Just thinking

I hear snippets of "news" on the radio make me start thinking. So as I was driving home from work, then errands the other day I thought about journaling.  Then I snapped that I was living in 2011 and should just start blogging so here I am.

I was thinking about people who are my age or about my age - 68 next month.  Most of the people I know are computer literate, at least with regard to email, although facebook is has taken over as the communication favorite.  People with kids or grandkids tend to text.  Almost everyone has a smart phone.  I have  Kindle and so do a lot of my friends.  My husband just got an i pad.  As soon as he lets loose of it, I'll start fooling around with it.

If you are not plugged in, to paraphrase Timothy Leary, dearie, you are really tuned out.  I love being able to type in any kind of question in the Google bar and have a reasonable choice of answers.  I like the new verbs, google, tweet and abbreviations, BTW, OMG and WTF.  I don't get all the details of acronyms attached to LOL, but I can approximate a guess.

I heard that  school system back east was no longer going to teach cursive writing.  That old lady in me reacted viscerally against it.  But people don't hand write things any more and when they do, it's often not legible and the spelling is atrocious.  I learned formal penmanship in third grade using the Palmer Method.  Our graduation was the use of an ink pen.  We had liquid in inkwells on our desks and had to dip the pen in the ink bottle and slurp the ink up using a little lever on the side of the pen.  To be able to write cursive in ink was really a big hurdle.  I have pretty handwriting.  People comment on it.  I learned how to print well, to caption maps and technical drawings freehand.

President Lincoln and people of his day on learned to write cursively.  They did not print as we know it.  But I think kids need to be taught to hand write.  Block letter prnting is probably best.  I think they need the hand/eye/brain connection to the letters as they are learning to read.  I also heard that some people in the 1700's could read, but not write.  The two subjects were taught completely separately. But cursive?  I'm glad I learned it, but there is so much more to learn.  We don't use flowing ink pens anymore.  We don't dial phone numbers, we don't get up to change channels.  I think laptops will be another fond memory.  Anyway, I've let it go and can't wait for new things to come.