Writing sans the keyboard

...is becoming more rare. Between texting and the laptop, the keyboard seems ever at hand. This trend has improved my typing skills, a plus, but I like the flow of ink from the nib of a pen or of messy, every thickening graphite from a yellow number 2 pencil.  My written words are so connected to my being.  Handwriting is an individual expression as much as the words it conveys. One's handwriting shows one's mood, focus, creativity.

For example, if they are to be of any use to you, class notes have to be taken in speedy and neat writing.

When I put into a spiral backed notebook what I glean from the professor's  spoken words my handwriting becomes small and regular. It flows precisely along the pale blue line of the page, all legible, complete with dots and crosses.

But, when I am writing in a creative fervor the words sprawl big and bigger across the page with no respect for lines or margins. Letters choose their own shapes. Dots and T crossings all but disappear.

Creative writing on a keyboard does not show my passion, just lots of typos to be dealt with when I am through.

I have heard that Eskimos say that everyone is an artist, everyone can sing, everyone can dance, each in his/her unique way. Handwriting is certainly like that. It is as revealing as facial expressions.

Write a note on the next greeting card you send.  Or even write a letter to someone close to you.  It may be saved for posterity.  Letters have become so rare that chances are that your state historical society collects them. Letters are eye witness  history. Electronic signals soon disappear.

"I am not a crook"

......to quote one of our ex-presidents.  Only, it turned out that Richard Nixon was! 

I start with this quotation because something on my brand new blog has erroneously triggered a SPAM alert.  And on only my second entry, the one about seasons that morphs into praise of spring gardening.  In the first place, I am not a crook. In the second place, I am too ignorant to know how to produce spam. 

With the exception of the post grad class I took in the summer of 1980 on programming for teachers (three languages, and the floppies really were floppy in those days) I am an autodidact in regard to computers.  My method is to click on something and see what happens.  

That is the same method used in climbing an unfamiliar tree.  Try a likely branch, but don't put all your weight on it until you can tell it will hold you.  Bit by bit you learn the paths up and down that tree.

I have owned both pcs and macs.  I like macs better because people don't bother to write bad stuff; viruses, trojan horses et al, that will work on them.  It's because there are just not enough macs out there to make it worth while.

Now don't go out and buy macs!  That will ruin the whole deal for us few mac users because then the baddies will think it might be worth their time to make up junk  for macs. 

I like macs too, because they are simpler.  Simpler both in their interface with me, the none-too-bright user, and in the internal structure.

To get back to the climbing tree again, someone explained to me the difference between a mac and a pc this way:

Imagine a huge oak tree in the middle of a meadow.  One with the symmetry that a lone tree achieves.

On this tree there is a squirrel.  He is sitting on a twig way out on the west side of the tree.  He wants to get to a branch way on the east side of the tree to eat a really fine acorn there.

Here is what he has to to to get to the other side of the tree if that tree is a pc.

He must scurry from the twig to the branch to the limb to the trunk, down the trunk to the ground then up the other side of the trunk, out on the big limb to the smaller branch and out that to the twig with the delicious acorn hanging on it.

Here is what he must do if the tree is a mac.

He must jump from his twig to the twig with the excellent acorn.

So now you understand that anyone who thinks computers are like oak trees is way too un-savvy to be able to figure out how to do spam. 

And in further support of my character, I was a Girl Scout!