Old Dog, New Tricks

I have not been a very good blogger of late. Oh, I am still good (as much as can be) but my BLOGGING has lagged.  

A recent thread on Facebook made me wonder why that is (thanks Jayne Sexton Trapnell).  And I think part of the reason is that I have been distracted (preoccupied?) with learning new tricks.

Here's part of the story. I am the webmaster/ mistress/ meister for my church's website. When I first took over the website, maybe 10 years ago, everything I needed to know about creating and maintaining a website I self-taught. A few years ago, I had to change the software I was using to do the website--and so I learned yet another software program.

It is time, I think, for yet another change.  This resolve came about when I sat in a recent meeting and learned about WordPress.  Now, some of the fellow bloggers I read use WordPress, but I do not.  What I learned about excited me, though, because it might make maintaining the website easier AND allow me to share the task with other people.

See, I am in the 65+ age bracket. (Don't you just love it when you are asked to check which age bracket you are in when you get all the way to the eldest category possible and you see "65+"?)  Anyway.  From time to time I wonder...why am I doing this? Shouldn't some much younger whipper-snapper (see, that proves I am in the 65+ bracket) do this? 

In a related vein, last summer I was persuaded to take the plunge and buy an Apple computer. I had previously gotten an I-pad, then next I caved and got an I-phone--so the jump to a MacBook seemed like a continuation of technology.  And it is.  I should hasten to add, I am still learning. And will be for a long long time (maybe not so long for those of us in the 65+ group).

So what, you might ask.  Well, because I maintain the aforesaid website, and because the software to do that is PC specific, I have to keep using my PC as I learn my MacBook.  Let me tell you, it can be a bit schizophrenic.  Do I scroll up or down to make the page move? Do I use the delete key to erase the characters on the left side or the right side of where the cursor is? How can my cursor on the Mac disappear suddenly--that never happened on the PC. Why does the track pad on the Mac work so much more responsively than on the PC? Why does the PC take FOREVER to run the virus scan, and the Mac seemingly blinks and it's done?

As I contemplate switching the website to a WordPress site, I know that I will have to learn new tricks.

Any sympathy yet?  I acknowledge--I am an old dog. And I am learning new trick.  Care to toss me a bone?

Caveat creditor*

*My loose translation. . .let the lender beware (using caveat emptor as my guide).

Herewith the text of an email I received today:

Hi,
How are you doing? hope all is well with you ,i am sorry that i did not inform you about my traveling to England for a program called empowering youth to fight racism,Hiv/Aids,and lack of education.

I need a favor from you as soon as you receive this e-mail because i misplaced my wallet on my way to the hotel where my money, and other valuable things were kept i will like you to assist me with a soft loan of $2,500 US Dollars urgently to sort-out my hotel bills and get myself back home.

I will appreciate whatever you can afford to loan me now, i'll pay you back as soon as i return,Kindly let me know if you can be of help? so that i will send you the details to use when sending the money through western union.

I await to read from you.

Best of regards,
Louisa.

Since the title of the email was I NEED YOUR HELP ASAP, I was immediately on alert. My friend Louisa Mae (please note that while I have changed my friend's name to protect her, she always used her given first and middle name) was in trouble? She needed money? From me?

Wait. . .a. . .minute. First, what about her somewhat well-to-do mother? Would she not have helped her daughter?

Second, what about all those grammatical errors--my friend is meticulous to a fault. She would never have sent such a sloppily written email. She even capitalizes all her initial letters, always. No lower case "i" for her. And "I await to read from you"?

Third, "Best of regards"? Who signs anything that way?

And fourth, Louisa? She always goes by Louisa Mae. So, just who was Louisa really?

I picked up the phone, and called the office where my friend works. A pleasant voice answered--is Louisa Mae there, I asked? Well, she is, but she's on the other line. Oh, I said, she's not out of the country? Not in England? No, came the answer, but I can put you into her voice mail.

I sensed an old email scam--maybe even originating in Nigeria. So I hit "reply all" and sent out a cautionary note--DO NOT ANSWER THAT EMAIL. It's a scam.

So, let the lender (would-be, of course) beware.

H-E-L-P

Over the past several months, I have noticed that the monitor on my laptop seems to be red when I first turn the computer on. Then it slowly "fades" into view. And finally is completely bright--a nice cheery LCD monitor.

Well, a couple of days ago, after I undocked it, the screen suddenly went black. PANIC. So I re-docked it, and the LCD shone as brightly as ever.

Then, yesterday, I took the laptop to a meeting, opened and turned it on. . .and it slowly faded to black.

Brought it back home, docked it and it was fine. It seemed to be when I closed it, while undocked, and reopened it, was when the problem occurred.

Well, last night, the LCD screen faded to black and stayed. . .that. . .way.

GASP. Air, I need air. Stand back. H-E-L-P!

Well, that woke me up early, and now am using my husband's computer that will soon be going to work with him.

Next steps? Stay tuned.
-------------------------
QUICK UPDATE
My husband went shopping, first on the Internet, then to a store that sells office supplies. There he purchased an external monitor, which I set up this afternoon, so I am now back on the Internet. The next step will be to call the manufacturer of my laptop--the replacement for IBM--and see what it would take to fix it, and where it needs to go to be fixed.

Dancing with the Internet

The other day, a colleague told me his grandson, who is eight and attends school in Portland, Oregon, is not being taught cursive writing. Apparently, the schools there have decided not to teach students how to write cursive because computers and keyboard entry of things written takes primacy.

Out of curiosity, to see if abandonment of cursive writing is widespread, I “googled” the term. Here’s what Wikipedia summarizes as the criticism of teaching cursive. There are, it seems, many good reasons for ceasing the teaching of cursive.

When I relayed this information to my husband, who taught science to 7th graders over 25 years ago, he wondered if students are still being taught to read it. What an interesting question. And what incredible changes in communication this news stresses.

As a college English instructor, I have an abiding interest in developments in communication. I know that language is living, dynamic, constantly changing. Words are added to the dictionary every year. In fact, this year’s word, according to the American Dialect Society, is “plutoed” as in “to demote or devalue someone or something”. You know, like Pluto was a planet until it got voted out of the solar system.

Rough comparison of the sizes of Earth and Pluto, image created by NASA

But it is clearly computers that have had the greatest impact on communication. We have been a computer family since. . .the beginning of personal computers. We got our first home computer in 1984! It was a Texas Instruments 99 A.

Image from http://oldcomputers.net/ti994a.html

The display monitor was a regular color television. It had no real memory, and we stored any data on a regular tape recorder. Our next computer was a huge upgrade—an Apple II C.

Our son, who had majored in math during college, was drawn to computer programming and decided to get a master’s degree in computer program. He attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). On one of our first visits to see him, we took a couple extra days and hence needed to get an educational excuse to justify our daughter, who was still in middle school, missing classes. So, our son said he would show us something that was just beginning to be popularized: the Worldwide Web! That was 1994.

Back to the impending loss of cursive handwriting. As someone who has written an occasional article, I have used primary sources. In writing a biography of my paternal grandparents, I had access to letters they had written to each other during their days of courting. Back and forth these letters flew, between Pennsylvania and Ontario, Canada. All in handwriting that was distinctive and wonderful to read.

I do wonder about future biographers who will be bereft of such material. Will emails take the place of letters? How could they. First, they are unlikely to be saved. Second, they will lack all character of individuality. Much as I prefer to do my writing composition on a keyboard, there is something so particular and special about handwriting.

Some years ago, when the marvelous historic downtown church I attend celebrated its 200th anniversary (that counts as old in this country!), I helped assemble material for a church history. I went back through the Session minutes. (For all you non-Presbyterians, the Session is the equivalent of the church board.) These minutes, extending as far back as 1794, were hand-written in wonderful pale brown ink (faded, no doubt, over time) in a spidery crawl of writing that spread across the page. At times, it was difficult to read. The recording secretary (a man, of course, for this was in the days long before women were eligible for church office) had perfectly legible hand-writing. But how the letters were formed has changed. A lower case f looks like an s. So, a word like success looks remarkably like succeff. I had to keep translating to myself. It is no surprise that today all these minutes are neatly word processed. All individuality is lost.

Much as I love computers and the Internet, as my fingers dance along over the keys, I mourn the loss of the individual touch of hand-writing. With its demise, the experience of picking up a piece of paper written in someone’s very recognizable hand will be lost.