Communication

by John Reblin

Well, I guess we don’t have the season of fall in Wisconsin anymore. We go from a cool wet summer and roll into winter, the snow and cold weather. A little early in the year, but maybe that means spring will be peeking out in February rather than April. Now is the perfect time to figure out what you need to do to your bike, drag out the tools and to start thinking of blocking a day in the spring to take a rider course.

I read an article about a loss occurring in our schools because cursive writing is going out in the garbage. Many states, along with school systems, are deciding if they want to keep teaching this skill called cursive writing. They say because of the use of computers, those that knew how to use this style of communication have a hard time reading it now, years later. They are encouraging the kids who want to learn this method of writing to pick it up on their own. Everything you see written out now is in block lettering. I picked up a book recently by Eric Gorges from Voodoo Choppers and the host of “A Craftsman’s Legacy” on PBS where he wrote about this topic also. He wrote about how personal handwriting is a form of art if you are creative enough and how handwritten letters are saved by people from years ago and how we enjoy reading these letters as a small window into our past.

Imagine kids now, going to the Smithsonian Museum seeing the U.S. Constitution and not being able to read what our founding fathers wrote, or any other important original documents from our history. A pretty sad state of affairs, if you ask me.

As our skills in writing are going downhill, look at our other forms of communication. I am thankful that I had Auntie Abate in the past to look over my submissions to the newsletter. I will admit that I have some help making sure these articles are legible and understandable. Of course, I did get some comments back from her expounding on the different ways to use there, their and they’re and “learn to use the correct one”. I am fortunate to have Betty now to keep me in line.

As I read texts and look at posts on Facebook, I see that everything has become abbreviated. LOL, OMG, SMH, ROFLOL – a blur of letters that become a sentence of an emotion of what you are feeling. Then through it all, the list of emojis and memes texts and emails are becoming colorful letters and pictures.

We have had a few alerts going out the last few weeks urging you to contact your representatives on a change in the law to allow gas stations to sell E15 fuel with a single hose delivery system along with other types of fuel. The new law would require a single pump on the lot to be able to sell E-10 or lower fuel without the fear of getting excessive ethanol into a vehicle, like your motorcycle. Getting a fuel that is higher than E-10 can harm your fuel system, motor and void your warranty.

A lot of effort goes into sharing this information, writing the alert, and checking for spelling and punctuation. In the past, we urged members to spend a few moments, pick up the phone and make the call to their representatives in order to share our thoughts on certain bills using phone trees. Couldn’t call during the day? Letter writing at regional meetings was another way we got the word to our legislators about certain topics. Or members would write that personal letter at home and mail their representatives to sway their mind one way or another on a particular subject. We thought the personal touch was the best way to drive our point home. But technology is now creeping into this philosophy. The system is getting faster with social media and email alerts letting us know what needs to get done and when. Steve Panton spent some time with the MRF to set up and use their alert system, so all you need to do is put in your name and address and click ok to send off an email to your representatives giving them your thoughts. We also get reports from this system that tells us how many of these emails are sent by who and to whom. Pretty cool information to have. When first used, we got some really good feedback from our members that said they thought this was very helpful in sending those emails out. In just a couple of minutes we get these emails into the politician’s inbox and he can see that not everyone is happy about what is being discussed. Hopefully, these emails change those politician’s minds to either support or not support a particular bill.

You now have the option to use whatever method you are comfortable using to contact your legislators. Right now, when the call to action is made to contact your person in office and to share your opinion, we have the easy point and click method or can continue writing that masterpiece of a letter from your heart. The most important thing though, is you do it.

John