The Time Traveling Lounge

autumnleaf

practical experience, FTW
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I am bizarrely captivated by this illustration of "Everyone Who’s Immigrated to the U.S. Since 1820":
http://metrocosm.com/animated-immigration-map/

A more depressing version is this animated map of slave ships crossing the Atlantic between the 16th and 19th centuries:
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/..._the_history_of_the_atlantic_slave_trade.html

If you pause the animation and click on a dot, you can find out more details about the ship. It's part of a huge project to catalog the trans-Atlantic slave trade:
http://slavevoyages.org/
 

Sunflowerrei

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Last weekend, I and some friends went to visit the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. I went there once as a kid, but it's different as an adult--you realize how tight a tenement apartment is, how dark it is, and how little privacy there must've been. I wrote a blog post about it, but yeah, it was a cool experience.

And last month, I took a trip to Boston and stumbled upon the Gibson House Museum--it's literally a house museum of an upper middle class family living in the Back Bay in a brownstone. It was a really interesting insight into a family in the Edwardian-ish era.
 

MaeZe

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Apparently the lack of an ability to read cursive writing is becoming an issue. Reading historical letters and other documents requires the skill of reading cursive writing.

I'm watching C-SPAN Book TV just now and they are interviewing David Ferriero of the National Archives. One thing I love in history books is when the author used original materials like letters to research their book. One place a lot of those original letters are stored and accessible is the National Archives. He expressed concern about the population losing the ability to read cursive writing which the documents are written in.

I know most of us old folks learned cursive writing. I'm wondering how many younger members of the forum, or their kids, are no longer learning cursive?
 
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Elenitsa

writing as Marina Costa
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Apparently the lack of an ability to read cursive writing is becoming an issue. Reading historical letters and other documents requires the skill of reading cursive writing.

I know most of us old folks learned cursive writing. I'm wondering how many younger members of the forum, or their kids, are no longer learning cursive?

I wonder why it happens like this in USA, because I heard it does. In my country (and I bet in most European countries) we aren't allowed to write type font, only cursive, since first grade, when we learn them. The type font are learnt only to be read, not to be imitated. :)
 

Sunflowerrei

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My ten-year-old niece started out initially not learnig cursive, but her parents decided to teach her. Then I think her school decided to teach it anyway? Either way, she knows how to write in cursive. I'm not sure of my nephews who live in another state, though.