Word: pens
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...vehicles only via a narrow forest road and surrounded by double chain-link fences 12 ft. high that send out an alarm at the slightest touch. With its narrow-windowed dormitories, the village bears an unfortunate resemblance to a prison; it will, indeed, become a minimum-security federal pen after the Games...
...themselves. To the long list that includes Samuel Pepys, James Boswell and Virginia Woolf must now be added the name of Cecil Beaton, who died last month at 76. For half a century he roamed the halls of fashion and fame with a folding Kodak and an acidulous pen...
...Rabbi Seymour Rosen was delighted to go to the gambling casino where Youngman was appearing to correct the oversight, and Tenor Jan Peerce was cantor. "Today," cracked Youngman, after reading his prescribed prayers in phonetic Hebrew, "I am a boy." Years ago, he insisted, "you got a fountain pen when you were bar mitzvahed. Now you get a computer." But the punch lines were watered with tears when the new kid in town tried to be serious before 300 friends. "Today," he concluded tearfully, "I am the proudest Jew in the world...
What dismays pen and pencil makers today is that woeful writing seems to be spreading. Particularly upsetting is the poor example being set by the White House. Among recent Presidents, Richard Nixon's script was barely legible, while John Kennedy's was so erratic that he seldom signed his own name the same way twice. Though Jimmy Carter's hand is clear, it seems almost juvenile when compared with the elegant, flowing scripts of early Chief Executives like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson...
Beyond the fact that much less communication is handwritten now than it was in the days of the quill pen, experts point to several causes of scriptural sloppiness. Some blame a spreading weakness of will. Says Sam Toombs, a Houston psychologist: "Bad handwriting is a way of saying something and taking it back at the same time. People scrawl signatures on material for which they don't want to be held responsible." Others cite the hurried nature of modern society, in which speed is given a higher priority than clarity. Pen makers decry poor instruction: while courses in calligraphy...