http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-269012A1.pdf

we won’t be getting such an announcement for cursive, because writing is not regulated as radio is; morse the pity!

I never could manage any semblance of a pretty handwriting so I had to settle for a utilitarian style. In my late teens however I realized that I had an aptitude and interest in calligraphy, particualrly letters written large. Later I practiced Hebrew calligraphy. This apparant contradiction has something to do with speed. Handwriting was invented to speed up the writing process as compared to block lettering. The calligraphy I enjoyed was block lettering.

In any case I am a professional writer now. My fear that writing on a word precessor instead of a legal pad would somehow crimp my creativity turned out to be a supersition. In fact the editing capability, and, more dramatically, the spell check feature (rememeber the dyslexia) of word processing has made creative writing easier without crimping inspiration. Where the new process of writing really had a dramatic effect is when I returned to school to get an advanced degree. Computer word processing helped to vastly improve my paper writing. Of course all those years as a writer helped me to learn to organize my thoughts and to find apt expression of them. But this is one person who will not miss the typewriter.

All this remains true in longform writing. But I cannot imagine writing poetry on a computer. I need the pen in my hand and to touch it to paper to write poetry at all. Certainly this has to do with the rhythm, sound and image of poetry and the intergration of all these features somewhere in the brain that is just incompatible, at least for me, with the keyboard.

I am one who has experienced the pleasure of an exchange of letters with other human beings, the epistolary relationship ib both friendship and romance. This practice, this art is all but vanished. In a certain nostalgia, I would say that we are less fully human for its absence. There was a self discovery and deepening of bonds in the epistolary realationship not to speak of the attention to and development of language.

But are relationships any worse now that the epistolarly realtionship has gone by the wayside like buggy rides into the country or the parlor discussion? I think not. Certaianly less romantic. But think how tortured those nineteenth century lovers were, at least in those French, Russain and English romanrtic novels we love. Perhaps in the accelerated, to-the-point, utilitarian e-mailing and text messaging friends and acquaintances get to the point. And lovers get real, have the opportunity to work things out.

Can we hope for the best of both worlds, rapid and far reaching communication online but when we get together we can enjoy the art of verbal communication – sort of the template for ROS? Or have we just become speeded up and numbed out to our respective humanity?