Editing The Pen Addict 228/transcript (section)

== Fountain Pen Care ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' I think you do. I think you do. Dear, don't get the letters wet. You're going to run the ink on them. I did mess up one of them, kind of. Of course you did. Dear Brian and Myke, I'm writing to you using my Schaefer Snorkel Statesman fountain pen. I found it several years ago in an old secondhand desk. I thought it looked interesting, so I kept it around on the chance that it might hold some value. I had no idea how to ink it up, so it sat unused on my desk drawer for years. One of your podcasts gave me the idea to dip the pen in a bottle of ink and try writing with it. And it's been one of my favorite pens ever since. Thank you for inspiring me to try new things. The Schaefer Snorkel is a vintage pen and sometimes gives me thinking about the history and evolution of writing instruments. I would love a coffee table book on the subject. Do you know if any such book exists? Sincerely, Doug.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So I loved this question when he asked it, and I didn't have time to research it. And I don't own any specific ones like that. The one that I do own is from Andy Lambrough. It's the Pens of Japan book, but it's not necessarily a history book. It's more of a visual coffee table style book. So I would open that up to the listeners. If anyone has any great recommendations for books, I think we can do some follow-up on this because I would like to know that myself, especially with the holidays coming up. If we can find some good history books that would be very cool for our listeners, for myself and things like that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' If you are like me and you've never heard of or seen a Schaefer Snorkel before, check the link in the show notes. This is one of the most bonkers things I've ever seen. Yeah, it's a cool pen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What on earth? I keep telling myself I need to buy one of those, and I just don't because it's such a cool filling system.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's a literal snorkel. It looks like a ballpoint extends from out of the fountain pen nib. That's what it looks like. It's like this rod comes out, and then you dunk that in the ink, and it fills it. How peculiar. How peculiar. People don't make weird stuff like this anymore. You know?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, gosh, no. Can you imagine? That's why Brian Gray at Edison Pens, he likes to try to recreate some of the old filling systems, just because no regular pen company is going to be able to afford to do that in any kind of scale. So, yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Because I assume it's horrifically unreliable as well. I can imagine that thing just spitting ink out all over the place.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yep, yep.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Hey, should we take a break?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, take a quick break, and I definitely have more I want to get to, so I'm trying to narrow these down for today. We're definitely going to have another segment of this going forward.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, I have no doubt that now we've done this, people are going to want to write in even more than ever, so we'll talk about that at the end of the show.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I just want to make sure to get everyone who did it for this show in. Yeah. Even though it's not going to happen today, but I guarantee it's going to happen.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This week's episode is also brought to you by the Pen Chalet. We have a big, big offer today, Brad. Go check it out. Uh-oh. I'm going right now. They sell authentic, amazing roller balls, fountain pens, ballpoints, mechanical pencils, everything you are looking for. They have all the brands that you want as well. Monteverde, Pelican, Lamy, Pilot, Namiki, Sailor, Kaweko, and an authorized theater of all of them. They believe in providing the fastest and most reliable customer service, which is why they give a 100% satisfaction guarantee on all of their high-quality, low-priced pens. They do great discounts all the time. They have sales all the time, and they're adding new styles of pens every single month. They have free shipping on orders of over $50 in the United States. They sell internationally with very reasonable shipping rates. I will mention this as always. If you've heard us talk about a pen today in this episode that you're interested in, go to penshaulet.com first and see if it's there. Because if you click the podcast link at the top of the website and use the password penaddict, you will get a code to save 10% on anything you find at the Penshaulet, including this week's special offer. You can get 10% off the 30% discount, so you're getting a huge discount on a Pilot Vanishing point in the black carbon-esque finish in broad nib. You get 30% off plus that 10% discount on top. What an offer this week. A vanishing point. And I will say I've used a few of them. And again, while it's not my favorite pen because I don't like the clip, but I know basically everybody else on the planet does. The broad nib on these is amazing.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That is true. It's a Japanese broad nib, so it writes probably like a Western medium. But it's still, you know, it's a little bit firm and really, really nice line. And can we say the price? We can't say the price, can we? I'll say the price. It's really good. It's really good. Excuse me. Yeah. Anytime you can get anything, any percentage off on a vanishing point, it's a good deal because that rarely, rarely happens. So yeah, wonderful, wonderful deal.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You're going to go check it out. Thank you so much to Pen Shelley, as always, for supporting this show and RelayFM.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right. So this one, like all the letters are interesting, so I should probably stop saying, oh, this one's very interesting. This one's from Joseph. And when I opened up the very traditional envelope, out popped this very unique green gridded and blank engineering paper. Like I've seen this paper. I was like, wow, this is really cool engineering paper. And then like you kind of have those thoughts before you start reading the letter. And then this happens. It says, dear pen addict. I've been listening to and reading your blog for over a year since finding them in a quest to improve my handwriting. Your request for handwritten as TPA has inspired me to take the time and write in. I found your recent discussion of the handwriting doesn't matter article interesting. The subject has come up periodically over the years with most articles proclaiming the end of handwriting as nigh. The problem is they all ignore the role of handwriting in math. I work as a mechanical engineer and use math constantly. For me, a pen and paper is an important part of my job. It is cumbersome and time consuming to do my work solely digital. The combination of numbers, symbols, letters, characters, and subscripts make it difficult even to create the most basic of formulas. This shortcoming becomes even more evident in a classroom setting. Part of the need for handwriting in math is that at the core of how math works and how it is taught, math is still very much about working things out on paper. You need to see your work from beginning to end. Working through a problem may involve going back a step, crossing things out, writing new things, erasing them, and rearranging them. It is time that the computer makes the computational aspects of math faster and in many cases possible. It should not be forgotten that the computer is a tool, just like the pen. The inclusion of one does not mean the exclusion of the other. Sincerely, Joseph. This is a wonderful point that I had not considered before. And I'm a huge believer in math and science are the keys to education these days. And I was terrible at math and science. But I keep telling my kids, these are the things you should focus on. Because no matter what you're doing, those things are in the background somewhere, right? Yep. In one way or the other. Whether in your computer programming or research or really, gosh, I mean, even if you're a lawyer, math and science plays a huge role in how you're coming to decisions. So, I thought this was a great letter and something to think about. I don't know that I necessarily have an answer other than I absolutely completely agree with what he's saying there.