Category Archives: Night Writer

The handwriting’s on the wall for pensmanship

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My hand-writing is atrocious and I admit that with more shame than pride. I dutifully learned my printing and cursive writing styles in school, but my thoughts have always been faster than my hand. Trying to get them down in longhand is like trying to rein in a team of stampeding horses — when the horses are behind you. In their haste to keep up my fingers have often cut corners around the edges of some letters, or lapped over the lines meant to keep the letters inside, or sketched the first few letters of a word while giving the rest of the word a lick and a promise.

Never better than mediocre at it’s best when I was younger and using it regularly, my hand-writing has deteriorated as I’ve gotten older, even though I still use it quite a bit. My generation still had to write most of our reports and essays in longhand while in school, and I didn’t take a typing class until my junior year in high school. I typed my college papers, except for my semester in England when I didn’t have access to a typewriter and had to turn in four large bluebooks of laborious cursive. You’d think I’d be able to keep my “hand” in these days since I take copious notes at work and fill roughly one notebook a year in scrawled highlights of sermons from church. My wife, however, looks at my notes and says that I write in tongues, and it is getting to the point now where even I can’t read the scratchings if it’s been a week or two since they were put down on paper.

My struggles are not unusual and, in fact, the generations behind me may be even worse off according to a recent article in the Boston Globe noting the decline in handwriting in the U.S., most likely due to a decline in teaching it as students and teachers conform to the ubiquity of the keyboard, even in the elementary grades.

To previous generations, clear and speedy handwriting was essential to everything from public documents to personal letters to generals’ orders in battle. As literacy became more widespread, various handwriting methods arose. There was italic, starting in the 15th century, and then in the 17th century came roundhand – called copperplate in the United States – seen in the Declaration of Independence and the script of Benjamin Franklin. In the 1820s, Platt Rogers Spencer developed the Spencerian script, which became the American standard in schools (it survives in the Coca-Cola logo).

Then came A.N. Palmer. While working as a clerk in Iowa in the 1880s, Palmer devised a way of writing that eliminated Spencer’s fancy curlicues and purportedly minimized fatigue, too. He promoted his method in a book, “Palmer’s Guide to Muscular Movement Writing,” and by 1912 his method was dominant in American schools. Palmer and its offshoots featured the odd large number 2 for the capital Q, the capital D with the little forelock, and the M and N that start with a loop.

However much you studied your Palmer, though, your “hand” was distinctive – as personal as your voice or laugh. But as typewriters proliferated after World War II, handwriting gradually became less important. Authors typed their manuscripts and students typed their school papers. As telephones became universal, letter-writing virtually disappeared. In the e-mail age, most people seldom need to write more than a grocery list or a short note, or sign a check. It’s not only kids; many who formerly wrote fluently and neatly have forgotten how.

“It’s a very disturbing problem,” said Kate Gladstone of Albany, N.Y., who has a website specializing in handwriting improvement. “I see people in their 20s and 30s who cannot read cursive. If you cannot read all types of handwriting, you might find your grandma’s diary or something from 100 years ago, and not be able to read it.” There are practical concerns as well. Sometimes we don’t have a computer, or the professor won’t let us bring it to class to take notes. Or sometimes, as happened in New Orleans hospitals during Hurricane Katrina, computers lose power and medical orders and records have to be written out by hand.

In a way, it’s as if hand-writing has become another “dead” language like Greek or Latin. All three were once thought to be the foundations of a good education and now are the arcane province of “Men of Letters” (and Women).

While typing — whether on a typewriter, computer or hand-held device — is the most efficient and functional way to put words (or electrons) on paper these days, and despite my own struggles with the craft of penmanship, a part of me feels sadness at the decline of one of the “Three R’s”. There’s an elegance and classiness in being able to master a graceful note to a loved one or even a list of chores on the whiteboard stuck to the refrigerator door. Perhaps that’s why so many important documents today still affect a hand-written look. How ironic that a student today might not be able to read his or her diploma!

Not nearly frightened enough!

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by the Night Writer


(from boing-boing)

Nancy features the word “zombie” in her Word for the Week on Fritinancy, and offers an entertaining history of the origin and uses of the word as well, of course, as its place in our entertainment and culture. Included in this is the following punditry she’s come across recently:

But it’s the ongoing global financial crisis that has truly reanimated “zombie.” References to zombie banks and zombie companies have proliferated over the last 12 months. “The threat of zombies here and now is real,” wrote Alyce Lomax in the Motley Fool blog last week:

That is, the zombie banks and zombie corporations that are artificially kept alive even though in any rational, natural world they should be dead. And if these reanimated corpses are still stumbling around, growing greater and greater in number, well, I’m pretty sure we all know what appears to be causing the dead to rise.

In a Jan. 18 column titled “Wall Street Voodoo,” New York Times op-ed columnist and Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman wrote about a hypothetical bank, “Gothamgroup”:

On paper, Gotham has $2 trillion in assets and $1.9 trillion in liabilities, so that it has a net worth of $100 billion. But a substantial fraction of its assets — say, $400 billion worth — are mortgage-backed securities and other toxic waste. If the bank tried to sell these assets, it would get no more than $200 billion.

So Gotham is a zombie bank: it’s still operating, but the reality is that it has already gone bust. Its stock isn’t totally worthless — it still has a market capitalization of $20 billion — but that value is entirely based on the hope that shareholders will be rescued by a government bailout.

I think in these cases the zombies are roaming the streets moaning for “Brains!” not because they want to eat them but because they seem to have misplaced them. This does give me an excuse to link to a classic from Tiger Lilly, however:


(Finally, the Are You Smarter Than a Fifth-Grader-level trivia question: What movie did the headline of this post come from? Hint: it wasn’t a zombie film.)

Update:

To find out what the zombies don’t want you to know (i.e., who you’re really borrowing from) go here. (HT: Through the Illusion).

Picture this: Surrender, Dorothy

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by the Night Writer

We’re not in Kansas any more. Actually, I’ve never lived in Kansas but I thought about Kansas today during praise & worship at church. Well, what I was thinking about was “the rock” of my foundation and how important it is to build my house on the rock instead of shifting sand. So how does Kansas enter into this? Bear with me a moment.

In my last post I referenced Jesus’ parable of the man who builds his house on the solid rock vs. the man who builds on shifting sand and how these homes fare when the rains, floods and winds come along. As an analogy I described the rain as being the economy (dampening everything), the floods as what washes away our job or business and the winds as the stresses that come along in the storm that and batter us (perhaps in our relationships, or health), adding to the destruction. Jesus suggested we “build” our homes — or lives — on something that can’t be shaken and I’ve tried to renew my thinking over the years in order to do that. And that’s when I thought of Kansas.

You see, in “The Wizard of Oz”, when the twister appears on the Kansas horizon, Auntie Em and the others don’t have a basement in the farmhouse to run to. Instead they have a detached root or storm cellar for emergencies. When that picture appeared in my mind it made me realize that there are probably areas in my life where I’ve built near my foundation but not actually upon it; things that look solid and even Biblical and may even be good, but are not built on that key foundation. “Doctrines of man” might be an example of this. Meanwhile, we take for granted the thing with the solid foundation, perhaps using it for storage or our convenience, almost forgetting what it’s there for.

The thing is, when the storms and the wind come, the things I’ve built near the foundation — good, bad or indifferent — will blow away. The question I have to answer, then, is whether or not I’ll chase after those things that are blowing down the road (after all, I’ve likely put a lot of time and effort into these) or if I’ll look for people still out in the storm and try to wave them over into shelter.

What would you do?

Of bubbles, bread, seeds and cookies

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by the Night Writer

One of the characteristics of the dearly remembered housing boom was the sprouting of “McMansions” in former cornfields or alongside golf courses. These were very cool looking homes and we enjoyed touring these during the Parade of Homes, especially those listed at $1 million or more.

It made for an afternoon’s diversion and fantasy, but you had to wonder at some of the value represented. A salesperson was showing us around one $750k model townhome and as we were admiring the well-appointed family room the resident in the home that shared a common wall flushed the toilet. We knew this because we could clearly hear the water running through the pipes and the tank refilling. This is not an unusual experience when you live in an apartment or a townhouse, but not a big selling feature if you’re going to spend $750k. Other times we’d tour a million dollar home with Ben, who is an experienced carpenter, and watch as he pointed out subtle mistakes in fit and finish. In one case there was painted over evidence of a load-bearing wall not doing it’s duty, likely as a result of a problem with the foundation.

I think of these things, and foundations, in the burst residue of the housing and mortgage bubble as the entire economy sags like the wings of a great house falling toward the basement because the center-beam wasn’t set as well as you might think. It’s the latest demonstration of the Biblical exhortation to build your home on solid rock and not on shifting sand. Of course, the Bible is using the house as a metaphor, as am I. Let’s review Matthew 7:24-27:

“Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.

“But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.”

Doesn’t that sound familiar, and in more ways than one? Allow me to extend the metaphor into an analogy: today’s economy is the rain, and the effects of it in our lives are the floods, and the wind is the additional adversities that come to challenge our faith and make us doubt what we are standing upon, or whether the rock is enough to save us.

We have to build with storms in mind, an outlook almost completely lacking in the latest run-up as people seemed to assume that storms had become extinct and that those sets of conditions would continue in perpetuity (just as some now assume the current situation is forever). What is the housing bubble, or any bubble, all about but value driven by high expectations rather than intrinsic worth, or the greater fool theory? In those conditions you’re not building a foundation on a rock; you’re not even building it on sand which can at least be heavy — you’re building it on something as flimsy and as easily popped as a bubble. And great is the fall.

A Poem for “Choice”

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I came across this poem in time for “Blogs for Choice Day” today:



Middle-Age

by Pat Schneider



The child you think you don’t want

is the one who will make you laugh.

She will break your heart

when she loses the sight in one eye

and tells the doctor she wants to be

an apple tree when she grows up.



It will be this child who forgives you

again and again

for believing you don’t want her to be born,

for resisting the rising tide of your body,

for wishing for the red flow of her dismissal.

She will even forgive you for all the breakfasts

you failed to make exceptional.



Someday this child will sit beside you.

When you are old and too tired of war

to want to watch the evening news,

she will tell you stories

like the one about her teenaged brother,

your son, and his friends

taking her out in a canoe when she was

five years old. How they left her alone

on an island in the river

while they jumped off the railroad bridge.



“Middle-Age” by Pat Schneider, from Another River: New and Selected Poems. © Amherst Writers and Artists Press, 2005.




Telling the temperature by the LRT

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by the Night Writer

Back in the day, when we were closer to the land, people could predict weather or gauge temperature without thermometers or technology by observing the behavior of animals, insects, clouds or clairvoyant joints. We don’t rely on natural observation that much anymore, but I have observed one way, in this recent cold-snap, to tell just how cold it is.

There’s an electronic alarm bell at the Fort Snelling Light Rail station that clangs at high speed whenever a train is approaching or departing. It’s a loud, hyper ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding when temperatures are, say, above 10 degrees. When it drops below 10, however, the bell is muted and lower in pitch and makes a steady ng-ng-ng-ng-ng growl like a chihuahua passing a cheeseball.

When it’s below zero, however, its clamor is restricted to a choked and tortured ng………..ng………..ng…………ng every few seconds.

Granted, it’s not a very useful way to gauge the temperature if you’re not near the bell, but it’s a handy confirmation if you happen to be walking past it, shivering and wondering if it can really be as cold as it feels. And this gives me the opportunity to run another of O. Winston Link’s steam engine photos from the 1950s that I love so much.

Besides being an inventive and talented photographer faithfully recording the images of a passing era, Link also had a passion for recording the distinctive and fading sounds of the old steam engines as well. These recordings are a lot more pleasant and evocative than the sound of a freezing electronic bell these days, and have a way of taking you places in your mind that the trains themselves never could. You can listen to a few of these recordings here. You can also go hear the Fort Snelling LRT bell for yourself without going back in time, but you’ll want to bundle up.

Wondering Where the Lions Are

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I had another dream about lions at the door
They weren’t half as frightening as they were before
But I’m thinking about eternity
Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me…
— Bruce Cockburn, “Wondering Where the Lions Are”

I’m a few minutes from sleep yet, but this song comes to me tonight. It’s been some week. On my last post, the one with the picture of a shark flying out of the water, Hayden asked, “Shark Week?” To which I replied, “Yes, and I’m wearing sealskin underwear.”

Last Friday I had a meeting with our CEO who told me our business was heading into an interesting week. I’m guessing that most people’s jobs, when they get “interesting” probably don’t involve the media. My job, however, does and it turned out that two unrelated events were heading our way that the local and even national press would find hard to ignore. Neither were pleasant, and neither were a shock, but it was surprising for them to fall in such proximity to each other. My job as well is two-fold: messages for the media and for our employees — and only one of those two groups enjoys bad news.

One, of course, was layoffs. It was almost a relief for the crew, however, as folks had known it was coming and it had been stressful for many while waiting to find out how bad and how deep, while calculating one’s own prospects to stay or go. Even if you were relatively safe it’s hard not to ponder what you’d do while hurtling toward the inevitable. It was a sobering week, though our portion of the business was relatively unscathed. Still, we’re a small group and even a few losses are felt; no one is nameless or faceless. Even if the cup passes you by it’s hard not to think of the individuals and families involved. It does tend to focus you a bit, especially if you think, “What if it had been me?”

Same with riding in a crashing airplane. The news today of a US Airways jet taking off from LaGuardia and ending up in the Hudson River — miraculously without loss of life — is the type of story that you can’t help but picture yourself belted in and, again, hurtling toward the inevitable, with only moments to review your decisions, regrets and priorities. Now there’s no time to change anything, barely time to pray, and yet how heavy some choices must be as they seem to drag across your mind. “If I get out of this…” you might think. Then what? I thought, this afternoon after reading the news, of the time on that Iowa highway in the winter white-out when I moved to the left and the semi-truck careened through those on the right, taking others but not me. Changes were made, and here I am, the man I am today.

I had another chance. Those on the airplane today have another chance. Those in my office, whether staying or departing, each will have another chance, though it may come to us in different ways. Rather than be scary, or depressing, it becomes stimulating, even after the adrenaline fades and only clarity remains. And then the words of another Bruce Cockburn song come to my, and I can smile.

Don’t the hours grow shorter as the days go by
You never get to stop and open your eyes
One day you’re waiting for the axe to fall
And next you’re dazzled by the beauty of it all
When you’re lovers in a dangerous time
Lovers in a dangerous time

These fragile bodies of touch and taste
This vibrant skin this hair like lace
Spirits open to the thrust of grace
Never a breath you can afford to waste

When you’re lovers in a dangerous time
Lovers in a dangerous time
When you’re lovers in a dangerous time
Lovers in a dangerous time

When you’re lovers in a dangerous time
Sometimes you’re made to feel as if your love’s a crime
Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight
Got to kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight

When you’re lovers in a dangerous time…

We’ve got some daylight coming to us. It may take awhile, but it’s coming. Be ready.