Lockjaw’s Life
Live from New York – Lockjaw has MOVED
Through a sequence of events over the past few years, Lockjaw’s Spouse has advanced in her career and education to the point where she was able to land a job at a great New York City charter school. As a result, we have left North Carolina behind and moved the family to Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan. While North Carolina will always be home, New York City has much to offer even the grumpiest of ogres.
I am now 5 days into my new life in the city. The wife arrived a few days after I did, having spent 5 weeks studying with Father Reginald Foster, the greatest latinist in the world. We are now getting to know the neighborhood, exploring the nearby blocks for interesting places, and planning our apartment.
There are many ways that New York City is different from North Carolina. Some are good, and some are just plain weird. For instance, when you get a beer with your meal in a restaurant in New York the waiter must pour a bit of beer into your glass so that, ostensibly, the beer is not being served from the bottle.
One of my favorite things about New York City is signage. There are billboards. There are multi-colored signs above nearly every store. There are neon signs in the windows. North Carolina’s cities are creating more and more sign ordinances, which have always driven me crazy. My hometown of Sanford is one of the worst, though Cary has the most well-known. Limitations on signs are unusually strong. As a consumer trying to find a store, it can be very troubling to drive back and forth looking for a particular store only to discover that the sign is a small block on a larger, yet still small sign conglomerate with no real differentiation in font, color, or visibility. Small businesses are harmed by government regulation that does not allow them to set themselves apart from the other stores nearby, or make themselves identifiable from the road.
New York is not this way. Signs are part of the flavor of the city. What would Times Square be without the billboards but a plaza amongst tall buildings?
On the other hand, New York places benches all arounds its parks, but does not allow you to sit on one near a children’s playground unless you have children of your own. This is supposed to prevent child predators from being around the children, but I have a hard time believing that this is truly effective. This prior restraint on law-abiding citizens isn’t going to prevent the miniscule minority of perverts (perverts being a minority of the citizenry, and predators being a minority of the perverts) from finding children. Face it, if they can have police to ticket people for sitting on provided benches, why can’t they have them to watch for predators?
One of the greatest things about New York City is food. Food is everywhere. In my two trips to the city, and my short time since moving here, I have had some of the most amazing meals I have ever eaten. The HK Fritata at Hell’s Kitchen’s HK Diner was great. The sushi at two different restaurants was the best I have ever eaten. Junior’s cheesecake truly deserves its “best in the city” reputation. Last night I had “Enchiladas al Vino” at a mexican-influenced restaurant west of Broadway in Washington Heights that amazed me. Imagine my surprise when the lady at the Dunkin Donuts told me the delicious cuban sandwich I had up the street was “no good” before telling me where to find one better.
I look forward to discovering more about the city. I am loving the neighborhood. I am loving the neighbors. I love the subway system, and the grid layout of the streets.
It’s a good day.
Cursive – Who Thought This was a Good Idea?
I have a vivid memory from a very young age of scribbling a bunch of loops on a piece of paper with a blue ballpoint pen. My young mind was intrigued with how long swirls and peaks could form words. Of course, since I was still too young to read I was writing gibberish.
As I grew older writing became a constant part of my life. Much of my early education involved drawing block letters in large spaces on lined paper. Every year the spaces grew smaller in order to refine my handiwork. I always knew that my artistic skills were not great when it came to drawing lines, and my simple block letters were no exception.
In third grade I finally reached what I thought was the holy grail of writing. In Mrs. Powers’ class I learned to write in cursive. I learned the letters, and how to string them together easily. Of course, my cursive writing was only legible if I wrote slowly and carefully. In addition I had adopted special forms of certain letters such as the capitalized T and F from Mrs. Powers’ own style, rather than her lessons. She taught the “proper” way, but I preferred the letters as she wrote them. To me it was as much a preference in style as it was in legibility.
The next few years I dutifully wrote cursive in class. I pitied my poor teachers who had to read my writing, and I still do. My cursive legibility relied as much on the readers’ expectations as my own skills. This, I learned later, was a common thread between most writers of the cursive script. Honestly, can you say that you’ve never found a beautifully written page that had words that could only be discerned based on the words around them?
After Mrs. Powers, the most important person in my life of the handwritten word was my 8th grade history teacher, Mr. Keith. One day Mr. Keith pulled me out of class and had a very frank discussion with me.
“David,” he said, “your handwriting is terrible. Some letters angle to the left. Some angle to the right. They should all angle to the right because the eye flows better that way.”
His next words changed my life.
“Honestly, if you can’t write any better than that, then print.”
It really was that simple. The rigid requirements of school said that I should use cursive script, because it was a skill I should practice. Another requirement was that my writing be legible enough to read. The two requirements, in my case, were contrary. I had, though, been trying to meet both requirements. Mr. Keith helped me understand that there could be a choice.
From that day forward I turned in my classwork in printed form. I would have turned in my homework the same way, except that I rarely saw homework as a requirement.
Every year most teachers would approach me and inform me that I should be turning in my assignments in cursive. Printing my assignments was not acceptable, because I was expected to use cursive script. Since I had learned a bit about making decisions on my own in the face of conflicting instructions, I knew what to do. I would smile, nod, and agree to use cursive script.
I would then turn in my next assignment in cursive, without the care required to make my assignment reasonably legible. After that one assignment I would return to my printed words without a word, or a complaint from the teacher.
Cursive, I learned, was pretty but useless. As a system of communication, cursive was imprecise. With practice my writing never improved beyond what I learned in third grade. I had gained in speed, but not legibility. Cursive writing was not for me, and I began to think it wasn’t so great for everyone else either.
Several years ago the news came out that schools were no longer pushing cursive writing skills as a necessity. I was thrilled with the news. Not only would the new kids no longer be forced to learn a form of communication that was barely effective across the general population, but also there was hope that one day I could read a prescription form.
Now when I write by hand I prefer an all-caps block lettering. Occasionally I throw in a lower-case vowel such as when I write the word “email.”
I think the biggest lesson I learned through all of this wasn’t really about cursive script at all. It was about rules. To my teachers writing cursive was the rule. I was expected to follow the rule. The rule, as it turns out, wasn’t 100% right. Learning the difference between rule and right is important to us all, and cursive script was a tool that helped me understand.
Why I dislike roadside deer
My wife and I were on the way home from a delightful anniversary trip to Charlotte. I can’t tell you exactly which anniversary it was, because I’m male. I’m sure my wife could tell you exactly which anniversary it was, because she’s the wife and women seem to have a genetic predisposition to remembering anniversaries. [...]
Warcraft Economics – Auctions, Profiteering, and Helping Others
I love to play World of Warcraft. Questing, killing beasties, gaining achievements, and Player vs Player are just entertaining things to do on a nice relaxing evening. One of the great things about WoW, as it is known, is that there are so many different ways to play the game. One of my most enjoyable [...]
Joining the Dark Side – I Got an iPhone
Last week, my wife and I finally upgraded our phones. We knew we needed more from our phones, so I spent some time looking at the options. I’m crazy like that. When we first got our cellphones four years ago, I spent 2-3 months talking to everyone who had a cellphone about their plan, their [...]
I Swear, I WILL Blog Regularly Again
It has been a long time since I have been blogging regularly, but I fully intend to make this a regular thing again. I’ve been doing lots of other things, but I need to take a little time to write. Right now, I’m blogging from the Triangle Tweetup 2.0, a meeting of the Raleigh/Durham area [...]
It’s a whole different work environment
Well, now that I’m in a different job, I’m finding lots of things are different. For instance, I’m doing more, stressing less, and have better surroundings. I finally have a place to display my Star Wars Action Fleet collection. I’m keeping an AC cord at the desk for my personal laptop. I also was able [...]
Job Change
It’s a brand new day in Lockjaw’s Life. I’ve changed jobs. Hopefully, this will mean the chance to spend a little more time thinking on what I want to write. It does mean a little more morning time for me, and a little less evening time, but it also means more benefits in the ways [...]
Coming out of Busy-ness
It’s been a busy week and a half around the lair. It has seemed like every day has been stuffed full of something important to do, or recovery from it. I love the busy weeks, when they come, but I’m sure glad when they come to an end, and I can go back to normality. [...]
Car Troubles
Well, the Saturn finally bit the dust. When my wife and I married, she had a 1991 Saturn SL. Over the years, minor issues have cropped up with the car. The first big issue was back in the mid 1990s, when a valve roller went bad, resulting in replacement of a couple valves, rollers, rocker [...]