Beverly Cleary is a big deal around here. She wrote children’s books about a little girl named Ramona Quimby, and she spent a goodly chunk of her own childhood within about a mile of our house. There’s a whole Beverly Cleary walking tour of the neighborhood featuring Klickitat Street, where Ramona Quimby fictionally lived, and various locales where fictional puddle-stomping happened, and so on. There’s a Quimby Street also but it’s across the river and you can’t make people walk that far. The Ramona Quimby books are beloved and even I feel sort of cozy and proprietary about the whole connection, even though I’ve never read any of her books.
Beverly Cleary was a sweet-faced woman who only recently got around to dying about three weeks before her 105th birthday, unfairly reported as 104. Most people assumed she’d been gone a long time already and so interest in her literary sainthood was rekindled. Hence it was a big deal when a time capsule was dug up at Roseway Heights Middle School after 100 years, and word got around that the loopy “Beverly” signature on the third-grade roster was probably Cleary’s. Her son thinks so. The school is pretty excited about it. After all, it’s a relic. It’s not Beverly’s childhood puddle-stomping boots, but it’s still a relic. A nicer one than some of the ick the Catholics lug around.
The signature includes curly E’s. Beverly said she was burdened by curly E’s in her cursive her whole life. I can relate. One of the teachers in my elementary school wrote with curly E’s—like the capital E but smaller—and I was smitten. I took my perfectly serviceable Palmer Method handwriting and jammed complicated E’s in it, and then other capital letters, none of which played nicely with the other letters, until eventually no one could read my handwriting, including myself. I always blamed that teacher, because it beats taking personal responsibility. But it turns out that teacher probably picked up her curly E’s from learning a different cursive from the Palmer method: the Wesco method. That’s what Beverly Cleary learned, and she said she had as much trouble with it as I do.
Wesco cursive was taught in Portland Public Schools for decades. John Wesco was a remarkable calligrapher himself and didn’t generally throw in the weird E in his own work. Mr. Wesco was, in fact, elected, in 1914, the Supervisor of Penmanship in Portland Public Schools. I am charmed that there once was a supervisor of penmanship. I don’t know how much supervising he needed to do on a day-to-day basis but he was also a forensic handwriting expert and a restorer of fine violins. Good handwriting really sets you apart as a classy individual. Learning it is associated with strong neural connections featuring meaty, muscular neurons, increased retention of material without excess bloating, and self-discipline, and I believe it must be true, because I don’t have any of those things.
Evidently the fine motor skills involved in carefully shaping each letter sear the language into your brain in a way one-tap keyboarding does not. So I’m glad I learned cursive when my brain was young and spongy. Them letters is damn near cauterized in there now but I don’t have to ink them anymore. I get to fling them around with a word processor like a boss.
Apparently there is a strenuously Christian Republican Congressman in the Indiana House of Representatives named Timothy Wesco and I do not know if he is related to the late Supervisor of Penmanship, but he did sponsor a bill requiring the teaching of cursive in Indiana schools, and also one outlawing abortions in all circumstances including rape. His neural pathways are probably rock-hard. No word yet on whether he’ll let Ramona Quimby stay in the school library.
Although cursive was drilled into me, having gone to a Catholic elementary school, I don’t use it anymore. I find it quicker — and more legible to print. The only thing that I use cursive for is if I have to sign something. My signature has gotten ever more illegible.
If you’d stuck with it, it would’ve been easier and more legible. I’m guessing you strayed, like I did, and lost the whole point and grace of cursive.
I can remember the first Beverly Cleary book read to me from the library. It was about Henry Huggins and the donut machine. Later we read about Beezus and Ribsy and Ramona the pest. I knew about Klickitat Street long before I moved to Portland.
Later yet, I made jewelry (of a sort) for Ms. Cleary herself. Pendants of Ramona on a swing and the mouse on a motorcycle in silver. Thanks for the stroll down memory lane.
The making of a small silver sculpture of a mouse on a motorcycle has pretzeled my brain in a way it might not recover from. Diagram THAT, English majors!
I remember Homer Price (by Robert McCloskey) and the donut machine — and doughnuts still rolling down the little chute, just as regular as a clock can tick — but I didn’t know Henry Huggins had one too!
I haven’t read either one, but now I want a donut machine.
I highly recommend Ramona Quimby, Age 8 as read by Stockard Channing. My daughter, age 34, was very much a Ramona growing up. Such sweet stories, and Ms. Cleary had a wonderful memory of what childhood was like.
Is Stockard Channing still around? I like her.
Louis Darling illustrated all or most of Ms. Cleary’s books. Some idiot decided those illustrations needed to be updated for recent editions.
I read all of her books as a child. We had a wonderful old children’s library that was presided over by an elderly librarian who took a special interest in me and ordered books on dinosaurs and evolution. Considering that most of the books in the Bishop Memorial Library were original purchases when the library was endowed in the 1920s, those new books were really special.
I expect that the idiot’s decision involved money. It usually does. SO many great children’s books have been ruined that way…
I’m going to have to try and find the Ramona Quimby books for my baby grand daughters.
I don’t know what sort of cursive we learned in Australia, but I did once have lovely handwriting which has now become a near illegible scrawl, so I print instead which isn’t much better these days.
The elegance and efficiency of cursive are not things that an eight-year-old is likely to appreciate.
Thanks for the interesting background on Beverly Cleary. I remember the Ramona books from when my daughter was growing up. I learned cursive writing and still use it for my daily journal and for sticky notes most of the time. It’s faster than printing–although I admit that I print the capital letters and drop most of the loopy stuff. My wife learned the MacLean method in Canada, similar to Palmer, but had to use an ink pen with a nib. She was a primary teacher too, so she still writes like the sample lines in a penmanship book! But, why do doctors all write illegibly? Do they take a course on that? And they write things that matter. Oh, and I agree with you Murr that if you make it to within 3 weeks of 105 years old, they should round up and give you credit for it!
Will, Doctors write so illegibly because they are always in a hurry. So do nurses. I speak from experience (I was a nurse when we had to write notes by hand, not computer) and my handwriting has not improved since I retired.
I’ve already rounded myself up to 100.
Murr, you really should read some Cleary. Any of the Henry Huggins series. And look at Louis and Lois Darling’s art. My God! the best illustration ever done IMHO. I was Lois’ executrix and as a die hard Cleary and Darling fan I was made for the job of settling her considerable estate (she judged). Cleary was a genius. I had read all her books by fourth grade and went back for thirds and fourths. The Darlings were geniuses, too, and I was privileged to know Lois pretty well. Just wish I could have known Louis, he of the springy lines and wonderfully animated human art. Lois did all the animals. Love, love, love them.
Maybe I’ll go fetch some from the liberry. I’ve been disappointed a few times too often by current bestselling novels. I need a joy break!
Oh Julie, the more we learn ’bout you, the more I smile- bluebirds and Ramona and Darlings, oh my!
OK. Who was the loopy one? Mrs. Tracy, Brown, Cooper, Belt, or Parks?
My youngest daughter had a friend named Ramona in the 3rd grade when we lived in Seattle. Her parents owned a tavern/club/music venue in the Belltown area. She came over several times for a ‘sleepover’, and each time would come wake me at 2am to be taken home. Every time.
This is just a regression I know, but both my girls loved the Ramona books, and Ms Cleary was a excellent author.