The Junk Drawer

Is cursive handwriting dead?

Ah, I remember fondly learning how to write cursive in grade school. My teacher used a funky metal contraption that held three pieces of chalk in alignment and then she dragged it across the blackboard to prepare for our lessons.

The first step produced this:

The second step was to go back and erase part of the middle line to form dashes. This way, you learned where your lower and upper case cursive writing went in relation to the dotted line.

I barely write in cursive anymore, mostly because most everything I write, save grocery lists, is on a PC.

When I do, something strange happens. I tend to mix printed letters with cursive ones. Why? No idea.

Here’s an example:

I don’t know if schools even teach cursive writing anymore. If you have kids in grade school, do they come home with practice lessons in handwriting? Someone please tell me it’s not dead yet.

So, other than signing your name on paperwork, do you write cursive anymore?

Each September my town hosts the Celtic Classic Highland Games & Festival, a celebration of Celtic culture with music, food and athletic competitions involving big burly men.

In kilts.

Here’s an example of a kilt-clad burly man throwing a 56lb. (25.5kg) block across the grass, as I stood on the sidelines hoping the officials knew when to duck.

One of the longest food lines was at this stand. If you don’t know what it is, I suggest you stay ignorant. It’s not for the weak of stomach.

If you don’t look it up, perhaps you can guess what’s in it by looking at it on a plate. And, no, it’s not impolite to ask a complete stranger if you can take a picture of his haggis. As long as you ask nicely. I didn’t even have to flash my blogger badge.

Looks a little like cat food, no? Meow.

About a thousand men walked the grounds in really gorgeous kilts, some with cute knees to match. It’s easy to get used to seeing men in skirts when they look like this.

Not half-bad!

Or this. Beautiful!

But then there’s this. GI Joe kilt!

And then ….. well. This.

Gotta hand it to this guy. Nobody’s gonna make fun of him for wearing a skirt. Nobody.

Congratulations go to Grant, commenter #7, who was the first to guess that yesterday’s What’s That item was a Scrabble tile rack. To make things more challenging, I turned the rack on its side and shot it on the short end. Grant, you have a keen eye! Your prize is in the mail.

For those of you still in a guessing mood, head over to Bill White’s blog. Bill is a columnist for my local newspaper, The Morning Call.

He found an item in his basement that he can’t identify and wants some help from his readers. He also gave me a nice shoutout for my little What’s That contests and made it sound like I know what I’m doing. Thanks, Bill. You’re aces!

Today’s What’s That Wednesday is probably so easy I’ll regret putting it up. Of course, I’ve claimed before that something was so easy, only to have you guys go all crankypants on me.

Please don’t yell at me if you find it too hard. I’m still smarting from that math post the other day, wherein I posted something too easy.

How to play:

1. Simple. What is this?

2. First person to guess the object wins a Junk Drawer magnet and a mystery prize.

Go!

What’s that?

I don’t know why my family keeps sending me math questions to answer. Despite my protests that I don’t do math, my niece Amy sent me this equation and asked if I knew how to solve it.

x (.23) = x – 10

She actually knows the value of “x” because a site called Wolfram Alpha lets you enter all kinds of equations and it’ll give you the answer. If you want to compute the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of a matrix, head over there and check it out. Then shoot yourself because no one should want to know the eigen-anything of anything.

I suspect my niece hangs out at this site for fun, since she once took a college physics course for its entertainment value. I don’t know how she’s related to me. Me no do school for fun.

Anyway, Wolfram solves for “x,” but doesn’t tell you how to arrive at the answer.

There’s a Junk Drawer magnet and a pat on the head for anyone who can explain the method to find “x.”

Remember to show your work.

Go!

Go ahead, Miss Kathy. Take your pick.

One of my fondest memories from childhood involved Sunday morning visits to a bread bakery. Not really a bakery, but a factory, where bread was baked and packaged up for delivery to grocery stores and other outlets.

My Dad owned a tire service business and one of his customers was Leone’s Bakery in Easton, Pennsylvania. His company serviced their fleet of delivery trucks and my Dad was good friends with the owner.

One of the perks of that friendship was being invited to come in on Sunday and buy fresh bread that came right out of the ovens. A six-year-old Kathy always got to join him.

The things I remember most after I stepped into the factory were the heat, the noise and the aroma of delicious fresh bread that wrapped its arms around you and wouldn’t let go. It was intoxicating.

It could have been freezing cold outside, but the moment you walked into the factory, you were in a flour-dusted Sahara. The bakers wore thin white uniforms, always short-sleeved, no matter what the temperature outside. I pitied them in summer months.

And the noise! The machinery that processed the dough and then sent it through an open-ended oven was massive and LOUD. Clang, click, SHHHH. Clang, click, SHHHH. At the start of the assembly line, little chunks of dough were cut and dropped onto the belt where metal ice cream scoop-like arms would come down upon them, grab them and give a vigorous shake, until they formed little balls of goodness.

In perfect formation, the bread balls would move down the conveyer and into the oven, where they would bake up and fall out on the other side as crispy, delicious Kaiser rolls.

My Dad’s friend would hand me a bag and tell me to go pick out a dozen of the best rolls in the bin. I know it sounds silly, but getting to handpick seconds-old, piping hot rolls out of that bin made me feel special. It was something my friends didn’t get to do because their Dads didn’t have an “in” with a bread guy. Score!

You can probably gather by now that I was happy with the simple things in life, still am. Two more things were about to happen that were such big deals to me in my young life.

After my Dad and I said our good-byes, we got in the car and my Dad would let me turn the ignition to start it. Me! Making this big machine start up all by myself! CH-CH-CH-CH-CH-VROOOOOM!

Good job, Kathy. Good job.

When we got home with our bread loot, some Kaisers and some French bread loaves, my next little excitement was to deliver one of the loaves to our neighbor Mrs. Meyers.

A sweet old lady, she would greet me at the door with a smile. Morning, Mrs. Meyers! I have your bread! She’d take the crispy loaf from my tiny hands and deposit back two shiny quarters for my trouble. My Dad would never let Mrs. Meyers pay for the bread, but he did let her pay me for delivering it.

Thank you, Kathy. You have a good day now, OK?

I will, Mrs. Meyers!

And off I ran to my house to drop the quarters in my piggy bank and then rip into our own loot. Nothing better than still-warm, crispy rolls broken apart and slathered with butter or stuffed with cheeses or meats.

Another Bread Sunday under my belt. I don’t remember when we stopped going together, but those trips with my Dad were some of the best in my kid memory.

Thanks, Dad, for making me feel like a big girl in my six-year-old head.

It would be so much easier directing people to my house if I had one of these. "Pull in at the seven foot bird."

When my husband and I parked outside this house to take pictures, I’m pretty sure no one wondered why.

Polly want a cracker? No? How ’bout some junk mail?

A good friend of mine sent her kids off to public school yesterday. This year her school district implemented a uniform policy that the kids understandably hate.

I can guarantee it’s not as bad as the fashion dictated by my Catholic grade school.

The requirements?

Green and gold plaid jumper no higher than an inch above the knee, preferably below.

A choice from a wide selection of either white or green socks.

Shoes judged to be sensible by a panel of nuns.

Failure to comply resulted in death.

The upside is I never had to worry about what to wear any day of the week. For 18 years. The downside? Plaid is dead to me.

If you have school-aged kids, do they wear uniforms? What do the styles look like nowadays? Do your kids hate it? Tolerate it? Maybe even like it?