This transcript was generated from an audio file by AI, and may contain inaccuracies.
Transcript
I don't listen to podcasts. It's terrible.
Hello and welcome to episode 28 of the erasable Podcast. Tonight, we're excited not only because it's World Stationary Day on Wednesday, but also we're going to be joined by someone we've wanted to talk to for a long time, Brian Bedell from Kudal Partners and Field Notes. He'll be here with us on the second half. For now, I'm joined by my two co hosts, the gem paper clips to my ring clasp, Johnny Gamber and Tim Wasem. Hey, guys.
Hey, Andy.
How are you?
Very good. You guys really are the perfection of designs. So I just wanted to point that out.
Wait till you see me in person.
You're just going to be shocked someday. So, yeah, we're going to have Brian on later, which is pretty awesome. And in lieu of a Pencil of the Week, we're going to be discussing just a little bit some initial impressions from the Perfection of the Paperclip, the new book by James Ward. So, yeah, join us in for that. I guess we should start off with the tools of the trade. Tim, what are you drinking with? What are you drinking and writing with? What are you drinking with? A glass.
A glass mostly.
Usually
I am drinking tea tonight. Just a little caffeine just to boost me, just until I go to bed. So I'm drinking some Barry's black tea. It's my favorite black tea with some good, healthy dose of half and half, a nice beautiful orange color. And I am writing with my penmanship pencil, 4B penmanship pencil that I reviewed not too long ago. It's a nice. I'm finding that it's a nice podcasting pencil because it's really quiet. So soft, like butter. Yeah, that's me, Johnny, how about you?
Well, I am drinking a nice old fashioned, compared to the old fashions I usually make, that is made with bullet rye. And I didn't realize how hipsterific bullet whiskey is getting until it's like all over Instagram. But it's good stuff.
You know the rye is made in Indiana.
Yes. I knew that because my friend read the label and he's like, why is it made in Indiana? I have no idea.
It's not. It's. It's. It's always confused me because Bullock county in Kentucky is not spelled the same way as bullet whiskey. Like, none of them are spelled like a, you know, like a gun bullet or a bullet pencil. But that's no idea why I think
this is inhabit our guy who had a mysterious frontier whiskey recipe Like Frontier Whiskey.
Really?
Okay. And I'm writing with a really cool pencil I picked up at CW Pencil Enterprise called the Musgrave Bugle. It's not unfinished. It's a clear, lacquered, round pencil that's untipped with white letters. And it's pretty inexpensive.
It's like a quarter.
And on Caroline's website, it says shiny and simple. The Bugle is a cute untip number two, which pretty much sums it up.
It's a cool pencil.
It's a cute.
Definitely tag them onto an order. I should have bought more of these. I bought, like, two. I went like a hundred because they're cool.
Well, maybe we'll have the opportunity to. To change that.
We will. Steal them all, but buy them all.
I am.
How about you, Mr. Andy?
I am. I've been kind of sick this weekend.
It's.
I'm amazed that I have a voice right now to do this podcast, but I'm so. I'm just drinking water for now.
You guys are making me look like a lush.
Well, normally, I would be joining you in some kind of. Just today. Been drinking water. Like, it's going on a style, which in California, it's kind of going out. I paid $8 for this water. And I know you're going to gasp when I say this, but I'm writing with a mechanical pencil. It was just sitting in the pencil cup when I was grabbing an index card to write on.
It's actually I just muted myself because I was throwing up in the cor.
Threw up a little bit in your mouth. It's actually my favorite of the bullet pencils. It's a disposable. It's a zebra, and I think Pentel makes the zebra. It's the number 2.7 millimeters. They look like a wooden pencil in that. It has, like, a real ferrule on it, and it has, like, a hexagonal body. And they're really nice. They're like, 4 inches. So they're the size of a good, like, shortened pencil. Yeah, they just do a really good job of. Better than anybody else. Really? Like, emulating a wooden pencil. So I don't know.
They're adorable.
Yeah, they're super adorable. And they're, like, so cheap. You can just get them and just, you know, lose them really easily. So. Yeah, we didn't do our jokey, jokey drinks this week.
Well, there are riots in my city, so. That's true. Just have the straight drink.
You're too busy.
No, I just wanted the whiskey.
Yeah.
Magic goblin Drink. I want to.
Well, it's funny. Well, it's not funny, but it's. It's ironic. You talk about riots happening in Baltimore right now and we, we stopped for a second when the first time we tried recording because we heard the ice cream man. So it sounds real rough out there.
Johnny, he's leading the charge.
Yeah.
He's gonna get himself in trouble now.
I'm just kidding.
Oh, yeah. The riots are like two miles from here.
Yeah.
Which in Baltimore is pretty far. There's a lot between here and there,
including my favorite park. How hilly is Baltimore?
It's pretty hilly. I live in pretty high up. So when I used to be in the workforce and a very easy ride to work on my bike.
It's all downhill.
Yep.
Uphill, built character. But I was going home, you know, take a shower, eat way too much food.
So today we are talking about the new book by James Ward, the Perfection of the Paperclip. It's really not that new because it's been out in the UK for a few months now.
Yeah, it's paperback already.
Yeah. I have to admit I'm kind of jealous of the UK hardback because it's. It has like a. Without the dust jacket, it has like this rubbery texture and it has that cool kaleidoscope design stamped on it.
Oh, man.
T.J. i think was showing his, his copy on in the group. It's like, man, we just have a boring looking book. But it's. I'd be interested to get a copy of a UK book just to see what the differences are. I assume that occasionally in this book he'll like in parentheses, put like imperial measurement next to, you know, like the metric stuff. So I'm guessing maybe it's that. I don't know what else. His, his introduction is definitely different. He kind of explains why they're not using the UK version. In the US people tend to say stationary to mean like fancy, like paper and envelopes that you get from papyrus or something like that rather than like office supplies. But I guess I say. I usually say stationary, like a stationary store for office supplies.
Yeah, I sort of forgot that that's not what people mean by it around here.
Exactly.
I think most people, I think in our world it's. We think that way. But I do think most people here, when they hear stationery store, they think of wedding invitations or something.
Not a gold foil or gold leaf.
Which I'll admit it makes it hard when I'm in a city with like some time to do some shopping and I look on Yelp or something for some cool like office supply shops. Yeah, I'll put in stationary and usually it'll show me like the paper source or papyrus or like things remembered even or something like that. So it's. Yeah, it's definitely. It definitely makes it hard because when I just search for office supplies usually just shows me like office Max or staples or something words. So yeah, we had a really good response. I know that, you know, almost 30 people took advantage of our affiliate link to buy the book online. Yeah, that's great. We made a whole 34 cents. No, we made a little more than that. But good old Amazon definitely doesn't give a huge cut, but it's still alright. And those of you who used an independent book dealer to buy, buy your copy. I can forgive you for that.
Yeah, yeah, most definitely.
For show.
Yeah, most definitely. And so we'll be talking about it today and we should say in the next episode. So if you haven't got a copy of it yet, you can jump on Amazon through the link in the show notes and get yourself a copy. Because today we're gonna give some first impressions and talk about some things and then once we all finish the book, the next episode, we'll talk about it at large, the book as a whole.
So, and, and those show notes, in case you're interested, is at erasable US/28. One thing, I was going to correct this in post, but I might as well just bring it up now. We actually recorded the interview with Brian before we did this. We did this first part and for some reason I was thinking it was episode 27. So I, I think that in that interview I say our show notes at erasable us/27. That is in fact wrong. It is at 28, so.
Oh, that's my fault. I know it's episode 27 because I can't believe we're at 28.
If I would have like looked around, I would have corrected myself.
We're getting up there. We're gonna be old timers. We are podcasting world.
Meanwhile, pen addicts on like 151.
Are they really?
Yeah, well, they do it every week and they've been going for two years longer than we have, so. So it's understandable. Powerhouse. I think they're the only one of the Mike Hurley shows that have continuously counted from the beginning. Pen adjectives stayed basically the same Since. Since his 70 decibels day, which was like two podcast networks ago.
It's very confusing.
I think part of it is because when he went from 5 by 5 to Relay FM. That one wasn't one of the, like, tech powerhouses, so they just wanted to, like, they were just like, sure, just take that with you.
Anyhow, it was the only one that didn't change names.
Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. So it's one thing I should point out is I'm kind of a bad analog user because this is the first paper. Paper copy of a book that I've read for a while.
Really?
Yeah, probably. Probably a year.
Wow.
Yeah, I just. I've had my Kindle and I've really been conscious about, like, adding to my library and like, taking up physical space just because I've definitely been downsizing.
Well, moving across the country, you know.
Yeah. Well, even. Even before that was even a thing I was going to do, I moved from a really big place to a much smaller place. So I kind of downsized to my library then. I've just been trying to be conscious about just about my, like, physical library, so. So I've been getting mostly Amazon books or finding things from the library or finding things that fell off the Internet truck, things like that. But this is. This is definitely a worthwhile investment into dead trees, I think.
I've never read an ebook before.
It takes some getting used to, but it's not. It's not bad. I like it because sometimes I read like, more than one book at once. Like, maybe I have a book of short stories and a novel going on, and I was traveling in 2011 a lot for my back and forth for my. For the pencil.com job, and I got a Kindle for Christmas and it was really nice because you could just pack that on an airplane and, you know, pull it out when you need it. You wouldn't have to travel with two books.
I like my Kindle. I don't. I hate reading on my iPad, but I like reading on my Kindle. That E Ink thing is really. Yeah, really nice.
Have you ever.
A little more easy to handle and easy to navigate? Because I have the old one that's just like four buttons, so. Yeah.
Johnny, have you ever used an E Ink display on anything?
Yeah. I'm the odd guy among everybody. I know I'm the only one without one. Everybody's got one. They're trying to talk me into it.
It's nicer because, like, I was worried that it was going to be just really, like, eye straining because, you know, like, an iPad is in such high contrast. It's hard to stare at that for a long time. But that E ink display is a really nice. It's not backlit or anything, so it's. It makes it more like actual, you know, type on a page. But. But yeah, there's definitely something nice about being able to just like, flip back and forth in my. My physical book.
Yeah.
And I also wrote a little, like, a couple notes in the margins for. For discussion, and that's not something that's easy to do on a Kindle. You can.
You'll wreck it.
Yeah, well, you can. You can, like, annotate and, like, type in notes, but that's not. That's. It's hard to kind of, like, recall and get back to it. So. So I definitely felt like I was back in college with annotating my. My notebook.
That's awesome.
My textbook. Yeah. So, yeah. What did you guys think of the first few chapters?
I learned a lot. I don't know about you guys.
It's a. I love. You know, even if this wasn't stationary stuff, I still would really like it because I love just trivia like this. There's a. There's a book called Consider the Fork, which is a lot like this, only with, like, kitchen utensils and their evolution throughout history. And, like, they talk about, like, crock pots and ovens and forks and chopsticks, and it's really great. So it's very similar to that in that it just kind of breaks things down by category and then gives you some history and how it got to where it is today.
Yeah, Yeah.
I think it's. Isn't there a. Bill Bryson has a book about, like, a similar kind of premise about home, doesn't he? Like, where he talks about, like, the concept of houses and different rooms in the houses and stuff like that.
Yeah, yeah.
At home.
Yeah.
Yeah.
A short history.
I'm looking at it right now.
Yeah.
It's big book.
Yeah, it is.
So it's big.
Bill Bryson books are good books.
Sorry.
I read. Which Bill Bryson book was it? Oh, where he talks about, like, the universe or. Do you know what I'm talking about?
Nope.
Okay, I'll look it up.
He went to Carbondale in the one that he wrote about America in the 80s, which summed up my experiences there, too. Yeah, just beer and tv. It's about it. I'm not a big fan of either.
I wasn't.
Anyway. Yeah.
No, it's. No Wild Turkey.
No Wild Man.
What did. What did you guys. Let's start about, like, the writer himself, James Ward. Like, with this book, what did you. How did you think about or what did you think about his, like, his tone like that? Because the. I feel like the. The tone of this book is pretty.
First of all, he's much younger than I thought he would be.
Yeah.
According to like the picture on the dust jacket. Like, I honestly have no idea how old he is, but yeah, he's definitely younger than I thought. And he comes from. It looks like this book was written mostly out of his experience on a blog. What is this blog called? It's something like I like boring things or something like that.
I like boring things.
Yeah.
Which is pretty great because I can relate to that to the point it's very, you know, like. So there's the evolutionary. The evolutionary. No, excuse me. The evolution of useful things. Is that what it's called, the Henry Petroski book?
Yes, it's like that or very close to that. Yeah, it's.
This book is similar to that in kind of what it's trying to do, but it has, I feel like the complete kind of opposite tone of Petroski. He's like a lot lighter and more accessible than Petroski is. Maybe sometime.
I read the pencil. It was kind of ponderous.
Yeah. Yeah. Ponderous.
Not being an engineer.
Yeah.
But once you get past that, you're like, yay.
This one does feel a lot more kind of like blog based than that. It does seem like a little bit shorter. And he writes with some like, colloquialisms and like just ways of saying things that may not hold up over time.
Yeah, it's just newer. The pencil was written in what, the 80s?
Yeah.
Gotta date it. There was still a blackwing back then.
That's true.
Yeah. He definitely lets his voice out. Like what you like aren't. Don't really expect and sit in a book that's very. A lot of the times, like several pages will go by and it'll just kind of feel like history, you know, of things. Then all of a sudden, his voice comes out. I have an underlying thing here in the section where he's talking about paperclips and. Or he's actually talking about pins and clips and like b. Binder clips. And he says 54 uses for binder clips that will change your life, promises one Buzzfeed article. Although having read all 54 uses, my life remains as resolutely disappointing as ever. So he lets out kind of self deprecating, like little humor stuff like jumps out every few pages, which is pretty. Yeah, it can be pretty fun as you're reading it.
Yeah, I definitely enjoy his. His Playful tone. Because it's. It's something. If it was not present in a book about whiteout and staplers and everything, it might just kind of make a lot of put.
Yeah, yeah.
A lot of people go to sleep. I loved his rant about the. The imperial system versus the metric system.
Yeah, that was funny.
I'm trying to find that right now.
My head in shame a little bit.
Yeah, he. He referenced. Sorry, go ahead. Go on. Tim. I'm sorry.
Oh, I was just. I read a Kurt Vonnegut short story today. It's kind of like, off topic, but he was welcome to the Monkey House. And he's like, the people Assisted Suicide or like way into the future and this very kind of futuristic story about this crazy situation. But Vonnegut makes a note to stop and say, and we still weren't using the metric system, by the way.
Yeah, I like. I'm trying to remember what chapter this is. It may be the one about paper where he's talking about this. But he. He quotes Grandpa Simpson from an episode of the Simpsons. I don't need the metric system. I still.
I'm on it.
40 rods to the hogs.
81.
Yeah. Page 81.
Yeah.
Man, you guys are on top of this.
The magic system is the tool of the devil. The metric system is the tool of the devil. My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead. And that's the way I likes it.
True words have never been spoken.
It is really interesting because I guess I never before. Maybe like a year ago, when I was really paying attention to like a 5, a 6. The paper sizes like that. I guess I never realized that they were. They were like one was half of another one. I guess I never realized that.
That was really eye opening when he talked about that.
Yeah. How logical that was. So it makes perfect sense.
But.
But yeah, even. Even the first chapter about paper clips, it's. It's so interesting because there's such a muddy history for so much of this stuff. Like, I don't know how often in this book they talk about how, you know, more than one person sort of invented the same thing at one time. It's just whoever was faster or had better marketing is the one who gets the credit. And paperclips is interesting because it seemed like maybe that wasn't the case. Like it. You know, so many people kind of came up with this, and so many people had really rapid iterations and improvement that it's kind of lost to history. Who invented the paperclip?
Mm.
Yeah.
The discussion of the different paper clips is like a stroll down memory lane.
Yeah.
You know, I'm old enough to remember all those. Like the one with the lip that makes it easier to mount your pages. Oh, perfect.
Yeah.
Can't find those.
I. I really like. I can't remember what they're called. They're those paper clips that sort of looks like it's an angel with wings kind of.
Yeah, Yeah. I call them a butterfly clip.
Yeah. Butterfly clip.
Yeah.
I mean, I just. That's just what I call them, but yeah, I like. There's one that kind of like slide down on the top of the page and they're flat on the top. Yeah.
That was one of the first things that Red and Hungry came out with.
Oh, yeah, I still have that for Valentine's.
Yeah.
And then they had. In the first kit, they had a big box of them. The box is really cool.
We really have to get head on the show.
Yeah, we do.
Yeah.
She was just talking. I think it was from her where I learned that it was World Stationary Day, National Stationary Week.
So we don't have that in the US it must be a metric thing.
Yeah. We have 40 rods to the hogshead
day in the US WTF week.
It is interesting how what, Liberia and Burma and the US are the ones who still use the metric system.
Yeah. But I did like how it pointed out that the US has like sanctioned the use of the metric system for like a really long time, but we just still don't use it.
Yeah.
Scientists use the metric system. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's interesting. I noticed just in flipping through the index that there really is no chapter about pencil sharpeners, which I assume they're covering in the actual pencil chapter itself. But yeah, it's interesting to me that a sharpener is. I'm sure that has gone through a crazy history in iterations though. Johnny, you pointed out that pencil lead really wasn't centered until kind of recently.
Yeah. I mean, my memory might be completely wrong, but I thought that was an early 20th, sort of late 19th century innovation that you could have a pencil sharpener because the leads were centered enough that you could get a reasonable point that way.
Yeah.
Which is weird. Think we're cutting edge still.
Yeah.
Literally the cutting edge. Maybe he's just deferring. Maybe he's just deferring the entire pencil sharpening. Just everything to David Reeves.
Yeah, he wrote the book on it.
That's it.
It's true.
Bing, bang, boom. I did read the Head to the Paper chapter. I don't know if you guys read that one. He did a really, really good job of tying in moleskins with the invention of paper.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I appreciated his iteration that moleskins were always made in China.
Yeah.
And, like, that's okay.
Yeah. I liked where he said people get all upset when notebooks are made in China, but, hey, China kind of invented paper, so it's not that big. Like, that's not a problem. And I also really liked in that paper section when he's talking about. And I was thinking of you, Andy, with this too, because I know you or a fan of legal pads, too. But he. He writes about the. The origins of the legal pad.
Yeah.
Why they were yellow. And that's really interesting. Kind of like the first time legal pads were made there just these kind of scrap things that people threw together and they dyed them because all the paper was different colors, and it made it all kind of uniform. I just thought it was. That was a really. I enjoyed that chapter a lot.
And I love the idea that that judge, like, made his own rules on his. On his pad. Like an important judge, just, like, finicky enough where he's just sitting there and with a ruler and just, like, marking out his own rulings.
And I never knew that AMPAD stood for American Pad and Paper Company.
Neither did I. And I didn't realize they were so early on, like, I. You know, they're the ones who make my precious gold fiber notepad.
Yep. Yeah.
That's cool. It's. There's a lot. So many companies that it's just, you know, it's. It's so sad that they've just been gobbled up and gobbled up, like.
Yeah.
You know, not only Eberhard Faber, but just like, so many, like, little tiny companies that got bought by this and got bought by this and then got bought by Newell Rubbermaid, just for example. But. Yeah, it's. It's cool that it seemed like if you had a vision and maybe just a little bit of backing, it was so easy to, you know, start a company about something like this. I guess. I guess Kickstarter is kind of making. Doing that again, but maybe not too. Just the level, because so much of the stuff has already been designed and. And imagined, and now it's all software.
Right.
So it's. Yeah, we. So I did. I did read the pencil chapter, but I figured we'd be talking about that in much more. Much more detail. Did he. Did he mention mechanical pencils?
Briefly.
Briefly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. Weird. Speaking of mechanical pencils, the entire Episode of the Most recent Pen Addict is about mechanical pencils. And I don't know in what context because it just came out about an hour ago. But we were mentioned in it, so. Thank you guys. Unless it's something bad, then. No, thank you.
Those guys don't like me.
Hopefully they pointed out our favorite chapter of how to sharpen pencils.
Yeah, I think that's what they based the whole. Must have been what they based the whole episode on. I couldn't help but think when I saw the mechanical pencil in the description and then saw that Brad they had titled the episode Hot Mess of a Pencil. Okay, well that's pretty much the definition of a mechanical pencil, so
that's awesome.
Yeah, I have to admit I do like a rotring. Like they're just really well, well engineered pencils and pens.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally against him. But I'm pretty against them, so.
Yeah,
so too sterile for me.
I definitely know when we. If I ever get to go to the uk, I want to go to this stationer shop that he goes to that he talks about in the introduction. Oh yeah, because they're just like just still stuff from the 70s sitting on the shelf. Yeah, Fowlers. That's what it's called.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was a lot of those like little things that he mentioned like early on in the book that I really like about like enjoyed looking up and checking into like these little desk caddies and things that he talked about. And did you guys go to the office museum.com early? Office museum.
I've been there before but I haven't been there since reading this. I. Okay, definitely check.
I used to stock that website.
Yeah, it's a.
Look at it late at night.
It's pretty awesome. Yeah, pretty awesome website. I mean it's awesome in the content, not in the design. It's like hideous. But you bring up the site and first of all everything's like off center. It's like the title of the site is like on the left side of the screen and there's a huge picture of an eagle that seems to be standing on top of an American flag, which I don't know what that's about. And there's a lot of like moving gifs of stamps and like an old fashioned hole puncher and so. But it's still. It is an awesome website. They're like.
To be honest though, would you trust a fancy responsive website with like really nice like type kit fonts to like tell you about old office supplies? Yeah, I definitely like would. I definitely Want to see somebody who has, like a marginal knowledge of HTML to tell me about staplers? That's true.
Yeah. Somebody's like, I get this just enough so that I can make a website. Like, just barely enough.
Yeah.
He's still like paying some guy that works out of his own basement that's been doing it since like 1985, to build his website. Emails him the content for it, like in the mail, and then he types it up himself.
Hey, some of the highest traffic pencil sites are still like that. Like, I don't doubt it. Yeah, the pencil pages is still pretty. I mean, that's been pretty much the same for years and years.
Yeah, it's an awesome site. I really enjoyed finding out about that kind of stuff early on in the book. Just new little wormholes to follow on the Internet.
Yeah, yeah, he's. He's awesome. I hope we can. Hope we can find a time to have him on the show.
Yeah, that'd be great.
I know that TJ is going to try to interview him.
Oh, nice.
That would be awesome.
TJ Cosgrove, our friend across the pond. He's. He's our Mac Hurley. I guess we could say he's. He lives in. Does he live in London?
I thought he.
I don't know.
Liverpool. I think he lives in Liverpool. TJ Cosgrove. He runs the Wooden graphite video series and blog, and it's a very active member of our group.
Very generous member of our group.
Yeah.
So I guess I'd be interested, just as a takeaway for next week, if anybody has any points of discussion they'd like us to talk about or just make sure we're covering in our discussion next week. If you are a member of the erasable group, go ahead and post it somewhere there. I'll make sure there's a thread for it. And if you're not, feel free either to tweet us at erasablepodcast or just go to our website and leave a comment on this post. That would probably be the easiest way to get your discussion questions in. I wish that we could make it more like a book club and get more people in on this discussion, like live.
That would be awesome.
Yeah, but I guess that would be super chaotic if there were like 30 people on a podcast. So, yeah, we'll kind of have a discussion in the Facebook group and then make sure to have, like a lifetime one here.
Yeah, that sounds great. We'll just get some. It'd be great if people could give us some input and then we can put together A nice, organized way to talk through the book. Once we've finished the whole thing, I think, and those of you reading along, I think you'll have. From what I've read so far, you'll have a lot of good. I'm sure people will come up with a lot of good ideas that I wouldn't be able to come up with on my own. As far as things to talk about, questions to bring up. Because it's an enjoyable book. It's fun to read. It reads a lot more quickly than I was expecting it to. And I sent a text to Johnny and Andy because at one point I was kind of thinking, I don't know if I can do this. Because my interest in the stationery world has always been writing tools like pencils, pens, paper. It's always been that. And so when I hit the first chapter that wasn't related to that, I got a little, like, feeling, like, do I really want to put myself through this? Like, reading about. I forget what it was at the time, like, which one I was reading. It might have been when I was, like, getting to the whiteout or something like that, and was like. But then I was totally wrong.
I was going to mention the whiteout.
Yeah, Yeah, I was totally wrong. Because then, like, the. Just hearing the development of these things, how they develop so naturally, like out of a need, you know, it's not just. And they usually are these kind of wily people. There's this kind of like, wild west feel to it where people are like, they're. They're putting something together and they're putting all this money on the line. They're putting. Throwing everything into the invention of this certain kind of paper clip or making a thumbtack that they can sell to people. Like, it's just pretty. Pretty fascinating.
So, yeah, on that. There's a book called. I think it's just called Ballpoint. It's about the invention of the ballpoint pen.
Oh, wow.
It's a full book about the invention of the ballpoint pen. It's kind of woo, but it's really interesting if you like ballpoint pens. I just read it recently. It's an act of sacrilege.
Is it
like comparing it to Petroski? Because I haven't read Petroski.
But no, it sort of reads like a crime caper. They put Petroski on the jacket.
Oh, really?
A lot of the parts of this book reminded me of a condensed version of that book. It was interesting. I think it's in print. I bought a used copy on Amazon for like, five bucks.
I'm on Amazon right now, and it's in print. There's a Kindle. The Kindle one's like nine bucks. It's a fun book.
If you guys like this book, you might enjoy that.
That's cool. Yeah, I kind of felt that way. I thought I was going to just kind of be just snooze when. When we got to the business card chapter. But in this.
Yeah, I'm not there. That was one I'm really worried about. But it's.
No, it's not anymore. Not anymore.
I was.
At first, I was like, oh, my.
No.
Do I have to read about business cards?
There's a big part, and I won't spoil anything, but just sort of how it evolved from sort of like calling cards. Like when you presented yourself at somebody's home and you would bring a. Bring a card with your name and contact info on it. I took a couple different, like, Victorian lit classes in college, and they were always, like, somebody presenting a lady his card. And I thought of, like, a. Like a business card, but really, they look much different. And there's all these really interesting things you do to it in order to indicate if it's for the man of the house or the lady of the house or the whole family, or if it's a business call or a personal call, or if you plan on calling again, like, if you miss them or if you plan you want them to respond to you, or if you don't want them to respond to you. Like, there's all these different little subtleties of how you dealt with that. That's just fascinating.
Oh, yeah, I'm looking forward to it now. Yeah, now I'm excited.
And they talk about one of my favorite videos, which is the your business card is crap video. You definitely have to go. I'll put a link in, show notes to this to this guy.
It's.
It's a really great video. It's slightly reminiscent of American Psycho when he's talking about, like, his business card, but a little bit. A little better. Awesome. So should we go into fresh points?
Yeah, that sounds good. I look forward to talking about it in a couple weeks. Can't wait to hear what the group has to say about it, too.
Yeah, we've been getting a few little snippets every now and then of people weighing in with some impressions, but we should. Yeah, just definitely kind of start ramping that up.
Yeah, for sure.
Cool. Tim, how about you?
I don't have much for freshpoints kind of Related to the book club thing that's going on right now. I've never read the Pencil by Petroski. It's one of those things that I put in my Amazon cart, like, a hundred times, and then I've never pulled the trigger. And I had put it finally, like, one last time I put it in my. Put it in the cart, and then I forgot about it and I didn't realize, but my wife had bought something else, and she just went ahead and got it for me and it showed up today. So I'm really excited about that. So she. She had bought me that as a gift. So I'm going to be reading that over the summer, I think, at some point. And we could consider doing, like, a book club for that sometime down the road to get people who have, like, not read it. I mean, I know from what I've heard, the tone of it is quite different. It's pretty, as Johnny says, ponderous, dry, ponderous.
Yeah, it's interesting because he's definitely an academic and kind of approaches it from that angle. And it's such an interesting. Yeah, I read it a while ago, I think when I first started blogging about pencils, I figured I should read this, but I definitely need to go back to it and look at it.
I've read it three times.
Yeah, that's awesome. Because I was even thinking about putting together, as far as the book club goes, if we could assemble, like, a bridged version, basically, like a selection that we could talk about on the episode instead of, like, the entire thing, if we get people to read that. But, I mean, I'm gonna read the whole thing. And I'm excited, too. So I. Look, I was excited for that to show up today, and now I want to read this ballpoint book, so.
Heck, yeah.
Yeah.
Did you guys notice in the. In the summer, a New York NPR station had Henry Petroski and David Rees on at the same time. I put it in the show notes, and apparently they'd never met or spoken together before.
I feel like I might have heard that. But that's awesome. It's really, really cool.
You can still listen to it off of their website.
Like, whoa, that's really funny.
I sort of forgot Henry Petoski is still alive.
Yeah, I think he's retired recently.
He's not that old.
I do two minor celebrities and a minor niche of the world. That's awesome.
He's super nice.
I should have said major celebrities in a minor niche of the world. That's what.
When we did an interview like, oh, my God, 2006, he referred to me as Professor Gambridge, who. I really appreciate it. I was not a Dr. Gamber yet.
this point.
Like, no, I'm just a grad student. But thank you so much.
You made my name. You interviewed Henry Pochoski.
Yeah, we just did like an email thing on Pencil Revolution.
That's super cool.
He's super nice.
Post a link to that. I would like to see that again. Yeah, so that was one point. The only other point I have that I was going to mention is that last week I was talking about my collection of the Steinbeck pencils that I got in that three. My triumvirate of Steinbeck pencils together. And there are a couple things I had to mention about that. One is that in looking on the Internet, I think that somewhere over the last three years, in my head, when I thought about the Steinbeck Trio, the IBM Electrographic replaced the actual pencil that is part of those three, which is the Blysdell calculator 600.
I can see how you can make that.
Yeah, because I think. And it was. I think it was related to finding out about the Blysdell and then finding out. I think it was actually through Blackwing pages. And then through the Blackwing pages, the Blythesdale 600 was listed similar to the Blackwing. And then also listed there was the IBM. I think that's how I did it, or something like that. But so I'm still just saying I have all three for now because I cannot find the Blythesdale 600 anywhere. I've looked everywhere online. I asked Caroline. She doesn't. She's never seen one. They're pretty old. I think they haven't been around since, like the 30s, so. So if anybody knows where I could find one, I would really appreciate that. To make my triumvirate actually complete. I'm gonna pretend like it's complete until then. Wait, what did it look like? I'll post a link from brand new pencils. Okay.
I don't have a lot of old pencils, but the ones I have, I am unaware of. There's kind of in a box. Never know.
Yeah, here's. Yeah, I'll post a link in the. In the show notes.
Sean had something on contrapuntalism about it, too, back in 2012, and I don't think it helps in that. It looks like the electrographic too, a little bit. It's. It looks like it's black and it has the same kind of lettering on it.
Yeah. But yeah, he.
He mentions. Yeah, Sean. Sean only ever. Has only ever seen one of them.
Oh, well, my chances are slim.
That dude. That dude digs and digs and finds these things. But yeah, if anybody. If anybody has a. Has the scoop on it.
Oh, yeah, and I'll buy it. I mean, I'm. I mean, I'll pay for it and I'm. I'll pay whatever it takes.
You'll pay? You'll pay, Lawson?
Yeah, I will pay a fair price for.
Yeah.
But so my collection is sort of complete. So. But the other thing I was gonna say is that on the episode I mentioned the making of a shrine And I mentioned Mr. Dudek, Mike Dudek, when I was saying that. And the next day I got a text message from him and he says, we need to work on this shrine. And so I got him. I've worked with him and we've designed and he is building me a shrine for my Steinbeck pencils that I drew up just like in my field notes. And it's basically. He used to have a stand. It was like an iPhone stand. Do you remember that? It was basically like his block or whatever. And it had holes for pens, pencils on the top, and then there was a little ramp on the front of it for your iPhone to lean against so you could set it on your desk. So it's like a shrunken version of that because on the front I have a John Steinbeck baseball card that I'm gonna.
That's so cool.
That's like a. Like a vintage reprint look, like, look old looking baseball card. But it has like that sort of classic picture of him on it. Sort of dorky, but I'm really excited about it. That exists, and I got it on Amazon for $2. So I was like, yay. Awesome. So it's gonna lean that on the front and then have the three pencils coming up out of the back.
So no, all you have to do is send it off and get it autographed by Steinbeck.
Yeah, I'll work on that. So. But if anybody can help me find a Blythell 600, I would be forever grateful of that. But that's all I've got.
Cool, Johnny. Let's see.
I have only a few things. One is a sticker update. I've got them all, maybe one or two new orders packed. So as soon as I can get to the post office and get some of the heavier ones weighed, they'll be on the way. So sorry they're so late. Baltimore is crumbling right Now, So I don't know if I can get to the post office. I'm just kidding. Also, so I have a piece of ice in my mouth.
Don't worry, we're not recording or anything.
Yeah, it's been a month, so I've been posting a lot on Pencil Revolution, but Caroline Weaver of the pencil Store, you guys might have heard of, she and I did an interview on paper and it just came today, so I'll be typing that up and getting that up on the website soon.
What do you mean by on paper? Like you did the interview on paper or. Yeah, I wrote about paper.
I wrote down the questions and mailed them to her, and then she wrote down her responses and mailed them back.
That's awesome.
Yeah. Are you just going to Pencils Exchanged?
Are you gonna just scan them in and do them like that?
I thought of that. Maybe I'll do both. And then I want it to be searchable.
Yeah, I don't know why I want
it to be searchable, but that would be cool.
Well, you can, if you wanted to take the extra time, which you probably wouldn't, if you edit the metadata, like the. You know, you Double click in WordPress and you can edit like the description of an image. You can transcribe it into there and thereby make it searchable.
What?
Or you could just put it like beneath it, like your idea. Cheryl Lowery from Strikethrough, who is actually now one of my co workers, she's super awesome. She used to do that with type. She used to make blog posts that were like that Typecast.
Oh, man, that's awesome.
Yeah, that's a really good idea.
Yeah.
I didn't know you could do that at all.
Yeah. I don't know if you have to do any modifications of your website if you want it to be searchable from like in Pencil Revolution, but it's definitely Google searchable.
Sweet.
That's awesome.
That's super cool.
Yay. Awesome. That's really it. That's really all I've got for this week. Yeah, I'll have more next week. Let's come back loaded.
It's been a pretty light week.
Yeah, two weeks. Terrible. I haven't been sleeping. Can you tell?
Well, you got crazy stuff happening around you right now.
Oh, I did finally see. I don't know if you guys saw the Imitation Game, but.
No, not yet.
It was like two hours of pencil porn. It was great.
Lots of pencils. I have noticed. Do either of you watch Mad Men?
Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm way behind But I love it. I think I'm actually. I was late to the games. I think I'm in season three somewhere.
Well, the, you know, people have posted about this before, but they are continuing to use. I think we're in what, 1970 now. And Stan Rizzo, the. Oh, he's like the art director who works with Peggy, he continues to use a Blackwing and he continues to use. Not a remake or like a Palomino Blackwing, but he can. He's using an actual like old Abrahad Faber Blackwing. So I'm willing to bet that the amount of the budget that Mad Men spends on just stationary is incredible because things.
Or they just have one, or they
just have one that everybody uses. And I'm starting to watch a show called Halt and Catch Fire, which I'm a season behind. But it's about sort of the. It's a fictionalized account of like early days of computers from like the personal computers from like the early 80s. And there's some interesting pencil appearances in there. I've definitely seen a lot of old Ticonderogas and I'm told there's some Blackwing apparently, appearances too.
Sweet.
Yeah, it's interesting. It's a lot like Mad Men in that it's a fictional company, but they deal a lot with real life companies. Like IBM is like a player in this world. They're in, they're in like a tiny computer manufacturer in Texas. But like, they talk about IBM, they talk about Apple. So it's, it's like Mad Men in that they, they do that a lot, which it's always interesting to me how they do that because it feels like it wouldn't. It would be hard for them to get permission to talk about IBM that way, for example, because they don't put them in the best light. So maybe they don't get permission. I don't actually know, but that was just a fake. Fresh point. I guess the only one I really had was that I am going to New York next week and I'm going to be able to go to CW Pencils and check it out. Hoping Johnny can join me at some point. Hoping Tim. Hoping Tim can join me. But that's not. That doesn't look likely.
Unlikely. I wish I could too.
Just tell your students, hey, I'm busy.
Yeah.
And your family.
Take them with you.
Your students and your family.
Field trip.
Yeah. But yeah, so I've been looking through and I just can't decide what I should get. And if anybody has any suggestions, purchases, they've made it from CW Pencils. That was kind of an unusual purchase that they've been really unhappy with. Let me know, because I'm sure once I get there, I'll just want to buy one of everything. But, yeah, I need to. I need to dial it back a little bit.
Oh, and take quarters for the pencil machine.
Oh, yeah.
And don't be like me and forget to use them. I had a roll of quarters in my pocket, which sounds like a dirty joke, but I forgot to buy any pencils out of the machine. I'm just kind of staring at it for a long time. Like, that's cool. That's cool.
So what does the pencil machine do? Is. Is that the personal. The one that personalizes them now?
You put quarters in and you get vintage advertising pencils, like a dispenser.
Cool.
Yeah, man. How'd I forget to do that?
That's so awesome. I need to. I definitely need to get some personalized, too, while I'm there.
Yeah.
So, yeah, that's. That's it for me. We should. We should launch into our main topic. Get Brian on the line.
Ring a ding, D.
All right. And we are really excited for our main topic today because we are talking to someone that I think we all kind of feel is the unsung hero of Field Notes. It's Brian Bedell from Field Notes and Kudal Partners. Brian, Hello. Did I say your name? Your last name? Right. Bedell.
Yep.
Yep, that's right.
Awesome. Brian is. Oh, it's. It's a small place, so everybody kind of does a little bit of everything. But Brian's a designer at Kudal, and he's. He's part of the operations and production process of Field Notes. Is that probably accurate to say, Brian?
Yeah, that's right on.
Yeah. We love hearing Aaron Draplin talk, and we love hearing Jim Kudal talk. And when this opportunity presented itself, we were like, you know, I don't think I've ever, you know, Johnny pointed this out. We don't think we've ever really heard, you know, Brian kind of, you know, talk outside of, like, a field Notes video, so.
Well, I've got ideas. I've got plans. Take over the world.
We wanted to get him Ron uncensored here.
Where else can you go to get someone to talk smack about Jim and Aaron?
You know what I've heard about those guys.
Oh, don't get me started.
I heard that. The fake beard.
No,
I just talked on my other podcast, dot Grid, with Aaron not too long ago, right before the two Rivers edition came out and he's such an amazing guy. Like, I, I love listening to him talk. He's. He's so charismatic too, which is pretty good.
Yeah, it's funny, I don't, you know, I see him, you know, a few times a year and email with him, but it's, you know, it's like I really don't even see him as much as I'd like to. But yeah, he's great to work with. It's. He's a real good guy. And yeah, it's funny. He's kind of always on like, kind of first I kind of felt like it was a shtick, but I think that's actually him. He's always in character as himself, I guess.
That's amazing.
Yeah, he's great to work with. All his good ideas, really energetic and gung ho on everything. He's working all day, every day.
Yeah. That's awesome. So who wants to kind of get us started? I know we're going to talk a little bit about pencils, but I was wondering if anybody here had any kind of field notes, the paper product questions for him first. I guess I'd be interested to know, Brian, what your favorite addition to field notes is.
It's hard to say. They're like your kids, you know.
Yeah. Who's your favorite child?
Yeah, well, I know that's easier. I love Two Rivers. It's always the most recent ones, always towards the top of the list. And then maybe over time you really. But at Two Rivers is really. I think it says so much about what we're about and what we love. And just working with Hamilton, getting to go up there a few times over the last several months and actually get hands on with those a little bit, you know, and being able to help them out too, that was just an amazing experience. And you know, and on top of that, I think they just came out, you know, like, that was sort of. We had talked about it for a long time and then talked to them for a while and there were some other very, you know, just playing around the logistics of it all. But all along I sort of had in my head anyway the idea of what I thought they would turn out like. And they came out really close to that. I think we kind of nailed what we meant to do going into that, so. Really happy with those.
Do you come from like a letterpress background or do you have.
Not really, no. Yeah, I mean, I'm a designer. I did a little bit of printmaking in general. Like in college I took a Few different printmaking classes just because I was interested in it. So I did take one letterpress class in college, which was a long time ago. I went to Ohio University in Athens. So I took one letterpress class there, which involved like the second day, I think I pulled out a drawer of 18 point garamond and pulled the drawer out too far and like all the type just splattered all over the floor and shipped. And I spent the next four classes just sorting through it, trying to figure out if it was a comma or an apostrophe or a P or a Q.
No, no.
So that was sort of my introduction to. That was metal type.
And he can't use Garamond ever since.
No. You know what, it's funny because I loved Garamond even then. And that was around when. This is how old I am. That's around when Adobe Garamond came out.
Oh yeah.
So I've been a nut for that typeface. That's probably one of my favorites. So no, that didn't hurt that at all. It actually made me that much more familiar with it, I guess. So I did that and I did a little bit of stone lithography and some screen printing and probably a couple other things. So I was interested in that printing. And I think what we've talked about a lot here lately, like Matt here and I have been talking about sort of what makes field notes or just design in general sort of more authentic. And I think I kind of got that little. I got into design sort of when history. Design history was really kind of a big education point for it. I think a lot of programs were getting into it. I think that helped a lot because I really studied a lot about print, the processes of how things were made, not just. I think a lot of designers now get into things and just sort of everything's on the computer from beginning to end. And they never really understand how things used to be made. So if they're looking for an older look, they're not really understanding that this combination of things just couldn't be done back then. So I think having that sort of. I kind of got into my first few jobs. I was seeing actual paste up and pre press and FPO and Rubylith and everything that's just gone now. And press type Two Rivers is such
a good example of that process. Yeah, four different applications of things to put it together.
Yeah, it was on three different printing presses over the course of it. And just all the machinery and people that were involved in it was neat. So that's yeah, that's one of my favorites. And then I think Pitch Black was another one I really like. I'm sorry. Night Sky. Yeah, that was one of my favorite films to work on because we just got to go out and sit in the desert all night for two nights in a row, and that was just an amazing experience. That was great. But just. Yeah, the way that came out and it looked and, you know, the way the books came out, I think that was one of my favorites. National Crop was pretty great. I liked the box set. The wood ones were just, you know, just all of them. You know, it's just each one has kind of its own thing. Yeah. But it's just neat to work on it, because when you're a designer, I think most people, you're either like. Kudal Partners was an ad agency before we did field notes, and I'd work on an ad campaign, and it would be a lot of days you'd just be sitting there resizing an ad for 200 different publications or something. And that gets old.
Is that why the deck came out? Just because you can just have one standard and that's it?
Yeah, that's pretty nice. And then the other end of that is you're sort of. If you're doing freelance or doing sort of just agency work, you're working on different projects that don't really necessarily connect, and you're kind of going in different directions every time. So I think fieldness is nice because we have Aaron's sort of general template for what they are and what they're used for. It kind of locks us down into a lot of the decisions being made ahead of time. And then when we get into the design of each edition or specific changes and things, we can focus more on those processes and materials rather than the actual design and layout, which I think is kind of what gives us the luxury of investigating those directions more than maybe other people would ever think to do because they're worried more about other details.
Yeah, that's cool.
This is a super big question, but can you walk us through sort of. I don't know if this is the right use of the word workflow from, you know, a field note, seasonal edition, from when you brainstorm it until, you know, we're all waiting by the mailbox sweating. I mean, not that I do that.
Sure. Yeah. Yeah, that's. I would say. I mean, they're all a little different as far as how early or, you know, how long before we get going on it between the original idea and when it actually Happens There's a few actually. I mean, Two Rivers is a good example of one. We'd been talking about it for probably a couple years before we got around to actually doing it. And that one was months of. We really had to plan ahead on that one. And then there's other ones like Traveling Salesman was one where Expedition was supposed to be. That was fall, what, two years ago and Expedition was supposed to come out. And we just ran into some problems with that, both with the sort of concept and the printing and everything and we had to delay that one. So Traveling Salesman kind of was like, you know, we have an hour to come up with a new idea.
You can go with that in an hour.
Traveling Salesman is a lot of people's favorite too.
Yeah, that's a really cool one.
Yeah, so they really do vary a lot as far as conception and how much back sort of research and brainstorming put into it as opposed to, opposed to just sometimes it's like we like this color paper and let's try that with this ink. And just looking at them, you'd never know. Some of the really complicated looking ones came together really quickly and some of the simpler ones took a long time to come to. But yeah, I'd say generally there's some sort of just come together in a weird way where we all sort of just talk about it and it happens. Other ones are maybe Jim's idea or Aaron's idea. Some of them come out of, you know, we have a material like the shelter wood was just a matter of. We saw that material and had to do something with it.
So you know, it's funny, right after that came out, I was in Louisville and at a, at a bar and the menu had that same sort of like shaved wood on the COVID And I. It was so cool to see, just like, I mean it was cool to see in the context of the field notes, but it was neat to see it, you know, in a different context and yeah, it's just so, so lovely. I love that look a lot.
Yeah, there had been, you know, there, there was wood, you know, substance similar to that. You know, people were using it for things like, like loyalty cards or like, you know, gift cards or greeting cards and things like that, but it just wasn't, you know, we had tried messing around with that a few times and it was just nothing that was going to be solid enough, you know. So when we saw it with the, you know, like, like laminated to the backing like that, we knew that would probably work better. So that was one to kind of plan ahead and test it. You know, I carried one around in my pocket for a few months before we actually got around to doing it, just to make sure it would hold together.
Oh, man. It's like. It's like when Steve Jobs is carrying an iPhone for so long.
Yeah, there's. There's been a few times where I've had some. Some kind of pretty top secret stuff in my pockets.
But if you just leave it.
Yeah. You know, anytime. Anytime I see a material I think might be good or a new paper or something, I'll cut a rectangle of it and put it in my pocket and carry it around.
So how do you guys pick when you do a different print? Not necessarily the different paper, but when some sort. Sometimes you do the reticle or the dot. Is that like we want to do a reticle and this is. We're on the fall edition or did you sort of match that up with the neon?
Yeah, some of that. It's a combination of what goes with the look of everything else, I think. And then just what, you know, like sometimes it's just sort of a decision made on. We haven't done this for a while. Will that work with this? You know, like, as far as, you know, people sort of expect the graph most of the time, so we generally go with that. Unless we kind of have a reason to do something different. But then we don't have. Well, I guess we have the. We have the cherry or we have the expedition as the dot graph in it. But you know, we've been doing kind of a lot of dot graphs because people seem to like those, you know, but it's just, you know, it's kind of, you know, whatever we do isn't maybe going to be the best thing for everyone. But we just try to mix it up so that especially, you know, if you're a subscriber, you get, you know, at least a few of something you really like. And yeah, I think it's something like America the Beautiful just ruled. Made sense for that because it just seemed more kind of from that period. And you know, old fashioned is sort of a log traveling salesman. That was the first. The first ledger we did and that was just sort of part of the whole concept. And so that made sense to tie that in with ambition again because it was sort of about getting things done and checking boxes off as you were completing tasks.
I just love that. I really like the ambition.
Yeah, the paper's awesome.
Yeah, I love the graph paper with the title line that's exactly how.
Yeah, that was just sort of. That's just one of those last minute sort of. Well, we have the double stripe on the other two. We might as well do it here too. So. Yeah, that one was fun to work on too. I mean, that's. That one I like a lot because it's really fairly simple as far as what's there, but it's real tied to our concept and our look and basically simple. But there's just still a lot going on. Working with that gilding was fun. That was a neat process that I'd never worked with before. And it was cool to go down to Indianapolis and check that all out.
Yeah, we wanted to ask, and maybe you can't answer this or you don't want to answer this, but are there any additions that you guys have sort of dreamed up that just ultimately were sort of too outrageous to make or like, was just not realistic for the project you were doing that you really wanted to do, that you could tell us about?
There's. Well, there's a couple that are things we've been talking about going back to probably around when we did County Fair. There's a couple ideas we've had on that that just as far as production or no problem at all, but just as far as far as like sort of the concept, we've never been able to dial it down to like a three pack or a six page pack of how it would exactly work. So I don't want to talk about this because I always feel like sooner or later.
Yeah. Still in the hopper kind of thing.
And then aside from that kind of. If there's something we thought of that we liked that we didn't do, it's probably just because it didn't feel right as far as sort of the aesthetic. It was either too modern or too. Or just something that we thought they've got to appeal to. Now that we're doing pretty large runs of these, you know, for the custom or for the colors editions, you know, we. We gotta sell them, you know, and maybe not.
All right.
You know, it's something we want to, you know, the Colors editions sort of fund, you know, you know, they're kind of working one to the next one on those where we're sort of like, you know, we make the money to go bigger on the next one every time we do one of those a little bit. So. So those are sort of our research, you know, that's sort of. Each one of those is kind of like its own little Kickstarter. You know, we Sell all that out, and then we've got all that to invest into new projects. So we never want to do anything where we're going to be sitting on a ton of inventory for a long time unless we do something. Like after we tried Shelter Wood, we thought, oh, we can do the cherry graph, because those sold well and we'll sell them over time, and then we can invest that money into that. But with something sort of untested. We never, like, getting too risky with it or anything that wouldn't be appealing to pretty much anyone who would want to use them. Sure. So I'd say anything else that we thought of. I'm trying to think of an example, and I can't really. But anything else that we thought of that was maybe just too specific to a certain market or a certain type of person that wouldn't have the general appeal.
How long have you been on the team at Field Notes? Have you been there since the beginning or when did you join on?
Well, I started at Kudel Partners in 1999. No, 1998. Cause it was right after I got married.
So.
Yeah. So I've been here 16 and a half, almost 17 years, I guess. And companies a little older than that, they probably are 20, 22 years old. And they, you know, Jim started that sort of as a spinoff. He was working for a bigger ad agency and took away a few, like, radio and sports clients and started Kudal Partners. So we were the Blackhawks, Chicago Blackhawks agency for a really long time.
Oh, cool.
And that's mostly what I worked on, you know, from 98 until 2000. What, six or seven or whatever. And that was around this. And then, you know, we had some other clients, too. We had some local cable and radio stations. We did some work for the Houston Astros. We redesigned their uniforms several years ago and did a lot of stuff with their new stadium. When they built, it was what it was Enron Field back then, but now it's mini. Yeah, that happened real fast. Yeah. And so, you know, so I worked on a lot of that different kind of stuff and a lot of restaurant stuff, too. There's. There's a local chain of restaurants here we did a lot of work for. And then that spun into Corner Bakery, which went national. And we did a lot of stuff for them for a while. So, yeah, we were doing mostly, you know, mostly restaurants and radio, tv, sports kind of stuff. And around there was sort of that Internet boom and then bust. Like in 90. What was that? Probably 99, 2000.com bust. Yeah, the.com bust. And we lost a few clients then. And we sort of said, you know, let's figure out Web a little better because we're not really on top of that. And so we sort of started our blog then and kind of made a lot of friends that way and realized we were spending a lot more time on that than we were doing a lot of our client work. We kind of had a blog going before even Movable Type was out. We were going into HTML every day and just adding a few new things. We just made a lot of connections that way. And then after 9 11, we lost a few more clients just because people were being careful with their money and doing a lot more stuff in house. And we started focusing on trying to start these other businesses.
I remember Jewel Boxing.
Yeah, Jewel Boxing and Gyms kind of talked about that a lot. So I won't go into too much detail, but as far as all these other kind of things, we tried, but. But one of those was the swap meet, which was sort of a weird thing where people would just send us things because they'd hope we'd post about them. And we started sending them back to other people when we got something from another person. And we sort of codified that. And I think Aaron had probably played Layer tennis, which was Photoshop Tennis back then, a couple of times or once, and sent us some field notes just kind of as a gift. And we said he was just kind of printing himself in his studio on a Goko printer then. Wow. And we liked those. And it's funny, I've kind of been looking lately at the sort of official history and I think some of the times and dates that Jim and Aaron have. We've sort of accepted these sort of facts as the timeline for the company. But I think it goes back like Aaron started earlier than we were thinking, and we got them from him earlier than we were thinking. But I think it was probably 2000, spring of 2007 was when we sort of officially got things agreed. I think we were selling them as part of the swap meet. And then we. And that was probably the end of one of Aaron's first print runs that he actually did at a printer in Portland. And then after that, we started printing him in Chicago and got the site set up and everything. So I think it was by the end of 2007, we were going pretty strong in Chicago.
That's awesome. I remember how. Just really responsive. I mean, not saying he isn't now, but I had a whole conversation, I think, on Twitter with Jim about Field notes back when they kind of first. First came out. I accidentally ran a. Ran one of my notebooks through the washer.
Oh yeah.
And it did. It fell apart as it would. But the, the ink was still like you could still read it and you could still see things from it. And I posted about that on my, my blog and Jim came across it and sent me a. Sent me a new pack, which is amazing.
Yeah, we try to do that. I mean it's sort of. That's obviously sort of important to us just to keep, I think just the goodwill. Something like that's so cheap to do for a company. It always boggles my mind when anyone wouldn't do that just to make things right or just do someone a favor here and there. It doesn't really cost you anything. So we try to do stuff like that. Watching social media and staying on top of just people talking smack about SB 100 bucks.
We also, we wanted to ask you about the standard editions. I know you started with the craft and then it's kind of moved into some other really cool standards. My favorite of which, as I always talk about, is the county fair. I'm so happy that's a standard because that's my favorite edition by far. And we were wondering if you could talk. It's kind of a two part question, but if you could talk about other standard editions that you might hope to do someday. And also is it a possibility. So all three of us are huge fans of the heavier paper that was in America the Beautiful and shelterwood of that being a standard edition. Or is the standard edition always going to be probably the standard paper besides Expedition?
Right. I would say the, I mean county fair came out of just the kind of necessity of printing lots and lots of them. Because that was basically 150 different books practically. It was three colors of each of 50 states. To do it practically, we just had to do a very large run. And then we had to kind of guess which states would sell better. And we kind of always along the way knew that that would have to turn into. Into a regular thing because once we'd run out of some states we'd have put to print more. So keeping that going just made sense. And it was super popular. And I think I'm pretty sure those have ended up. If you count graph ruled plain and mixed as separate editions and count County Fair as one edition, I think that's been our top seller of all time. We've sold more of the county fairs than even the graph craft books.
That coverage wears in. So Nicely.
I love it. Yeah. Yeah, I like that. That's the only one I think we've done with that. What do you call it? Linen paper and. Yeah, I like that paper a lot. It's really dark too. Yeah. So those, you know, and it's just sort of as far as the infrastructure here of how we have things set up to have, you know, we have to have like, you know, a box of those open. You know, just the way we have to sort through everything. Like that's kind of our big, you know, like it's easy with the new edition. You just have, you know, in our packing station where we have the one box of that and one tray of each book and then those throw a wrench in everything because you have to have like 50 editions on hand. So I don't know if we do something else like that, but as far as. Yeah, I mean, we don't. Some of those were planned like that, like with Expedition. That was again sort of just a big commitment print wise. And we were working with Yupo to get those together. So it just made sense to do a very large run of them with the intention of reprinting them when they were gone because it was so different and something that we knew would be useful to certain people. It's got a definite market for. For the adventurers and outdoors kind of people.
So. Not us.
Yeah, you're still welcome to use them. We'll still sell them.
Yeah. No, I definitely like the Expedition. Yeah.
I actually like the paper for pencils a lot. Yeah. And then, yeah, Shelterwood was just sort of, I mean, you know, that turned into Cherry Graff which was again, you know, we, you know, we knew Shelter Wood was going to sell well and it was just, you know, a matter of making sort of a more general edition of that that everyone would like.
So.
Yeah, so I mean, that kind of answers that question as far as like why do we do certain special edition, you know, certain. You know, I guess we always say they're permanent. But then we, we ditched Red Blooded after a while, which was more. That was more because our vendor closed up shop. The printer that printed those. Oh no, that was Dan Baron who was a real small print shop and it was getting to be too much for him anyway and he actually got out of printing. But he just did such a good job with those and I guess we could have found someone else to do them but didn't because it kind of always felt like his addition. But the ones that at least we keep in stock for a longer time, we'll keep adding those. I would guess that if we did something else, maybe going to the bigger size, like the arts and Sciences size would maybe be something. We've talked about that. There's no concrete plans right now because we've still got a few of those left, but.
Gotcha.
Once that sells out, I imagine we'll probably. Or gets really close to selling out, we'll probably start talking about doing a craft edition of the bigger size.
That would be awesome.
I do love the. Well, I love everything about the Starbucks Roastery edition, but I, I especially like the dot grid with that big size. I think.
Yeah.
Is really good for just like big.
Yeah, that's. That's been kind of one of the big questions with that is if we did do that bigger size, what paper would be inside of it? Because to do all four, you know, you know, to do. Or you know, to do a mix, you know, there are two packs that you couldn't really do a mixed bag. You could do one graph on one ruling. It's just that's. That's always sort of the argument we get into when we start talking about that. Yeah, you know, graph makes sense, but so does rule and so does plain. You know, so does grid. And then, then, then you're printing five different sets instead of.
And you know, there will be angry people in the field. That's forum about anything you do.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. And you know, and then that's just a matter again. It's like investing in a huge stock of books that will take some time to sell, you know, which, you know, we know we'd sell them over time, but do you want your money tied up in that or do you want to work on these smaller projects that. And then as far as the paper and this we have looked at, it's like a tricky question because the paper we're using, which is in most of the books and definitely in all the regular editions, is that 50 pound finch. And that is. Most people are happy with that. And I know there's a lot of fountain pen people who would like something a lot different, but that's as vocal as they are. And as much as we love the field nuts and the hardcore fans who we get all that feedback from, and it's very useful. That's still sort of like such a. There's so many other users that just don't even consider that it's something. Yeah, it is something. To do some sort of specific fountain pen edition is attractive because that's something. Again, there would Be a market for. We sell over time. But we've done tests with paper a few times now where I've sent, you know, a few fountain pen friends, I've got, you know, samples of a few different papers just to see what would work best. And we never get any kind of consensus. It's always, you know, you know, like, I'll send six papers to four or five different people and get them back and each one of them will have picked a different favorite, you know, and I think that's just maybe a function of each pen. They'll test it with several pens and inks and come up with their favorite. But I think, you know, even just the way people write and the different pens and inks they use, you know, makes that tricky to just sort of nail it down to one paper that always works. But we are, are working on, we've been getting sample papers from some different suppliers and keep testing them. And we're kind of like looking for something that we really feel good about. And at some point, hopefully if we found something that was in the same price range and seemed like it was going to work better for more people, we would switch to that for everything over time.
Nice.
Of all of the papers you've used, what do you find to be the most pencil friendly or graphite friendly?
I don't, you know, like, I generally either use our field notes pencils or you know, like a black wing. And we were talking earlier like the, the expedition's fun to write on with a pencil, but I don't know if I use that all. It's, it's. It's like a neat feeling. But I don't like probably America the Beautiful. That paper in there was great. That was the. I think that was Finch fine, which is a variation of the Finch. And it had a little more texture to it and it was a heavier weight. It was a 70 pound. And I like that one a lot. And trying to think of what else. Like, I just like that actually like, like ambition has that off white. I think that was. Was that Finch fine offset?
Yeah, that one was really nice.
Yeah, I just like the color of that and the texture of that was nice. I like, yeah, I like that little bit of green in it is nice. But I don't know if everyone likes that. I guess probably, you know, the fountain pen people and the pencil people. But as far as for everyday use, I don't know if that's something people really like or not
cool.
But yeah, probably that. For as far as the interior paper, I think And I think a lot of the fountain pen people like that finch fine too. But it's pretty good deal more expensive than the. Than the regular Finch.
Yeah, the regular.
I don't think that's something we could use. And I don't think that was a 70 pound. I don't think they make that in a 50. Maybe they do, but even. Yeah, I don't know that was it fit that addition just you know, color wise and weight wise and everything. But.
So we talked a little bit earlier about the, the fervent community of collectors that, that exists not just field Nuts, but even in the erasable group, which is, which is kind of our podcasts community.
Right.
Which is slowly catching up to the field nuts. So what do you guys think? Did you, did you ever think that there would be such a fervent following and just like the incredible prices that some of the old editions will fetch on ebay?
If we did, we would have saved more of them because we sure don't have a lot of them here. We fantasized about it. I'll say. It was something that we sort of considered like haha, wouldn't it be funny? And it's also in both ways that would be good, but then that would be bad too. And it is good and bad a way. You know, there's sort of like the, what is it? The Dutch tulip craze of the, you know, the 1600s or whatever when people were like, you know, investing their family fortunes, buying one tulip bulb or something like that. You know, it's like you just see, you know, and then it, you know, and then everything was like, you know, and Beanie Babies are another good example of that where, you know, it's just sort of like we definitely have to walk this line of like we don't want to artificially, you know, influence or inflate the market or make false demand or promise anything that's not, you know, it's like, it's neat to see people get so excited about them, but on the other hand make them to use. You know, we want people to, to write in them and use them. And you know, like I think, you know, I remember writing the text in the, in the subscription, like on the webpage and stuff. It says, you know, one to. One to use and one to hoard, because you get two sets. And you know, I kind of wrote that tongue in cheek when I first did it, but I guess people took it seriously.
Well, what one do you use in five to hoard?
Yeah, right. We don't yeah, we don't, you know, like, we absolutely, literally do not have. I think we have one. I found a sealed three pack of Butcher Blue a couple, like, maybe six months ago.
Yeah.
And that was. That's the only sealed three pack we have. And we have, like, our. You know, our museum in the display case here. And I know the one. The three pack of Butcher Blue in there is one real one in front and then two similar ones behind it. You know, find, like, you know, half used one to put in there. You know, there's a few other additions. Yeah, we really don't have many of around here. We've been a little better about hiding away a few extra every time now.
But I definitely, you know, remember very clearly when field notes started making color additions. And I remember just sitting there thinking, this is really dumb. Like, why would anybody not want to use the. The craft brown? Because that's the. The coolest, and that's the signature one. So I really did not even ever consider buying one until, like, a balsam firm.
Yeah.
And I had a pack. I had some of those. And I didn't. I didn't again until I think, like, way up until America the Beautiful. Like, I just kicked myself. I could have. I could have had a collection from the beginning. But it's all right. I. I do have hoarding tendencies, but I try mostly to use them. I try not to buy any that I know I wouldn't use.
Yeah, that's what they're for, man.
Yeah. Yeah.
I always. I'm always happier to see one all torn up and written in and stained up than one in the shrink wrap.
Oh, yeah, definitely. So should we. Should we realign some of our talk to pencils?
Yeah.
Were you gonna say something?
Me? No, I'm good.
Okay, cool.
So I've always sort of wondered, among other things, how you guys came up with a green eraser, because I really like it aesthetically, but it seems like, I don't know, it clashes with the field notes in some way. So I was wondering if you could talk about your field notes pencil. Not necessarily who makes it or where it's made, but how you came up with the design.
I'm trying to remember. It was a long time ago. I'm pretty sure that was sort of a choice from. We got them kind of from a promotions company, and we actually don't know the provenance of them all as well as we should, and we're kind of working on that. But the green eraser, I think, was maybe the choice from several options And Aaron just, if I remember correctly, I think it was just Aaron picked it just thinking it looked kind of crazy. And he was right. It does stand out.
I love the look of it. Even if you'll notice, in our first sticker, erasable sticker that we did, we have a natural wood pencil with a green eraser. That's definitely a callback to that.
Yeah, it's distinctive and it's.
And it looks really good with that kind of like brushed metal ferrule.
Yeah. Yeah, it's. Yeah. Like aluminum sort of. Yeah, I like. Yeah, I love those pencils. They're just, you know, like, you know, obviously anyone listening to this knows way more about pencils than I do, but, you know, you just end up with these pencils, like after using one of those even. You know, I know there's much nicer ones, but. But I just have gotten so in the habit of using those now. Or I use a black wing sometimes too. But then you go back and you find a dollar store pencil, or my kids will have just beat up pencils in their bag that they got from Halloween trick or treating or something like that. And you go to sharpen it and the lead breaks and it's just like, oh, this is the worst. It makes me so mad now. And it's like I'm not even, like, I don't even know much about it and I'm not a little snobby about it. But yeah, there's something to be said for a good quality pencil. And I feel like those are, without being, you know, particularly expensive or anything, are pretty solid pencils.
I, I think we, we get so many pencil converters who for years and years have just used like, you know, Office Depot brand pencils or something that's super cheap. And then, yeah, they try out like a field notes pencil or a black wing or even, even like a golden bear or a nice Ticonderoga.
Yeah. And they're like, oh, yeah, even. Yeah, Ticonderoga is great. Yeah. Just any, you know, you just, you definitely realize that they're, you know, they're the, the brand, you know, sort of brand name. Yeah, they're just better. You know, the lead's just more consistent. You know, I've just, I just, you know, you get like that, you know, one with like the, the sort of sublimated graphic, like pumpkins all over it or something. And yeah, you just go to sharpen that thing and it breaks like, you know, oh, it's just so frustrating.
So the, the question, yeah, the question that I I guess I've been wondering since we had a. I don't know if that was you on the other end of the field notes brand. Instagram, where we were mostly just talking about.
Oh, yep, that was me. Yeah. Dawson generally. Usually kind of. I know Instagram is frustrating because you can't have more than one account open at a time. So Dawson usually runs that. But then when I have something, I'll jump in there, and that's cool.
Well, somebody asked me.
They.
I can't remember. I think I noticed the field notes in there. And I was like, hey, we should talk about field notes. And then Johnny was like, you should come on the podcast. And you were like, let's do it.
And somebody.
Sure.
Somebody goes, omg, Are you guys working on a field notes bullet pencil? And I was like, no, not yet. No. So I know that bullet pencils and kind of the original field notes concept just go really hand in hand. They're both like, kind of started as maybe advertising material.
Yeah. Sort of giveaways either from companies or tractor companies or, you know, just other industrial people. Yeah. Because it just, you know, made sense. They're both, you know, they fit in your pocket. You could just clip the. Clip the bullet pencil. So that was definitely when we. When we first kind of started talking about doing, you know, some extra giveaways or extra items. I remember one of the first things Aaron came up with was the bullet pencils, because he had a lot in his collection already, too, from picking up the books over time. And. And we just looked and looked and looked and couldn't find, you know, an American vendor and, you know, just. Or anything we felt really good about. So that's something that we've always really wanted to do. And I know Aaron continues to look into it, and we're trying to sort something out for it, but no new concrete plans. I know we've talked to a few people that ran Kickstarters, and they made some really neat things, but it was all sort of just beautiful bullet pencils that work great, but it's just not sort of the everyday disposable junkie kind of giveaway kind of item thing that we wanted to do. You know, something, you know, we might do something like that as. As an expensive thing. But, I mean, you know, for us, I think, to do a bullet pencil, we'd want to do something, you know, just to keep them cheap and disposable and, you know, an authentic sort of to the old style.
Yeah.
Rather than, you know, we don't need anything made out of ballistic carbon fiber or anything like that.
Tactical bullet pencil, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's. We'll. We'll keep making the notebooks and everyone else can make the tactical cases.
And yeah, yeah, there's an incredible. Just aftermarket on stuff like that. There's the stuff sheath and there's all stuff like that. But so many amazing. Just field notes holders out there.
Yeah, yeah. Lots of really cool other products and different covers and things. And I think that's sort of the function. I mean, any hobby like that, you sort of get into it and you're kind of like, I need more, you know, or, you know, what else can I do? I'm into. I'm into Vespa scooters. And it's. It's the same thing with that. Like, I got this scooter now, what can I glue onto it? You know, like, I need some stickers and I need some. I need some more lights and some mirrors, and I need, you know, a quarter feet this thing out. And I think that's kind of probably the same. The same attitude. Like, I need to. I can't just stop with the books. I need some accessories, which is cool, though. It's neat to see what people come up with. And there's some really neat products out there. And some of the covers are really beautiful. There's lots of choices there, which is cool.
Brian, do you have any questions that you would want to ask the pencil community at large? Is there anything that you have questions you'd want to bring up or things that you've been thinking about that you wanted to mention?
Not so much, really. I think we certainly appreciate all the love we get for everybody. It's fantastic just to read. You know, we poke through field nuts and we try to all pretend we don't read it, but we. And it's, you know, it's sort of like, you know, either get outraged about things people say or, yeah, they're right, we should try to do this better. But, yeah, just seeing that community build up around it and, you know, and meeting all these people that, you know, people come into the office to see our, you know, I say museum, but as you guys are probably aware, it's just a display case with all of our books in it. But, you know, people come in. We've had people come from around the world. You know, we're in Chicago for a conference and we had to come to field notes, and it's like, oh, wow, I'd be out at the beach if I didn't have to be here, but it's just. It's super rewarding just to know people get so excited about them and, you know, and we don't always. We're not able to, you know, always keep in touch with everyone or, you know, or always, you know, make it clear that we appreciate the feedback. But we certainly do. It's all, you know, we do see it all and read it and take it into account. So, yeah, just keep the kind words coming and keep using the notebooks. And if you have suggestions, we're happy to hear them.
Awesome. So what is your favorite pencil and sharpener and maybe even your favorite non field notes notebook? Is it a secret?
You know what? It's kind of funny how little. I think probably some people here maybe follow a little more closely than I do. I don't really. I sort of make a point of not looking at other notebooks too much because I don't want to have an idea and then find out someone else
already did it, which is actually plausible deniability.
Yeah, I'm not even. Yeah. Without getting into too much detail, it's sort of happened a couple times where we thought we sort of, you know, not, you know, obviously we didn't invent anything, but, you know, we sort of thought we had an original idea and then later found out someone else, you know, either before or after we printed it, found out that there was already something like that on the market. But. So don't follow too closely. I mean, you know, obviously, you know, obviously we're aware of Moleskine and what they're doing and, you know, lots of. I'm trying to think. I mean, I think Rhodia I like a lot just because they keep it simple and they, you know, they just have a real sort of distinctive look to them and feel. Yeah. And I like that. You know, like the top flip, you know, the way they open up. I think that's a nice way to do it.
Have you seen the Nakko top flips?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just saw this in the last few days. Those look pretty cool. And that's. Isn't that. That's Brad Dowdy, right?
Yep.
That's Brad Dowdy.
Yep. Yeah. Yeah.
Our ink friend.
Yep.
Yeah, I did their podcast, too. That's. They're the only other ones that realized that I'm actually the genius behind everything.
We're the ones with the. With the vision. We.
Yeah.
Well, Brian, I'm. I'm interested to know where can people
find you on the Internet as far as field notes?
Well, I guess I guess, yeah. You specifically. If you care to give out that information. And if not.
No, sure, yeah. All you have to do is just. Yeah. Say something mean about me and I'll show up. Well, you know what, like I said, I'm really into scooters. And for a long time I did a website called two Stroke Buzz, which is really defunct right now, but that's always what comes to mind when people ask where to find me. But I have updated to that twice in the last two years, so that's probably not a good place. And then I'm one of the last holdouts on on Flickr, but I'm starting to give up on that too. I'm on Instagram as as bright am I on there? Brian Noyes B R Y A N N O I S E and on. I'm on you on the Twitter. Flickr. Yeah, I'm on Flickr is two strike Buzz. I'm on Twitter, but I really don't use it much, so it's probably not worth it. You could follow me on there. I mean, it's. What am I on there? Geez, you'd think I'd know this stuff. If you just search. Brian B R Y A and videlbed E L L on Twitter, I'm on there, but I don't post and I really don't post on there. I'd say probably Instagram. If you're looking for follow field notes brand on Instagram. And then I'm Brian Noyes on Instagram and I post a little once in a while, post a little behind the scenes at the printer or something like that on there if you're into that sort of thing.
Those are great. People just eat that up too.
Yeah. And then trying to think what else. Yeah, I'm on contact you through Facebook, but I don't. Yeah, I kind of just try to keep Facebook to people I know in person. Although that's a funny story. I went to see a local production of Spamalot a few weeks ago. A couple weeks ago. And the director came up to me afterwards and was like, are you Brian Bedell? And that was certainly the first time that ever happened. He pulled his stuff sheet out of stuffed sheath out of his pocket. So he's my friend on Instagram, on Facebook.
That's awesome. No, it's great when that happens. Somebody recognized me from my erasable T shirt. I was standing in line for coffee in San Francisco and somebody was like, my husband listens to your podcast. I was like, oh my God, I can't Believe it. DM you. Cool. And people can get a hold of you if they need to through the field notes website too even. Probably.
Yeah. Or just Brian with the Y B R Y a n@fieldnotesbrand.com. yeah. And I'm always, I'm always happy to talk about field notes all day.
Yeah. And Tim, where can people find you on social media?
You can find me at thewritingarsinal.com writing Arsenal on Twitter and then on Instagram thereriting Arsenal.
Johnny, how about you?
I am@pencilrevolution.com and things are going to pick up this month, so stay tuned. I'm on Instagram and Twitter. Both are ensolution.
Cool.
I'm Andy Welfle. I am@woodclinched.com, also another site that hasn't been updated. But there's something, something deep inside me brewing that I'm trying to get out there.
There's, there's plenty of lovely field notes unboxings on there.
Oh yeah, no problem. I finally, I finally figured out I have this lamp that if I lay it a certain way, I can, I can lay my phone down on top of it and basically make something that points down to my hands. So I, I love watching like the like Mac, like Apple product unboxing videos.
Yeah. Yeah.
So this was, this is a really good natural evolution of that. So woodclinch.com you can find me on Twitter and Instagram as awealthly and this website, this podcast at large. We are the Erasable podcast. We're online@erasable us. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com groups erasable. It's great. There's people posting things every day, multiple times every day. It's just an amazing community. Or you can just visit our page which is facebook.com erasablepodcast or find us on Twitter raceablepodcast. You can find this episode and show notes for it@ erasable us27. We'll have links to everything we've been talking about. You can find perfection of the Paperclip, the book that we are talking about this month. You can find that there as well as all sorts of fun other stuff. So thank you all very much for listening and we'll catch you in two weeks.