The Afterglow of Being Freshly Pressed

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Cursive Handwriting, Cursive Handwriting Debate, Cursive Handwriting in School Curriculum, Freshly Pressed, writers, writing

I lounged in bed on Sunday morning and basked in the afterglow of tingling toes caused by euphoria and the rapture of the night. The sheets were rumpled and damp, the scent of roses lingered in the air, and an upturned champagne bottle bobbed in the ice bucket. Love was in the air.

I turned to my husband and said, “Do you want to do it again, my sweet?”

He groaned, rolled over, and said, “No.”

As I inched my way across the bed I said, “Why forever not, my darling?”

“Because, I am sick to death of checking your blog stats since you were Freshly Pressed, damn it!”

I ignored him and continued to inch across the bed to reach for my laptop. My husband turned on the football game.

C’mon people. What were you thinking? Get your minds out of the gutter. This is a PG blog I have going here.

Thank you to Michelle at WordPress for having a moment of insanity and deciding to Freshly Press this humble blog. Merci to the thousands of folks who stopped by this place for a gander.  Gracias to the all who “liked,” “followed,” and left thought-provoking comments. I will respond to you all as soon as I can. And my deepest gratitude to my blogging friends who keep me motivated.

Last, but not least . . . thanks honey, for indulging me when I asked, “Can we look at my stats just one more time?”

Back to our regular programming here shortly.  I promise. I hope. However, I am currently dealing with more issues with my aging folks.

Here I am looking stunned when my Freshly Pressed post went live. Deer in the headlights?

Related articles

• The Debate Over Cursive Handwriting (robincoyle.wordpress.com)

The Debate Over Cursive Handwriting

Tags

Cursive Handwriting, Cursive Handwriting Debate, Cursive Handwriting in School Curriculum, Freshly Pressed, writers, writing

Gosh, it has been pretty quiet around my pad lately. Let’s see what Robin’s been up to:

I made a meatloaf for Monday’s dinner. Used leftover meatloaf for a doorstop on Tuesday. 

Sorted, washed, and folded 6 loads of laundry. I’m still missing 5 socks. They don’t miss me.

Took a toothbrush to the mold in my shower grout. It wasn’t pretty.

Was Freshly Pressed on Friday.

Walked the dog 3.14159265 times around the block (His favorite number is Pi).

Threw out the last of the Thanksgiving turkey. Thank GAWD that is over.

Whoa, wait, hang on . . . Did I say I was Freshly Pressed!? Yes indeed-y-doo!

Moi? Freshly Pressed? Here’s the proof. I tattooed this screenshot on my bicep.

Imagine my surprise and delight when I received an email from the darling Michelle at WordPress telling me my post “Is Cursive Handwriting Dead?” was to be Freshly Pressed. I offered to adopt Michelle, but she politely declined and then called the cops. Smart move Michelle, but thank you for Freshly Pressing me.

Since being Freshly Pressed yesterday, my in-box is flooded with likes, comments, and follows. It is the coolest thing EVER. Overwhelming, but super fun.

The conversation and emotional response over cursive handwriting’s elimination from 48 state’s school curricula has been lively. Almost visceral. While not scientific, my gut says the majority of the commenters believe cursive handwriting should not kick the bucket.

There is richness to words committed to paper by hand, not keystroke. Cursive forces you to think, pause, and breathe before you write, unlike when you hammer out an email. Somehow a love letter typed on a computer loses some of its sex appeal. Imagine if Romeo sent Juliette a text saying, “Yo, Juliette. Come out on the balcony.”

Sure, sure, sure . . . there were a few folks who commented on the post and said, “Wake up and smell the printer ink, Robin. Cursive is so last decade.” However, a fair number of teenagers and college students agreed here that cursive should be saved. The comments from the electronic-agers give me hope.

Here are a few of the clever comments for your reading pleasure.

Sunsetmeandyou said, “Last year, I wrote a letter to my grandma, scanned it and then emailed it to my dad so he could print it and give it to her the very same day!  Call it full use of technology or the eagerness to send her the letter asap!”

Jiltaroo said her son may never “experience the joy of waiting weeks for a letter to come and hungrily read those words from a country on the other side of the world. Emails have all but extinguished the need for this romantic angst.”

Dennis Langley said, “Hmmm. That sounds like why teach math because we have calculators. Why teach how to play music when we have iPods.”

TimKeen40 said, “But don’t despair. Soon, those who can master it will be able to lend their services to people who have all these letters written by their great-grandfathers that are essentially written in a foreign language. A little mini-industry will emerge at least for a time.”

Now if you will excuse me, I need to respond to six-kagillion comments.

• Is Cursive Handwriting Dead? (robincoyle.wordpress.com)

Is Cursive Handwriting Dead?

Tags

Cursive Handwriting, writers, writing

An article in today’s paper gave me pause. Cursive handwriting has one foot in the grave.

Remember this paper? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A debate wages as 45 states adopt school curriculum guidelines for 2014 that exclude cursive handwriting, but do require keyboard proficiency by the time students exit elementary school.

You can read the full article here, but some highlights are:

“ . . . it has teachers and students divided over the value of learning flowing script and looping signatures in the age of touchpads and mobile devices. Some see it as a waste of time, an anachronism in a digitized society where even signatures are electronic, but others see it as necessary so kids can hone fine motor skills, reinforce literacy, and develop their own unique stamp of identity.”

“When a kid can text 60 words a minute, that means we’re headed in a different direction. Cursive is becoming less important.”

“School assignments are required to be typed, and any personal note, such as thank yous and birthday cards are emails.”

“It’s not necessary to write in cursive. Whatever you write in, you say the same thing.”

“For kids, the only practical purpose for learning cursive may be to sign their name.”

Hmmm . . . I struggle with this on several levels.

Call me old-school, a fuddy-duddy, or stick-in-the-mud, but I think kids should learn the fine art of cursive handwriting. Why? Just because.

The days of handwritten letters are gone. I get that. However, I miss when letters were lovingly written on beautiful stationery and then bundled together with a satin ribbon and saved in a satin box. I have dozens of letters my mom, uncle, and grandmother exchanged before the electronic age. They are treasures. Some of these letters are 70 years old. I can hold them in my hand, see their personality in their handwriting, and read them when I am feeling nostalgic.

Now, we email, text, Tweet, and FaceBook Grandma rather than sending her a note on linen stationery and signed with a flourish. Maybe electronic notes will be saved in a file on Grandma’s computer, but do you think that years from now the next generation will consider a typed message as part of their legacy? Besides, technology will have advanced to such a degree that my grandkids won’t be able to open old word.docx files.

My husband and I insisted that our kids wrote their thank you notes in cursive. They cursed the cursive, but acquiesced after we tied them to the chair until the notes were properly written. Don’t worry, Child Protective Services never knocked on our door.

I recently showed the girls some of the thank you notes they wrote my folks. It was fun for them to read that Grandma gave them pink Barbie pajamas for Christmas in 1992. But it meant more to them that Grandma cared enough about their notes to save them. Can’t save a text message in a satin box.

If Shakespeare wrote his sonnets in block letters or on his iPad, some of the magic would have been lost.

I guess I am lamenting the loss of two things here . . . the art of letter writing and cursive handwriting.

Where do you stand on the demise of cursive handwriting? Is it dead, or should the patient be saved?

I mean it.