The Written Word
I opted for a creative endeavor. I’m embarking on a unit focused on public speaking and ranting, so I decided to compose a rant that I will perform as an example for my students. This proved useful because I aimed to provide them with some inspiration, and this rant flowed effortlessly as soon as I put pen to paper. Interestingly, I find that I’m less bothered by mistakes when I’m writing things down. I simply scratch them out and keep moving forward. I find this liberating, and it allows me to censor myself less, often resulting in more inspired and impactful work. As you can see, when I made a mistake, I would merely write over the letter or cross out words or sentences. There is less editing involved when I write; it’s more like a knowledge dump. This might stem from my previous experience as a traveling teacher who took students around the world. Each morning, we would all sit and write in our journals for 30 minutes, with a focus on stream-of-consciousness writing. Whatever came out, came out. This practice helped the students stop censoring their thoughts and freely explore ideas.
I rarely, if ever, write by hand now. I used to keep a to-do list on a little notepad in my back pocket, but recently, I’ve shifted to using the notes app on my phone. However, I would like to return to writing by hand more often, but I type much faster, and I can barely read my own handwriting half the time!
Writing by hand feels more freeing and less restrictive, although it does have its drawbacks, especially when my wrist starts to hurt. Mechanized writing is easily saved, duplicated, shared, and edited, making it much more practical. Poetically speaking, I would say that writing by hand is the heart, while mechanized writing is the head. While I’d love to claim a preference for writing by hand, I must admit that using a keyboard is much more efficient and offers numerous benefits. Speaking of efficiency, it was fascinating to read about the early printing press and how labor-intensive it was. The letterpress short film was beautifully shot, but the job itself seemed quite tedious!
A-peeling Potato Prints
I wouldn’t consider myself a crafter by any means. I was drawn to the idea of this activity, and it provided me with a better understanding and much more empathy for the original printing stamp makers. I must say, there were MANY challenges in this process. I learned that some letters are more difficult to carve than others. Please bear in mind that I was always the child at Halloween with a jack-o’-lantern that resembled a melting face. The fine detail required in carving proved to be quite a challenge, with a few letters needing to be redone.
As you will probably hear time and time again, I carved the letters incorrectly as they needed to be backwards to make the stamp work. I even watched the video with the lingering images of the ‘y’ in reverse and I still made the mistake. I had to redo each letter except the ‘o’. This was tedious, and I could have just cut lower and used the bottom of the letter, but I wanted to do it right. In total, it took about two hours to make the stamps, and that was a full two hours, involving numerous viewings of the instructional video provided on the assignment page. Straight lines triumphed over curves when selecting letters. Curves proved to be harder to carve, which is odd as there is only one letter separating them! I chose the word “FJORD” because I’ve always loved that word. It rolls off the tongue, and there is something about its unique spelling that I enjoy. If I were to do this again, I would choose a word like ‘MOUTH’, as each letter, when capitalized, is the same forward and backward.
As I mentioned earlier, I now have a much greater appreciation for the old methods of printing materials. The mechanization of writing is an incredible achievement and has clearly saved mankind billions of man-hours. This activity required patience, something that is lacking in my life. I appreciate the fact that I had to slow down and carefully work through the steps of making the stamps. While this activity was enlightening, I don’t believe I’ll be trading my computer for a series of potatoes anytime soon.