Some would call it old school. I call it classic.

I love pencils. They have a depth of emotion that you can’t get with any pen. But the highest standard in industrial pencils are not the 0.5mm mechanical pencils that everyone uses. No, it’s the 2mm leadholder.

I first used these in my drafting overview in Grade 8 shop class. I sucked at drafting, but these felt good.

I just rediscovered them, and have found that there are many people who share my love of these old leadholders, including the folks at leadholder.com.

The most prevalent ones are the Staedtler 780s, and their cheap copies.

The pinnacle of leadholder lust: the Caran D’Ache Fixpencil 2.

Tags: leadholder, Staedtler, Staedtler Mars, Technico 780C, Caran D’Ache, Fixpencil, Fixpencil 2

The Da Vinci exhibit had pages from his notebooks and sketchbooks. Seeing the mind of a genius, the range of interests…the scope of what he accomplished, is astounding.

Go see it. Worth the trip to London.

As a bonus he got a Fisher Space Pen. And of course…

It’s the perfect companion to the “Rite in the Rain” All-Weather Field Book the soldier also gave to me. Nothing like a friendly supply sergeant. The Field Book has paper “created to shed water and enhance the written image.” Hot damn. That book is a good piece of gear, the kind of thing you wonder how you ever lived without.

Based on his description, he got a tan Tactical Field Book.

I need to find a supply seargeant to give a lift to!

Technorati Tags: Fisher+Space+Pen, RiteintheRain, Rite+in+the+Rain, Fisher+bullet+pen, Supply+Sergeant

When I visited Nick Drake’s official site (sadly out of date) I found this lovely image dominating the front page.

A lovely, weathered, black leather notebook.

Nick Drake strikes me as a person that is a lot like I could have been. Painfully shy, suffering from depression, trying to get the ideas out in a world that was not his. When he died in 1974, he was ignored and forgotten.

Now that he is all the rage again, it important to go back and consider his life. Consider what he made in a few short years. The stories he tore out of himself, willing to share this one aspect of his life with us.

The rest, well, they are hidden in the little black book.

Technorati Tags: Nick+Drake, Notebook, journal, John+martyn, Richard+thompson

After more than a year, my first Moleskine notebook is nearly done.

A year!?!

Yes, a year. All that I have been using it for is work notes, jotting down the facts that make my customers and colleagues get up every morning.

Its replacement is in my bag, still wrapped in its cellophane, calling me; tempting me.

Technorati Tags: Moleskine, Notebook, Journal, beginning, end

An interesting note on the word rejuvenation: it means to reclaim your childlike state (ok, I’m playing fast and loose with the definition).

Why now? Why 15 years?

In the Fall of 1991, I bought my first computer. Until then, I had avoided using them like the plague. I had managed to get through my undergraduate years with a pen, paper, and an electronic typewriter with rudimentary spell-checking. I felt that I had achieved something; I felt bonded to the works I created.

I was also an avid and active journal-keeper. In the months after my father died, the writing in my journal was what let me empty my naive mind, letting me vent the chaos that rushed through my head on a constant basis.

Then I went to grad school. And I realized then that I would need to step up in order to generate the massive amount of paper that is required in a graduate history program.

It turns out that I found the technology more enticing than the program. To this day, my failure to complete my Masters degree haunts me. Someday, I will return to that, and complete it. Knot the loose ends of my life together.

Ok, this really is going somewhere; thanks for hanging on this far.

After 15 years of intense immersion in technology, the Web, networking, and all that comes along with that, I have realized that something has been missing from my work, my writing, my life. I have missed the rushing sound of pen on a clean sheet of blank paper. No lines to slow you down; nothing besides the edges of the page to define what you put in the book.

Technology has lost its lustre. The rushing stream of this new laptop, that new technology, another over-inflated boom have left me feeling empty, asking “So what?”. In a hundred years, we can be so far down the path to post-humanism that computers as we know them are a vague and distant antique amusement.

Or we could be living in caves, scratching by a subsistence existence.

In either case, the only thing that will remain, that will linger, that will connect us to the past will be the written word. Not the electronic bits and bytes we are now so addicted to, but the ink on paper, graphite on wood pulp.

The smooth, quiet, seductive transition of ideas from mind to physical reality.

I have been trimming back my blog-reading. Gone are the political blogs. I fear that the gadget blogs are next.

What you have left are those people who celebrate life outside the electronic realm. Those who step back, and look back on the knowledge that preceded us. Who pick up a book that was published before they were born.

A book that left the mind of the author and flowed gracefully from the pen, to the paper, to another mind.

15 years is a long time to try and live without paper. Those 15 years have seen the niceties of a bygone age evaporate, get swallowed by an endless sea, a raging torrent of information.

The cursive hand; the thoughtful response; the flowing of ideas from person to person.

To calm the storm of my mind, I have returned to my first love: ideas of the mind, of the soul. Ideas that were worthy of the preparation of the parchment, the sharpening of the quill, the grinding of the pigment to create the ink.

We have walked away from those ideas, grasping at the brass ring in front of us, to the disdain of the treasure chest we leave behind.

To focus on the ideas, that is to live again.

To heal my mind, I must write my mind. Not type it; not IM it or e-mail it or blog it.

That familiar scratch of pen on paper. The rush that comes from committing something to paper; something that you can share with others.

Something that you can set adrift, watch as it floats, the glow from its candle on the gentle rippled flow of all the ideas that have come before.

I am setting my ideas free again.

Picture: girlzone41

Technorati Tags: ideas, quill, ink, pigment, death, life, resurrection, rebirth, technology, paper, pen, rejuvenation, myths, legends, chaos, healing, mind

The take-away quote from this article?

At the very least, costing $15 a pop, the Moleskine can certainly put the “starving” back into starving artist.

Read it. It’s a reminder that having the tools doesn’t make the owner an artist.

Technorati Tags: Joe+Lavin, Moleskine, Humor, Satire, Starving+Artist, Professor+Barnhardt

China is responsible for a large number of the consumer products that we use today. However, there is an expectation that Moleskines were better than a mass-produced throwaway consumable. I imagine we all had images of a workshop filled with dedicated craftsmen, carefully hand-binding each notebook with absolute focus and attention to detail.

Sorry folks: these books have always been mass-produced. What is irksome even to me is that Modo e Modo (or their new French corporate masters) is no longer making a pretense of selling a quality journal that is unique and worth posessing. An item that sets the owner apart as someone who takes their notes, sketches and writings seriously, as thoughts worth dedicating to a medium that will last beyond them.

It’s all about brand. And the Moleskine notebooks are the icon of the social networking brand growth vision held by so many companies today. The core, dedicated following evangelizes the product, drawing more people to try the product and love it. As with so many things, will popularity denude and degrade the product?

If it is true that the latest production runs of Moleskines are originating in China and are of a lower quality than the community has come to expect, nay, demand, of this fine piece of crafting, then the no longer have the cachet, and are no longer unique, and will die the death of a million blog posts.

I am voting for the Rite in the Rain notebooks to be the next iconoclastic notebook. The unique yellow covers and indestructible paper have made me think twice about this addiction to Moleskines. They are books designed to be noticed (try finding a black notebook in the woods after it’s fallen out of your pack!), and stand out in a coffee shop, especially one filled with darkly dressed artist types.

Moleskine, I am willing to give you a chance. The community wants to hear your answer.

Technorati Tags: Moleskine, Modo+e+Modo, Rite+in+the+Rain, Moleskinerie, RiteintheRain, notebooks, Made+in+China, Viral+Marketing, brand+integrity

In the last week, I have re-discovered the joy of the pencil. There is something liberating in using something so simple.

It’s old-fashioned, but I love it.

Have you sharpened a pencil today?

Technorati Tags: Moleskine, Rite+in+the+Rain, Ritein, theRain, Pencil, Pen, Space+pen, G2, Uniball+Signo, Uniball+Power+Tank, 2HB

I think that this fair lass from my ancestral homeland has a larger issue with Moleskines than I do.

“They are not all here believe me…just sifting through stuff to pack…or not to pack….”

She also has her own Moleskine pool.

Technorati Tags: Moleskine, Flickr, 12+step+program