Fountains of Ink

I have a fascination with technology. “Yes”, you are nodding and rolling your eyes, “I know, Apple, Apple, Apple.” That is true. At work I was once voted “Most likely to run into a burning building to save his iPhone.” But today, I want to write about another kind of technology that I love: vintage technology, specifically, fountain pens.  

Although fountain pens had existed for more than a hundred years before, the modern fountain pen was created by Lewis Waterman around 1884. Prior to that, writing involved dipping a nib into a bottle of ink and then re-dipping every few lines as it ran out. Mr. Waterman’s pen allowed the pen to carry around its own supply of ink. This innovation meant that you could carry your pen around without having to bring a bottle of ink with you wherever you went. Also, you could write without pausing to dip. A fountain pen might only need to be filled every few days depending on how much writing you did. 

Fountain pens were expensive though, so for many, including school kids, it was still dip pens for a long time. Once fountain pens really took hold, they ruled the writing scene through the 1930s, 40s, and 50s until the cheap disposable ballpoint pen appeared in the 1960s and the fountain pen went the way of Blackberry in the wake of iPhone. 

My own fountain pen story began when I was about 12 years old and in 7th grade. My friend Schuyler had a translucent blue plastic Scheaffer fountain pen. The ink supply was a disposable cartridge that you threw away when empty. The pens were cheap – about $1.75 as I recall. Likely, they made their money on the refills. It was so cool! I knew I had to have one of these pens. Fortunately, such an item could be had at the local department store, Korvette’s and was well within the range of my humble allowance savings. (The following year I started delivering newspapers, and started earning the fortune needed to keep me in ink cartridges.) 

Throughout college and into early working life, I used a cheap Sheaffer fountain pen for my everyday writing. I loved the way the nib felt on the paper laying down a wet line of lovely blue-black ink and the sturdy steel nibs lasted for years. The way the writing looked reminded me of old postcards or letters or the high school autograph books that zipped closed that my mom kept in a box in her closet. The pages of those books were filled with the very innocent limericks and sayings of public-school kids of the 1950s.

My first major advance came in college when a political science professor, Dr. Schmickle showed me how he refilled his own pen’s cartridges from a bottle of ink with a hypodermic syringe saving money. A pack of five cartridges might cost a dollar for five weeks of writing but a $3 bottle of ink would easily last a year. Dr. S got me my own needle from his wife who was a nurse and I was on my way to injecting a modest ink habit of a few dollars a year (isn’t this how it always starts?)

Then as a wedding gift, my wife bought me my first ‘nice’ pen. A slim matte black Sheaffer Targa with a 14k gold nib. Gold nibs are prized by fountain pen lovers because the way they glide over the paper and because they are more flexible and, let’s face it, they are pretty and shiny. In 1991 as fountain pens were becoming the rage (and a status symbol) I fell in love with a modern recreation of the classic Parker Duofold and when I became the executive director of the organization I had worked for since 1987, I bought one as a gift to myself. It used a converter, a little cartridge like device with a piston inside allowing it to be used to fill the pen from a bottle over and over with no need for a syringe. I kept this pen filled with Waterman Blue-Black ink which had a chemical smell that reminded me of the white paste we used in Kindergarten. Sadly, they reformulated the ink around 10 years ago and now it has no smell at all. The Duofold somehow retains a lingering scent of this ink it held for so many years. 

Over the years, I have acquired other pens, given some away, bought more, given more away. And a few years ago I went on an insane ink buying spree accumulating inks in every hue and in a variety of beautiful glass bottles. I keep a small journal to record which ink is in which pen so that I can remember what is in which.

If you have read this far, perhaps you are thinking you might like to try a fountain pen? Or try one again? Here are the reasons you might be thinking you should not and why those reasons are (mostly) bogus. 

Fountain Pens Leak!

Modern fountain pens rarely leak. It is not impossible but if handled right they won’t. Don’t bang them around. Carry them in a pocket or bag with the nib facing up. If you bring them on an airplane fill them completely or carry them empty (the change in cabin pressure can cause half empty pens to leak, though I have never had this happen in decades of flying). Having said this if you fill your pen from a bottle you WILL sometimes get ink stains on your fingers. So what? Almost all pen ink is water soluble and washes out of cloth and skin very easily. Many people intentionally choose to mark their skins permanently with ink. What’s a few drops on your fingers that will wash out? 

They cost a lot!

Not so! A very serviceable fountain pen can be purchased for as little as $2.75! That’s less in real terms than my Sheaffer pen was in 1974! If you want to go up to around $30 you can get a great writer with changeable nibs that is sturdy enough to last a lifetime and for under $40 you can get a similar pen with an all metal body. A bottle of ink can be had for under $10 and will last for probably 2-3 years or longer depending on how much you write. Back when I wrote with mostly one color of ink, I’d walk over to Fahrney’s Pens on G Street (later F Street) once a year to buy my bottle of Waterman Blue-Black. It was a nice little ritual and sometimes, I’d come back with more than a bottle of ink. 

I always lose pens. I can’t have nice things. 

I lose stuff all the time but I have never lost a fountain pen. Unlike disposable pens which seems to behave like common property and move ownerless from person to person, a fountain pen will get noticed and if you put it down, people will try to get it back to you. You will also be more likely to keep track of it. When was the last time you lost your phone or your wallet? It happens but it is rare. 

I am left handed. Lefties can’t use fountain pens. 

It is true that left handed people face an additional challenge when using a fountain pen because their hand moves right over the just laid down (and therefore wet) ink potentially smearing it. However, left handed people WERE able to write before the invention of the ballpoint and there are many who use fountain pens successfully and with joy. 

 They are too hard to use.

Well, they are not hard to use like say an electron microscope is hard to use but using a fountain pen requires more thought and a little more skill than using a Bic. They need to be filled from time to time, they need to be cleaned once in a while (not often) and they require a bit of care. They may appeal to the kind of person who likes sharpening their own knives (me), shaving with a brush and razor (me), or maintaining their own car (not me!) but it requires much less skill or time than any of these. 

But what are the positive reasons to try a fountain pen? 

1.  It’s a nice writing experience. I find ballpoint pens and roller balls scratchy and unpleasant to write with. A fountain pen lays down a line of shimmering wet ink. 

2. It is a thing that is made to last in a world of disposable stuff. A pen can be something that helps you express yourself through your writing but also as a kind of piece of personal jewelry. 

3. There are thousands of ink types and colors. Pick one color as your personal brand or change colors each time you fill your pen. 

4. A fountain pen immediately signals you are a person of letters who demands to be taken seriously. 

5. You’ll start finding reasons to write. Daily journal? Sure! Old fashioned correspondence? Why not? Imagine their delight when they receive your handwritten letter or card in beautiful emerald ink hand delivered by the postal service. Mark Zuckerberg is getting nervous! 

6. The periodic reinking can be a chance to pause in your labors and reflect how the human mind and hand can turn pigmented water into coded thoughts and ideas that can change the course of history… or can at least serve to remind you what you need to buy at the grocery store. 

I know that most of you reading this will dismiss the idea of using a fountain pen quicker than the idea of abandoning your computer for a typewriter but for any of you who are intrigued and might want to give it a try, I’d love to help. Feel free to reach out for some advice on getting started or if you want to explore on you own, I highly recommend the online retailer The Goulet Pen Co. Brian and Rachel Goulet started this fountain pen focused business back around 2009 and I have been a customer almost since the beginning. In addition to pens they also sell nice paper and accessories and ink in tiny sample vials so that you can try a color without having to commit to a whole bottle. 

They have incredible customer service and great how-to videos on YouTube for anyone getting started. They are very knowledgeable about everything they sell and it just feels good to patronize them. Yes, you can find most of what they sell on Amazon for less money but just this once ignore your Prime membership and bestow your custom on a small, family run business even if it means waiting a day or two to get your goods and spending a dollar or two more. 

Also, they send you a little Tootsie-pop with each order. 

If you would just like to see what it feels like to write with a fountain pen, the Pilot Varsity provides that experience in a ‘disposable’ pen. But these pens are actually refillable so if you do buy one, don’t throw it away when it is empty. Send it to me and I will refill it for you or send it on to another newbie to try. 

If you currently write with a fountain pen, would like to try it, or need some advice on what to buy, let me know. I’d love to hear from you and as the good folks at Goulet say, “Write on!”

Detours and Downed Trains

This week I took the subway (Metro) for just the second time since pandemic panic week zero. From 1997 until 2014 Metro was my daily companion though not always an agreeable one. My commuting times were more than 2 hours a day, well over an additional work day per week spent riding in and out of town. Not a total waste - I got a lot of reading down during those hours. There was time to decompress on my way home or, I guess compress, on my way to work. Getting on at the end of the line in the morning, I usually got a seat, though that was by no means a given. 

Toward the later years, however, Metro strained under two big issues: One, the weight of ridership beyond what had been envisioned when the system first opened in 1976 (just in time for the Bicentennial of the U.S.). Second, the consequences of delayed maintenance beyond the boundaries of smooth operation and well into questionable safety territory. And in fact, there were a number of fatal incidences that rocked the DC area and eventually spurred officials to take action.  But for me, it was too little, too late. My final years of commuting were extremely frustrating, with unpredictable delays multiple times a week, resulting in my sometimes being hours late for work or arriving home long after my family had eaten supper. Meanwhile the cost of commuting and parking at the metro soared to more than $16 per day.  

So I was interested to see what progress had been made when I boarded Metro this week for the first time on a weekday and just the second time since March of 2020. 

On the plus side, Metro, like the New York City subway, has implemented Smart Phone express pay. Before heading to Metro, I transferred my SmartCard to my iPhone and set up Express Transit. I am pleased to report that worked flawlessly. I tapped my phone to the target pad and without needing to authenticate with Face ID the gates sprung open. Unfortunately, I was not able to board the train at the closest station. My station and the next one on the line are undergoing major work and are closed for months. Metro is providing a bus to the third station down the line where I was able to board the train. 

Trains are no longer packed. Admittedly, I was traveling after rush hour but the stations and the trains were nearly empty. Unfortunately, for all the repairs, my train was held for about five minutes because of a ‘downed train’ on the tracks ahead. Still five extra minutes sitting on a nearly empty train is a very different experience than 20 minutes standing with someone’s elbow in your eye. On the whole, the ride was pretty mellow. 

Emerging at Judiciary Square, the stairs were entirely ripped out and undergoing repairs, but the up escalator was in place and was actually operating so that was a pleasant surprise.  

Returning home later during rush hour, things were slightly busier but only slightly. The cars were still pretty empty and there was barely any wait for the bus detour around the closed stations. 

Back at the end of the line, I was pleased to see that the parking lot gates were wide open. Metro was not charging to park. That kind of made sense since mine was one of the few cars in the lot, but it was still another nice surprise. The trip in and out cost $5.75, less than it would have pre-COVID. 

On the whole, even with the delays and closed stations, I found the trip in and out of DC was more pleasant and less stressful than it used to be. (No doubt it helped that I was meeting a friend for coffee, not worried about being late for work.) 

Still I felt sorry for Metro, my old nemesis. What is a transit system, even a broken one without riders? DC too, was unnaturally quiet for Tuesday morning, with government workers and so many businesses still working remotely. The Metro itself seemed sad and somehow longing for its dysfunctional and chaotic past. 

My friend Karen and her husband moved into downtown DC in February of 2020 anticipating the delights of the city, from restaurants to theaters to bustling cafes. Yes, just in time to invoke that well-worn response from the deity to human plans – divine giggles. They are still enjoying life in a beautiful condo in the city free of the hassles of upkeep and yard work but it is not exactly the life they expected. 

Riding home on in the nearly empty car it occurred to me that it is not the world but our expectations of how it should be that get us every time. If we could move into the city, if they would just fix Metro, if I could lose 20 pounds, if things would just get back to normal, I would be able to find joy, we think. But if those conditions should ever be met, there will be three more conditions that are unmet. We long for quiet but when it arrives, it feels wrong and we miss the noise and bustle. 

The chance for joy is to somehow see that this present moment is the only time that ever was and will ever be. And as difficult as it is, the most important time to remember that is when there is a downed train on the track just ahead.  

Seeking Simplicity Part II: Until All That Remains is Joy

“The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

--Albert Camus

In early March of 2020, another member of the Hillel staff and I drove to DC to accompany 16 students to a conference that was a part of our regular cycle of activities. During these conferences, I always stayed in my Maryland home. It saved the organization a few dollars on a hotel room and gave me a good excuse not to stay at the conference late into the evening for the long-winded political speeches in the massive, dark rooms that hosted the general sessions. At the conclusion of the conference, I walked with a group of students from the U.S. Capitol to the side street where the Hillel-owned Toyota Sienna, affectionately known as ‘Meatball,’ waited with my colleague Meg, who would chauffeur some of the students back to Rochester. After saying goodbye to the students and telling Meg about sixteen times to ‘drive carefully,’ I hopped on the red line and took the subway out to the Maryland suburb where I live. It didn’t occur to me that I would neither set foot in DC again for well over a year nor that I would never see most of those students again, at least not in the flesh.

I was already in my last few months as director of Hillel at the University of Rochester. My ‘interim’ stint which was supposed to go for a year or so had lasted five. Although it had been the most fun five years of my working life, I was ready to come home, and the board had found my successor. Her name was (and I am not making this up) Joy and she was to begin work in mid-June when I would officially step down. I had been looking forward to these last few months as a time to start packing up my things, saying goodbyes, and celebrating with colleagues and students what we had accomplished. A certain Yiddish phrase about what God does when humans plan comes to mind.

The following week was Spring Break so I had planned to stay in Maryland and then head back to Rochester the following Sunday. That was the week Covid blew up. By the time the next Sunday rolled around, it was becoming clear that students would not be returning from Spring Break and that my trip back to Rochester would just last a few days to grab the essentials and the tools I would need to work from home for what I imagined would be a month or two. Yes, I could have stayed in Rochester but working alone in my graduate student housing apartment didn’t seem to make much sense when all the students and the rest of the staff would be remote.

And so it happened that with several months still left to go in my work, I found myself back in Maryland. During the evenings and weekends after a day of Zoom calls and emails, I found that I no longer had justification to ignore the decluttering project begun more than five years earlier.

Of course, I had to start again. There were more books than ever and the clothes situation had gotten completely out of hand.

This time, I was tougher. Or perhaps my joy threshold had gotten significantly higher. Whatever the reason, I filled carton after carton with books and clothes to go to Goodwill. But now most of America was doing the same! Our local Goodwills were overrun and stopped accepting donations. I turned a spare bedroom into a makeshift collection center and stacked the boxes in there. It took only a week or two to get back to ground zero, and now it was time to tackle what Marie Kondo calls kimono, or miscellaneous junk.

As previously mentioned, it was everywhere: in the basement (4 rooms and a large storage closet), my son’s room (untouched since he had left for college seven years earlier), and of course the shed, now the sole dominion of spiders, snakes, birds and mice.

The KonMari method asks you to bring all the stuff in one category into one room and sort through everything at once. You are not supposed to declutter room by room. But this is simply impractical with the junk. There is too much of it. Also, are you really going to bring your lawn mowers into the living room? I decided I would need to go room by room and hope that Marie would not find out.

I had planned to try to sell some of the nicer items on eBay but found I didn’t have the energy to do it. Instead, set up a table at the end of our driveway and offered them for free to passersby. That Spring there were many couples and families out strolling and I enjoyed watching from the kitchen window as they stopped to examine the fine items on display. I could imagine the conversations.

“Hey, look at this!”

“What do you want with that?”

“I dunno. It could come in handy”

“We already have one.”

“Yeah, we could always use another.”

“We don’t need it!”

“True…” (takes it anyway).

The ‘spark joy’ test doesn’t work well with junk. Case in point: everyone needs a drill but for most, a drill does not spark joy. I kept a lot of joyless tools, household items, and desk accessories. A better test to decide whether to keep kimono than ‘does it spark joy?’ is ‘if I get rid of this will I just have to buy another one in a month?’ As I cleaned and organized the kimono, I collected items I came upon from the last category, sentimental objects and photos, and threw them in boxes in my office to review when their time came.

My son’s room required special attention. His old room was like a microcosm of the entire project. Clothes, books, toys, a ceramic pig full of coins! The room was more or less in the same state that it had been in when he left for college in 2013. Further, he was unwilling to either authorize me to get rid of it all or to come home from Colorado and deal with it. In the end, a lot of photos of his stuff were texted to him, and boxes filled with the things and books he wanted to keep. I took the coins to one of those machines, which takes ten percent and turns the rest into store credit. I used the store credit and sent my son the value through Apple Pay Cash. $115.67. He couldn’t believe that a ceramic pig could hold so much money. I think he invested it in cybercurrency.

Then last December, when we drove out to Colorado to have the van converted into a camper (our own Toyota Sienna, just like Meatball!), we filled empty cargo space (all but the front seats had been removed) with the last of both our children’s things. Then we delivered them right to their doorsteps! What great parents! Our kids were so grateful to be reunited with their belongings!

Goodwill started accepting donations again. I took two van loads and waited in a line of cars for 20 minutes each time to drop off the goods which included an ancient TV and a few old hard drives that contained e-wallets with $100,000 worth of bitcoin that I had purchased in 2011 and had forgotten about. (Just kidding. I think).

Then all that remained was the dread shed. I waited for the signal. That signal came in the form of an announcement in the town newsletter. Saturday, June 21, 2021 was to be the next ‘Bulk Trash Pickup’ day. I began my work on Wednesday of that week, removing every item from the shed and dumping it on the lawn. I disturbed a nest of mice living in one of the corners. I found accessories for the motorcycle I had sold the previous fall. I found pieces of a lawn mower I no longer owned. I emptied the shed to its bare walls and swept the old wooden floor boards clean. I put back the things that we needed to keep and hauled the rest to the curb where it was picked over by a succession of scavengers on foot, on bicycle, and finally in pick-up trucks. When I looked out Saturday morning, there was nothing left for the bulk trash pickup except an old grass catcher and some rotted roofing from an old sukka. Recycling at its most efficient. (Usually, I am among those strolling around the neighborhood looking for other people’s trash to make my treasure but I was too exhausted from my tidying to make the effort this year!)

Finally, the last category, Sentimentalia remained in boxes strewn about my office making it an environment unsuitable for even Zoom calls. It took me several more months until I was ready to face it.

This category consisted of letters from friends and family going back decades (70s and 80s and early 90s when all mail correspondence suddenly stopped for some reason), Matchbox cars and other toys from my childhood, and boxes of cassette tapes containing the pre-pubescent voices of myself, my sister, and my cousins from 50 years ago. I didn’t have a cassette player. I didn’t know if the cassettes would even play.

I knew I needed to toss the mildewed and smelly old tapes but first I had to find out if there was anything on them that could be retrieved. For about $30 I bought a gadget that promised to convert old tapes to a digital format. I had had good luck with another such device years ago when I converted my old VHS tapes to digital so I decided to give it a whirl. Amazingly, the 50-year-old tapes played perfectly! Using a free software program called Audacity, I converted all the tapes to digital files and stored them on my computer. There was a tape of me playing the bagpipes at college in 1979. There was a tape of my sister and I being silly. Also a snippet of my Grandmother’s voice saying, “How’d your mommy get to be so smart?” There were hours and hours of Kasey Kasem ‘countin’ ‘em down’ on America’s Top 40 program broadcast on AM radio, as well as more tapes of Dr. Demento. I didn’t transfer all of that.

The hardest thing I had to do was to drop those old tapes in the trash. I kept one or two and tossed the rest. Another month or two went by. I began to sort the rest of the stuff. I sorted the old correspondence into one box, photos into another, and random scraps and items into a third.

Marie says one should throw all this stuff away. Keep one or two photos and mercilessly chuck everything else.

I failed.

I sorted the correspondence by person but didn’t put the letters into chronological order. I need to leave something for my biographer to do! I filed them in large manila envelopes in my large sturdy four drawer filing cabinet I brought home on another bulk trash pickup day long ago. (The four drawers are labeled ‘Earth, Wind, Fire, Water,’ an homage to beloved college physics professor.

The photos all went in a box I labeled and stuck on a closet shelf.

Finally, I pondered the toys. Some of the things I posted on the town list serve and got some takers. There was a neighbor who wanted my HO model railroad trains from the 1970s. But in the end, I wasn’t able to bring myself to toss most of these keepsakes I had held onto for nearly 50 years. They too went in a box and stuck on a closet shelf. Likewise, the vinyl records I have no way to play remain in a box in the closet.

Finally, I vacuumed the floor in my office and straightened a few joy-sparking knick knacks on the coffee table. I was done! I glanced around the room pleased and satisfied with the conclusion of my nearly eight-year-long tidying project and thought how proud Marie would be of my accomplishment. As I did so my eye fell on the bookshelf. Somehow the number of books had proliferated in the last year; I saw that there was just a little more to do.

It was then that I spotted a man wearing only running shorts pushing an enormous bolder up my street. I ran out to him as he passed the house.

“Move over, Sisyphus,” I cried, “There’s gotta be room for two happy men behind that rock!”