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Taking the Long Way

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Happy Independence Day!

To celebrate freedom by staying home from work on a Monday must feel especially sweet, unless you happen to be an employee of the State of Minnesota. In that case, the open ended-ness of your long weekend would tend to put a damper on those feelings of jubilation. Trust me on that.

Personally, I’m reporting for work today without complaint, because I have to, and because it’s delightful to have a job.

And so we will observe the day with picnics, parades and fireworks, though some might choose to celebrate with a woodworking project.

Here’s an artifact that is, without a doubt, an object of great significance. Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence on this lap desk of his own design. A compact and tidy thing, it folds out to present a felt covered workspace that sits at a comfortable angle for writing.

And yes, you have to do your scribbling longhand. There’s no keyboard, kiddies.

But it IS portable. Jefferson was a visionary, and somehow he could see that we would want to be able to plop down and put our thoughts to parchment anyplace, anytime. You can store your writing implements in the handy divided slide-out drawer. And it locks, so people can’t steal your ideas when you drift up to the counter for another caramel macchiato grande latte.

The Thomas Jefferson lap desk appears simple enough to be a basement project for the at-home craftsman, and some have tried. I can only guess that the various moving parts, tight fitting drawer and old-world corner joints defeated a few amateurs along the way. Just like writing the Declaration itself, the creation of an enduring piece of art is a lot harder than it looks.

One of the greatest things about America is that somebody else is ready to sell you that thing you can’t make for yourself – and there’s a price range so you have a chance to find one that suits your budget.

You can pay just over $1,900 (with shipping) for a Jefferson Lap Desk, though you’d think at that lofty price point it might be more effective to deliver the whole package for $1,776. Others are available at $795 and $600, fountain pens not included.

Once the desk arrives, open it up and conceive a nation (in liberty). Feel free to start over as often as you like. As long as you’re creating some founding documents, try to include a few words of advice for future leaders in regard to the whole notion of a debt ceiling.

If you’re like me, you’ll have to figure in the ancillary costs of dribbling ink on your good shirt.

When do you take the time to write it out longhand?

55 thoughts on “Taking the Long Way”

  1. A happy 4th to all:

    I don’t always have my computer with me and I don’t have any other devices that I can carry around to do my writing with a key board. Thus, lots of notes and reminders to myself are in long hand. Sometime I am more comfortable writing the first deaft of any writing I do, such as a guest blog, in long hand. I was never a good typist. I can do a fairly good job of operating a key board and would be able to do all my writing on key boards, but it is a little easier for me to just use long hand when making a first draft of something. I am kind of an “old school” person anyway. I don’t do any texting on my cell phone.

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    1. I could have written that, Jim. But I will add three specifics besides guest blogs. Poems, sermons, and first very rough drafts of chapters my novel.
      I cannot copyread/edit on screen. The publishing company I once co-founded produced over 75,000 pages of content for our manuals. I, and others, edited each of these pages at least 3 times each, many pages more than that, each read requiring a new printed version.
      Two of the people (married) we hired now run their own companies producing various sorts of computer-based products and many sorts of printed items. They are 100%
      paperless. They are in their early 40’s. I think its an age thing.

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      1. Not completely – I mostly edit on paper, it’s my preferred method. Have been proofing a friend’s masters thesis, and have been making notes electronically in the .pdf files she sends…I prefer paper, but it’s more efficient to email back my notes. Not sure if a few years pushing me into my mid-40s makes it an age thing or not. 😉

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  2. good morning, All – thanks, Dale.
    i like to make lists for the week, day by day, so i can cross out things when i get them done. just wouldn’t be as much fun if it were a cyber list.
    i also like to plan menus (when we’re having guests, like today) on paper and i like to do the grocery list on paper as well. today: Gulf Red Snapper (courtesy of my brother – frozen fresh), brown and wild rice, fresh mixed green salad (from our veggie CSA), watermelon, orange and and (our)feta salad with baker-friend’s baguette and focaccia, and strawberry/rhubarb sorbet (also local). happy 4th
    next on list (after checking TB): milking
    ‘bye!

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    2. That meal sound wonderful, Barb. We are enjoying a fresh peach pie that my daughter made. Our menu today will include home made pizza with some fresh basil from the garden on it.

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    4. i just tasted the strawberry/rhubarb sorbet and i think i’m keeping it all to myself. think i put a little too much simple syrup in it (just cooked 1:1 sugar:water) because the sorbet is still not frozen solid and it’s been in the freezer since six last night. and i didn’t even put any alcohol in it (wanted to, but guests do not do EtOH)
      happy day
      i better get going!

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  3. Like Jim, I’m not a big texter. Mostly just “Im here” to the teenager whenever I’m picking her up somewhere.

    At work, I often take notes during calls — I’ve found that it’s easier to just volunteer to do it and then you have control over whether or not the notes ever find their way into print. I’m most likely to key in notes during a conference call if I know I’ll be sending the notes out. On calls where it’s just one-on-one and the notes are just for my personal use, I tend to make notes by longhand. I’m not sure why my style evolved this way, but it works for me.

    At home, I’m a post-it note, legal pad kind of person. If I made a to-do list for a weekend or an upcoming deadline, I usually do this by hand (although occasionally I use the computer and decorate the list w/ clipart). But truly, I can’t even imagine life without post-it notes. I have little stacks of them everywhere (bedroom, studio, kitchen, dining room) and everything from list of errands to phone numbers to driving directions goes onto them. I can’t stay away from them when I see them on sale and I’ve always thought that Art Fry (inventor) should be canonized.

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    1. It just fascinates me how different people are. “I can’t even imagine life without post-it notes,” writes VS. Now me . . . I can’t imagine a life in which Post-It notes are a central organizing factor. It I never touched another Post-It note again it would not subtract enormously from my quality of living, or so it seems. But who knows? All this time I’ve been chasing other goals maybe True Happiness was always available in the form of sticky notes, if I’d only been smart enough to know what I REALLY want in life.

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      1. That’s what makes the world fun. If we were all post-it note fanatics, can you imagine how boring the conservations would be? “Did you see the new Doonsebury post-its?” “No, but I really only like the yellow ones.”

        By the way Steve — pretty picture on bing. com for you today!

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  4. Oh, I completely forgot. HAPPY FOURTH ALL! Two parades today, one in which I march. Finger and toes nails are red, white and blue for fun. Haven’t decided which fireworks to go to yet – the big Red,White,Boom downtown or the ones close by in Veterans Park. Everybody have a GREAT day!

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    1. Dale, I have a thing for old wooden boxes of all sorts. Now only have two left, one two large to keep. It’s very cool, but have to let it go. I will list it on Craig’s List this week.
      The wood peach crates were always mine to use to make things as a child. I would go on about this, but the topic is writing in long hand. I know. But old wood boxes!!
      To exorcise my box lust I will now go bike ride.

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      2. Clyde, Don’t let the Minnesota Family Council know about your box lust. They might propose a constitutional amendment banning it.

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      4. One travel writing I like has a lust for bags, not suitcases or grocery bags, but things like shoulder bags and computer bags. He says he has a room full of them and sometimes secretly goes in, puts them on the floor, and rolls on them.
        I understand that.

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      5. Clyde, I have a spice rack that I made out of a wooden crate during our impovrished student days that we are still using.

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  6. In grade school I used to get top grades in all subjects (even math, which means I successfully fooled quite a few teachers) except penmanship. There I got the lowest grades possible, plus “tut-tut” notes on my report cards that implied I couldn’t produce such wretched penmanship without serious attitude problems.

    It has always seemed like that movie where a nice man has the hand of a murderer grafted onto his wrist, and after that he watches in horror as the hand does what it merry well pleases, with no control from him–breaking stuff and strangling women and other embarrassing things. I have a rough idea of the letters as I mean to write them, but while I watch in astonishment my hand keeps adding a third or fourth hump to “m” or switches back and forth willy-nilly between three ways of making the letter “e.” And there’s not a durn thing I can do about it.

    Clerks in stores used to look at my checks and say, “Sheesh! Is that a 5 or a G or a 9?” And I always would explain, “That is a 5. Unfortunately, I had mumps the week they taught us how to write 5.” Not a one of them ever cracked a smile at that. Nodding, they would improve my “5” so it would have a chance of being read right. God, I was so happy when we all quit writing and started swiping cards.

    The more I use computers and other keyboards, the deeper into the tank my penmanship goes. Writing longhand has been pretty much driven into retreat from all areas of my life except grocery lists, but my grocery lists are so illegible I often end up with several mystery items that I can’t figure out even with the magnifying glass I keep by my side just to try to read stuff I’ve written. I was smart enough to buy a home with no 5 in the address, and then here they came with that damn zip code, and I’ve got three 5s in that!

    Here’s wishing a wonderful Fourth to all my dear friends on the Trail. I have a light day, although I need to nip into Lunds to pick up some brough and gooorm. I’m thinking they might be in the produce section.

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    1. Penmanship is innate, as several neurological studies have shown. Hand writing needs to be taught to develop the motor skills at an early age, as tim sees in his kids. You can learn to slow down and take care, but slowing down and taking care inhibits thought. The Palmer Method means their palms get greased on a bunch of trash. It’s still out there, heavily used in private, where they ban box lust.
      Steve, a small percentage of people, all boys in my experience, just cannot write clearly. It’s not a failure; it should be seen as a sort of learning disability. I would help them get help such as having someone write their finished essays for them, and got them on computers as soon as they appeared. For essay tests I would have them come in and read their writing to me. I did everything I could to teach them to see this as a minor handicap to overcome. As a left-hander whose early teachers tried to make me right-handed (nothing I saw ever made my mother as angry as that), I had a bit of feeling for those boys.

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    2. Oh, penmanship! Sigh! I am my mother the elementary teacher with the perfect handwriting’s despair. She blames my scrawling on my third grade teacher who could have cared less about handwriting and who believed that other things were far more important to focus on in the classroom. I prefer to hand write most documents and only use computer for the final draft. At work i have to dictate my documents. I wonder what Jefferson would have made of a dictaphone? My husband can compose quite well on the computer but cannot dictate to save his soul.

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  7. how big is the box too large to keep? i want to say i will take it sight unseen for whatever the posted price would have been. your taste in wordworking makes the question as to if it is worth keeping moot.
    in longhand i make the same amount of errors they are just between me and my penmanship grade though. i tend to fly even faster with a pen than a keybooard and sort it out later. i had a friend tell me once if i just slowed down i would save time when it came to rereading it but its is not possible to alter the path of the speeding bullet once the thought has left my brain headed for my fingerttips. up up and away, scripto do what i tell you…i had a tough time in catholic school with the fountain pens and being left handed. you scrape your hand sideways over the newly penned work and smudge it in a non holy fashion that gets your butt summoned one more time to the desk of sister mary chew your ass. its been 50 years and i still cringe when i see ink on the side of my hand. i love writing longhand and the flow and the form the letters take. i uesd to be retty fancy in my writing as a kid trying to come up with all sorts of ornate versions of the capital letters, E’s and H’s were my favorites. today al my caps are like printed ones but they work in well with the rest of my font. my r and s never seems to know which version i will use and i get a kick out of the fact that i sometimes use more than one version in the same word. my nothing books full of thoughts and reflections and dreams are prized possesions that my kids may or may not enjoy when i am gone but i sure enjoy the heck out of em while i am here. clyde, i have a cello playing canadian colleague who is writing stuff for education. any interest in a cyber meeting to see if there is anything you would like to get involved in?

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  8. Rise and Write it Out Baboons!

    Happy Fourth you Patriotic Baboons.

    I was never a great long-hand writer. Even when that was the only option I was not a great scrivener. From the moment of learning to type and having access to a typewriter, I would type out my school papers, then REALLY CUT AND PASTE, as opposed to the virtual version we do now. That made for an interesting process that my friends thought was pretty funny.

    Ditto to the VS Post-It note need. I now write out lists and orders to myself: DO THIS, DO THAT.
    (However, my fingers and toes are NOT Red, White and Blue today.)

    Otherwise I avoid writing it out.

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  9. my kids… talk about a shame. they don’t ever realize that they have the penmanship of a 2nd grader with a siezure. the block letters are not even good block letters. they have to write on occasion and i ask aren’t you embarrased to let someone see that is coming out of your brain? they don’t get it. no practice no use for writin paters no placein teir lives and why would they honor it it looks like crap. too bad.
    steve, larry harris was a bright kid that exceled in all things but throwing a baseball and writing. he went on to become a lawyer and i am sure his briefs are the headshaking nightmares today they were in 2nd grade. writing is an art and the ability to express yourself out of the end of a pen is one of the true gifts of life. it feels like making love to the paper. yeah i can do the keyboard but it fells very profilactic. i think i remember you saying someone taught you how to throw a ball, take a caligraphy class and open a new window.

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  10. My report card grades mirrored Steve’s throughout elementary school. When I switched to private school in 7th grade I switched to modified printing. It’s a lovely script and plenty speedy.

    When I worked in the hospital I was often teased for having the only legible notes on the patient’s chart. My colleagues believed it made me more vulnerable in a lawsuit because I would not be anonymous (so far so good).

    My wonderful physician sends handwritten thank you notes if I bring treats to clinic. His grace and lovely stationery have re-energized my commitment to handwritten thank you notes not only for gifts but for grace shown in everyday interactions

    Celebrate appropriately baboons-don’t be tooo independent!

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  11. I do almost all my writing by hand, at least for the first draft. Of course, lists of all types are done by hand, but many other things, too. I think better when I am using a pen on paper (and the thinking is even better when I use a good pen). Often I have found that the act of hand-writing clarifies my thoughts in a way that typing on a keyboard doesn’t do. And, if I’m writing a journal-type thing, it can also clarify my feelings and help me cut through all the surface junk and find my soul. Sounds kinda sappy when I put it down here, but it’s true. I also cannot edit/proofread on screen (at least not until after I send my email, then I can see all sorts of errors).

    I’m also intrigued by wooden boxes, old and otherwise. I really want to see a picture of the box that’s too large to keep, but it would be best if I don’t see it as it may cause a bad case of box-lust.

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    1. My husband kept all the articles for his dissertation in an old wooden box that originally contained something called Dobbins Electric soap. I have no idea how old this box is.

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    2. For those asking:
      The value and meaning in the wooden box is more the history and rugged used, but clean appearance, than craftsmanship. It was used in the Lake County traveling library 80 to 100 years ago. It is 11 inches high, 23 inches wide, and 18 inches from from front to back. It has Public Library Two Harbors painted on the front and Traveling Library son the top . I have no idea of its value, which is why I have not put it up for sale on Craig’s List yet.

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      1. It sounds super cool. Is it really too big for you to keep? It seems it would be neat to use it to store some special treasures.

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  12. I just talked to a friend who pleads with me to please go out to the garden of a mutual friend (who is on vacation) and pick their strawberries and keep them for my own! Whoopee! Our crop is a little sparse this year, so I am pretty grateful for this unexpected windfall.

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  13. I love writing on fine paper with a fine pen, particularly a fountain pen. That being said, I wish I could backspace, delete, cut and paste, etc. on fine paper with a fine pen. I’m more likely to do a first draft on the computer and copy it in longhand than the other way around. I like to have the power to rethink, rearrange, reword and otherwise revise as I write without endless crossing out and arrows..

    Our daughter homeschools our grandchildren and we’re thinking that teaching them to read cursive is more important than teaching them to write it. The boys have a program to learn correct keyboarding techniques and they learned to print, so are able to make lists and communicate in the absence of a keyboard. She did some longhand with the nearly 13 year old, but he hated it and we can’t come up with a really good reason to force it on him. The 8 year old has no interest in learning it either. I’m going to write them letters on fine paper with a fine pen in my quite legible longhand so they’ll know how to decipher it when they see it, but they will get very little more than that unless someone comes up with a compelling reason they need to be able to do more than sign their name. We’ll see what baby girl is like when her turn comes. She may want to have lovely handwriting to record her hopes and dreams in the diary she’ll keep under her mattress.

    Happy Independence Day to all. It’s my sister’s birthday today. She thought the fireworks displays were just for her until she was pretty darn old.

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    1. There is a debate in elementary schools about teaching cursive, if it is worth the time and effort. I easily could argue it both ways. My 8-year-old grand daughter is learning it by herself, as many kids always have done. We used to be swatted on the hand for using it before we were taught it, as I was swatted at the beginning of grades 1 and then 2 at for writing left-handed.

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  14. I still write sympathy cards, an occasional letter to my mom, and some thank you notes, by hand, and epistles to anyone who doesn’t do computers – aunts, etc. I have horrible penmanship, so it’s either a very slow process or highly illegible.

    Will have to read later, I’m at a neighbor’s on her laptop, as our internet connection is down and no one will be out till Wednesday. Have a good 4th and 5th, Baboons…

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  15. Morning–
    Happy Fourth!

    I buy the packs of legal pads. Yellow. All my theater notes are done on yellow legal pads, rough drafts of scenic designs (those that haven’t started on a bar napkin of course), ideas from the director, notes on shopping, buying, whatever.
    We’re moderate users of Post-it notes.
    We have some magnetic rails on the side of the fridge for important papers but we need better magnets. For some reason whenever I walk around there I bump into it and am constantly knocking things off that wall. It’s annoying.
    I keep spiral notebooks as journals. I don’t write as much as I should… it used to be all my teenage angst coming out in them — and then when I met the girl who would become my wife I didn’t have to write for several years — and now it’s just a sort of weekly / monthly journal again.
    Like tim said, I envision my kids possibly reading them.

    Last year during teacher conferences the English teacher is talking about students writing on the computers. I asked if they ever did longhand. She sighed; she really loves writing longhand and felt it is very useful but there’s just never enough time to do much with it. But I was glad to see she felt the same was as myself about it.

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  16. Happy 4th of July everyone.

    I have always loved cursive writing and practiced writing individual letters, page after page of them, when I was in grade school. Consequently I have fairly decent penmanship. My current primary use of writing in longhand is lists of various kinds – to-do, shopping, and reminders to myself. The most important though is thank you notes, sympathy cards and the occasional letter to my 88 year old friend, Sr. Beth. My journal, sporadic as it is, is also written in longhand. Here I find it interesting that I can tell what kind of mood I was in when writing each entry, not just by the content, but by the quality of the handwriting itself. When I’m upset, angry or agitated, my handwriting reflects it. When I’m calm, my writing tends to be much more fluid, easier to read and prettier to look at. When I was in college I saved all of the papers I had to write. One of them has this observation by the teacher: “The handwriting is obviously the best part of this paper,” not exactly what I was striving for, but it’s something, I guess!

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  17. I have several friends that I’ve known for more than twenty years whose handwriting I know well – i can look at the handwriting and I get a visual image of the person from it. I’m kind of saddened that this doesn’t happen with people I’ve become acquainted with more recently. I don’t see their handwriting enough to make that subconscious connection.

    Perhaps there is a profit opportunity for some smart programmer there – a widget where anyone can write something on paper, scan it into the computer, have it analyzed and converted into a personal handwriting font, which would then live in the cloud and appear for your friends when you type something in to Facebook or WordPress.

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    1. They actually had that, Linda. I don’t know if the business still exists. Shortly after my dad died I learned there was a service that would scan his writing (in this case, his printing since he only used block letters) and then create a font based on it. I couldn’t afford it at the time.

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  18. OT I hope you folks caught the “Wait, Wait!” show yesterday. The visiting expert was country singer Vince Gill, who claimed to have written the country song “It’s hard to kiss the lips at night that chewed your ass out all day long.”

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  19. I used to have very nice penmanship. I still can write nicely, if I concentrate on the effort. I write lists and phone messages daily. I also still write all greeting cards and letters longhand. My hand cramps in a way that I dislike now though.

    I’ve become very skilled at typing, proof-reading and editing in the last several years. I love to type out stories, go back and edit them, change wording and come up with something that is evocative and well-written. I’ve come to really enjoy writing, and the ability to type and edit quickly is part of that enjoyment. This has been a great place for that creative muse to grow.

    Have a great 4th, ‘booners!

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  20. Our friends have, I guess, a 100 foot row of strawberries and will be gone all week. We are the only ones who are picking them. Should I feel guilty?

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    1. No, you should not feel guilty.

      But you should definitely enjoy, delight in, savor, luxuriate in, and smack your lips with joy as you eat them!

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  21. Thank you notes, grocery lists and notes from meetings and lectures get written in longhand. Meeting and lecture notes seem to “take” better in my memory if I write the words longhand – I’m sure it’s a muscle-memory thing. I wrote a journal when Daughter was an infant, a little something every night. Often wrote while she was nursing or nodding off to sleep…which means my questionable penmanship is downright ilegible (Steve, I feel your pain) in more than a few places. And some of them were likely things I really wanted to remember, darn it.

    Creative writing, though – I follow tim’s lead – get it down and get it down fast. Typing goes better than longhand, and I’m more likely to recognize the letters later. If I spend too much time writing neatly, I then spend too much time thinking about the first draft and get bogged down. All my undergrad papers were first written longhand, as were most of my grad school papers and large parts of my master’s thesis (including notes, color coded by if they were “theme,” “idea,” or “quote”, on index cards that I could easily re-arrange with thumbtacks on foam core in lieu of an actual outline). But fiction and non-academic essays need to come out quickly lest I think on them too much and ruin them. Thinking can come when I edit…

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