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Address for Donations, Complaints, Brickbats, and — oh yes — Donations
Your Say
Where the Sidewalk Ends
There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.
by Shel Silverstein
My Back Pages
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The People Yes
The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
“Where to? what next?”
— Carl Sandberg
The Vault
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Comments on this entry are closed.
Girard,
You know what’s the coolest thing about Christmas? It’s the way Christmas just is. Nowhere — nowhere — in the Bible are we commanded to observe Christ’s birthday. We’re just given the bare facts concerning his birth, the manner of it, its place in man’s history and its implications for man’s destiny. But the facts are so astounding and the implications so profound — nothing less than our deliverance from sin and death — that this birthday has literally brought joy to the world, and inspired some of the greatest and most beautiful music, art and literature in all of human history. Christmas is something that, once you know about it, you just want to celebrate. That’s what’s so cool. Merry Christmas!
TGTW
sigz are kinda pointy
Beautiful. But Barron should learn script for his sig. Kinda’ like his parents.
Barron’s mother will have to teach him cursive; schools don’t do it anymore. I discovered my daughter couldn’t sign her own name in cursive when she was about 13, so I just made up some exercises and taught her how to do it myself. She’d still be printing her name if I hadn’t done so.
I remember taking penmanship classes in 4th and 5th grade and didn’t particularly care for them. My cursive writing quality was OK but I seen no need for it. We already learned how to make all the letters in upper and lower case so what what the cursive stuff for? There was a proper way of doing penmanship but might it be different across the country? Were 4th graders in Phoenix taught the same way as those in Gettysburg?
As the years rolled by the cursive writing we were taught had morfed into other things through convenience, speed, and other reasons. While some adhered to the old methods most modified their writing to suit conditions. As an architecture student I was introduced to “Upper Case Gothic Lettering” and quickly converted to it full time. From about the age of 16 on my handwriting became what most people would call “printing” and in architecture was called “lettering”. It was more comfortable, faster, and much more legible than cursive.
Over the years I have seen many types of cursive writing and much of it was either unreadable or difficult to read, and a few were very artsy. How many “mistakes” had been made over the centuries by people interpreting other people’s cursive writing? By this time I no longer did cursive except in my signature but even that dropped of drastically over the past 20 years. Now, the only time I use a cursive signature is when I can’t get out of it, like when signing that slick surfaced tiny screen on the card swiper in places of commerce. That fake pen goes skating all over the place on that plastic surface and in no way matches the sig on say, my drivers license, which in no way matches the sig on my CCW. None of my sigs match, so what’s the point? Resistant conventions.
I imagine, probably due to laziness, expediency, and technology, signatures and even cursive writing in general, will be mostly eliminated and will only be seen in things like greeting cards and other artsy endeavors. Me, I won’t miss it. As far as I’m concerned it is already gone. Though I don’t like it, when I occasionally due a text on the phone I find myself sometimes sliding toward 1337.
It appears as though people who don’t like cursive don’t much like grammar and spelling either.