Pen Pals

Yesterday, I  got a postcard from Iceland.  There's a story behind it, which I plan to tell next week.

The person who sent it to me wrote a short message on the card.  It didn't strike me at first, but I realized that it was printed.

It's also the first time I've received a non business letter (handwritten) or a postcard in forever.

Does anyone write in cursive anymore?  For that matter, does anyone reading this blog post have a pen pal?  

With cursive writing, my son (who is 30-something) never learned how, and I wonder if my postcard writer is in his age group.  This postcard project (more on that next week) wasn't to start pen pal relationships, but it made me think about pen pals.

Pen pals were so popular "way back when".  I know the practice has gotten a bit of a resurgence during the pandemic. I suspect a lot of these are young people writing to nursing home residents, or something similar.  But it was different "back then".

I remember my pen pal; in fact, I woke up about 5am today thinking of her.  I am a bit superstitious about when I wake up thinking of someone I haven't thought of in many years.  In more than one case, I look online for an obituary and I find it.  But I digress.

Years ago, when I (born and raised in New York City) got the urge to "go back to the land", spouse and I bought about 34 acres of land in Arkansas.  We lasted only a few years, but during that time, I subscribed to a magazine for like minded people.  They had a section for finding a pen pal.

I wrote to three or four people, and got back a couple of answers.  With one, a woman living in the Midwest, I started up a pen pal relationship that lasted perhaps three years.  Yes, actual letters (this was the early 1980's, prior to the Internet), handwritten, snail mailed back and forth to each other.

She was planning to move to Arkansas and was interested in finding out more about it.  Whatever she found out, she and her family (she, husband, three teens) ended up moving to another part of Arkansas.

We never met.  We never really tried to.  Writing was fine, and she had a busy life, given the three teens.

Eventually, we moved from Arkansas back to New York State, and the letters petered out. 

I don't think I've written a non business letter in years.  The last person I regularly wrote letters to was an aunt who passed away in 2003.

I never thought about becoming a pen pal again during lockdown, but if you do an Internet search you will find a lot of stories about unlikely pen pals.

I hope my pen pal is OK.

Did you ever have a pen pal?

Spring Keeps Marching On - And Do You Read Cursive?

Tomorrow is Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, where gardeners from all over the world post what is blooming in their worlds.  But today, history needs your help.

Flowers first.

This crocus in my front yard won't make it.  I only had four come up this year and three flowers were shredded by winds we had all week.

Here in upstate New York, on my off day from the Blogging from A to Z Challenge, I am enjoying every moment of spring - the days spring shows up, that is.

Today is not one of those days.  But yesterday was, and I headed out with my spouse to Cutler Botanical Gardens in Binghamton, New York to check spring out.

These trees, which may be maples, normally have small red flowers.  This year they are so big the trees almost can rank as a flower ornamental.

With the arrival of spring, we say goodbye to these yellow and red twigged dogwoods.  Once they leaf out, the colors will not be distinctive.

But hello daffodils.

Hello other spring bulbs.

Before I leave, hello blooming shrub.

Tomorrow a two-fer for you - my Music Move sMe and AtoZ Challenge "M" post (combined) and my Garden Bloggers Bloom Day post.

And now for the help needed.  Do you read cursive?  If you do, the Library of Congress and the National Archives need your help.  This is so amazing I have to share this article from a Michigan newspaper.

After all there are thousands of historical documents out there and new generations (including my son's) that can not read cursive.

Preserving history is up to my generation and maybe yours.

Can you help?

Throwback Civil War Sunday - Civil War Penmanship

This past week, a Facebook post went viral.  It was a picture of a young schoolgirl's homework with a warning that she shouldn't be writing her name in cursive, and that she has been warned before.

I am not going to comment about the post - I have a feeling there is a lot more to this than the post mentioned, and this is not the place to interject my educational opinions.  However, the debate about teaching cursive will obviously heat up because of this post going viral.

This boils down to:  should cursive writing be taught in school?

Many parents and teachers do believe that cursive writing should be taught in school.  I am one of them.  Not teaching cursive (and how to read cursive) shuts the student off from many historical documents.  Further, the overall art of penmanship should be taught.  If you look at handwritten documents from United States history, I am amazed at the quality of penmanship.

Recently, I was amazed by the handwriting of my mother in law's new doctor.  This doctor was educated in Pakistan.  Her cursive writing is a thing of beauty.  I wish I could post it online, but it has personal information on it.


Seeing that doctor's list reminded me of a Civil War post from 2012 , which I would like to share with you again.

Civil War Sunday - Civil War Penmanship and Dr. Charles Leale

 (Matthew Brady photograph of Abraham Lincoln in the basement of the Tioga County Historical Society, Owego, NY November, 2011, salvaged from the September 2011 flood..  Photographed, not too skillfully, by me.)

This past week, some exciting news was announced - the report of the first doctor to reach Abraham Lincoln after he was shot was found.  The doctor was Dr. Charles Leale,a doctor who had seen Lincoln speak several days before.  For some reason, Lincoln's face fascinated him and he decided to go to Ford Theatre that fateful night of April 14, 1865, to study Lincoln further.  Accounts say he was only about 40 feet away from Mr. Lincoln when he witnessed the assassination.

Of course, it is always exciting for historians to have a source document found.  But, to me, what is more exciting is the availability online of the document itself.

For example, doctors have wondered if Lincoln's life could have been saved by modern medicine. As of 2007, the answer would have been "yes but with a lot of brain damage".  Now, we have an exact account of the medical measures taken.

From my point of view, though, what fascinated me the most was the document itself.  If you look at it, you will see it is beautifully written.  Not only is the writing that of an educated man, but the quality of penmanship is breathtaking to the modern reader.  For example, I would never win an award for my penmanship.

I had to do some research.

Handwriting was a main form of communication during the Civil War.  Those fortunate enough to be schooled spent countless hours practicing penmanship.  There were no typewriters commercially available (to the best of my knowledge) until right after the Civil War, although they had been invented.  Many documents were handwritten.   Part of judging how educated a person was consisted of judging penmanship.

Each side, Federal and Confederate, wrote countless letters, battle orders, and the like. Some kept diaries. Most all of these were handwritten.

What I found is that there were two main styles of writing during the Civil War era, "Copperplate script" and "Spencerian script."  I am not a graphic designer, but it seems from the small amount of research I did that both scripts, in one form or another, are still quite alive and well.

Even the instructions provided for Spencerian script sing to me.

With penmanship an instinctive skill, the writer was free to express his thoughts - and I could imagine the thoughts of Dr. Charles Leale flowing as he wrote about the fateful night of April 14 and morning of April 15, 1865. He did not talk about that night, the night he spent holding the dying President's hand, for years.  He  made his observations public in 1909, the 100th anniversary of Lincoln's birth, in a speech called "Lincoln's Last Hours".

Dr. Charles Leale died in 1932, one of the last living witnesses to the assassination.

Have you learned calligraphy?  Do you mourn the removal of cursive handwriting from elementary school curriculums?

Civil War Sunday - Civil War Penmanship and Dr. Charles Leale

 (Matthew Brady photograph of Abraham Lincoln in the basement of the Tioga County Historical Society, Owego, NY November, 2011, salvaged from the September 2011 flood..  Photographed, not too skillfully, by me.)

This past week, some exciting news was announced - the report of the first doctor to reach Abraham Lincoln after he was shot was found.  The doctor was Dr. Charles Leale,a doctor who had seen Lincoln speak several days before.  For some reason, Lincoln's face fascinated him and he decided to go to Ford Theatre that fateful night of April 14, 1865, to study Lincoln further.  Accounts say he was only about 40 feet away from Mr. Lincoln when he witnessed the assassination.

Of course, it is always exciting for historians to have a source document found.  But, to me, what is more exciting is the availability online of the document itself.

For example, doctors have wondered if Lincoln's life could have been saved by modern medicine. As of 2007, the answer would have been "yes but with a lot of brain damage".  Now, we have an exact account of the medical measures taken.

From my point of view, though, what fascinated me the most was the document itself.  If you look at it, you will see it is beautifully written.  Not only is the writing that of an educated man, but the quality of penmanship is breathtaking to the modern reader.  For example, I would never win an award for my penmanship.

I had to do some research.

Handwriting was a main form of communication during the Civil War.  Those fortunate enough to be schooled spent countless hours practicing penmanship.  There were no typewriters commercially available (to the best of my knowledge) until right after the Civil War, although they had been invented.  Many documents were handwritten.   Part of judging how educated a person was consisted of judging penmanship.

Each side, Federal and Confederate, wrote countless letters, battle orders, and the like. Some kept diaries. Most all of these were handwritten.

What I found is that there were two main styles of writing during the Civil War era, "Copperplate script" and "Spencerian script."  I am not a graphic designer, but it seems from the small amount of research I did that both scripts, in one form or another, are still quite alive and well.

Even the instructions provided for Spencerian script sing to me.

With penmanship an instinctive skill, the writer was free to express his thoughts - and I could imagine the thoughts of Dr. Charles Leale flowing as he wrote about the fateful night of April 14 and morning of April 15, 1865. He did not talk about that night, the night he spent holding the dying President's hand, for years.  He  made his observations public in 1909, the 100th anniversary of Lincoln's birth, in a speech called "Lincoln's Last Hours".

Dr. Charles Leale died in 1932, one of the last living witnesses to the assassination.

Have you learned calligraphy?  Do you mourn the removal of cursive handwriting from elementary school curriculums?