Re: [Rollei] Obsolete skills (was Why the 6-element lens for 3.5Fs)

[Don Williams <dwilli10 >]

At 02:54 PM 5/5/2003 -0700, you wrote:
>   For a while I went to a private grammar school where we
>were taught Palmer Method long hand. I think this was
>intended to leave you able to write a nice sort of copper
>plate hand. We did hours of practice drawing coils going in
>both directions, interlocked figure eight's, etc, etc. The
>idea was to use the muscles of the upper arm instead of the
>hand for writing. I changed schools and the Palmer Method
>went away.
>    The result is that I can't write more than two sentences
>of decipherable longhand. If I must write by hand I wind up
>printing (which I do very well). I much prefer typing.
>   I've tried to look up Palmer Method on the web but found
>nothing referring to the handwriting system.
>   I would love to be able to write in a beautiful and
>readable hand but have given up on ever getting my muscles
>trained for it.
>---
>Richard Knoppow
>Los Angeles, CA, USA
>dickburk  

Same experience.  Can't even read anything I wrote more than a couple of 
minutes ago.  I couldn't make circles without the pen sticking into the 
paper.  Also, for some reason I didn't always write with my circles 
touching the line.  The teacher thought I had a vision problem.

Worse still, I often print only a couple of letters which mean something to 
me while on the phone but can't remember what I meant to say.

Example, just from today-

SLC MK TWN      -X SEA

Means, if I remember correctly, that "Mark Towner has just moved to Salt 
Lake City.  Last time I talked to him he lived in Seattle."

That's of course, if I can read the letters, often written with a dried-out 
ball point pen I should have tossed but instead had put aside "just in case".

Photography is so much easier than writing.

[I even have a written signature I paste into email where HTML and inserts 
are allowed, but I can't read it]



Don Williams
La Jolla, CA

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