Cursive

My home state of Kansas is discussing the place of cursive handwriting in the education curriculum. That they are also discussing the place of evolution (as well as science in general) in the curriculum should be a clue to the perspective of those leading the discussion. One state board member, Walt Chappell (consider his name is “Walt”), argues that students should learn to write longhand because “We’ve got to be able to communicate with each other in written form. . . . Technology is great, but it doesn’t always work.” Well, yes, but pencil and pen – two other technologies – don’t always work either.

I was in a writing assessment workshop a couple of years ago where we read about 20 papers written in class by college students. Bored by the papers and the workshop, I noticed at one point that all of the 20 papers – all of them – were printed by hand, not cursive. After that, I started paying attention to my own students’ in-class writing, and found very few of them used cursive. It just isn’t a skill that is taught – or needed – anymore.

Not that it has for a long time. I suffered through cursive during my elementary years at Adams Elementary, all the swirls and squiggles and connectives (how do you make a “z”?). But by the 7^th grade (this is 50 years ago) I had turned to hand printing my notes and papers, unless required to employ cursive by some coprolite teacher (which was thankfully not often (except for the blue-haired Miss Gates in 8^th grade English who regularly confused penmanship with good writing)). Over my junior high and high school days, my printing evolved into what I took to be a personal style with a certain amount of panache. It took me several years going through two or three versions to come up with an “a” that I thought was worthy.

But cursive writing is the buggy whip of communication. It came about at a time when almost all written communication, personal and business, was by hand, and it was important that everyone could read everyone else’s handwriting. So a standardized style wad needed. But that was before typewriters were common, let alone computers. If we have to write anything by hand anymore it’s almost always for ourselves, so it doesn’t matter if we’re the only ones who can decipher it. And today printing by hand is generally more easily read by others if need be (rarely) than cursive (which few of us can do legibly anymore).

Handwriting should still be taught in elementary school. But printing, not cursive. And along with it, keyboarding. No, technology doesn’t always work. But when all else fails, we could just talk with each other for a while. Or enjoy the silence.

Celebrating the War Machine

I seem to be one of the few people concerned about the militarization of the United States. This weekend – wrapped around Veterans’ Day – has been a love-fest for our military, not just veterans but more so our current service members. I certainly have nothing against veterans (my father and four of my uncles served in WWII, and two friends of mine died (for no reason) in Vietnam), nor against those now serving (though the idea that they are a “voluntary” force is belied by the fact that many if not most “volunteered” because they couldn’t find work anywhere else and were offered the false promise of “training”). But I don’t at all like the exploitation of the military that I see going on in at least the past decade or so. Patriotism is one thing, military empire is another. We are in at least one war that we’ve been in for more than a decade and are supposedly getting out of another (though not very neatly). We have troops stationed around the world in some 150 countries. The sun does not set on our empire. We’ve been in one or more wars for most of the past 150 years. Our economy is a perpetual war economy, the military-industrial-congressional complex being the engine. We spend more on our military (though relatively squat on the personnel, especially when they become veterans) than just about all other countries in the world combined. The current constant celebration of our troops is little more than propaganda that elevates the “sacrifice” of the “heroes” in order to mask the ongoing spread of the war machine. I appreciate and support our troops – I just don’t join in the jingoistic propaganda that exploits the troops for the benefit of the capitalist war machine (which by the way is fueled by the blood of the men and women who are sucked into it, and then ironically celebrated).

An Historic Election

This year was an historic election. At least for me. In forty years of voting, this year was the first in which every candidate I voted for was elected. During the first thirty or so years of voting, I rarely went for winners. This was mostly due to my being outside – sometimes way outside – the mainstream of the American electorate. One year I voted for Jesse Jackson, and am proud of it. Another year I voted for Ralph Nader, not so much. As I grow older, though, I’m not sure what difference my vote (or anyone’s vote) really makes. Every two or four years we go through the machinations of democracy, passionately expressing our preferences (severely limited by convoluted prerequisites and primaries (why can’t everyone vote for whoever they want? – wouldn’t that be real democracy?)), pushing the buttons or filling in the bubbles, hoping against hope that what our button pushing or bubble filling is going to make any difference in the way the world is going to go. The truth is is that the world is probably less deterministic and more like a pinball machine. We bounce around from bumper to bumper in a free-form free-fall where we think our occasional flipper play has some real influence for how things will turn out, but that silver ball always ends up dropping in the hole at the bottom of the machine. Politics – life – is reacting. Shit happens, and whoever’s “in charge” (as if anyone ever is) responds in whatever way and whatever happens happens. The Greeks tried to teach us this centuries ago. They called it fate.  (Ask Oedipus.) Ironically, they also gave us democracy, a form of government that provides the illusion that one can counter fate.

Car Compications

It was about 30 years ago when I first encountered the hell of modern cars. I wanted a new car (Honda, I think), but when I went looking there were no options as there had been prior to that time. All was mandatory. If you wanted a car you had to have all the accessories – the electric windows, the electric mirrors, the electric locks, etc. I didn’t want all the electric whatevers because the more complication, the more that could go wrong and the more the cost of fixing what I didn’t need or want in the first place. Rolling up and down the windows by hand was fine with me. Today my concerns were realized. A few weeks ago I had accidentally switched on the rear window wiper when I had my bike rack on, and the wiper stuck against the rack, bisecting the rear window. I tried to correct the stuck wiper, but the blade wouldn’t budge. Today I took the car in for routine maintenance and had them look at the blade, maybe at least return it to the horizontal position. The diagnosis was that it would take a new motor, and that that would cost $200 for the part and $100 for the labor -- $300 for something I didn’t want or need in the first place. Of course, I’m not going to repair the needless appendage. I’d be more likely to disable all the unnecessary electronic do-dads in the car. Give me my 1959 Saab.

All Hallows' Eve

Should you want to reduce the number of trick-or-treaters who besiege your house on Halloween, do what we do: Instead of passing out gobs of candy to the grubby little beggars, offer handfuls of raisins and salted-in-the-shell peanuts. The first few years of Halloween in our current house, we would have dozens of assorted ghouls and goblins, princesses and cowboys, skipping merrily in anticipation down our walk. But when we would hold out a large bowl full of raisins and peanuts and encourage them to take as much as they liked, their expressions would turn confused, grim, unsure of what “trick” this was we were pulling on them. A few would politely say “Thank you” and take a peanut or two, many would just say “Thank you” and walk away to what they hoped would be a more rewarding cache next door. It didn’t take long before the numbers of bantam beggars began to dwindle. Experience and word-of-mouth taught them to avoid our house, and now we entertain maybe a handful of the scroungers each year, most new to the neighborhood or toddlers new to the revelry. But they learn fast when confronted with a bowl of raisins and peanuts instead of Skittles and Candy Corn, and they won’t be back next year, thank you.

The Fuel of War

Listening to the presidential debate last night on foreign policy, with the bellicose rhetoric and promises of a strong military (and military spending), I couldn’t help but think of our 34^th president, who also happened to be the only military general who became president since the 18^th president, Ulysses S. Grant, and happened to command the European theater in World War II, including the Normandy Invasion, Dwight D. Eisenhower:

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity. – January 10, 1946

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. – April 16, 1953

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. – January 17, 1961

Since Ike’s words 50 years ago, it’s become the “military-industrial-congressional complex,” and it’s wholly controlled by the moneyed interests across the world. Capitalism needs industry and growth, the major growth industry is the war machine, and the war machine needs war. No wonder we’ve been at war for virtually all of the past 75 years, that we have troops, aircraft, and ships in some 150 countries, that we are the “world police” or “peace keepers” or whatever euphemism you like for war mongers or empire. We have an economy to fuel, and war – endless war – is that fuel.