“古中国 大运城”民俗文化旅游年河津展区：华灯耀“龙门”

The sto-ry has, over time, solid-i-fied into one of the columns of Steve Jobs lore: in the ear-ly 1970s, the man who would found Apple left for Reed Col-lege. But before long, not want-i-ng to spend any more of his par-ents’ mon-ey on tuition (and per-haps not tem-pera-men-tal-ly com-pat-i-ble with the struc-ture of high-er edu-ca-tion any-way), he offi-cial-ly dropped out, couch-surfed through friends’ pads, lived on free meals ladled out by Hare Krish-nas, con-tin-ued to audit a vari-ety of class-es, and gen-er-al-ly lived the pro-to-type tech-no-neo-hip-pie lifestyle Sil-i-con Val-ley has con-tin-ued relent-less-ly to refine.

Per-haps the least like-ly of those class-es was one on cal-lig-ra-phy, taught by Trap-pist monk and cal-lig-ra-ph-er Robert Pal-ladi-no. More than thir-ty years lat-er, deliv-er-ing a now-famous Stan-ford com-mence-ment speech, Jobs recalled his time in the cal-lig-ra-phy class: “None of this had even a hope of any prac-ti-cal appli-ca-tion in my life. But 10 years lat-er, when we were design-ing the first Mac-in-tosh com-put-er, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first com-put-er with beau-ti-ful typog-ra-phy.”

And what of the cal-lig-ra-phy teacher who made that pos-si-ble? “Pal-ladi-no, who died in late Feb-ru-ary at 83, joined the Trap-pist order of monks in New Mex-i-co in 1950, accord-ing to a 2003 pro-file in Reed Mag-a-zine,” writes the Wash-ing-ton Post’s Niraj Chok-shi. “Just 17 at the time, his hand-writ-ing attract-ed the atten-tion of the monastery scribe, who worked with him on his art. Five years lat-er, Pal-ladi-no moved to Lafayette, Ore., where local artists brought news of a skilled ama-teur to Lloyd Reynolds, an icon in the field and the cre-ator of Reed’s cal-lig-ra-phy pro-gram.”

Now you, too, can receive instruc-tion from Reynolds, who in 1968 starred in a series on the Ore-gon Edu-ca-tion Tele-vi-sion Ser-vice’s pro-gram Men Who Teach, shoot-ing twen-ty half-hour broad-casts on ital-ic cal-lig-ra-phy and hand-writ-ing. Eight years lat-er — about the time Jobs co-found-ed Apple with Steve Woz-ni-ak — he re-shot the series in col-or, and you can watch that ver-sion almost in its entire-ty with the playlist at the top of the post. (Reed has also made some relat-ed instruc-tion-al mate-ri-als avail-able.) You may feel the temp-ta-tion to turn all of Reynolds’ lessons on the art of writ-ing toward your goal of becom-ing the next Steve Jobs. But try to resist that impulse and appre-ci-ate it for its own nature, which Jobs him-self described as “beau-ti-ful, his-tor-i-cal, artis-ti-cal-ly sub-tle in a way that sci-ence can’t cap-ture.”

We’ll add these vin-tage lessons to our col-lec-tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours-es from Top Uni-ver-si-ties.

Relat-ed Con-tent:

Steve Jobs on Life: “Stay Hun-gry, Stay Fool-ish”

Steve Jobs Nar-rates the First “Think Dif-fer-ent” Ad (Nev-er Aired)

Steve Jobs Mus-es on What’s Wrong with Amer-i-can Edu-ca-tion, 1995

The Art of Hand-writ-ing as Prac-ticed by Famous Artists: Geor-gia O’Keeffe, Jack-son Pol-lock, Mar-cel Duchamp, Willem de Koon-ing & More

Font Based on Sig-mund Freud’s Hand-writ-ing Com-ing Cour-tesy of Suc-cess-ful Kick-starter Cam-paign

One of World’s Old-est Books Print-ed in Mul-ti-Col-or Now Opened & Dig-i-tized for the First Time

Dis-cov-er What Shakespeare’s Hand-writ-ing Looked Like, and How It Solved a Mys-tery of Author-ship

Based in Seoul, Col-in Mar-shall writes and broad-casts on cities, lan-guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange-les, A Los Ange-les Primer, the video series The City in Cin-e-ma, the crowd-fund-ed jour-nal-ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange-les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol-low him on Twit-ter at @colinmarshall or on Face-book.