Fascinating video of the process of preserving the 100+ year old original manuscript of A Christmas Carol. Reminder, if you want something to last for 100+ years or more, choose paper.
(via Mike Rohde)
The Last Bookbinder on the Lower East Side | Literary Hub
The Last Bookbinder on the Lower East Side | Literary Hub
Henry’s workshop is five steps below street level, in the basement of the Congregation Sons of Moses synagogue. There are no windows and yet it’s a cheerful place, primarily because of Henry, but also because of the instruments he uses—the oversewing machine with its web of thread, the presses that are tightened by wheel crank, the hand guillotine and the foot guillotine. Some are wickedly efficient, others possessed of a Rube Goldberg charm. Grease is needed to keep these machines in working order, and there’s a sweetness in the air, from the lubricant oils, the leather polish and Elmer’s glue, all of it underlined by the nutty scent of paper recently cut.
Lovely story about a Jewish bookbinder. Part of a dying but still needed art.
(via The Hammock Papers)
Finding Poetry in a Note-Taking App – The New Yorker
Finding Poetry in a Note-Taking App – The New Yorker
As I assessed my choices, I discovered that I had certain requirements. I had to be able to draw badly in a note-taking app; I had to be able to incorporate audio recordings of myself saying “Fnaffle” at 3 a.m. so that I could spend the next day trying to figure out its significance; I needed to be able, in the middle of a meditation about nineteenth-century German aphorists, to insert a jpeg image of a large gelid octopus going down on a man with a twelve-pack which I found God knows where in my Internet travels. I settled on OneNote, which seemed the closest to my ideal.
Really interesting and well written essay on how one writer uses her note taking app. It’s a good reminder that it isn’t about analog versus digital or paper versus bits. It’s about what works best for you and how you use those things.
Today is Journal Day
Today, December 9th, is a day I designated a few years back as Journal Day. There are many ways to celebrate, or traditions one could keep, to mark the day. Here are some ideas…
- This might be the day to take out previous journals and reflect on where you were then versus where you are today.
- This is a great day to open a new journal and begin to plan for the coming year — for instance, what things you’d like to accomplish or places you’d like to travel to.
- You might let someone you trust read one you have kept and get to know the “real” you.
- Perhaps gift a journal to another person in your life who practices or you feel could benefit from doing so.
- Or, maybe, be so bold as to spend a year keeping a journal for someone else in your life whom you love and spend your days with — write down their day as you saw it or the things you were thinking about them at that time. How wonderful a gift would it be to allow someone close to “see” themselves and their year through your eyes?
- Like the above, start a journal for your kids that are too young to keep their own. We forget so much of those early years. This is a way to remember those special times. This is the sort of thing that would make a meaning high-school graduation gift when they get older.
These are just a few of the ways you can celebrate. If you come up with others, I would love to hear about them. Shoot me a message on Twitter or use the hashtag #journalday and I will try to add them here.
The invention that helped me write again – BBC News
The invention that helped me write again – BBC News
When Emma Lawton was 29 she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.As a graphic designer, drawing is a huge part of her life but over the past three years the tremor in her hands has grown more pronounced stopping her from writing and drawing straight lines.Enter Haiyan Zhang and her invention that is changing Emma’s life.
Via my friend Matt Lang, who reminds us that there is much digital technology that is great. Life changing, even.
Paper is not broken.
My friend Steve Best recently sent me a link to yet another tablet like device promising to replace paper to get my take. It seems interesting enough at first glance, with a typically stylish video attempting to make the case. But, my take on all of these things is that, in order to be relevant, they must start from a premise that rings false for me and most others I know who love and use paper. That being, that paper is somehow broken or inferior. Or, even worse, they make the assumption that you are using your paper based products poorly and that you are too incompetent to solve it in any way other than their digital “solution”.
I’m going to rip this false premise apart by using the very words they do in their introductory video. Here it is:
They start with this line…
“Paper is the ultimate tool for thinking. It lets your mind roam freely, without restrictions. Lets you focus, without distractions. ”
So, were off to a good start. They lay out three out of a few dozen ways I could easily enumerate why paper is better than any digital tool I can think of. Then…
“But if you love paper, you probably struggle to keep track of your notebooks,”
False premise #1. No, I don’t, actually. Neither does anyone I know. Now, maybe I live in my own little paper bubble and this is a real problem, but I suspect not. And, I would suggest to those people for whom this is a problem that perhaps they should find a way to only use one large bright colored notebook that is not easily lost.
“…Print a lot of documents,”
False premise #2. I can copy and easily print and/or share anything I write in under a minute by scanning it as a PDF document with my smartphone.
“…Or have a desk that looks like this”.
This is where they show a shot of a desk strewn with paper and pens. Once again, making the assumption that there’s something wrong with that. Some people may see a cluttered mess. Those of us who know the truth, see a creative mind at work.
But, it’s the “solution” — their product — that really gets me. Take a good look at that video. Is there a single thing they are showing — the writing, the reading, the multiple notebooks, etc. that you can’t do right now with what you have? One that is worth $379.00 (their pre-order price the final is promising to be almost $800) to “fix”. It’s trying so hard to be “just like paper” that I’m left back at the question of why I would want to spend almost $400 to do everything I can do today with real paper for under $40. If paper and notebooks are such a burden then why are you trying so hard to be just like it?
But, that’s the rub. These tools have to convince you that what you are using and/or how you are using these things are broken in order to sell you a solution to fix it. It’s a classic straw man argument.
But I’m here to tell you that paper is not broken. I refuse to accept that premise because it can’t be proven. In fact, the opposite is far more likely. I don’t have to back it up, charge it’s battery, change it’s format to be opened by something else once the app maker goes out of business, or let it co-exist on a device with a hundred other things competing for my time and attention. It’s a technology that’s a couple of thousand years old and has worked reliably, virtually unchanged, in that time. It’s better than any digital solution in fundamental ways. Not the least of which is the fact that it has been proven to last for a thousand or more years given the right care.
So, don’t let anyone tell you paper is broken. It’s digital, that has yet to be proven.
The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter by David Sax
The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter by David Sax
A funny thing happened on the way to the digital utopia. We’ve begun to fall back in love with the very analog goods and ideas the tech gurus insisted that we no longer needed. Businesses that once looked outdated, from film photography to brick-and-mortar retail, are now springing with new life. Notebooks, records, and stationery have become cool again. Behold the Revenge of Analog.
I was interviewed for this book and am told I’m featured in it. I have yet to receive my copy but it looks great. Surely of interest to the readers here. I’ll post a full review once I receive my copy and have a chance to dive in.
How I Use Notebooks – Mike Vardy on Medium
How I Use Notebooks – Mike Vardy on Medium
I don’t use them as a means to keep a to-do list. Instead, I use them to ensure that I get the right things done. Paper helps me connect. There is an ever-present feeling about it, one that gives me the knowledge that capture is just a few pen or pencil strokes away.
Long time readers know I love getting a peak at how others work. Mike’s a friend so this is an especially fun one for me.
The Lost Virtue of Cursive – The New Yorker
The Lost Virtue of Cursive – The New Yorker
The laminated papers with cursive-writing instructions, taped to every one of the tyke-size school desks with the sweeping attached arms, were sad and beautiful at once, in the special way of obsolete educational technology, like the Apple IIe, or the No. 2 pencil itself. For me, a writer of strong fuddy-duddy credentials, the sad dramatic irony really was too much. You see, cursive isn’t being taught in my daughters’ school anymore, and hasn’t been for at least six years, as long as I’ve had children in the public schools. Who would tell the cursive that it was no longer needed?
Reasons to Buy Paper Books — CJ Chilvers
Reasons to Buy Paper Books — CJ Chilvers
It helps to remember the things a paper book can do that ebooks still can’t.
Some great reminders here.