Fresh Ribbon

NaNoWriMo Calendar: Because the Novel Wants Out

2012-09-30T15:10:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is October, and you know what that means. Just to get everyone in the mood, I whipped up a few countdown calendar wallpapers for all my National Novel Writing Month folk. Just click on the picture and download away.

I'll be slinging typebars as NoTelling with you this year, so buddy up and let's get this show on the road! Follow my blog with Bloglovin

A Room of One's Own

2012-07-29T16:00:00.001-05:00

Read about 229 Spring Street

Since Strikethru threw down the gauntlet and asked us to dream up our own writing shacks,I thought I'd play along. This was easy, because I picked out this Dream Shack a few weeks ago while visiting Eureka Springs, AR and very nearly not returning.

So it's not a shack, actually, but it is for sale and it called to me distinctly every time I rode down the mountain to go into or out of town. This little house tugged at me, I tell you.

I know the conversation about writing shacks began with the whole back-to-basics, typewriter-on-a-table philosophy, and I wholly agree - we need to disconnect and find a room of our own. I get it. I'm not having some kind of Pinterest-induced Southern Living magazine fantasy.

But LOOK at it.

Bear with me here. Let's say you're out in your backyard writing shack, in the gawdalmighty zone and typing like a best-selling fiend on the finest typewriter Remington ever made. You're an articulate machine gun, and you're thirsty for a tall glass of iced tea which should be within arm's reach, but is now empty. Or, you have to powder your nose. It happens.

Just then, your wife/husband/child/grandkid shouts out across the lawn and into your zone. "Do you need anything from the store?" they say. Or "Hey, where are my...?"

And it's gone.

The answer is to leave town, really. Move to, say, Eureka Springs and buy a sweet little house so you can live on two levels that step out upon two different streets. Better yet, win the lottery, buy the Eureka house, and tell absolutely no one what you have done. That way they can't follow you.

(Do click on the link and read about the house. There are more pictures, but I knew I'd lose complete typewriter shack cred if I put them up here.)

Dear President Eisenhower

2012-07-27T11:33:00.000-05:00

U.S. National Archives

Elvis got that haircut at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. There's a nifty tourist shrine to the whole event at the Fort Chaffee Barbershop Museum. But that's not the point, really. The important thing is that, in a fit of tween desperation, Linda, Sherry, and Mickie felt impelled to write the only man who could stop this G.I. haircut madness: The President.

U.S. National Archives

I don't know whether the best part of this is imagining the three of those girls working this out at some slumber party, or whether the best part is that through a series of offhand decisions, their letter became a U.S. National Archives document. In perpetuity, no less.

The Dream is This: Poets on the Street and the Roar of a Typewriter Posse

2012-07-23T13:04:00.000-05:00

And this is how to negotiate a poem:

Visit the Poetry Depot page at the Miami Poetry Collective.

Tallulah the Royal Futura

Documentary: The Typewriter in the 21st Century

2012-06-20T11:03:00.000-05:00

The Typewriter (In the 21st Century)

Directed by: Christopher Lockett

Produced by: Gary Nicholson

Coming Fall 2012

Please tell me I'm not the last person to know about this. Look at all the familiar faces and names in this trailer. The typosphere is on fire, I tell you! Keep up with the movie's progress on Twitter (@LAtypewriter).

Late to the Dance: Megan Chapman's Typewriter Art

2012-06-19T11:25:00.004-05:00

Megan Chapman at Art Maven

Having recently risen from a two year paper-grading-induced coma, I started poking around in my feedreader to see what I had missed. Quite a bit, it turns out.

Megan Chapman, one of my favorite Arkansas artists, created a series of paintings last year that floors me. It's a mixed media series using typed texts and vintage papers called Sometimes I Love You and other stories, and as luck would have it some of the pieces are for sale on Megan's Etsy site Art Maven.

Typing and aged papers and poetry - oh my! I adore everything about this series and am feverishly figuring out which piece needs to live at my house. Visit Megan at her blog as well - tell her Monda sent you and begs forever pardon for strolling in so late.

She's Back

2012-02-26T10:01:00.001-06:00

So I guess it's been a while. Because the reasons are neither dramatic nor interesting, let's put that aside for a bit and focus instead on my new gadget.

It's not a typewriter. It's not even cutting edge, since I'm certainly the last reader on the planet to finally get a Kindle. The fascination is simply this:

My daughter understands her mama's odd techno-dichotomy enough to gift me with a Kindle wrapped elegantly in a Verso embossed typewriter cover. How delightful is that?

It may take me a while to learn to read without a pen in my hand to scribble margin notes, but I'm thoroughly enjoying the clickety-click of zooming between books. No more going room to room to find one of the three I'm reading at the same time. Ah, progress.

So You Want to be an Office Gal

2010-09-07T20:24:00.003-05:00

Prelinger Archives

I don't really know where to begin. Maybe with that school counselor...

Mechanical Brides: Women and Machines from Home to Office

2010-08-29T22:10:00.001-05:00

at Amazon for a song

It's like someone was reading my retrotech mind. Washing machines and dictaphones and typewriters, oh my! Never mind that this little ditty was published about seventeen years ago by The Cooper-Hewitt National Museum of Design, I never saw it so it's new to me.

Mechanical Brides covers all the gadgetry of cleaning, cooking, and rote office work. What I found most interesting is the chapter on office machines (of course) and the feminization of this technology. Turning a male clerk into a female secretary involved separating the act of writing into two distinct jobs: composition and typing. While male clerks had done both, female typists were relegated to writing as assembly line production. Interesting now is that we've come full-techno-circle, because everyone with a laptop both composes and produces "typed" text.

Business invented a middle-woman and then obsoleted her. Not that it was a bad thing, really, but that's a rant for another post.

This book is as much about feminine identity as it is about the machines that defined it. Full of stunning/appalling advertising copy and art, it's a steal if you can find one either on Amazon or Ebay. In fact, I'd like to have a copy just to cut up and frame.

Vintage Typecast: J. D. Salinger

2010-07-14T16:41:00.004-05:00

(Salinger letter via MIT Memorabilia)

Everyday Art: Teaching Momentum

2010-07-06T00:01:00.000-05:00

(In honor of the Smithsonian's "Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists’ Enumerations from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art" exhibit.)

Everyday Art: Birthday List

2010-07-04T12:15:00.006-05:00

(In honor of the Smithsonian's "Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists’ Enumerations from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art" exhibit.)

Your turn.

List-Making as Art

2010-07-03T21:40:00.000-05:00

Ding Ren has the perfect gig: Typing as performance art. She just held an exhibition yesterday, but will perform "Observations with a Typewriter" again on August 20th as part of two-month "Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists’ Enumerations from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art." Here's a description of Ren's exhibition/performance:

"Ren will sit at a desk in the gallery space generating lists with a typewriter. The content of the lists will be gathered through an on-the-spot observation of visitors in the gallery space that is akin to an ethnographer performing a field study. These observations may include, but are not limited to: what visitors are holding in their hands, untied shoelaces, bits of overheard conversations, and the color of visitors’ shirts. The observed content will be recorded through typewritten pages that will spill out onto the floor of the gallery for visitors to read. Like the lists already on display, the lists Ren creates in real-time are meant to highlight potential patterns and find meaning in the easily overlooked, near-nothings of everyday life. Past records kept by Ren include an observation of falling objects, red dots, stray pennies on the street, and other people’s reading material on public transportation." ~ The Pinkline Project

Part one in this series began February 5th, and it looks like the whole collection might be available through September. Fascinating business, actually. Take a look at Smithsonian's online exhibit HERE, or order the companion book, Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists, although I'm sure neither will come close to that live performance. If anyone is handy to DC and can make that trip, be sure to let us know.

As a side note, that folded printer paper is for the birds. Clearly Ren hasn't yet experienced a fine BAROP.

In honor of all things Smithsonian and list-y, I'm proposing we all typecast a list or two to celebrate the everydayness of common writing. Besides, it's an excuse to make lists I don't have to follow.

List on, typosphere!

Nearly Vintage Fountain Pens

2010-07-02T15:06:00.000-05:00

For something to be truly vintage, it has to be at least 30 years old. I'm not sure if that's a hard and fast rule or if I just made that up, but there's something distasteful about using "vintage" to describe anything made after, say, the year I graduated from high school. These pens are nearly vintage, meaning they don't make them anymore and probably haven't for a while.

That hefty monster in the middle is the Monteverde Regatta. Made from pig iron or something like it, it's definitely a fountain pen you want to use unposted. The shame of it is that the cap screws neatly onto the end. This fountain pen is surprisingly easy to move, though. It's a sweet medium nib that's smooth even in the Moleskine. I found this one on closeout at Office Depot for $14. They're getting rid of all their pricey pens at OD, so hit the store soon.

My adorable blue Sheaffer Fashion Rings pen is a throwback to the early 80s when most fountain pens went skinny. The broad nib is decisive - almost a bit much for my thin-lined Moleskine paper, but I don't care. There is no pen faster. It came with a lovely matching ballpoint via Ebay - I think the seller has a few more sets, one in orange.

Ah, the Parker Rialto. I'm addicted to Rialto ballpoints, with their snappy caps and perfect weight. Again, thinnish and 80s to mid 90s, but the prices can be tragic. I was lucky with this red Rialto, which somehow rode under the Ebay radar due to misspellings in the listing. Smooth medium nib even on the Moleskine.

All of these pens came with converters. While I'd love to go crazy buying bottled inks in dazzling colors, there's a three year-old boy in this house and I know better. I'll stick to cartridges for a while.When you see the train coming, it's best to avoid the tracks, is all I'm saying.

Any skittishness in the pencast above is the sole responsibility of this Frost Parch stationery I found yesterday while milling around Little Rock. Pretty parchment, fails to drink the ink for some reason. It's pretty held up to the light, though. At the end of the day all that matters to me is how fast and well these pens write on ruled Moleskine paper, because it's all about actually using the pen. A lot.

Like Lazarus...

2010-06-20T22:04:00.005-05:00

Well, the old blog layout finally self-destructed. Not like I didn't see it coming. I'll miss those tea-stained boxes and funky page-switches, but not enough to build it back. So, the new Fresh Ribbon is a little cleaner, a little more functional.

To put me in the typecasting mood, I've whipped up a page on Facebook. Those of you addicted to FB (and you know who you are) will find this an easy way to keep up. I've slung up a few oddities on there already, so drop in and say hello.

Only a Typewriter Geek Like Me (or maybe you...)

2010-06-18T22:59:00.003-05:00

...will appreciate the bevy of old machines in their seminatural habitats. Nothing like a Navy training film, I say.

And don't you dare stop watching before it's over. There's some mighty fancy keystroking going on there at the end.

When a Lady Drops Her Hankie...

2010-06-07T16:27:00.001-05:00

Yes, with a spritz of starch you can roll that antique handkerchief into the typewriter. With a drawer full of these I've only just begun. These are perfect for lines of poetry, quotes, or cryptic messages. I feel a Silent Type entry coming on, so look out.

Thanks to my friend Stephanie who found the inspiration for this at the lovely blog 52 Flea. Steph knows where the good stuff is and always tells me.

BAROP Update: The Changing of the Guard

2010-02-18T23:25:00.003-06:00

It was only a matter of time, really. Our Writing Center typewriter - a dubious Remington Quiet-Riter - bit the techno-dust and had to be replaced. All that creative effort on the Big Ass Roll of Paper, all those timid hands clacking out their first mechanical writing, well, it was too much for the old girl. She threw a feed roller. Not AT us, mind you, but certainly in revolt.

I went home and made a quick search under the bed for another machine that could take the kind of semi-Kerouacian punishment our writing tutors can dish out. And look what I found.

This sweet Royal was an Ebay chance I took a year ago. I paid more in shipping, and not much there. What arrived was this completely pristine Royal Quiet Deluxe. She's an odd textured green - something between August grass and Ozark moss. The roller had never been struck and all the paperwork sat tucked inside the top of the case.

The truth is, I'd forgotten about this little jewel. And yes, I feel a little guilty about it.

Jennifer and I retired the Quiet-Riter with all the dignity due that toad-colored workhorse. Spinning the BAROP gingerly out was a tad tricky considering missing feed roller and the delicacy of the teletype roll, not to mention the enormous length of the damn thing. It was a two-woman job.

I think I heard "Taps" playing softly behind us, but I'm not sure.

Typewriter Hoofing

2010-01-09T13:59:00.003-06:00

Whippersnappers

2010-01-08T22:03:00.003-06:00

My God. They're typecasting at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas. Kinda. I've already left my comment - feel free to dive in and enlighten these gentlemen on the finer points of typecasting.

That is all.

The Prodigal Daughter Returns

2010-01-07T22:26:00.000-06:00

Maybe I Just Need a Better Fountain Pen

2010-01-05T18:57:00.008-06:00

...or, why don't my pencasts look as gorgeous as everyone else's?

VIDEO: The Twenty-Six Old Characters. A history of writing and how to use a fountain pen, brought to you by Sheaffer. Note: I tried to embed this and it jumped out in front of everything, taking over like The Video That Ate My Layout. Scary. Embed with care.

Avant Garde Typewriter Music

2009-11-08T09:34:00.004-06:00

Clearly DaDa never died. The typist/musician is obviously working on his NaNoWriMo novel.

Meet Percy, the First Rooster in the Hen House

2009-11-04T22:52:00.001-06:00

Percy came to me in a dream, almost. I'd been hunting one of these with a vengeance for some time and with no luck whatsoever. Then - just as it happens with true love - I stopped looking and this Royal KHM showed up at my office door with a fist full of road-picked flowers and a shy grin.

It seems he's not from around here. Probably hopped a train from Chicago - I found the barest remnant of it stamped on the shreds of his vinyl cover. You know, I live in a train town and it's not least bit unusual to find a wayward traveler here and there. I've taken him in, promised hot water and hot meals in return for a little office work.

Oh, he's filthy. I knocked out dirt-dobber nests and a couple of spider skeletons. Despite that, I was able to dust him off, put in a new ribbon, and begin typing as if not a day had passed since 1936. A steady, even Elite. This will be my new office typewriter - after a good going over.

Ed, I'm sorry you couldn't get your hands on this one. You would've loved it.

In Memoriam

2009-11-03T21:03:00.004-06:00

I just found out. Ed Cordon, my friend and typewriter repairman at Acme Business Machines is gone. Those interested may want to leave a message here. I'll send a long letter to his wife, typed on one of the many typewriters Ed lovingly resurrected for me.

It isn't enough, though. School began and I was busy. I never called and now I can't.

Ed was a gentleman and a good man, and is missed.