You may have a superpower

It seems hard to believe, but cursive writing has, in effect, become a foreign language in the United States. Because cursive writing is no longer taught in most schools, many younger people can no longer read it, or even use it to sign their own names. Letters and diaries written by their grandparents are foreign to them, and are probably just thrown away. They might as well be written in Mandarin.

And thus the ability to read cursive is becoming a rare skill. A recent New York Post article reports that the National Archives has more than 5,000 volunteers transcribing more than 300 million digitized objects so that future historians, who probably won't be able to read cursive writing either, can study them. And they are looking for more volunteers.

Yet most of those who learned cursive no longer use it. Except for signing my name, I have not used it for years. Few people write letters today, and if they do, they may write them on a computer, as I do. Appointment calendars and shopping lists are usually kept on phones, not paper. Thus the number of those skilled in reading cursive shrinks by the day.

Unfortunately the National Archives seeks volunteers, not paid workers, but with 300 million documents covering more than two centuries, and with the number of people who can read cursive shrinking, this skill could soon become valuable enough for a person to make a good living — if that person is still young enough to want a job. Already the National Archives calls this ability a "superpower." That should be worth something.

No surrender

Leif Enger's I Cheerfully Refuse (2024) is a stranger-comes to-town-story that turns suddenly into a hero-takes-a-journey story. It is a happy, contented love story that turns suddenly into a thriller. Those who open the novel expecting another Peace Like a River, Enger's previous best-seller, will find something very different.

Rainy and his wife Lark live a peaceful life on the shores of Lake Superior during an unpeaceful time. Civilization crumbles around them, but they manage, he as a part-time musician, she as a part-time book seller. They take in a young boarder, Kellan, who partly pays with a book, also called I Cheerfully Refuse, that Lark had been looking for.

Soon a mysterious older man, Werryck,  shows up in the community, Kellan disappears and Rainy finds Lark brutally murdered. Believing he might see Lark again, or her spirit, on an island on the other side of the lake, Rainy sails off in his small sailboat, pursued by Werryck in a large ship. Kellan, it turns out, is an escapee from that ship.

Bodies floating in Lake Superior, as well as the sudden popularity of a suicide drug called Willow, give testimony to society's decay, as does Rainy's strange difficulties with people he meets on his journey. Yet along the way he rescues Sol, a nine-year-old girl who has never been to school, and in the end she rescues him from a life of despondency and defeat.

Enger gives us a surprising story about how life can still offer something worthwhile if we cheerfully refuse to surrender.