Like many other people in the United States, I\u2019ve been writing postcards to voters in other states as a way of doing something about the election. I\u2019ll vote, of course, and I\u2019m sending a little money here and there as well.<\/p>\n
Given the number of postcards I can reasonably write and the amount of money I can afford to send, not to mention the value of my single vote, all those things only matter if a lot of other people do them as well.<\/p>\n
But the stress of \u201cthe most important election of our lives\u201d is weighing on me. I don\u2019t call people, because I despise getting such calls and cannot bear to do that to others. Postcards I can do without having to talk to a stranger who doesn\u2019t really want to talk with me.<\/p>\n
In general, while I worry a lot and always vote \u2013 the last time I skipped an election was a runoff between a dishonest Democrat who was going to win anyway and a well-intentioned good-government Republican whose ideas on how to run a city were disastrous \u2013 I am not excited about electoral politics. I prefer to put my energy for change into building something that might grow into better systems. Co-ops, for example.<\/p>\n
I came to that after being active in the antiwar movement back in the day when I realized that I preferred making things to protesting them. Not that I haven\u2019t done a lot of protesting as well \u2013 it\u2019s kind of like voting: you gotta do it from time to time.<\/p>\n
Anyway, I\u2019m trying to do my small part to fend off fascism \u2013 and yes, there is a right and wrong side in this election and not just in the presidential race. I don\u2019t think the United States survives as a nation if we don\u2019t stop this latest effort to create an authoritarian state.<\/p>\n
And though I can think of reasonable arguments for the dismantling of the United States, it would be hell to live through that period and while I\u2019m old, I\u2019m not so old that I won\u2019t have to.<\/p>\n
Also, I\u2019m pretty much in favor of getting a sane base in place and trying to fix the country\u2019s problems from there. See above, where I mentioned I preferred building things to protests.<\/p>\n
I mean, we already had a civil war over how the country should be governed. As someone who has read a bit of history, I contend that we wouldn\u2019t be in this mess if we hadn\u2019t abandoned Reconstruction after that nasty war. The Civil War Amendments to the Constitution gave us a way to build the country we ought to be, but we haven\u2019t used them as well as we should. <\/p>\n
So I\u2019m doing my tiny bit of writing postcards, and since those postcards are going to young voters, I\u2019m doing my best to print my message rather than writing longhand. I have heard that schools are no longer teaching that (they say cursive, but I\u2019ve always liked the word longhand better) and that apparently a lot of younger people don\u2019t read it well.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s probably a good thing, because my printing is marginally more readable than my longhand. I am from a time where they emphasized handwriting in school and it was mostly torture for me, because I was never very good at it. Fine motor coordination is not one of my talents and I still remember not being allowed to use the lovely fountain pen my father bought me because my writing was too messy.<\/p>\n
Mind you, I was very good early on at understanding words and reasonably good at spelling (and could use a dictionary) and got the hang of sentences and paragraphs very quickly. It was the technical skill of putting the letters on the page that gave me trouble.<\/p>\n
That said, I\u2019m glad I learned to write longhand, because I write much faster that way, if not as legibly. Printing is slow and hard. Truth is, I much prefer typing (or perhaps they call it keyboarding these days). I think best with my hands on a keyboard and yes, I touch type.<\/p>\n
But you can\u2019t type postcards easily, especially not if you no longer have an actual typewriter, and anyway the purpose of writing them by hand is to show the voters that you put something into it and that it\u2019s not mass produced.<\/p>\n
I mean, it\u2019s sort of mass-produced \u2013 I have a list of people and words I\u2019m supposed to say \u2013 but I am doing them one at a time. A human being handles them, at least.<\/p>\n
Despite my own travails at learning handwriting, I\u2019m in favor of kids learning both printing and longhand, as well as typing. Actually, dictation is probably a good skill to develop as well \u2013 I remember learning to do a little of that in one of the few jobs where I actually had a secretary to do my typing and these days lots of people speak to their phones to send texts and such.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not in favor of grading kids on it, just exposing them to enough so that they can figure out what works best for them. Each of these skills is a little different. I keep seeing older people who hate cursive, just as an example, and while I\u2019m not among them, I see no reason why they should have been forced to use it when they wrote papers for school.<\/p>\n
I am told that taking notes by hand, however you make your letters, is useful. Certainly I find doodling and making notes by hand useful when I\u2019m listening to a talk. Though as a reporter who used to cover meetings, I vastly preferred a laptop because the keyboard was way faster and I could cut and paste from my notes when doing my final story.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think there\u2019s one right way to communicate with other people. That holds true for how to help get the vote out for an election. One-on-one talking to people may be the most effective, but it probably works better with people who aren\u2019t going to jump down the other person\u2019s throat if they express a preference for the fascists.<\/p>\n
Which is to say, people who aren\u2019t me. I grew up being careful when talking politics and religion, but I can\u2019t do it anymore.<\/p>\n
So I\u2019ll go write a few more postcards and hope the recipients can read them. And that they\u2019ll register and vote, preferably for the right people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Like many other people in the United States, I\u2019ve been writing postcards to voters in other states as a way of doing something about the election. I\u2019ll vote, of course, and I\u2019m sending a little money here and there as well. Given the number of postcards I can reasonably write and the amount of money […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,17],"tags":[632,88,943],"class_list":["post-3612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-experiences","category-rants","tag-longhand","tag-politics","tag-postcards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3612"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3613,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3612\/revisions\/3613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}