Except when you have to go to the dentist. So another day went phstt, like that whooshing noise your email makes as it rushes away from your computer. iPad, whatever.But I'm still here, and still trying to deal with that list of things that, unlike me, will disappear in my lifetime - well, then, of course, so will I. Not to worry. We're up to Number NIne: joined handwriting. That's what it's called in the list I was sent. It used to be called "cursive" handwriting but I suppose if you cant'/don't do it you don't know that. Now think back, think way way back to your own childhood and try to remember when/how you first learned to write, that is, the physical act of writing, that is, joining your printed letters to make them flow. Does anyone remember filling a page with Os? Or up-down, evenly spaced Ls (lower case). I think it happened about Grade Three. Apparently, it doesn't happen any more. Did you know that? I just found out a few months before my end-of-things-in-our lifetime-list appeared. Cursive writing is no longer taught in schools. I guess the reasoning is that no one does it any more, writes, that is. I'm not talking about writing-writing because everyone is a writer these days, or thinks they are. (Note the generic plural, which I normally hate.) Marshall McLuhan predicted this: that one day everyone is going to be an "artist"/writer, whatever, and then the problem will be who will read him/her/them? That's another discussion. I'm still trying to deal with the physical act of writing. I was at the birthday party of an 88-year-old friend and he showed me a note on his fridge door written to him by his 12-year-old granddaughter. He beamed with pride as he pointed it out and took it off to show me: it was WRITTEN. This little girl had learned that there was another way to put words on paper and she had practised all summer to join together her print letters to make them flow. Well, it wasn't flow, exactly, but the letters were joined - and that's where the term "joined" handwriting comes from. One can't call it a step forward, at least, I can't. Oh, look, they still call different styles of letters fonts, even though lead fonts have long disappeared, and the old wooden font-boxes have been hung upright on walls to hold tschotschkes (please, somebody, tell me how to spell this word, it's not in my online dictionary). They still call a car's strength "horsepower" and light is measured in terms of candle-power. Everything evolves and we refer to the past technology to identify a current one. So - "joined" handwriting. Well, why not, I guess. I've already bemoaned that fact that no one writes letters any more. I'd be grateful for a printed one.
where was I?
"THE world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!" I must admit I had to look up Wordsworth to finish those lines but I often say, as I'm sure you do, too, "the world is too much with us". Boy, did I lay waste my powers the past few days! It wasn't a weekend of debauchery, just too many hours awake and too many hours doing other things than I usually do, all useful, quite entertaining, fairly productive, even necessary, but too many hours and not even sleeping, which I tried to do yesterday to get caught up. Caught up with what? With you, with me, with the world which had slipped out of my grasp even while it was too much with me. It started Friday when I took my electronic family - Big Mac, LIttle Mac and Minnie - for a major check-up, by appointment, but it was really for me. I was the one who needed the check-up, the clean-out, the examination, inspection, evaluation, analysis, survey, probe, test and appraisal and it took some time. I am so grateful to the "physician" who served us, not only for her awesome expertise but also for her patience, which was even more awesome. My son keeps telling me I'm a computer illiterate. He's right, of course; he always is. But I do keep trying to learn. It's a huge learning curve for me but I keep trying. You've probably seen those awesome lists of things that have entered our everyday lives that didn't exist even ten years ago. Try eighty. I'm so old that Dick Tracy comics were on my daily reading menu. He had a wrist watch with a two-way radio service accompanied by a picture (Skype to you, I guess), and the drawing had a little arrow with a balloon telling us the services the watch performed. And now that multi-purpose watch exists. I saw it in the New York Times last week. And these days GPS enables us to find and be found in the world. Too much with us is right. Where was I?