What have we here?

A Levenger catalog came in the mail today, and it featured THIS interesting thing.

Why didn't we think of it sooner?

Travel top-fives

I've spent a lot of time in airports this week, which got me thinking about my travel routines, particularly when I travel alone.


Five things I always do in an airport:

1. Buy magazines. I rarely indulge my appreciation for the Economist or The New Yorker.
2. Buy a bottle of water-- because I can't carry one through security.
3. People Watch. I usually travel alone, so while I am in the airport, there is a constant internal commentary on the people I see and the fiction I impose on them.
4. Wish I were carrying less.
5. Try not to look like an amateur. I don't know why I care or where this comes from. I always walk with purpose and go through security with the efficiency of a person who does this every day. I really don't, but this mindfulness let's me internally judge all of the other apparent "amateurs".

Five things I consider irreplaceable
I can't live without them.
Ironically, they are the five things I must have when I travel, which is where I am most likely to lose them.

1. My makeup bag--It's taken me years to find just the right versions of everything and to acquire that designer collection.
2. My Notebook--It's always worse on the way home, because I'd have lost my most recent travel notes.
3. My ipod. I shouldn't have to explain this one.
4. My pen. Since I spend so much time by myself, I always want to write more. This requires a good pen, but then if I lose one of my pens here, I'll never get it back.
5. My red messenger bag. I got this one in Florence, Italy, after years of searching and saving. It has all of the right travel pockets, including one for my boarding pass, drivers' license, and phone. I often get compliments on it; it's distinctive and beautiful, as well as (for me) uncommonly utilitarian.

The Lazarus Pen

Over Christmas break I undertook some significant pen-repair projects. After extensive online research, I found the causes of scratchy nibs and limited and skipping inkflow. Over the last couple of days, I repaired the first one I ever bought, the Rotring Freeway.

My first year of teaching, a student knocked it off my desk and, uncapped, it landed on the tip of its nib. It never wrote the same after that. Since it was my only pen, I couldn't tell the scope of the damage. The tines became misaligned, and the point of the nib actually curled under itself! Since the inkflow was really poor, I would open the barrel and force more ink through from the cartridge to simulate the former flow. Over time, the ink built up and it was a clogged mess.

I was lamenting the other day about how we don't live in a society that fixes things--this pen was the object of my frustration. I didn't want to throw away my first pen, but sending it somewhere for repair would have cost as much as the pen did. I am probably the only one who found it that valuable, and I think it costs so much because pen repair is really rare. It's an indicator of how little we take the chance to repair things instead of dispose of them.

I figured that the pen couldn't end up any more unusable than it was, so i tried fixing it myself. Success! With total disassembly, some heat, full flushing, and a pair of jewelry pliers (not entirely recommended), my pen feels like it's supposed to--how all fountain pens are supposed to, which is, according to a friend," like you're not writing on paper".

Teaching and Drinking

Top-five Things I Love About Being a Teacher that Have Nothing To Do with Instructing:

1. The process of getting coffee on campus: having to wash my mug in the bathroom, going to get the coffee in a colleague's room, then having to go get milk from the workroom fridge becomes less about obtaining the beverage and more about all of the detours on the way.
   
   
2. Summers off.
   
   
3. The excuse to buy school supplies every year, only being able to get more sophisticated ones like fountain pens, ink bottles and paperclips. Don't think I don't still grab that 24-cent box of crayons and a bottle of Elmer's glue, though.
   
   
4. Dressing up on Wednesdays--I'm a sucker for ceremony, and here we have pomp and circumstance and ceremony weekly.
   
   
5. Birthday celebrations. I always felt bad in school for kids who did not get to celebrate their birthday with the class because it fell over a school holiday. Mine is right at the time of the term when we need a celebration, and I get to celebrate birthday week in 5 classes!

Top-five Historical Figures with whom I'd Really Like to Have a Drink: (in no order, and subject to change)

1. Benjamin Franklin
   
2. James Madison
   
3. Dietrich Bonhoeffer
   
4. William Wilberforce
5. William Gladstone
   

Favorite Things

I am working on some photos of my favorite things, which include my pen, journal, books, and coffee, but it is posing quite the photography set of problems. I am struggling with getting a wide enough depth-of-field to incorporate all of the detail I want, but still being close enough to concentrate on small scale and details. If I put everything in the same plane, there is too much emphasis on geometric simple shapes. I am also struggling with lighting and setup in my apartment. Nevertheless, here are a few shots of the shots I like so far. Any technical suggestions for my camera?

Losing Things in Bulk

The holiday's leave plenty of time for losing things, running expensive errands, snacking, long showers, and reflecting on current employment (because NOT working leaves time to think about it). So naturally, a few more top-five lists emerge:

My Top-five Most Annoying Things to Lose:
(Based on degree of annoyance and frequency of misplacement, these are the things that wreck all concentration until I find them)

1. Fingernail clippers
2. Fountain pen
3. Driver's license
4. Phone charger
5. my lists!

Top-five Coolest Things to Buy at Costco:
1. Post-it notes--a pile of 24 for 10 bucks!
2. Wine--Banfi Chianti Classico Riserva for 12 bucks!
3. Peanut M&Ms--who wouldn't want five pounds of these??
4. Cheese--Gruyère, Gouda, and a Dublin cheddar!
5. Dog bones--even George Herbert understands the significance of buying in bulk.


Top-five Favorite Cheeses:
1. Sharp English Cheddar (aged)
2. Muenster
3. Fresh Buffalo Mozzarella
4. Feta
5. Brie (with no rind)

Top-five Favorite Shampoos
1. Paul Mitchell's Tea Tree Shampoo
2. Bumble and Bumble's Gentle Shampoo
3. Redkin's BlondGlam
4. Aveda's Rosemary Mint Shampoo
5. Bumble and Bumble's Creme de Coco Shampoo

Top-five Dream Jobs
1. Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra (with a season ending at The Proms)
2. Accessories/Cosmetics product selection for Nordstrom's
3. Editor of my own magazine (The New Yorker meets InStyle meets The National Review meets Paste meets CondéNast)
4. Ambassador to Britain under Tony Blair
5. U.S. Senator (Foreign Affairs Committee, Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee)

Thanksgiving top- fives

It is hard to categorize my restful and heart-warming experience for this trip to the Midwest. But one of my "core-competencies" is list-making, so this is probably the best way to make notes about my holiday. Here are some more Top-Fives:

Things I miss about the Midwest:

1. Caribou Coffee
2. The smell of the cold
3. heavy, fluffy scarves
4. the lack of a need to lock doors
5. being able to find cold storage anywhere outside during the winter

Favorite Christmas decorations:

1. white lights
2. red ribbons
3. red berries and evergreen
4. sparkly tinsel
5. **mistletoe**

Places to drink in Sioux Falls
Going out is unbelievably inexpensive here! Pint of imported (read snobby) beer: $2.75

1. McNally's Irish Pub
2. Braccos
3. Paramount Piano & Wine Bar, on Phillips Ave
4. Long Shots (Main Ave)
5. Kaladi's

Favorite Sioux Falls Stores

1. World Market (Cadbury dark chocolate Flake bars, and McVittles Plain Chocolate "Digestives" [cookies] )
2. Zandbros (new fountain pen converter, Pelikan Blue ink, Dover collection of W. Somerset Maugham short stories, Christmas cards with a Dickens Quotation)
3. Barnes and Noble (one of the largest I have ever seen, purchased a renewed Victoria magazine, Ian McEwan's Atonement, Barnes and Noble's History of Ancient Rome for dad )
4. Ten Thousand Villages (jewelry from India and Chile, Bangles from Bengal, experienced "singing bowls" for the first time thanks to Chase)
5. The Red Shoe (purchased absolutely nothing, but this is a common reaction of mine to Stuart Wietzman and Cole Haan)

*You Left Your Heart Where?!?

For Thanksgiving, I am going to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Can I just say how much I love this city? I usually get the wierdest looks when I talk about how excited I am to go there, but you have to go there--maybe you even have to go there with Dave--to see how charming it is. Dave pretty much grew up there. I cannot count the number of hours I have spent with him, driving around the "country's biggest suburb," admiring all of its quaint eccentricities.

For instance, Sioux Falls has the highest number of restaurants per capita of any where in the country--it is a great place to go out. It has a thriving local theatre and arts scene, my favorite coffee shop chain, Caribou Coffee, as well independent coffee shops scattered all over the city (inc. a tiny Ethiopian one on 10th where I think my friend Mike and I were the only white people to have ever been there). It has a Magnolia tree, which is strange because you are not supposed to be able to grow Magnolias that far north (Magnolias are my favorite tree). It has one of the largest green spaces in the country, with a park that on either side of the river that surrounds the city. This city's people have a ridiculous amount of civic pride; it has a long history, and they celebrate it (with the kind of brass placards nerds like me have to stop and read). And the people are friendly in that mid-western, down-to-earth, genuine sort of way. In case you get a chance to go, here is a list of things to do when you get there.

Top Five things to do in Sioux Falls, SD

1. Zandbros: a variety store/independent bookstore. It is where I bought my first fountain pen, they carry the Bloomsbury Review (the sign of a good bookstore), and the type of quirky, home-decorating stationary things where people always ask. "Where did you get that?" Bonus: there is an antique-soda-fountain-turned-coffee shop in the back.
   
2. The Washington Pavillion. Instead of tearing down an old highschool, they turned it into a civic arts center. It has a performing arts center, and both a permanent visual arts collection and rotating exhibits. The last time I was there, they had an exhibit about Harold Edgerton (that is now in Arizona.)
   
3. Falls Park. They light it up for Christmas and it is gorgeous. In the summer, when the falls are low, you can climb all over them; and in the spring, when they are full of the melting snow, it is a powerful experience.
   
4. The Sculpture Walk. Some really great pieces have come from here. The city votes on their favorite, then the city buys it each year and puts it out for everyone to enjoy. It started out as local artists, but now it is a national competition. Local corporations also buy pieces and put them in places for the city to enjoy.
   
5. St. Joseph's Cathedral (See photo above). You can sit on the steps for one of the best views of the city.It is a beautiful piece of architecture--stained glass windows and all.

*title taken from a NYTimes Article.

Some top-fives

I was reading the Guardian, and one click led to another, taking me to this. What a masterpiece! And this was the commentary: "The elegance and logic of Harry Beck's design - its combination of bustling intersections, sprawling tributaries, long, slanting tangents and abrupt dead ends, all sucked into the overturned wine bottle of the Circle Line - seems to spark other connections and appeal to the brain's innate desire for patterning and structure."

"The brain's innate desire for pattern and structure".... might explain my top-five lists.

I have been mulling over these lists for a while, and in lieu of a real blog entry, here are some of my recent top-fives:

Favorite Things Men Wear:

1. well-cut, single-breasted black suit
2. closely-coordinated shirt and tie
3. Pea-coat
4. The Jeans--the kind that sit just right
5. cologne--particularly Armani

Renaissance Art Works:

1. Michelangelo's David
2. Botticelli's Primavera
3. Ucello's Battle of San Ramano
4. Rafael's Entombment
5. Donatello's St. John the Evangelist

Favorite Beers:

1. John Smith's
2. Old Speckled Hen
3. Southshore Red
4. Newcastle
5. Guinnesss

Favorite Actors:

1. Cary Grant (hands-down favorite)
2. Colin Firth
3. Jimmy Stewart
4. John Cusak
5. Anthony Hopkins

Things I'd like to own someday:

1. A really expensive, beautiful fountain pen engraved with my initials
2. An overstuffed reading chair that permits me to sit sideways
3. A full wine rack
4. A tailored leather jacket
5. a DSLR
   
   Ok.. so this list is way longer than five...


6. A diamond ring
7. an espresso Machine
8. A British Passport

Other artful things of note:

• I love my Levenger bottled ink. I can't believe I ever used any other kind. It is strong and vibrant, and it has made the most stubborn pens smooth and sure.


• I found a new lip gloss by Laura Mercier that replaces my discontinued favorite from Guerlain.


• I have a new travel mug from Starbucks that epitomizes the travel mug. It has a non-leaky top that flips open and is non-intrusive. It keeps my coffee warm through 5th period, and it is a pretty raspberry color.