remember that? whatever happened to that anyway? many of us can't even read our own handwriting anymore. are we signing off on penmanship? tracy smith will be looking into that in our sunday morning cover story. ♪ i'm going to sit right down and write myself a letter ♪ >> reporter: how is your handwriting? chances are it's not as good as theirs. does our legibility get better as we get older? >> no. what happens is you tend to peak around fourth grade. >> reporter: a primer on penmanship and whether it matters anymore later on sunday morning. >> osgood: if a just-released blues album happens to be rockin' the house, the man you have to thank is dr. house or rather hugh laurie who plays dr. house in the popular tv series. he's a man of many talents and this morning our martha teichner will be paying him a house call. >> reporter: how did hugh laurie, british comedian, turn into a cranky american tv doctor? >> excellent diagnosis. >> the opportunity to reinvent myself the way i have, i mean, this is an incredible thing. it's only really given to career criminals who actually go to rio and have plastic surgery. >> reporter: instead he went to new orleans to sing the blues ♪ i went down... > this sunday morning hugh laurie's latest transformation. >> osgood: in a world of rapid change susan lucci has been a reliable constant. the tv soap opera actress has survived countless crises on the screen while saving ultimate vindication at the emmys. now mo rocca tells us this story star of the soaps is facing her biggest challenge yet. >> by the way, chet is coming over later. >> reporter: susan lucci reported for work on january 5, 1970, and never left. >> i want to be special and i'm going to be. >> reporter: she's been playing the indomitable erica kane for more than 41 years. >> i have to tell you like you're 23. i was also picturing myself having a really long run. >> reporter: susan lucci in the role of a lifetime. >> later on sunday morning. >> osgood: some of the most important team players in all of baseball never actually take the field. bill geist this morning will have a few cases in point. >> reporter: we always hear about professional baseball players making millions of dollars and living in mansions. but not here. not in the minor leagues. hudson valley renegades of wap falls, new york, like all minor leaguers are paid peanuts and live with local families. sons of summer later on sunday morning. >> osgood: norah o'donnell asks indiana governor mitch daniels why he decided not to run for president. david edelstein reviews the new brad pit film money ball. steve hartman shows us photos that win second chances for homeless dogs and more. first the headlines for this sunday morning the 18th of september, 2011. the white house official said president obama's proposal for deficit reduction which he announces tomorrow will include a new base tax rate for wealthy americans. the so-called buffet rule is aimd at ensuring that millionaires pay at least the same percentage as middle income tax payors. house speaker john boehner says he will oppose any tax increases to reduce the deficit. twos those two americans convicted of spying remain in an iranian jail this morning. lawyers for josh fatal and shane bauer said their million dollar bail needs to be approved by two judges and one is on vacation until tuesday. tomorrow president ahmadinejad travels to new york to speak at the u.n. general assembly. the death toll has risen to nine including the pilot in friday's crash of a vintage plane of an air race in reno. the world war ii era p-51 mustang crashed into a crowd of spectators on the tarmac. more than 50 people were taken to hospitals there are calls to end the annual nevada event which over the years has taken the lives of more than 20 pilots. at another air show, this one in west virginia, the vintage t-28 aircraft crashed yesterday killing the pilot. no reports of injuries among the spectators there. kara kennedy, the eldest daughter of the late ted kennedy of massachusetts died yesterday in washington. she was 51. kara kennedy died while at a washington area health club. she had been treated for lung cancer eight years ago. and eleanor mondale, daughter of the former vice president malter mondale, died yesterday in minnesota. she was minneapolis broadcaster who had been treated for brain cancer. she too was 51. and former senator charles percy of illinois has died at age 91. percy of... percy served in the senate. his daughter sharon is married to senator jay rockefeller of west virginia. the weather is something for everyone today. cool and crisp in the east. stormy over the plains and warm out west. this week nearly everyone can expect rain. we'll all mark the summer's official end on friday. next,. >> that is amazing. >> osgood: handwriting. >> can you erase it and try again. >> osgood: is handwriting being written off? later, "all my,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, >> osgood: as a new school year gets underway here's a question: do all the new fangled electronic devices at our finger tips mean we're signing off on the art of penmanship? the school kids of the future still practice writing letters by hand. questions that prompted our cover story reported now by tracy smith. >> so, boys and girls, i'm going to show you how you make these letters. watch how i do this. down, up and over. see that? ♪ i'm going to sit right down and write myself a letter ♪ >> reporter: if it's been a while since you felt the excitement. >> that is amazing. >> reporter: or the pain. >> can you erase it and try again. >> reporter: of putting pen to paper. >> what did you write? >> reporter: spend a few moments with this teacher's kindergarten class in upper arlington, ohio. >> you can see so much meaning and passion in their penmanship. you know, even if it's, you know, all in capitals and a mix. it makes you smile. >> reporter: handwriting is still an essential skill for kids, but in the world beyond school, the one filled with computers and cell phones and you name it, we're losing our grip on pen machineship. it's not that we're not writing. every day we send 294 billion emails. but for adulls the tactile personal art of handwriting-- you're looking at mine-- is pretty much reduced to shopping lists and credit card signatures. >> well, we don't use it as much. but that's an old story. we haven't used handwriting the way we used to use handwriting for well over 100 years. >> reporter:. this is from the 1880s. >> reporter: tamara thornton is a history professor at the state university of new york at buffalo and the author of a history of handwriting in america. what was handwriting of the pilgrims like? >> well, first you have to recognize that not everybody could write. and then even more strangely there were people who could read but not write. the two skills were taught separately and understood to have separate purposes. >> reporter: in the 1700 and 1800s if your handwriting was good enough you could actually make it a career. >> well, there were professional penmen, professional writing masters who would produce penmanship tour de forces as a kind of calling card. this is what i can do. >> reporter: flat rogers spencer was the first person penman to create a national model for handwriting, it was a fancy one. >> spencerian was very fussy and time consuming. you had to get the shading just right. it was slow. >> reporter: we know spencerian today as the script used in the coca-cola logo, but that's about all. ♪ because the arrival of the typewriter in the late 19th century presented enormous competition for handwriting. a new man took up the challenge, a.n.palmer. >> he really was the penmanship emperor of the 20th century. >> reporter: palmer said speed it up. >> what palmer was thinking and to some extent saying is we have to have a modern 20th century script for modern 20th century business conditions. fast. efficient. that way we can keep up with the typewriter. it's big on drill work. >> reporter: regimen tags that palmer believed would do more than just create good handwriting. it could make model citizens. >> penmanship could reform delinquents, it could assimilate immigrants. penmanship could do just about everything except cure acne. >> reporter: moreover handwriting was seen not just as a product of good habits but of your character itself. and that gave rise to handwriting analysis, graphology. >> it was all the rage particularly in the early 1900s. >> reporter: there were even graphology columns in magazines to which readers could submit their handwriting. >> what handwriting reveals. >> reporter: and find out their true self. >> what i see in your handwriting, i see a great deal of conscientious and sincerity. i can see considerable self-satisfaction. get this. before the 1920s students weren't taught to write in print. they only learned curveive. so abraham lincoln never printed. >> he would not have printed. >> reporter: and learning script took a lot of time. >> and we recommended back then and most teachers did about 30 to 45 minutes. >> reporter: catherine wright is the one of the largest handwriting instruction companies. >> let's go ahead and practice those. we're going to do it the same way. >> reporter: she said they've had to adapt to all the subjects crammed into a student's schedule. >> we've simplified it to about 15 minutes of direct instruction. >> reporter: today children start with print and then move on to curseive. >> the script we teach kids today is simple and efficient. americans are all about efficiency. >> reporter: steve graham is a literacy expert at vanderbilt university. graham says just as computer are a technology, so are pencils and paper. are pen and pencils still the most practical technology we have? >> they're clearly the simplest. they're the cheapest. in many ways the most portable. are they the most effective? that's a different question. if you take a look at having kids write on word processors over a period of time versus writing by hand, kids who write on word processor over time have better quality writing. >> reporter: so if kids just by-passed handwriting altogether and started on keyboards, would they suffer? >> probably not. >> reporter: others disagree with graham citing studies that show for kids handwriting is more effective than typing for stimulating memory and language skills. with computers still scarce in some classrooms and keyboards a poor fit for kids' hands, all agree penmanship counts. >> it does matter. people form judgments about the credibility of your ideas baseded upon your handwriting. >> reporter: so a kid with good handwriting could get better grades? >> yes, and a kid with poor handwriting gets lower grades on writing assignments. >> reporter: does our legibility get better as we get older? >> no. what happens is you tend to peak around fourth grade. >> reporter: fourth grade? >> so most handwriting instruction stops at about fourth grade. >> reporter: some of us are reminded of that fourth grade peak the hard way. >> penmanship was part of the problem in the handwritten note from gordon brown. >> reporter: when former british prime minister gordon brown wrote a letter of condolence to the mother of a soldier killed in afghanistan, his sloppy hand and spelling errors so incensed her she released the letter to the press causing a penmanship scandal. and most of us don't give our own handwriting glowing reviews. a sunday morning poll finds that while eight out of ten of us write at least some of the time, only 18% call their handwriting excellent. >> your handwriting is good enough. it doesn't have to be something from a medieval monastery. >> reporter: noted chrig grafer margaret shepherd has written two books to pen handwritten notes. >> the worst handwriting is still way ahead of the best, trickyiest, cuteest little email. >> reporter: after all, so much of our national history has been written by hand, and our personal history too. >> whenever i come across a letter of my mother's, it's like i hear her voice. she's in the room with me. and for communications between you and someone you really value, a handwritten letter is just awesome. ♪ i'm going to sit right down and write myself a letter ♪ >> reporter: why does handwriting even matter? >> because you can't just have a computer everywhere you go. if it's out of batteries or it crashes, you can still pick up a pencil and paper. >> reporter: even these fourth graders still struggling with how to form those curse i have been capitals seem to get that handwriting has a place at least somewhere. >> sometime if you're stranded on an island or something, then you'll know how to write. ♪ i'm going to sit right down and write myself a letter ♪ > on a desert island, a job application or for the history books, it just may be too soon to sign off on penmanship. >> there she blows. >> osgood: just ahead, old faithful. you can count on it. without hot sauce.'t eat egs she has kind of funny looking toes. she's always touching my hair. and she does this dancing finger thing. 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[ kristy ] she's definitely not like other moms. yeah, my mom is pretty weird. ♪ % yeah, my mom is pretty weird. naturals from delicious, real ingredients with no artificial flavors or preservatives. naturals from purina cat chow. share a better life. with over 30 years of medicare experience, unitedhealthcare medicare solutions can help. just give us a call. the annual enrollment period to switch your medicare coverage is earlier this year, from october 15th to december 7th, so now is a great time to review your situation. call now or visit us online to get this free answer guide from unitedhealthcare medicare solutions. call right now. >> osgood: and now a page from our sunday morning almanac. september 18, 1870, 141 years ago today. the perfect day for blowing off steam. for that was the day an expedition led by henry d.washburn encountered a remarkable geyser in the yellowstone region of wyoming. it was a perfect geyser, remembered another traveler. it spouted at regular intervals nine times during our stay. we gave it the name of old faithful. within two years yellowstone became america's first national park. and old faithful quickly became america's best known geyser. >> there she blows. >> osgood: with eruptions averaging 130 feet in height, hold faithful isn't the biggest geyser in yellowstone, only the most predictable. >> there it is. >> reporter: depending on the length of each eruption, the time of the next can be forecast nearly to the minute. the longer the eruption, the longer the wait for the next one. tourists come to yellowstone from all over the world to patiently wait. cameras at the ready, trying perhaps to match the photographs the great ansel adams took of old faithful some 70 years ago. >> oh, that's pretty good. >> osgood: back in 2009 president obama and his family paid a visit joining a long line of pilgrims to express their awe over the years. >> i had a cabin less than 300 yards from old faithful. in full view. wow! what a deal. you know what i mean? >> osgood: seismic activity is gradually lengthening the wait between old faithful'sous bursts for as long as two hours but the crowds still seem to think it's time well spent. ahead, the doctor is in. dr. house, that is. >> what? >> this portion of sunday morning is sponsored by toyota. me. i don't know if i could say the same for my parents. it's the worst thing that's ever happened to them. i'm just pretty much killing it out here. they say they're happy. i mean, what do you think they do every day without me there? ♪ are they eating? they must really miss me. i'm their only child, except for my sister. 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(announcement over the inter-come) >> i'll be there in a second. >> reporter: when an opportunity to be funny arises, hugh laurie can't help himself. >> what i always say is, if