime everybody else. I can't get away from them fast enough.

---

Ah thank you for clarifying.

This same group apparently had a rule that if people on their card list didn't reciprocate then after x number of years they were dropped.

Worked for me.

[Czari Zenovka]

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cinda Hoodoo wrote:

My grandmother was one of the most lovely women I've ever known,  she had a pen pal for decades, another lovely lady, she'd never met, overseas in England. How this came about was this English lady, was one of the children from London that were sent to the country sides by train to avoid the city bombings during the war. They corresponded by cursive all the rest of their lives.

There were times my grandmother had incessant insomnia, and the only thing that seemed to relax her was a fresh page of stationary, a good pen, and her pen pal. Pages of cursive across decades of time, celebrations, sadness, the baring of  souls in their darkest hours.

Upon her death I found the boxes of letters, neatly kept by year, and when i wrote the pen pal of my grandmothers passing and received the most beautiful letter back.

The last sentences summed up their entire experience:

"My sadness at your grandmothers parting although selfish, means the days of the post man waiving the envelope with your grandmothers strongly elegant handwriting has come full circle. Once I was alone and frightened in a dark and depressing world, and those envelopes once opened held the sunshine of her life in line after line of curling, daring handwriting that made me strong in ways I never knew possible."

So perhaps there is more to cursive than we imagine, it may be part of our character that perhaps would be missed otherwise.

---

That is a beautiful and moving story.  Thank you so much for sharing that.  I can imagine you treasure those letters.

[Madelaine McMasters]

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cinda Hoodoo wrote:

My grandmother was one of the most lovely women I've ever known,  she had a pen pal for decades, another lovely lady, she'd never met, overseas in England. How this came about was this English lady, was one of the children from London that were sent to the country sides by train to avoid the city bombings during the war. They corresponded by cursive all the rest of their lives.

There were times my grandmother had incessant insomnia, and the only thing that seemed to relax her was a fresh page of stationary, a good pen, and her pen pal. Pages of cursive across decades of time, celebrations, sadness, the baring of  souls in their darkest hours.

Upon her death I found the boxes of letters, neatly kept by year, and when i wrote the pen pal of my grandmothers passing and received the most beautiful letter back.

The last sentences summed up their entire experience:

"My sadness at your grandmothers parting although selfish, means the days of the post man waiving the envelope with your grandmothers strongly elegant handwriting has come full circle. Once I was alone and frightened in a dark and depressing world, and those envelopes once opened held the sunshine of her life in line after line of curling, daring handwriting that made me strong in ways I never knew possible."

So perhaps there is more to cursive than we imagine, it may be part of our character that perhaps would be missed otherwise.

---

What a poignant story, Cinda. I'm glad you have that record of their relationship.

I think cursive is exactly what we imagine, isn't it? I have a few of my Dad's handwritten daily budgets from WWII, in which I get a sense of what a weekend shore leave in Pearl Harbor was like, by seeing what he'd purchased. A movie ticket, a box of popcorn, a chocolate malted, a hot dog and a magazine. I don't recall the total for that Saturday, but it was under a dollar. I love those little budgets.

I Googled "telegram love letter" and found this image...

No cursive, not even a direct message, just the quote delivered through the window to the Western Union clerk. But the power of the message is there... The Prodigal Son is coming home from the War 

-(STOP)-

There is something special about holding a message in your hand, and it's even more special if it was once held in the hand of the one who sent it. But ultimately, it's the story that moves us, whether written, printed or spoken. Modern technology now makes possible the recording and widespread dissemination of stories from nearly everyone on Earth, in a way we never dreamed of. We define ourselves by the stories we tell. Now may be the best time in human history for the telling of stories.

This has reminded me of the Fukushima families who lost everything in the tsunami, finding perhaps nothing but a tattered family photo in the debris. There is a volunteer group that is still painstakingly restoring those photos to the delight of the displaced families. We're heading into a future where such losses can be avoided by storing your digital treasures in the cloud.

But...

We could have a whole 'nother thread about the ephemeral nature of digital storage.

 

[Studio09]

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

Studio, just to prove I'm not a blind optimist (just a TED addict)...

As a Wisconsinite, the locations of all those li'l red USA dots bother me, but I can take some small comfort (and you can beam over your Alaskan "hippy" style schooling) that our states are better than average in high school dropout rate (@8:05).

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Another interesting video.

I can't do too much beaming.  The "hippy" school and the school for students with learning differences are in Florida.

 

[Madelaine McMasters]

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Studio09 wrote:

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

Studio, just to prove I'm not a blind optimist (just a TED addict)...

As a Wisconsinite, the locations of all those li'l red USA dots bother me, but I can take some small comfort (and you can beam over your Alaskan "hippy" style schooling) that our states are better than average in high school dropout rate (@8:05).

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Another interesting video.

I can't do too much beaming.  The "hippy" school and the school for students with learning differences are in Florida.

 

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Okay then, do we credit the Alaskan one room K-12 schoolhouse? Mom did one room K-9, followed by high school. Or is it that Alaskans don't drop out because the schools are the warmest things in Alaska during the school year?

And now I'm wondering just where you are.

;-)

[Czari Zenovka]

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Studio09 wrote:

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

Studio, just to prove I'm not a blind optimist (just a TED addict)...

As a Wisconsinite, the locations of all those li'l red USA dots bother me, but I can take some small comfort (and you can beam over your Alaskan "hippy" style schooling) that our states are better than average in high school dropout rate (@8:05).

---

Another interesting video.

I can't do too much beaming.  The "hippy" school and the school for students with learning differences are in Florida.

 

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Interesting...I would have thought California would be the mother ship.