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BaronFig Dateless Pocket Planner
When 2020 began I was using an A5 hardcover notebook as a bullet jourrnal, tracking appointments, tasks, reading, birthdays, due dates for publishers—a lot.
In late summer, I realized it was just going to depress me to track cancelled plans, cancelled publication dates, and furloughed projects as publishers and corporations scrambled to stay afloat. I stopped using the A5 notebook, and moved to a pocket sized BaronFig dateless planner.
A pack of four BaronFig pocket sized dateless planners, each with a seasonal cover, costs $14.50 at BaronFig. You don’t have to allocate the seasonal covers to the seasons they depict, but it does make identifying each planner fairly easy.
I’m about to set up one of the BaronFig dateless pocket planners for the first quarter of 2021, so I thought I’d describe how I set it up and use it. This is the Winter cover:
BaronFig Winter dateless pocket planner cover The cover is thicker card stock; sturdy enough to protect the rounded corner pages, but not too thick to fold back.
The back of the cover has a blank white field; I use it to write the year and season.
I use the white label field to list the year and season/quarter. Inside the front cover is a book-plate area, and a title page where you could add your name and email address, or a date started and date finished or whatever suits you.
Inside the front cover of the BaronFig dateless pocket planner Each of the BaronFig pocket dateless planners has 16 two-page weekly spreads:
The weekly spread is designed so that each week has seven days, with a blank area at the end of the right-hand page for notes or tracking habits or what ever.
Because you add the dates, you can decide what day your week begins. Each left-hand page has a line at the top—I use it for the month, and a shorter line on top of the right-hand page; I use it for the week number.
Each of the day areas has a line for the day and date. As you can see, this is a center-stitched pocket notebook; there are no staples.
After the 16 two-page weekly spreads there are two two-page spreads of blank pages, without the divisions for days, and with the lines at the top of the right and left pages.
After those four pages, there are 13 pages of plain dot-grid, without lines at the top, just pure dot-grid.
The paper, as I would expect from BaronFig, works well with pencil, gel, rollerball, and most fountain pens. I typically use pencils, graphite and a Caran D’ache bicolor red-blue pencil, for daily entries.
Here’s how I set up a weekly spread using fountain pens:
Sample one-week spread I’m still using a rapid-logging bullet journal entry style, I’m just entering a lot less, and fewer deadlines. I often use the blank space at the end of the week to track birds and books.
I keep the current BaronFig dateless pocket planner and an additional pocket notebook for random notes and shopping lists in an expensive (but surprisingly nice) leather notebook cover, with an elastic to keep it closed, and two elastics running down the middle to hold notebooks in place. I bought it on Amazon for $13.95, and couldn’t be more pleased with it.
This is an affiliate link to BaronFig’s referral program. If you use the link and buy $25.00 worth of goods, (the notebooks are great, as are the pocket planners, but also check out the Squire pen), you get a $10.00 discount, and so do I.
This post contains affiliate links.
Buy me a Coffee! If you find this post or this site interesting, and would like to see more, buy me a coffee. While I may actually buy coffee, I’ll probably buy books to review.
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I Love My Kindle Paperwhite
One of the things that has been especially useful during the year of COVID-19 isolation has been my Kindle PaperWhite ereader.
I was an early convert to ebooks, and not just because I worked on ebooks at The Voyager Company. I’ve always had vision problems. Being able to set the font and size of type in ebooks has made reading much easier. I started buying ebooks first for my PowerBook 180 (Voyager’s Expanded Ebooks running on HyperCard), moved to a Palm PRC and Mobi ebooks, and now, read ebooks via my Web browser, my iPhone, my iPad, a Chromebook, and for the last year or so, my Kindle Paperwhite.
The Kindle Paperwhite was the first Kindle that looked even mildly interesting to me; previous versions of E Ink were, as a friend once said, “like reading wet newspaper.” The version of E Ink on the Paperwhite (E Ink Carta) is much better, though it still lacks the glorious readability of Apple’s Retina screens. The base model Kindle is still pretty poor in comparison to the cost, screen quality, and utility of the PaperWhite, especially if you have vision issues.
Image of a Kindle PaperWhite e-reader What convinced me to buy a Kindle Paperwhite was that it was clear that I was going to be away from my books for a while, without an easy way to go to the library, which means I’d be mostly reading ebooks. My third generation iPad, while extremely legible, is awkward to hold for long periods of reading, and not really a great option for reading in bed (though I still use it for image-rich ebooks, and digital manuscript facsimiles). The Kindle Paperwhite is lighter and easier to hold than my iPad and displays more text on a screen than my iPhone (which I still use to read ebooks regularly), which definitely offsets the poor image display, and the fact that it’s grayscale, rather than the rich Retina color display of my iPad.
The Kindle Paperwhite is Amazon’s mid-range Kindle e-reader, with higher resolution (300 ppi) than the entry-level Kindle, and a back-light. I didn’t get the 3G version with cellular access; WiFi and USB is all I need. The storage on my 2017 model is 4 GB, less whatever the OS uses; mine has several hundred ebooks, and about 2 GB of free space. The current Kindle PaperWhite holds base model has 8 gigs of memory and is a bit safer with respect to water than my previous generation PaperWhite. That said, I bought mine in 2017, use it daily, and generally get a week’s worth of reading before needing to recharge.
The 300ppi resolution, and the ability to set the darkness or contrast of the type, the type size and font (from a pretty decent list), means I can read the Kindle Paperwhite screen even without my glasses; the back light means I don’t need an external light source, and I can read the screen fairly easily even in sunlight.
My Kindle Paperwhite is perfect for late night and early morning reading. I can hold it with one hand, swiping to turn pages isn’t stressful for my hands (the high-end model, the Kindle Oasis has a slightly larger screen, more control over the backlight, and page-turn buttons). The back light isn’t bright enough to be disturbing to others but it’s bright enough. My Paperwhite holds enough ebooks to keep me happy even away from my own library and easy access to WiFi. When there is access to WiFi, borrowing ebooks via the public Library’s Overdrive collection is quite simple (I use Overdrive’s Libby app on my iPhone and iPad, and Mac, and can easily send books to my Kindle with Libby). I use Calibre to manage my own ebooks on my Kindle, which makes reading drafts of my own work very easy.
My Paperwhite has also helped my resolve to reduce my printed books to just the ones I use or re-read regularly, or that are otherwise not really suitable candidates for e-reading. More importantly, in the age of COVID-19, the Paperwhite has eased the misery of insomnia.
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Ulysses Supports Family Sharing
I’ve only recently begun to look at Ulysses again, and start using it. I got my current copy of Ulysses via SettApp, which provides access to hundreds of macOS and iOS apps via a single subscription. Ulysses is beloved by many writers, particularly for its support of Markdown, its easy syncing between iOS and macOS, the built in support for publishing to Medium and WordPress, and Ulysses’ distraction-free approach to writing.
Today Ulysses announced support for family sharing via Ulysses purchases from Apple’s App store.
Please note: Family Sharing for subscriptions requires the currently latest OS versions: macOS Big Sur 11.0.1 or iOS 14.2, respectively. For new subscriptions, Family Sharing should be activated automatically. However, if you’ve already been a subscriber, you’re likely to have to turn it on manually.
See the blog post for full instructions.
This post contains affiliate links.
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Apple HomePod Mini
I used an Amazon gift card to buy a DOSS SoundBox portable Bluetooth speaker in 2017 when I realized I would be away from home and my stereo for an indefinite time. It’s worked really well, a charge lasts me almost a week of a few hours of daily use, and it’s easy to set up. But the sound quality isn’t much of an improvement on the speakers on my Mac.
Space gray Apple HomePod Mini In November I used an Apple Gift card to buy an Apple HomePod Mini. It arrived today. You need to have an iOS device running iOS 14 to set up a HomePod Mini, but it took me less than 5 minutes, including unboxing. You unbox the Mini, plug it in to the AC adapter, connect the adapter to an outlet, unlock your iOS device, and hold it near the HomePod Mini. The iOS device screen instructs you to hold the iPhone so that you center the top of the HomePod mini in the camera’s view; you set up a room location (living room, etc,) with a tap in the iOS Home app, the HomePod gets your WiFi and Apple account data, and you’re good to go (though you can tweak Siri via the Settings on your iPhone).
The HomePod Mini takes up about as much space as a navel orange on my night stand. You can turn off Siri if you want, and just use your iPhone to send audio to the HomePod Mini. The top glows when Siri is active, and there’s a touch sensitive + and – to use as volume controls (or you can use Siri). Tap the flat area on the center top of the HomePod to toggle between pause/resume audio, double-tap to skip forward, triple tap to skip backwards. A long press puts Siri in listening mode (an alternative to using Hey Siri to signal Siri that you have a request).
The HomePod Mini sounds amazing. No, it’s not like listening to my stereo, or even high-end headphones, but it’s much better, richer and with much more range, than my Bluetooth speaker or computer, and Siri works surprisingly well. I’m delighted.
I’ve been exploring what Siri can do with a HomePod that I’ll find useful. I’ve added the Home.app widget to my Control Center. You can set options for room control and smart devices in the app. You can also play audio on the HomePod from your iOS device in several ways, including turning on BlueTooth and holding the iOS device near the HomePod to transfer currently playing audio to the HomePod, or vice versa. I should note that I have Apple Music, but you can also play music and podcasts you have purchased or downloaded on your iOS device (pod casts default to Apple’s Podcast app).
Things You Can Do with Hey Siri:
Play [Bruce Springsteen’s] latest album.
Tell me a joke.
What time [day, date] is it?
Play [RSVP] podcast.
Ambient Sounds
Play Night sounds
Play Rain sounds
Play Ocean sounds
Play Fireplace sounds
Play Stream sounds
Play Forest sounds
Play Whitenoise
Set up a Sleep Timer
- Start a track, playlist or ambient sound playing (Hey Siri play [Ocean Sounds Playlist]
- Ask Siri to set the timer: Hey Siri set a sleep timer for [45 minutes]
Siri will play the audio for the specific duration, then audio will fade out.
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Pilot S20 Drafting Pencil 0.5 mm
I’ve had the Pilot S20 Drafting Pencil on my Wish list at JetPens.com for a few year;s I like mechanical pencils, and I love a wooden body. This pencil comes in two shades of wood for the body, dark red, and dark brown, and in a .3mm and a .5mm size. I chose the dark red wood and the 5mm, though I was tempted by the .3; I don’t think I’ve ever used or owned a .3mm pencil. The pencil has a short aluminum pocket clip engraved with Pilot, and an aluminum band around the center that says S20 and Japan in small black letters around the center. You can slide the clip off the pencil if you’d prefer to not use it.
The Pilot S20 is a drafting pencil, with a fixed pipe for the graphite. The knock mechanism works by pressing the end of the S20 to push out a fresh section of graphite. The top of the knock is a plastic disk that closely matches the wood and proclaims .5 or .3, depending on which size you purchased. 
The center band of the knock rotates to change a label that names the graphite in use (F, H, HB, B); mine came with B already inside the pencil. Pull the knock off gently to reveal the tiny eraser (you can buy extras from Pilot), which itself pulls out so you can refill the lead chamber.I’ve used the Pilot S20 constantly for the last ten days or so, writing thousands of words. It’s been fabulous. It’s just the right weight and nicely balanced so even long writing sessions have been comfortable. I’m still using the three pieces of Pilot Neox Graphite Lead in B that the pencils was loaded with, and I like it well enough to order more. The Pilot Neox Grapite in B is dark without being too soft, and very smooth.
I bought my Pilot S20 pencil largely for esthetic reasons; it is lovely looking. I used it as a self-bribe to complete some onerous tasks, all of which I managed to force myself to do in the course of a two-week slog. I’m so glad I did, too. This pencil is lovely to look at, the slightly tapered curvature at the grip makes it easy to use for a long session of writing, and the wood feels as good as it looks. I confess that my Pilot S20 pencil has supplanted the Uni Kuru Toga for regular use, and the Kuru Toga has been relocated to my book bag. You can find the Pilot S20 at Amazon in .5mm in deep red, dark brown, and mahogany. The Pilot S20 pencil is also available in .3mm in dark brown, and deep red. Amazon says that the deep red and dark brown bodies are made of birch.
This post contains Amazon affiliate links.
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Annotating Books and Other Texts
Annotations don’t have to make sense to anyone else
Image: LLSAs a child, I was horrified by people who wrote in books. In high school, I’d go through my textbooks at the start of the new school year and carefully the penciled scribbles and doodles left by previous students. Once I started college I was expected to write in books, to annotate books, to know how and what to annotate. At the time, I rejected the very thought of annotating books; it just felt wrong. I wasn’t going to to do it.
I successfully avoided annotating books until my senior year as an undergraduate English major, when I first took my first Chaucer class in Middle English. The Robinson Chaucer, while an admirable scholarly text, was not student friendly. There were no notes on the page; they were all appendices at the back of the book. I resorted to making careful glosses using a fine point orange-body Bic Pen (my favorite tool for annotating books for decades).
As I read more texts in Middle and Old English and Celtic languages in graduate school, I used marginal notes to help me find particular passages, and glossed difficult words and concepts that weren’t otherwise explained by the text. Once I started teaching, I glossed with colored pencils in order to make finding a particular passage or note easier while lecturing and leading discussions. I still regularly annotate books, and thought I might save others some time by explaining how and why I annotate.
What Does it Mean to Annotate
Here’s a formal dictionary definition of annotate from the American Heritage Dictionary:
v.tr.
To furnish (a literary work) with critical commentary or explanatory notes; gloss.v.intr.
To gloss a text (s. v. American Heritage Dictionary annotate).And here’s the entry for annotation:- The act or process of furnishing critical commentary or explanatory notes.
- A critical or explanatory note; a commentary (American Heritage Dictionary, s.v. annotation).
In other words, when we annotate a book or text, we mark it up, via marginal notes or glosses, marks in the text itself, or highlighting and underlining passages in order to create additional meaning and understanding for ourselves. By careful annotation, we make a text our own. Careful, thoughtful annotation helps us engage with the text and remember it.
Annotating books (or other reading matter) helps us read as an active, engaged reader more likely to remember what you read. When we annotate or mark texts to emphasize the important information, the goal is to emphasize the key points or concepts. Don’t simply highlight or underline everything. Prioritize the material that you know you will use later in your own work, or that you want to be able to find quickly and easily later.
Glossing and Marginal Notes
Detail from British Library Cotton Nero D IV Lindisfarne Gospels f.203v showing Old English interlinear glosses translating the Latin scripture of the primary text in the darker Uncial script. Glossing, or making notes in the margins and within the text itself can help enormously when you locate something you read and need to remember. Glossing can be either a note that summarizes or comments on a passage or it can be a label, for instance, adding the word distinction in the margin, to note when an author draws a distinction between two items, or analogy, when an author compares an unfamiliar concept to a familiar one. Or you might gloss something with short note to provide a definition of an unfamiliar term. This last method was the most common kind of gloss in earlier eras when scribes would annotate a foreign term with a marginal note, as in the image to the right from the 8th century Gospels of Lindisfarne. A monk named Aldred added Old English glosses between the lines of the Latin text of the Gosples as a translation aide. Medieval and earlier glosses like this eventually resulted in the modern glossary, a collection of terms appended to a book). Etymologically Modern English gloss derives from Middle English glose, from Old French, from Medieval Latin glōsa, from Latin glōssa, foreign word requiring explanation, from Greek, “tongue, language” (American Heritage Dictionary s.v. gloss 2).
Highlighting and Underlining
Highlighting, that is using a colored marker or pencil that colors text so that the text is still readable through the color, is a useful technique for annotating books. It is different from underlining in that the entire line(s) of text are colored in highlighting, whereas underlining usually means to draw a thin line under the line of text.
Don’t get carried away with underlining or highlighting. If you highlight or underline more than about 15% of a given page, you’re probably not prioritizing the information. Only highlight those concepts or points that are most important.
As an alternative to underlining or highlighting, consider annotating by drawing a vertical line in the margin to mark the passage in question, possibly with a note in the margin about why it’s important.
Annotation Styles and Codes
It’s a good idea to create your own personal style of annotating books. You might circle important concepts, and underline terms and definitions. Consider using the margin to summarize key points with a brief note. It can also be useful to use the margin to ask questions that are answered in that section of the text. Many readers use a question mark in the margin to make it easy to find a section or concept that they do not understand. It’s helpful to create your own personal style of annotating. You might circle important concepts, underline terms and definitions, or summarize key points with a brief note in the margin. You can see an example of one way of annotating a text here.
Levenger’s Helpful Marks for Readers In some cases, you might want to have a short note on the flyleaf of a book, if you’ve used special annotation symbols just for that book.
Keep It Clean
Many readers particularly students planning to resell their textbooks hate the idea of annotating books. Sometimes it’s just a personal dislike; sometimes it’s because the book in question isn’t yours, so you shouldn’t mark it permanently. In that case, consider using post-its that you can remove before selling the books or keep in books you own. There are special stickynotes designed explicitly for making notes about a page as you read.
Alternatively, I often take notes by hand in a notebook or pad of paper or on my computer as I read instead of or in addition to marking up the book.
Digital Annotation
If you routinely use .pdfs or ebooks, there are digital equivalents for the forms of annotation used in printed books. There are minor differences in the methods for accessing and creating the annotations based on the app in question, but the basic methodology is similar. Typically you can make digital marginal sticky notes, dog-ear pages or book mark them with a note, highlight text, and underline. With most .pdf readers, you can also draw circles, arrows, and other shapes, on the .pdf pages.
Why Annotate?
Annotating has two primary purposes; it allows us to find particular passages or ideas in a text, and it aids our memory and understanding because as we closely read and think about the text, and engage with it by annotations, we make the text our own. We add personal meaning and interpretation.
Tools for Annotation
You don’t actually need fancy tools to annotate books or documents. But the right tool can make a difference in legibility and utility.
Smaller sticky notes, the familiar 1 3/8 inch x 1 7/8 inch notes are useful for making marginal notes without marking the page. Page flags make it easy to find the pages and passages you know will be important without writing in your books.
Sometimes it’s helpful to take extensive notes about a page without writing on the page. These removable notes have tabs that you can label, making it easy to find the specific topic you’re looking for. And you can use them to take notes while you read and then remove them, either to save in a notebook for later use or discard when you no longer need them.
There are a lot of different kinds of sticky notes, with all sorts of uses. It’s often convenient to have a portable assortment to use not only for annotating, but for note-taking, and marking sections for review.
A multi-pen with red, blue, and black ink, and a .05 mm mechanical pencil is exceedingly useful as an all-purpose writing and annotating tool. You can use it to make color-coded annotations, take notes, and you have erasable pencil too.
The utility of highlighting passages with very visible color is that they’re easy to find. But sometimes it’s better or easier to use pencil to make notes and marks that you can erase later. These Apsara pencils are smooth-writing dark graphite wood-case pencils and they come with a sharpener and an eraser. You will be surprised how nice these are to write with, and by the quality of the sharpener.
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Musgrave Pencils
Musgrave Pencil is a family-owned and operated pencil maker in Shelbyville, Tennessee that’s been making pencils since 1916. The Musgraves began by selling Tennessee Red Cedar slats to European pencil makers; remember that, it’ll be important later.
Musgrave’s Heritage Collection
While Musgrave Pencil Company makes a wide variety of custom and specialty decorated and branded pencils, I’m going to focus on their Heritage Collection pencils. Most of these pencils have been made and sold by Musgrave for decades, or perhaps more accurately, generations. I don’t think you can go wrong buying any of these pencils, but whether a pencil will work for you is very much dependent a writer’s personal preferences, and the writing task at hand. I like the fact that Musgrave has its own Pencil Variety pack, which is a great way to try out a number of individual pencils rather than buying them by the dozen. You can also buy singles of most Musgrave pencils via CW Pencils.
Musgrave 600 News
Musgrave 600 News I’ve written about the Musgrave 600 News before, so I’m going to cheat and repeat myself, with some minor changes. The Musgrave 600 News is a round, glossy black eraserless pencil with prominent san-serif white print. I purchased it from CW Pencils for $0.50, and it was a bargain. As the CW Pencils description of the Musgrave 600 News suggests, this thick-cored dark pencil feels about like “3B/4B and looks a bit darker.” Musgrave 600 News isn’t terribly durable in terms of general hardiness (all that graphite is fragile) or point retention, but it produces a thick dark and very smooth line. Musgrave 600 News is a great pencil for writing, despite its tendency to smudge. I especially like it for note-taking, and on-the-fly writing. I’ll probably buy a couple more so I can always have one on hand because Musgrave 600 News smooth writers, produce a thick line, and are very dark. I’m thinking that they might work particularly well for handwriting practice. If you go to Musgravepencil.com, you can buy a dozen Musgrave 600 News for $6.25.
Musgrave Bugle 1816
Musgrave Bugle 1816 The Musgrave Bugle 1816 is a round, eraserless, light toned (Bass wood?), natural finish pencil with an HB/#2 graphite core. The body of the pencil is coated with a clear glossy lacquer and has a white text imprint reading “Musgrave Pencil Inc. Shelbyville Tenn.” and “Bugle 1816,” flanked by an image of a bugle on either side. This pencil feels light weight in my hand, and the graphite seems a mite softer and darker to me than a standard #2. You can see some indications of grain and natural striations in the wood, and while the base color of the wood is lighter, the Musgrave Bugle 1816 is otherwise very similar to the basic pencils made by Henry David Thoreau and his family, as CW Pencils notes.
Musgrave 909 Ceres
Musgrave 909 Ceres The Musgrave Ceres pencil looks like a yellow-painted classic hex American school pencil, and that does seem to be the market it’s meant for. The graphite is standard #2/HB. It has a black imprint and the classic pink eraser, with a gold ferrule. It writes smoothly, and is perhaps a shade darker than the Bugle, but that might just be me. Based on pencils I’ve seen in collections, they used to make the Ceres in #1 graphite too.
Musgrave Harvest 320
Musgrave Harvest 320 The Musgrave Harvest 320 is another yellow hex body with a brown stripe in the ferrule, and a pink eraser. The imprint is in gold foil script (sorry it’s such a poor photo). The Harvest 320 is a reasonably smooth, perfectly pleasant pencil, a reliable #2/HB. The Harvest 320 also comes in a #1 graphite, and has a new sibling, the Musgrave Harvest 320 Pro. I haven’t yet tried the Harvest 320 #1, but I plan to.
Musgrave My-Pal 2020
Musgrave My-Pal 2020 Musgrave’s My-Pal 2020 is a black round-bodied eraserless pencil. Descriptions, including Musgrave’s call this a “mini Jumbo.” It’s not all that mini; it’s 7” long, and 5/16″ in diameter, so it’s a little shorter than a standard pencil, and a little thicker, but not as jumbo as the standard thick red pencils I learned to write with in Kindergarten. If you look at the flat end, you’ll notice that the core is substantially thicker than a standard pencil. This pencil’s black body appears almost navy in some lights. The imprint “MY-PAL” and the Musgrave pencil name and “Shelbyville Tenn. – 2020” is in white paint. Musgrave’s My-Pal 2020 pencil was intended for young children, but I can see it being used for handwriting practice or drawing, and it might be an easier-to-use pencil for arthritic hands as well.
Musgrave Test Scoring 100
Musgrave Test Scoring 100 The Musgrave Test Scoring 100 is a silver-bodied pencil with a silver ferrule and pink eraser has an electro-bonded artificial graphite, designed to perform well on machine-scored scantrons. It isn’t rated, but it does feel a little more like a B than an HB, a 1 than a 2. The Musgrave Pencils Co Shelbyville Tenn is in tiny black print, and it’s a little crowded looking. In larger text, also in black, the pencil also shows two test boxes, one empty, and one filled in, Test Scoring 100″ with two empty test boxes before the 100. I would absolutely use this pencil for a scantron form or ballot that accepted graphite, but this strikes me as a decent writing pencil for long form writing, too, even if you do need to keep a sharpener close by.
Musgrave Heritage Collection 2019 Releases
In late 2019 Musgrave announced some new releases, including three new pencils. This was an unexpected treat, and all three of the new pencils have been roundly welcomed.
Musgrave Harvest 320 Pro
Musgrave Harvest 320 Pro Musgrave says of the Musgrave Harvest 320 Pro that “It features the same classic Harvest design, but it’s now made from California incense cedar with an upgraded core.” I say this is a really nice pencil. It looks very much like the Harvest 320, including an identical gold imprint and pink eraser, but the Musgrave Harvest 320 Pro lacks the brown ferrule stripe that the standard 320 has. Like the standard Harvest 320, Musgrave’s Harvest 320 Pro is a perfectly good, reliable, smooth-writing pencil, with a slightly softer, darker graphite core. Honestly, if you handed me one to use and didn’t tell me it was HB/2, I’d think it was 1/B. I really like this pencil, and plan to buy another box.
Musgrave Tennessee Red Cedar
This is a fairly typical Musgrave Tennessee Red pencil, though there’s a lot of variation in the color and grain in a box of pencils. 
These are also Musgrave Tennessee Red pencils. Musgrave began as a business by selling Tennessee red cedar slats to pencil-makers, before creating their own pencils. They found a new (albeit limited) source for red cedar slats, and thus, produced this Musgrave Tennessee Red Cedar pencil. This Musgrave post explains some of the issues about making Musgrave Tennessee Red Cedar pencils with slats that weren’t prepared with pencil production in mind. The cores aren’t perfectly centered. Some of the seams on these pencils are iffy, and some seams aren’t joined. That said, these pencils are truly beautiful; the natural red cedar colors and grain are lovely, and there’s a lot of variation from pencil to pencil. The wood bodies of these pencils is not stained, just sealed with a transparent lacquer. They have a gold ferrule, and a white eraser, with a red ink imprint that says Musgrave Pencil company, an M in a diamond, and Genuine Tennessee Red Cedar. The Tennessee Red Cedar is in a script face, followed by a tiny red circle with three stars, a nod to the Tennessee flag. The poor point on this is my fault; I forgot to finish sharpening it. I’ve had good luck using an Apsara hand-held sharpener on these. This pencil I sharpened with the Kum/Blackwing two-step, and it’s not as satisfactory, in my opinion, as the point from the Apsara.
Musgrave’s Tennessee Red Cedars smell like red cedar when you sharpen them (think about the way your grandmother’s cedar chest smells). Each pencil is different in appearance. Some are darker red than others, some are striped with a combination of Red Cedar’s natural light and darker striations. But all of them are lovely, and they write very nicely. The graphite in these Tennessee Red Cedars reminds me of the graphite in the Musgrave Harvest 320 Pros; smooth, a little darker and softer than a standard 2 maybe, but wonderful to write with. Sharpening these has been a challenge for some; I’ve had great success using an inexpensive Apsara Longpoint Sharpener, free with boxes of Apsara Pencils, or 20 Apsara Long Point Sharpeners for about $5.00 on Amazon.
I really love these pencils. They’re a treat, and were particularly welcome companions on dark days this winter. I’m going to buy more when I can, so that I can share the joy.
Musgrave Single Barrel 106
Musgrave Single Barrel 106 The Musgrave Pencil Co. catalog page says this about these pencils:
At the end of the 1930s, Colonel Musgrave sent his final export of Tennessee Red Cedar slats off to Europe’s pencil factories. Somehow, a small number of burlap sacks filled with slats missed the boat. Years later, the sacks would be discovered in the wreckage of an ill-fated storage building that had collapsed.
These Musgrave Single Barrel 106 pencils are a genuine limited release, one that’s limited by the availability of materials. These hex pencils have a natural finish over the lovely grain of the antique Red Cedar, a black end-cap, and a smooth #2/HB core. These are very limited, and priced accordingly; two for $18, or $10.00 each, but they are truly lovely to hold and great for writing. It is a dark graphite, but to me it feels a little harder than it looks. The graphite is not as nice as say a Blackwing Natural, but the pencil is lovely to use and feels good in the hand, with a perfectly good core. The 106 is a reference to Episode 106 of the Erasable Podcast, which you should absolutely listen to because it features Henry Hulan III, of Musgrave Pencils.
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“I Will Survive” “I Will Survive” The Coronavirus Version for Teachers Going Online
Via Michael Bruening:
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A Reading Plan to Reduce My TBR Stack of Books
I never used to have anything I’d call a TBR (To Be Read) pile of books. Even in grad school by using a reading plan I managed to keep up with reading for school, work, and still keep the circulation department of multiple libraries busy.
But now, now I have a colossus of a TBR stack, though most of it is digital these days. That said, I still have somewhere around 15 printed codex books, mostly in my field to read. I’ve had a loose schedule of sorts for years, mostly based on what I’m currently researching, but this year, in part because there are So Many Books, I decided to organize a list and create a reading plan, much like those I made in grad school in order to keep up with long lists of required reading.
As I compiled my list, which required me to sort through books printed and digital, I was reminded of other reading plans. There were the Great Books sorts of institutionalized plans wherein reading Great Books was thought to be a sure pathway to being a Great Person yourself; these sometimes took the form of actual books produced and accompanied by a reading plan, sometimes by subscription, as in the Harvard Classics l or in the form of a build your own list like The Modern Library. Just search “reading list” and you’ll be overwhelmed with all the lists of books you should read.
In a similar vein, given the current emphasis on intentionality and reading for personal improvement, just searching the Web for “personal reading plan” will provide you any number of how to guides for creating your plan.[1]Not to mention countless schedules for reading the entire Bible over the course of the year; this practice dates back at least to the medieval monastic tradition for Christians, and far longer for … Continue reading I even found a nifty 2020 schedule for reading all of Shakespeare during the course of the year.
I’m in the early stages of my plan as yet, with not much more than a very large multi-page checklist organized by topic/project. Just listing and categorizing the books was exceedingly helpful in creating a plan. I already use Library Thing and Goodreads for book tracking and inspiration. They were useful in this instance in tracking books I have but have not yet read, and what I need to reserve at a library. I use Calibre to sort and categorize and tag ebooks, making it easy to locate all the books I’ve tagged TBR or to put on hold at the library.Once I had my checklist of categorized books, the next step was scheduling and finding specific times to read. I generally read fiction at night and for a few hours each weekend. During my week-day working hours, I concentrate on non-fiction and books in my field and related to current writing projects. Even more importantly, I’m blocking out specific times to read specific books. It’s not enough to just put Read Cunliffe’s Ancient Celts second Ed on a to-do list. I need to block out when I’m going to read it (Friday afternoons 12-2). The blocking-out-of-time is one of the most useful techniques I know in terms of actually getting things read or done. I schedule specific items to read an hour or two at a time during the week as part of my regular bullet journal scheduling. I also make sure I always have something queued up on my iPhone for those odd quarter-hours waiting for someone else to do something.
References
↑1 Not to mention countless schedules for reading the entire Bible over the course of the year; this practice dates back at least to the medieval monastic tradition for Christians, and far longer for Jews. -
Staedtler Norica 2B Pencils
I’m using pencils a lot these days, especially for drafts and taking notes. I’m starting to be a little more particular and leaning firmly towards darker graphite or the 2B graphite rating.
I liked the black Staedtler Norica HB I tried last year so much I decided to try the blue Norica 2B. My black Noricas came from Office Depot last year, and were exceedingly affordable, but even the Amazon price isn’t terrible.
I like the blue Norica 2B even better than the black Norica
HB (#2 pencil, in American graphite ratings). The eraser is not great, but it’s not terrible either. The Norica 2B graphite is really smooth and fairly dark, but not so soft that the pencil requires constant sharpening and the graphite smears. These made-in-Thailand Staedtler Norica 2B pencils are both nice enough to use every day and affordable enough to give away and to use away from home (at the library for instance) without feeling bad if I lose one. I even like the blue paint with silver text of the wood (though not quite as much as the black and silver of the the Norica HB). I notice Johnny Gamber of Pencil Revolution also likes both the Norica HB and the Norica 2B.
I’ll have to see if Staples carries the 2B Noricas. I bought mine at Amazon, and have already ordered more. I’m told that both the HB black Noricas and the 2B blue Noricas routinely go on sale at Staples and Office Depot for back to school; I’ll have to watch. Staples currently lists 36 black HB Noricas for $14.59. Notice that Office Depot has blue Norica HB (not 2B) pencils listed for $9.69 for 36 pencils. These are not the same pencil; if you look closely you’ll see that these pencils say Staedtler norica 132 46. Mine don’t.
Staedtler norica black HB and blue 2B pencils
