Resilient

I can't help but feel sorry for the brave little bulbs that keep thinking it's supposed to be spring. They rise a few inches, and then they get dumped on. Snow, snow, and more snow. That's the kind of February and (so far) March it's been. Earlier today there were a few flakes, but when they stopped, I dashed out on a few errands. Wherever I went, people asked me (I seem to have that kind of face -- people talk to me) what the weather was doing. Every one of them expressed relief when I said that the snow had stopped. And maybe they just heard the relief in my own voice when I told them. 

Whatever, today is supposed to be the day that we all 'march forth' towards whatever goal or cause we may bear in mind. I like that one of the things we're supposed to do today is to try something new, especially something we've always wanted to do, but haven't got around to trying. 

So, will this be the day I start looking for online lessons so I can learn to play something beyond one-finger 'Mary had a little lamb' on my little electronic keyboard? Or do I need to think about something more exotic, more difficult? Or should I just knuckle down and finish one of my many unfinished projects. 

If resilience is something I can learn from the bulbs out front, it's probably something I can apply to my own daily life. 

As the date suggests, onward!

Nothing to curse about

Not long ago a friend wrote to share a small rant of his own. Since it doesn't take much to put me into rant mode, here I go, taking up his cause and blathering as usual.

A friend of his had expressed concern to her child's teacher over the fact that the students weren't learning the art of cursive writing, or as we probably refer to it most of the time, handwriting. The simple act of connected writing is apparently a dying art, no longer even part of the curriculum in most jurisdictions.

And no, the term cursive has nothing to do with cursing (even though my frequently flying-away cursor often sets me off on a string of curse words). Origin of the word relates to 'running' -- the letters all running together in a connected line.

It's become a skill parents have to teach kids on their own -- a situation some parents might say also applies to arithmetic, spelling and grammar. Naturally, the Internet offers everything from animated teachers and practice sheets to patterned images you can follow to learn cursive handwriting, but as with anything, it takes time to learn.

Sadly, if you look at my page of notes in the photo, you'll see that somewhere along the way I seem to have lost the art of connecting my letters -- that my notes have devolved into the more common print scrawl we mostly seem to encounter these days.

About the only people I know who have retained their lovely handwriting are friends who are hovering near eighty. Both of them were elementary school teachers, who no doubt offered examples of evenly spaced loops according to the MacLean Method (or, for those in the U.S., Palmer Method) for their students to copy.  

Yet my pal and I aren't the only ones who wonder about this disappearing skill. Still, in the great end, at the rate we're going, will it matter? After all, how long can it be until all of our 'word' processing/writing and reading are done via voice-activated commands?