1. Exquisite Tweets from @hormiga, @upbeatprof, @tenorclef530, @doughshiyo, @JMatt_62, @freechurrosyeah, @boyleslab

    PreoccupationsCollected by Preoccupations

    hormiga

    Terry McGlynn

    I opened up this book and my whole being could only shout WHAT THE FUCK?!

    Reply Retweet Like

    hormiga

    Terry McGlynn

  2. hormiga

    Terry McGlynn

  3. My mom was offered jobs over other applicants solely on the basis of her shorthand ability.

    Reply Retweet Like

    tenorclef530

    Caroline Coward

  4. This just blows my mind. I didn’t realize it was a whole other language, and a super hard weird impossible one. These folks should have been the ones getting paid the big bucks if this is what they had to do, my gosh.

    Reply Retweet Like

    hormiga

    Terry McGlynn

  5. As a kid I was obsessed with the lady in The Westing Game who kept notes in Polish shorthand so no one could read them.

    Reply Retweet Like

    doughshiyo

    どうしよう

  6. Now I understand why. Gosh. Thank you for sharing.

    Reply Retweet Like

    hormiga

    Terry McGlynn

  7. I’ll interpret dragon - d=slanted line to the right, r= bottom open curve, a= circle, g= hump shape, n= short line. All written in order of the sounds you hear not the names of the letters.

    Reply Retweet Like

  8. Thanks! (While it’s phonetic, it’s so terse that it takes time and lots of effort to learn how to do it?)

    Reply Retweet Like

    hormiga

    Terry McGlynn

  9. My take-home is that shorthand is like so many talents that were highly gendered and required a ton of effort but weren’t valued as much as they should have been, like weaving, baking, mathematical computing, etc. Our mothers and grandmothers deserved so much more.

    Reply Retweet Like

    hormiga

    Terry McGlynn

    My mom was trained by a brokerage to do commodities training on Wall Street and did this work on the down low. But she wasn’t allowed to get her trading license because gender. Then she finally got married at the advanced age of 30, so the firm fired her as a matter of policy.

    Reply Retweet Like

    hormiga

    Terry McGlynn

    If anything has made me a feminist (other than just living in this earth and seeing what happens every day), it’s this.

    Reply Retweet Like

    hormiga

    Terry McGlynn

  10. My Mom was (and may still be) proficient at it. I spent afternoons in her office after school and watched her write it so much that I could write basic words in shorthand. I even practiced it for a bit and I still have her shorthand dictionary on my bookshelf. It's a cool skill.

    Reply Retweet Like

    boyleslab

    Justin Boyles

    I had to ask if she still could do it, and apparently she still uses it occasionally at work. This is various versions of "my son is awesome, wonderful, great, superior". She also says no one is supposed to read her shorthand except her, so she'll likely be mad I posted this.

    Reply Retweet Like

    boyleslab

    Justin Boyles