Then:
Now:
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After scanning its face again and again,
I began to scale it, picking my holds
With intense caution. About half-way
To the top, I was suddenly brought to
A dead stop, with arms outspread
Clinging close to the face of the rock
Unable to move hand or foot
Either up or down. My doom
Appeared fixed. I MUST fall.
There would be a moment of
Bewilderment, and then,
A lifeless rumble down the cliff
To the glacier below.
My mind seemed to fill with a
Stifling smoke. This terrible eclipse
Lasted only a moment, when life blazed
Forth again with preternatural clearness.
I seemed suddenly to become possessed
Of a new sense. My trembling muscles
Became firm again, every rift and flaw in
The rock was seen as through a microscope,
My limbs moved with a positiveness and precision
With which I seemed to have
Nothing at all to do.
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of
universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I
reach my hands and play with pebbles of
destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs
reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive
in the universe.
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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.