Here’s an interesting story where a notebook makes a cameo. Sgt. Richard G. “Dick” Schimmel was at Fort Shafter, near Pearl Harbor, when the attack happened. He worked as a switchboard operator, alternating shifts with Private Joseph McDonald. McDonald was on duty when a warning of the attack was radioed in– he wrote down a … Continue reading Pearl Harbor Notebook
Here’s some appropriate notebooks for celebrating Presidents Day! These are from Redbubble: This one is available from Cafe Press: For something a little more elegant, you can get these at Amazon (click image for details):
Here’s an exhibit I plan on checking out in the near future: “The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives,” at the Morgan Library in New York. The exhibit includes these lovely items: A diary jointly kept by Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne: John Ruskin’s chess diary: You can see more images in … Continue reading Morgan Library Exhibit: “The Diary”
Here’s someone with a realistic take on the Moleskine brand: “This is a company that took a famous novelist/travel writer’s (Bruce Chatwin) description of his favorite non-living travel companion (the brandless, black-covered, elastic-banded, ribbon-bookmarked notebook) and from it built a brand that is extraordinary in its implied history and prestige. …the company only came into … Continue reading Moleskine Monday: “Legit Quality and Design, Faux History”
This is interesting: In reviewing volumes of diaries, mostly written by women, [a researcher] found many terse records about what was happening in daily life in the same style demanded by Twitter’s 140-character limit. Many diary entries ranged, for example, from what was for dinner to reports of deaths, births, marriages and travel, such as … Continue reading 18th Century Diaries Written Like Twitter
Welcome to our 9th Carnival of Pen, Pencil, and Paper, collecting the past month’s highlights from blogs about pens, notebooks, office supplies and art supplies. The iPad may be getting all the hype this week, but we’re here to celebrate pads made of paper, ink that is not e-ink, and pages that turn in actual … Continue reading Carnival of Pen, Pencil and Paper, 9th Edition
This week’s notebook addict blogs about history at Patriots and Peoples. He says: A bit more than twenty years ago I started carrying a spiral notebook with me almost constantly. I usually wrote in it while reading—taking notes, jotting titles and authors of other texts that I planned to examine, proposing theses, writing initial drafts … Continue reading Notebook Addict of the Week: Patriots and Peoples
Welcome to the first edition of the Carnival of Pen, Pencil and Paper! Some carnivals have roller coasters, fried dough, and oversized stuffed animals as prizes. This carnival offers just as much fun and variety, if you love handmade Japanese paper, fountain pens, Filofaxes, and 15-year old spiral notebooks. Every month, a different blog will … Continue reading The First Carnival of Pen, Pencil and Paper
Here’s a nice image, from a New York Times article yesterday about the history of gin: It’s a recipe book from the 1820s, with some kind of formula, I guess, for making genever, a Dutch ancestor of the gin we drink today. I love all that small elegant handwriting and the way they’ve crammed so … Continue reading Notebooks From the Past: Recipes for Genever
