Mozart and Me.

A week or so ago, we had the opportunity to take 2 of our grand daughters to dinner at kinda fancy Asian restaurant; Chinese, Thai and Japanese all from one kitchen and, frankly surprisingly good. This was something of a reward for them coming right in from school and getting all the homework done without a bit of fuss.

One of them has extremely careful printing skills; letters crisp and clear.  The other does very well for 1st grade except that she holds a pencil in some sort of a death grip with just her pinky making contact with the paper. I'm certain that will change.

It got me to thinking as the second finger of my right hand has an indent just by the last joint and that came from writing music for years with a dip pen and an ink bottle.  For years it was blemished with

ink and the outside of my hand near my little finger was often smudged as well. To get really good at music manuscript we took to writing everything with dip pens for a couple years of grad school, studied calligraphy, and actually took a drawing class so to get even more fluent.

These were the days when a xerox was a rarity and an electric typewriter was an agony of white-out and ribbons.

I bring this up as my fingers have withered a great deal due to my affliction and that little "valley" on my second finger is every noticeable and I wish I could again hold a pen correctly and make notes that any musician could read.  There is little as satisfying as to sit at a table, inkwell to the right, manuscript paper just so and the dip and flourish that goes on for hours.

Mozart I'm not but we used the same tools.