Penmanship

What Learning Cursive Does for Your Brain

Yet scientists are discovering that learning cursive is an important tool for cognitive development, particularly in training the brain to learn “functional specialization,” that is capacity for optimal efficiency. In the case of learning cursive writing, the brain develops functional specialization that integrates both sensation, movement control, and thinking. Brain imaging studies reveal that multiple areas of brain become co-activated during learning of cursive writing of pseudo-letters, as opposed to typing or just visual practice.

Cursive Benefits Go Beyond Writing

Putting pen to paper stimulates the brain like nothing else, even in this age of e-mails, texts and tweets. In fact, learning to write in cursive is shown to improve brain development in the areas of thinking, language and working memory. Cursive handwriting stimulates brain synapses and synchronicity between the left and right hemispheres, something absent from printing and typing.
The College Board found that students who wrote in cursive for the essay portion of the SAT scored slightly higher than those who printed.

Links
Lessons in Calligraphy and Penmanship
A Penmanship Forum
4 benefits of writing by hand
More Penmanship Links

Bed

In bed we laugh, in bed we cry;
And born in bed, in bed we die;
The near approach a bed may show
Of human bliss to human woe.
Isaac de Benserade

A poem by William Morris

For the Bed at Kelmscott
by William Morris

The wind's on the wold
And the night is a-cold,
And Thames runs chill
Twixt mead and hill,
But kind and dear
Is the old house here,
And my heart is warm
Midst winter's harm.
Rest then and rest,
And think of the best
Twixt summer and spring
When all birds sing
In the town of the tree,
As ye lie in me
And scarce dare move
Lest earth and its love
Should fade away
Ere the full of the day.

I am old and have seen
Many things that have been,
Both grief and peace,
And wane and increase.
No tale I tell
Of ill or well,
But this I say,
Night treadeth on day,
And for worst and best
Right good is rest.

Pugin: God's Own Architect

Also see: Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin

Thomas Kinkade

I will admit I have mixed feeling about quality of Thomas Kinkade's art, much of work is very pretty and sweet, and I have grown to have an appreciation for it. I have noticed so-called "Artists" and "Liberals" heap endless hate upon Thomas Kinkade even on the day of his passing. The truth is the attacks on Thomas Kinkade have nothing to do the technical quality or style of his work. It is the subject matter and tone that they hate so much. It is his nostalgia and love for the home, church, nature, and the Victorian architecture that they hate so much. Sentimentality and sweetness seems to be unforgivable to the modernest.

Goodbye To The “Painter Of Light”, Thomas Kinkaide

Cottages of Love - A Tribute to Thomas Kinkade

In Memory of Thomas Kinkade: Beloved Christian Painter

Evening at Home

"Evening at Home" by Sir Edward John Poynter (1836-1919)

Esther by Sir John Everett Millais

Esther by Sir John Everett Millais

The Order of Release 1746

"The Order of Release, 1746" by Sir John Everett Millais 1852

Scottish soldier, imprisoned by after the Battle of Culloden in 1746 is freed and reunited with his family.

Marvels Of Mechanical Music, Introduction

Marvels Of Mechanical Music, Introduction

The Ornithologist by Sir John Everett Millais

The Ornithologist by Sir John Everett Millais 1885

"Quilting on a frame"

"Quilting on a frame"

Reed Organs

I do like reed organs, I remember hearing a reed organ played on Sunday at an old church I sometimes attended. They were very common in homes in the 1800's.

The Reed Organ Home Page