#cursive handwriting

For starters, it's a really good way of developing fine motor control, dexterity.

But also, as a historian, I think it's less about being able to write in cursive, and more about being able to read cursive writing.

As much as we like to think that "everything is digitised these days, everything's online!" there are qualifications to that.

We'll gloss over the fact that not everything is online. There are millions of texts with a wealth of information that have not yet - and may never be - digitised, but that's another topic entirely.

A vast number of the things that are digitised and online are scans or photos of documents written in cursive handwriting. Very few institutions have the resources to transcribe all of those documents, to type them up. Losing the ability to read cursive means losing access to a massive amount of documents produced more than 50-odd years ago. We're losing primary sources, not because they aren't there, but because they can't be read anymore.

Your grandma's recipe book. The letters your great-grandpa sent home from the war. The census for your city in 1876.

18.04.25

Daily carries.

Need to keep reminding myself of the importance of ritual in my life. When I forget it, when I forget myself, I find myself feeling so adrift. Like I’ve lost something. Ritual grounds me in a way few things do. Writing as a ritual. Fragrance as a ritual. Water breaks as a ritual. Lip balm because I perpetually forget that last one.