Thank YOU, Mr. Takei, for your generous blurb on my new book Kapoho: Memoir of a Modern Pompeii, for a hand-written letter that displays so much respect, and for the art form of letter writing that seems to be disappearing from our age of technology. To readers, I may be using the exact media I’m questioning, but my gratitude to Mr. Takei was sent hand-written when my book was first released. Wow, thank you, Mr. Takei. I’m humbled to know my book is at your bedside.
Look at that penmanship! WOW! Or should I say “Oh my!”
I have now received four hand-written notes to my Kapoho book. They are all second generation, meaning their parents came from Japan and the Philippines. They are still hanging on to what they have been taught, and to the pen. Oh My. I don’t even know what your hand-writing looks like.
It isn’t hand writing so much as scrawling. I learned to write in cursive in school, yet developed the habit of ‘printing’ everything because we were told far more often to print out name, not “write” it. I took to printing instead of cursive writing. Sadly, no trace of the elegance of cursive script made the transition into my woeful printed letters.
It really is pretty bad.
We created a total individualized language arts program in Hawaii K-12. We began teaching K kids to write through cursive before printing because cursive was a better match with the development of their muscles. They gradually went into print and they had no problem in writing. We also had typewriters for the kids ( before computers) whose muscles weren’t well developed for the pencils. That was a good program. I did help to write the K-12 Literature program, I still have letters handwritten from Anais Nin and Ray Bradbury somewhere in my boxes. Those are my good ol’ days.