My father had absolute beautiful handwriting. Cursive, a sort of script that he had been taught in school. My own handwriting wasn't quite up to his, but if I say so myself, it was also pretty good. Like fairly fancy script, but very readable. I had been taught it by my sixth grade teacher, and I was rather proud of it.

All of my papers (including short stories, essays, and book reports) in high school were handwritten with a fountain pen. Then, when I started university, I got a Royal portable typewriter, which I used extensively until I got a Adler electric typewriter. Then, I got a KayPro II portable computer (if you consider 27 lbs. "portable")—CP/M operating system, and a copy of WordStar. I've had several generations of computers since the KayPro was retired.

With these machines, I've cranked out a substantial amount of prose:   a couple dozen magazine articles, a number of essays, a short story or two, two abortive attempts at a science fiction novel, and most of a book on the folk scene in the Seattle area during the 1950s and 60s. Not to mention innumerable e-mails, and a shameful number of Mudcat posts over the past twelve years.

Some time back, I picked up Dragon Naturally Speaking, a voice recognition program, which I have been using off and on since. With this, and a small head-set (earphone with small boom mic attached), you can talk to the computer and what you say appears on the screen. Very handy indeed!

And with all that typing and dictating, my handwriting, of which I used to be so proud, has degenerated to the point where, when I write a check or hand-address an envelope, unless I do it in block letters, it looks like ancient Icelandic runes translated into Aztec hieroglyphics, then translated in turn into the Cyrillic alphabet, and hand written by an inebriated orangutan with the palsy.

I have a couple of really nice fountain pens in my desk drawer.   I will have to clean the dried ink out of them, check their condition in general, then, gas them up and spend some time practicing the nice loops and whorls my sixth-grade teacher taught me.

Handwriting is a lost art. When I watch people write these days, I am amazed at some of the weird ways they hold a pen or pencil. No wonder their handwriting looks even worse than mine!

Once I received one of these catalogs in the mail that listed gifts for the person who has everything. One of the items was listed as "Shakespeare's Pen Set." $19.95. It looked like THIS. It included four quills (goose feathers?), not with the point cut, shaped, and split, like Shakespeare would have had to do before he penned a Masterpiece, but with unobtrusive brass sockets into which you could insert any one of a selection of nibs. A bit of recent technology (metal pen points), but they functioned and looked like the kind of writing implement that had served people well for centuries. I almost sent for one. I wish now that I had!

Thank you, I don't know, for starting this thread. I'm gonna get off my butt and clean and load my fountain pens!

In this era of computers, e-mail, cell phones, throw-away ball-point pens, grab-and-go coffee shops and restaurants, and fast-food places that throw hamburgers out the window at passing cars, there is simply not enough elegance anymore!

Can we do something about that?

Don Firth