Lifestyle

Move Aside, Doctors: You’re Not the Only Messy Writers in Town

Published

1 year ago

March 24, 2023

Move Aside, Doctors: You’re Not the Only Messy Writers in Town

On Reddit, the web platform the place folks go for recommendation, conspiracy theories and N.S.F.W. the whole lot, there’s one “porn” neighborhood that’s simply concerning the furthest factor from salacious you possibly can think about: “Penmanship Porn.”

There, customers share photographs and movies of lovely penmanship — their very own or others. Further Reddit communities on this constellation provide a secure place for customers to submit their indecipherable scrawls to be decoded by 1000’s of strangers.

Emily Smith, 19, likes to maintain Put up-it notes scattered all through her bed room with essential reminders. Usually, the notes are readable, but when she hurries, letters can morph collectively in a barely legible script.

She was not too long ago going by way of her stack of essential reminders when she discovered a be aware she had written a minimum of a 12 months in the past. Ms. Smith mentioned she remembered considering on the time that she ought to rewrite the be aware so it could be discernible however by no means bought round to it. .

Struggling to decipher it, she posted a photograph of the be aware in a Reddit neighborhood the place 1000’s have sought assist to decode messy handwriting.

“I used to be like, please, I don’t know what this says,” Ms. Smith mentioned. “Nonetheless every week later, the one touch upon it’s, ‘Hey, do you converse another languages? Might this probably be not English?’”

Ms. Smith, who works in a bookstore in Nashville, mentioned that two issues had contributed to her worsening penmanship: habitually writing shortly and receiving her first pill when she was about 10.

“The dangerous handwriting particularly comes from I’m considering too quick for my hand,” she mentioned. “I really feel like with the ability to sort as shortly as I’m considering I’ve this like nice benefit the place I don’t have to fret about legibility.”

‘Making an attempt to Discover an Excuse to Write’

In 2010, cursive was dropped from Widespread Core requirements, and youngsters in kindergarten by way of twelfth grade at public colleges had been not required to study it in class. The change was controversial, and lots of legislators have since fought for its resurgence in colleges.

Anne Trubek, the writer of “The Historical past and Unsure Way forward for Handwriting,” mentioned that when, over a decade in the past, she started researching the historical past of writing applied sciences and whether or not the digital age was altering writing her work obtained an enormous quantity of pushback.

On the time, she mentioned, folks believed that not instructing youngsters cursive went towards conventional American values. They feared youngsters would lose their connection to historical past in the event that they had been unable to learn historic paperwork just like the Declaration of Independence.

These anxieties finally advanced into the idea that youngsters wouldn’t be as clever in the event that they weren’t taught handwriting, an thought Ms. Trubeck says discriminates towards youngsters who’ve bodily disabilities.

“Anytime that there’s a enormous shift from one know-how to a different, whether or not it’s the invention of writing, or the printing press, or the typewriter, there may be this form of rear-guard anxiousness about what it means for the beforehand supplanted main means for folks to write down,” Dr. Trubek mentioned.

The device folks use to write down doesn’t essentially matter, and know-how has merely made the power to write down and to speak by way of writing extra environment friendly and stronger, she mentioned.

For Eileen Web page, a 78-year-old handwriting marketing consultant in Scituate, Mass., who additionally makes a speciality of forensic forgery and suspicious signatures, a transfer away from cursive has even made writing signatures easier.

“I’m discovering now signatures have gotten virtually logos and extra designs and symbolic than precise letters,” she mentioned.

Any lingering reverence for neat penmanship, particularly cursive, might have extra to do with nostalgia than practicality.

There are two metrics for measuring the fantastic thing about handwriting, mentioned Lindsey Bugbee, the creator of The Postman’s Knock, a calligraphy and handwriting weblog and enterprise. The primary is legibility and the second is steadiness, she mentioned. However magnificence is within the eye of the beholder, and elements like reminiscence and life expertise, can have an effect on what constitutes “good” penmanship.

“You may need recollections of your grandmother’s handwriting being actually stunning, and then you definitely see handwriting like that and it’s already ingrained,” Mrs. Bugbee, 34, mentioned.

Mellissa Prunty, a senior lecturer in occupational remedy at Brunel College London, was a part of a workforce that developed a strategy to measure and quantify the legibility of handwriting.

The Handwriting Legibility Scale makes use of 5 elements, similar to readability and letter formation, to attain youngsters’s writing and decide early on in the event that they would want additional assist from an occupational therapist. For younger youngsters nonetheless creating motor abilities and dexterity, studying the right way to write properly by hand is a crucial talent to have earlier than shifting to extra hybrid fashions of writing or typing, Dr. Prunty mentioned.

“They could shift extra towards typing, however they’ll all the time have handwriting as a talent for be aware taking or no matter occupation they go into,” she mentioned.

For Majd Taby, a 35-year-old software program engineer and start-up founder in Los Angeles, writing by hand is uncommon.

“My recollections of handwriting actually simply contain cramped fingers,” Mr. Taby mentioned. “Since graduating I type of simply stopped writing — I don’t bear in mind the final time I wrote two paragraphs collectively.”

Mr. Taby grew up in Syria and moved to america within the ninth grade. He mentioned that whereas he discovered the right way to write in Syria, cursive was not explicitly taught. By the point he got here to america he was properly previous the age youngsters are sometimes taught handwriting in class, which is the third grade.

It was not till he met his spouse, who’s from France, that Mr. Taby developed the will to enhance his handwriting. Mr. Taby’s spouse and her household all have stunning handwriting, he mentioned.

When Mr. Taby got here throughout a fountain pen at a grocery retailer, he determined to purchase it and provides it a attempt a number of years in the past. He joined Reddit teams in hopes of discovering writing assets and got here throughout the Palmer Methodology, a system of writing popularized within the early twentieth century that emphasizes utilizing your total arm.

“I believe it took me most likely about three to 4 months of each day observe earlier than I bought ok to be pleased with the standard of my writing,” he mentioned. “Then the problem grew to become looking for an excuse to write down.”

Handwriting Classes

Along with the free assets on platforms like Reddit, folks concerned about enhancing their penmanship can search out tutoring with an skilled.

Kate Gladstone, 60, began Handwriting Restore, a handwriting teaching enterprise primarily based in Albany, in 1987. When she started, her clientele consisted of hospitals and medical doctors, who enlisted her assist for employees workshops and people going through malpractice lawsuits due to illegible documentation. The final workshop she performed was at a hospital in Florida that had misplaced its energy within the wake of Hurricane Katrina. When energy was restored, the workers scrambled to decipher medical doctors’ handwritten notes to enter into the pc system.

Now, her clientele is about 75 % adults 18 to 37, a technology, Ms. Gladstone mentioned, that skilled numerous elements, similar to finances cuts in colleges and curriculum modifications, which led to a decline in penmanship.

She provided in-person classes earlier than the pandemic, which generally value $100 for the primary in-person session and $75 for subsequent classes plus journey. (Digital classes value $75 for the preliminary session and $50 for subsequent classes.)

There are additionally classes and drills for individuals who choose to study at their very own tempo. Doris Fullgrabe, 47, began posting handwriting drills and classes on web sites like Skillshare and Udemy in 2017 when she was feeling burnout from her consulting job and needing a brand new pastime. Ms. Fullgrabe’s programs prices round $15, relying on the web site. One among her programs has been taken by greater than 10,000 folks.

“You may enhance with observe,” she mentioned. “Similar to you aren’t going to have the ability to do a headstand in your first yoga session.”

Mr. Taby began writing in a journal and joined a Reddit neighborhood referred to as Fountain Pen Buddies, the place persons are randomly paired as soon as a month to write down letters. When Mr. Taby tweeted that he was writing letters, a number of of his buddies responded that they too felt like their handwriting was getting worse and wanted an excuse to write down.

“There’s something pretty about writing, and there’s something actually private about it that e mail and photographs and even a telephone dialog doesn’t have,” he mentioned.

Studying to Love Letters

In 2021, a CBS Information ballot discovered that 37 % of American adults had not written and despatched a private letter in over 5 years, and one other 15 % had by no means written and despatched a private letter.

Amanda McNair, 37, is an outlier. Since deleting her Fb about 10 years in the past she determined that the easiest way to maintain up along with her family and friends was to write down them each week.

She writes three to 4 letters every week, altering the ink colour or paper relying on the recipient. Usually, her family members recognize the letters, however typically she does must remind her grandparents to ship her a letter again, and never an e mail.

Ms. McNair’s rising love for letter writing finally impressed her to give up her job as a banker to grow to be a mail service in Montreal.

“I actually simply love the mail,” she mentioned.

However for most individuals it has grow to be more and more tough to search out events to write down. Jame Ervin sends handwritten Christmas playing cards, a observe she mentioned was most likely the longest little bit of writing that she would do all 12 months.

Ms. Ervin, 44, who works at a tech firm in Oakland, Calif., discovered that her handwriting had grow to be sloppier as she wrote much less in her on a regular basis life. She purchased a fountain pen a couple of 12 months and a half in the past and began a nightly writing routine.

However Mrs. Web page believes that it’s a false impression that writing much less means we’re sacrificing elements of our id.

“You come into this world together with your character after which it evolves by way of your experiences and your life, and I don’t suppose that’s ever going to go away,” she mentioned. “I don’t suppose the handwriting determines the character, I believe the character determines the handwriting.”

Lifestyle

5 takeaways from Salman Rushdie's new memoir 'Knife'

Published

1 hour ago

April 16, 2024

Press Room

5 takeaways from Salman Rushdie's new memoir 'Knife'

Author Salman Rushdie at the annual gala of PEN America on May 18, 2023.

Ted Shaffrey/AP

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Author Salman Rushdie at the annual gala of PEN America on May 18, 2023.

Ted Shaffrey/AP

On August 12, 2022, famed author Salman Rushdie was stabbed. He was on stage at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York, about to give a talk “about the importance of keeping writers safe from harm,” Rushdie writes in his new memoir, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder.

Rushdie, the 76-year-old writer of The Satanic Verses, Midnight’s Children, Victory City, and more, survived the attack. But not without some lasting scars, including being blind in one eye. Since the attack, he’s done a handful of interviews here and there, but he’s kept mostly to himself. In Knife, he details everything that’s been going on in his life and in his head since the attack. He talks about the recovery process, the support he received from loved ones, and his feelings about his alleged attacker, Hadi Matar.

Matar is in custody at Chautauqua County Jail, being charged with second-degree attempted murder and second-degree assault. The judge in his case actually postponed Matar’s trial after Rushdie announced his memoir, in order to give Matar’s lawyers an opportunity to see what’s inside the book.

The book is out Tuesday. Here’s what you can expect from it:

1. Rushdie has no interest in re-litigating The Satanic Verses

Rushdie only makes a few mentions of his 1988 book that led the supreme leader of Iran at the time to call for Rushdie’s death. And, Rushdie notes in Knife, it wasn’t just the Muslim world criticizing Rushdie for writing the book. He calls out other names, including former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and the writers Roald Dahl and Germaine Greer. Besides that, Rushdie writes that he’s said everything he’s needed to say about Satanic Verses in his previous memoir, Joseph Anton.” If anyone’s looking for remorse, you can stop reading right here,” he writes in Knife. “My novels can take care of themselves.”

2. The book is about freedom of speech, particularly aimed at the left

Rushdie instead saves his argumentative energy to make an appeal for freedom of speech – an ideal, he believes, progressives and the left have left behind to their detriment. “This move away from First Amendment principles allowed that venerable piece of Constitution to be co-opted by the right,” he writes. Rushdie had a long background in free speech advocacy. He’s the former president of PEN America, the literary rights advocacy group, and co-founded that organization’s World Voices Festival. His first public appearance after being attacked was at a PEN Gala in his honor. And, if anything, the attack has only furthered his positions. “Art is not a luxury. It stands at the essence of our humanity, and it asks for no special protection except the right to exist,” he writes.

3. It’s also a book about marriage

In 2021, Rushdie quietly married the poet and novelist Rachel Eliza Griffiths. Rushdie is tender when he writes about the early days of their relationship, saying he was not looking for romance. “And then it came up behind me and whacked me behind the ear and I was powerless to resist.”

It’s Griffiths who helps Rushdie through the many doctor visits, physical therapy appointments, sleepless nights, mystery ailments and piling bills (a sub-takeaway could be, not even world-famous authors can avoid surprise medical bills), all while tending to her own writing career. There are tough moments that they have to go through together in the book, but there are also regular moments that could be scenes from any other marriage.

4. He tries to understand his attacker

Rushdie never refers to Matar by name in the book. And he maintains a certain distance from him. There’s a quick instance in the memoir where Rushdie toys with the idea of reaching out to Matar, but he quickly decides that’s a bad idea. Instead, Rushdie chooses a different route to understanding Matar that we won’t spoil here. But it is an exercise in deep empathy – one that seems to help Rushdie find at least a little bit of closure.

5. There’s a possible documentary on the way.

Early on in the book, Rushdie and Griffiths begin filming Rushdie’s thoughts. The plan seems to be to take all the footage and bring it to an experienced filmmaker, who can shape it into something. But there have been no announcements made on that front yet.

Lifestyle

Kendall Jenner's 818 Tequila Slammed for Ruining AC/DC Mural, Sources Say BS

Published

2 hours ago

April 16, 2024

Press Room

Kendall Jenner's 818 Tequila Slammed for Ruining AC/DC Mural, Sources Say BS

Kendall Jenner‘s 818 Tequila brand has stirred up a storm at Coachella — ’cause a local bar owner claims her team ruined a beloved mural of theirs … even though we hear it’s BS and have seen the contract saying they actively agreed to and acknowledged the potential for damage.

A watering hole in Indio, CA called Club 5 Bar let Kendall and co. set up shop at their establishment last week for a pop-up attraction to plug 818 … complete with a bunch of custom decor and decorations … including a massive decal-like sign on the outside.

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It looks like they painted 818 branding all over the wall, but they didn’t — it’s actually a separate piece they slapped on top of the wall … which is why the owner is now pissed. You see, there’s an AC/DC mural underneath that they recently had installed, which he claims is now damaged as a result of how the 818 team set this whole thing up and left it behind.

acdc the mural

Randy Franco — one of the owners of Club 5 — put out a blistering press release Monday accusing Kendall’s company of recklessly slapping this 818 vinyl piece on their mural and leaving it scuffed/chipped in the aftermath, allegedly without any attempt to restore it.

He tells TMZ that he and his partners gave 818 permission to use the wall and to put the 818 sign up — but claims he asked them to put a protective layer underneath so that their crap wouldn’t touch the wall/mural … which he alleges they failed to do. Instead, Randy claims the 818 team essentially slapped this sign on the mural with adhesive … and when they removed it … it cracked off a lot of the paint from the OG mural underneath.

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As for what exactly he plans to do about it … it’s unclear. Randy says he hasn’t even contacted 818 directly about this yet … saying he’s only chatted with the event coordinator (a third party, it seems), whom he says expressed frustration over how this was handled.

Club 5 in indio CA

Here’s the thing though … we’re being told by people with direct knowledge of the contracts signed and the emails exchanged about this that the Franco family did, in fact, OK the condition of the place when the 818 team was packing up their stuff at the end of last week.

We’ve seen an email sent from Carmen Franco — Randy’s mom and another co-owner of Club 5 — that appears to show she explicitly said the condition was fine by her as they left.

The email notes she did a walk-through of the premises and it even points out the mural specifically — which Carmen appears to have said looked great to her. So, our sources are telling us all this bitchin’ and moanin’ from the son at this point makes little to no sense.

Kendall Jenner's 818 Tequila

Sounds like whatever issue they might have will have to be taken up another time … and in another way, maybe even in court. We’ve reached out to Kendall’s camp … no word back.

Lifestyle

A first date turns into a whodunit in 'Diarra from Detroit'

Published

8 hours ago

April 15, 2024

Press Room

A first date turns into a whodunit in 'Diarra from Detroit'

Diarra Kilpatrick stars as a school teacher-turned-mystery solver in Diarra from Detroit.

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Diarra Kilpatrick stars as a school teacher-turned-mystery solver in Diarra from Detroit.

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Detroit native Diarra Kilpatrick has always wanted to share her version of the city with the world: “For me, the gems of Detroit have far outweighed some of the more challenging aspects of growing up there,” the actor, writer and producer says.

Kilpatrick’s new BET+ series, Diarra from Detroit, is inspired, in part, by the time she spent as a little girl watching Columbo and Perry Mason with her grandmother. Kilpatrick notes that despite the fact that all the women in her life seemed to be obsessed with murder mystery shows back then, she never saw Black women driving the narrative.

Diarra from Detroit is a dark comedy about a public school teacher going through a divorce who decides to hit the dating scene. When a guy she meets on Tinder ghosts her, Diarra goes on a hunt to find out why — and winds up embroiled in a decades old mystery.

Kilpatrick says she was initially reluctant to use her own first name in the title for the show because she was concerned that the audience would assume she was simply being herself instead of playing a character. But as the show progressed in development, the decision began to feel right.

“It felt like it was like an announcement,” Kilpatrick says. “Almost, like ‘Diarra from Detroit is ready to be seen!’ ”

In addition to working on this latest series, Kilpatrick is an actor, writer and producer who created and starred in the ABC digital original satirical comedy American Koko, for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award. She also co-starred for three seasons in the HBO period drama Perry Mason.

Interview Highlights

On her tendency to joke about dark things

My father, the only way to describe him is just a damn fool. He cannot take anything seriously. They say comedy is tragedy plus time. He doesn’t need the time. It’s just … funeral, joke. Someone’s hurt, joke. It’s never too soon, joke. So he just really doesn’t have the ability to take anything seriously. And I think my mom took everything really seriously and had a tremendous amount of depth of feeling and thought and everything. And so I think making sense of the two of those personalities within myself, has kind of been my lot. And I think making sense of comedy and depth is probably a hallmark of my work.

On casting Diarra from Detroit by listening to the actors’ voices

It’s in the voice. I could be playing auditions on the computer and walk away from the computer to get a cup of tea or something, and the voice will drive me back. We’re not really doing the vocal fry thing in the Midwest. We’re not really doing the pitching up thing in the Midwest. Detroit is a southern town up north for me. And so it’s that bit of southern in the voice, it’s that bit of bass in the voice. Assuredness in the voice. I could tell it immediately.

On learning to drop her Detroit accent in acting school, but then using it to get roles afterward

I went to theater school, too, and they beat me up pretty good when I first got there. … They were like, “Ma’am, what is this accent that you have? Your vowels are all over the place. You sound a hot mess.” … Even though I did love being at Tisch and that training, I didn’t love the kind of judgment that I felt about my accent and being the only Black girl in studio. It was like, “We got to fix that!” Because as soon as you graduate, no one’s asking you to speak the King’s English. As a dark skinned, Black, 20-something actress, they want your regional dialect. A lot of times you’re going out for Prostitute No. 4. They don’t need you to sound like you’re doing a Shakespearean play. So that part of it was interesting to kind of lose it and then kind of learn to regain it, because that’s what the industry was requiring of me. And I did wish that it had been framed that way for me in school. Like, there’s nothing wrong with your accent. In fact, you’re probably going to work more with your regional dialect and without it.

On seeing the beauty in her Detroit childhood

I grew up in the city. When I was really young, we didn’t have a lot of money. My mom and I lived in Section 8. We lived in Calumet Townhomes right off the Lodge Freeway. … I had a very idyllic childhood. I have a very pristine idea of what it was to grow up in that Section 8 housing community. And I think it was in part my imagination.

10 years ago Detroit filed for bankruptcy. It makes a comeback but there are hurdles

It’s not there now, but there used to be, right across from where I grew up, this big field. It was an empty field, and I would cut across that field to get to the corner store whenever my mother would bless me with a couple dollars to go get ice cream or whatever. And that field, in my imagination, in my mind, was honestly like Maria von Trapp, like The Sound of Music, like Austrian vistas and mountains. The grass was so high. I would go in that field and pick flowers for my mother. I would sing and dance and get lost in that field. And it wasn’t until I was much older that I was like, “That was an empty lot. The grass was mad high because it should have been cut. Those were dandelions. They’re not flowers.” There was a church bell that would ring. I was always like, this is magic, because I guess that’s just the love that I felt. And that’s just something about me.

So I do realize not everybody has that point of view on it. I’m able to see the beauty of it. I also am able to recognize that there are challenges and there are things there that need to be fixed. So I feel like I can make room for both.

On the “angry Black woman” stereotype

It is a trap. They have made us afraid of our anger. … But at the end of the day, anger is so beautiful and so powerful to me. Nothing changes unless someone gets angry. Obviously you don’t just want to aim a bunch of unwieldy anger all over the place. That’s not going to be constructive either. But there is great information in your anger. There’s great direction in your anger. And, of course, there’s great change that comes out of somebody being like, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” … I think that when Black women are afraid of it, it will siphon off some of your power and your intuition and your drive.

On seeing a mural for the show in Detroit

I got a chance to go to Detroit with my husband and my baby and my sister and my oldest friend in the world, and we stood out there and took pictures. And it was a beautiful moment. … I was trying to figure out how do I take a brick wall back on the plane with me? But it was a really beautiful moment. And I have to shout out Sydney James, who was a wonderful muralist in Detroit, who created it with her team. And I just try to keep my head down and do my work. I’ll try to listen for my assignment and just follow and be obedient to it. But there are those moments that kind of shake you, like, “Girl, you’re doing it. You’re doing it! Your face is on this whole wall!” That’s crazy. And it was a really touching, lovely moment.

Lauren Krenzel and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.