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  Frédérique Morrel The French artist Frédérique Morrel was horrified to discover that when her grandmother died, all of her handicrafts were thrown away. Since then, she has been pursuing the idea of bringing her grandmother’s works back to life in order to revive the passion that was inherent in them. In the process, she has developed a completely new artistic concept that “ decycles ” unnoticed and unvalued pop artifacts, thus helping them make the transition to a new life cycle.  ** Thankfully, no animals were harmed in the making of  Frédérique Morrel’s art.  The horns and fur are real; the rest is a mix of taxidermy molds and vintage needlework.  While amusing and perhaps a bit shocking, the trophies that adorn the Seventh Floor are “tame” compared to some of Frédérique’s other work which include life size horses, deer, wild boar and even humans (which they call “ ghosts ”.)  If the artists’ goal is to “re-enchant” our world, then

oTis: oMg

 

no more cursive: YES👆

Had I heard him correctly? Who else can’t read cursive? I asked the class. The answer: about two-thirds. And who can’t write it? Even more. What did they do about signatures? They had invented them by combining vestiges of whatever cursive instruction they may have had with creative squiggles and flourishes. Amused by my astonishment, the students offered reflections about the place—or absence—of handwriting in their lives. Instead of the Civil War past, we found ourselves exploring a different set of historical changes. In my ignorance, I became their pupil as well as a kind of historical artifact, a Rip van Winkle confronting a transformed world.

In 2010, cursive was omitted from the new national Common Core standards for K–12 education. The students in my class, and their peers, were then somewhere in elementary school. Handwriting instruction had already been declining as laptops and tablets and lessons in “keyboarding” assumed an ever more prominent place in the classroom. Most of my students remembered getting no more than a year or so of somewhat desultory cursive training, which was often pushed aside by a growing emphasis on “teaching to the test.” Now in college, they represent the vanguard of a cursiveless world.

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