Typewriter

This is my latest, completed just last night. It's the second in a three-part series on once ubiquitous but now obsolete objects. I saw this old manual typewriter in a shop window in the Village. My office still has an IBM Selectric tucked away, saved for filling out the occasional form. A few months ago my younger son was at the office and puzzled over the machine. So I had to give him a little history lesson about typewriters and how computers quickly replaced them in the 1980s. I remember learning to type on a similar IBM machine during my senior year in high school. Friends couldn't understand why I would take a typing class. But I knew the skill would come in handy in college and beyond. In retrospect, taking that class was one of the smartest school choices I ever made. During my freshman year at VMI, as my classmates and I encountered the first generation of IMB PC's, most of my peers were engaging in the one- and two-fingered "hunt and peck" style of typing as they tried to learn their way around the keyboard at the same time they were learning new software. At least I felt comfortable at the keyboard! (5" x 7", watercolor, pen and ink, on Fabriano paper)