HANDWRITING COMPELS

I would add a certain cultural value. Handwriting is part of each person’s identity. We were taught to copy exact forms for each letter, printing and cursive, but by the time we’re adults we’ve each developed a handwriting style that is uniquely our own. Whenever I would receive a letter or note from a parent or sibling — back when we would write to each other by hand — I knew exactly who had written it after reading the rst three words. We each had a signature, for writing checks, or signing memos or receipts. Nowadays, of course, a scribble quali es as a signature. Do we really want to lose this part of our identity?

My preference for blue book exams goes to the heart of why I still believe in handwriting. Handwriting compels the writer to think through to an entire sentence, and often to an entire paragraph, before writing the rst word. Digitized writing, by contrast, encourages the writer to dump words onto the screen and begin a process of cutting, pasting, deleting and inserting until the verbiage starts to resemble expository writing. When the subject is law or ethics (the courses in which I required blue book exams), crafting a cogent argument before starting to write is a commendable skill. And without a laptop for the exam, all cheating schemes become low-tech and highly risky.

I dug a little deeper and found a small but growing body of research on the e ects of handwriting versus word-processing. Cognitive scientists have found that handwriting, while exasperating for most young students, demands a degree of small-motor and hand-eye coordination that is rarely found in the classroom, yet useful later in life. More surprising to me

Handwriting was a common means of written communication for centuries, before the advent of word processing. Will our grandchildren even be able to read handwritten historical documents from the 19th and 20th centuries? Will they be able to read letters written by their grandparents? A friend of mine recently read a trove of love letters — nearly 700 of them — exchanged between her grandparents from 1900 to 1909. She organized the letters into a loving, historically fascinating book, which was published just last month. Every one of those letters was handwritten. What if my friend had lacked the ability to read cursive?

I’ll continue to write by hand, but, I must concede, only when the situation seems appropriate. After all, this essay took me hours to write in cursive — and I wrote it out only after I’d typed my rough draft on a laptop!

Professor Emeritus and Founding Department Chair Paul Voakes has taught journalism at CU since 2003. is opinion column does not necessarily re ect the views of Boulder Weekly.

Praise For Dave Anderson

anks, Dave [Anderson]! I suspect you had to be a historian, or anyway teach U.S. history at some level, in some decade, to fully appreciate the passions, struggles and sometimes the pure nuttiness of the discussion of the U.S. Civil War era (Anderson Files, “Fake history of Civil War fuels MAGA,” Jan. 19, 2023). Or you had to have been awake in high school history class even when, as so often, U.S. history fell to the… football coach.

It was increasingly fascinating to me, decades after the 1960s, when major liberal historians, (e.g., Arthur Schlesinger Jr.), unfailingly devoted to Andrew Jackson and other such heroes of the Democratic Party, began to explain that slavery had been really, really awful but never unforgivable, because the U.S. economy could not have been built otherwise, and the U.S. was, after all, the exemplar to the world, the protector of the 20th century world, and so on. By the 1980s, Schlesinger and even such past stalwarts of liberal histories of the South as C. Vann Woodward, raged in the pages of the e New Republic against “revisionism,” “divisive history,” “history without central narratives” of American freedom ever advancing, etc.

e MAGA folks today have taken up the charges, in their nutball way, but they have plenty of backing in the backlash against 1619, liberal to conservative, and a new battle front in the centuries-long confrontation of Europeans and Indigenous folks.

Paul Buhle, Providence, Rhode Island

Criticism For Dave Anderson

As much as I usually love Dave Anderson’s columns, his latest, about the Civil War, could have been better (Anderson Files, “Fake history of Civil War fuels MAGA,” Jan. 19, 2023).

I’d like to o er some facts that Dave at least kind of left out.

In recent years I have frequently gotten the impression that a lot of Americans are confused about the Civil War. People think it was about states’ rights and not slavery and racism. In recent decades many people in the Republican Party who were either closet racists (or had been fooled by them) thought it was ne to have the Confederate ag displayed wherever people wanted to display it, including as part of state ags. e Confederacy and its symbols were and are about slavery and racism. e Confederacy was not about state’s rights as some have claimed. ose who pushed for its creation complained that northern states had anti-slavery laws. At one point, the Confederacy’s leaders brie y considered ending slavery to get military support from Europe — support that probably would have resulted in victory against the Union. ey decided to keep slavery, meaning that slavery was more important to them than independence from Washington D.C. And there was at least one incident where Black Union soldiers captured by the South were executed instead of being taken to POW camps as were the white Union soldiers.

When Donald Trump needed a new Secretary of Veterans A airs in 2018, the position was lled by Robert Wilkie, a man with a history of involvement with the neo-Confederate movement. In 2020, Trump passionately opposed re-naming military bases named after Confederate military leaders, including one responsible for the incident where Black POWs were executed. In 2017, Trump talked about the Civil War and said former President Andrew Jackson would have handled the slavery issue better than Lincoln did and the Civil War would have been avoided. Jackson was a passionate opponent of abolitionists and would have compromised with the South and slavery would have continued with (at most) minor changes to its geographic scope and/ or life time and/or there may have been minor changes in how slaves were treated. Or he may have done absolutely nothing about slavery — if it were up to Donald Trump, slavery might still exist today.

As Dave said, the neo-Confederate view is part of the MAGA movement.

Tom Shelley/Boulder

SERIOUSLY... SUPPORT LAB MEAT

A historic legacy is available for any politician who supports increased funding for cultivated-meat research. For those who aren’t familiar with the term, cultivated meat is grown from livestock cells, without killing. It’s better for the environment, public health and animal welfare than slaughtered options.

Jon Hochschartner/Granby, CT

Eagle Heart Wisdom Healing

Dear Community, Wishing you warmth in this Holiday Season!

The origins of Eagle Heart Wisdom Healing began in a Near Death Experience related to a traumatic event. I was carried through a pulsing artery of sparkling blue sound nestled in vast swirling worlds of white light.

Spiritual Beings studied me along the way imbuing gifts of loving mercy. I awoke into a gentle flush of flowing kindness as whirlpool of loving mercy appeared. Its core, a living void, pulsed steady sounds of strengthening harmonies as its outer perimeter lavished thunderous, dynamic waterfalls of sparkling generosity.

Left Hand Laser Studio

Armene Piper is a Boulder native who grew up on the outskirts of town; she can still remember when Arapahoe and 75th Street were dirt roads. Now she lives in Longmont with her husband, five children and four dogs. She is deeply committed to her clients and takes great pride in providing the best customer experience with unparalleled results.

As I stood in the holy eternal flow of our Creator, I was given a choice to stay or return.

When I chose to return, the Eternal spoke: “Take my Heart and give to Others what I have given You. Be the Direction of Your Own Spirit. “

Thus was born Katy’s ministry as a healer of subtle body trauma, grief and loss: Eagle Heart Wisdom Healing.

Eagle Heart Wisdom Healing 2204 18th Ave Suite 227, Longmont, 80501 720-667-7928 www.eagleheart.life

Armene also works closely with the transgender community to help them feel more authentic in their own body’s. Armene offers Cryoskin slimming and toning, laser hair removal, vein treatments, sun and age spot treatments, toenail fungus treatments, as well as Boleyn stretch mark and scar camouflage. 1446 Hover Street, Longmont 303-551-4701 www.lefthandlaserstudio.com

Locally woman-owned and operated, Wild Birds Unlimited Specializes in bringing people and nature together through the hobby of backyard bird feeding. We offer a wide variety of naturerelated products and expert, local advice. Our store stocks the highest quality items made in the the USA with emphasis on eco- friendly products and recycled plastics. We source our unique gifts from Fair Trade companies and local artisans. We also have gift cards and last-minute gift ideas. Stop in and let us explain our mission to Save the Songbirds one backyard at a time!

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