This transcript was generated from an audio file by AI, and may contain inaccuracies.
Transcript
What you're saying, Johnny, is you're not writing it down to remember it later, you're writing it down to remember it now.
I'm writing it down to remember it anytime. Hello, and welcome to episode 165 of the Erasable Podcast. I'm Johnny, here with Andy and Tim, and tonight you'll notice a familiar voice. Longtime Erasable friend Caitlin joins us from Brooklyn, and we're so happy that you're here. Hello, Caitlin.
Yay. We're glad you're here. When did you move to Brooklyn?
Like, shoot, has it been almost four years now?
Oh, wow. Okay. You've been there for a while, since
before we knew you.
I don't know. No, you used to live in Jersey City.
No, I used to live in Jersey City. You're right. No, but when I left Jersey City, I went right to Brooklyn. I've been.
Okay.
You just, like, skipped right over Manhattan.
2017, I think.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So tonight we're going to talk about Marginalia. Like, people who write in their books, and one of us does not write in their books. So this will be a super fun topic, hopefully. Yeah, I'm a savage. I write in mine. Want to start us off with tools of the trade, Ms. Caitlin?
Sure.
Wouldn't it be terrible if you had me on and I was the one who couldn't talk about marginality?
That would have been funny.
Defend yourself.
What exactly are you doing here?
We have totally set you up.
What gives you the nerve
whomst among us?
On that note, I. What am I consuming? It's been a while since I've done one of these. I've been binging a lot of YouTube lately, and it's mostly been all criminal psychology. I don't know if you'll hear a theme here, because the other thing I've been binging is I'll be gone in the dark on hbo, which is, like, the extension of the book that Michelle McNamara wrote about about the Golden State Killer, who they caught using, like, a lot of her research, which is kind of amazing. Yeah, I've just been delving way too deep into criminal minds.
A friend of mine, her mother lives, like, four blocks away from where they caught him in Citrus Heights.
That's so creepy. Yeah, it's such a. Like, the whole thing is so creepy.
Yeah.
But the. I found this great YouTube channel where this guy has all this footage from interrogation rooms, and he talks about the interrogation techniques that the police are using. And I tell you, I watch a lot of Law and Order svu and there's Just subtleties that happen in real police work that just don't happen on television. And they're really fascinating and really interesting. Interesting. And yeah, it just. There's a lot that goes into interrogation technique that I just didn't even realize. So that's been a fun binge for me.
What's been your favorite, like, little detail of it? Because I'm super curious. Like, what's one little discovery about it that has just. Just kind of, like, stuck in your brain?
Like the way the. The subtle way that good cop, bad cop can work. I think it was a Jodi Arias one. They did, like, this whole long special on her, and they show the interrogation where one day they have a female. She starts the interrogation with one male detective, and then the next day they start it with the female detective. And she's not, like, outright mean. That's just like. That's the thing that, like, catches me the most is that they're not outright mean. They're just sort of talking down to you in a way that's trying to get her to, like, break. And that's her bad cop technique is just like, putting, like, the guilt pressure on. And then they bring the other guy in who was giving her, like, a hard time the day before, but now she trusts him more because he seems easier on her than the female detective. It's like, it's. It's so subtle.
So it's not like slamming the fist on the table.
No.
Shining the bright light in your face.
Let me add her.
I wish. Cartoon version. Yeah.
The other thing I find really interesting about it is just like watching the interrogation footage and what people do when they don't know they're being watched. It's. And yeah, like, Jodi Arias is a crazy person. We don't need to go into that. Maybe I should talk about stationary instead. I don't know. I've been sticking with the classic merman. Do you guys know how to say this word? Right? Is it nemesine?
I think it's so a. I think it's Anthony. But also that's like. I think how you pronounce, like, the. It's the Greek God of memory or Greek goddess of memory or something like that.
Right, Right. I've been using this notebook. The same notebook. Not exactly this exact same one. I've been using their branded notebook in the A5 size for years, and I haven't deviated. It's like my everyday notebook for everything.
Such a good memory.
But I recently started bullet journaling lightly. And I broke into my Field notes. National parks for that.
Nice. Yeah.
Oh, and we'll get into this in a bit, I guess, but I'm going to talk about pens for a second. I've discovered these really fun felt tip. They almost look like a felt tip, like a plastic fountain pen. You know, like the disposable ones. And they kind of write like one, but they're like a marker. They're so nice. And they come in a whole bunch of colors. It's called a Pentel Pola Man Pula man.
They're fun, interesting. They are. Like, what is the difference between this and those plastic fountain pens?
Well, because it's like, they remind me of, like, a micron pen almost.
Yeah.
But they're not. They're. They're not fountain pens. So I guess it's just that, like, weird tips.
Yeah.
But they write really nice. The, like, burgundy pink color is my favorite. Oh, yeah. That's what I got going right now.
How about you, Tim?
I am. It sounds in the background. It sounds like somebody's playing, like, an old arcade game.
That would be the sirens in my neighborhood.
Oh, okay.
A lot of them sound really wacky.
Okay.
Because all I'm hearing is like, yes.
Yep.
Okay. All right. A few days ago, I got a new book. It's. The author's name is William Sounder, and it's a new biography of John Steinbeck called Mad at the World that came out, I think it was last November. Kind of snuck by, and I didn't notice it. And I've never actually read. As big of a Steinbeck fan as I am, I've never actually read one of his biographies because this is a bad mindset that I have. But if I'm looking for a biography on somebody, especially a writer, and it was written, like, a really long time ago, I just immediately don't want to. Don't want to read it. And I think that's a bad thing. I need to get over that. But this one popped up, and I was like, oh, it's cool. It's brand new. You know, I'll give it a try. And I got a few days ago, and I'm like, halfway through it, and it's actually super interesting and really enjoying that great title, too. Mad at the World.
Yeah.
But I would highly recommend if you're interested in him at all. I'm also re watching Ted Lasso.
Oh, yeah.
Because, you know, every once in a while, you just get to that point where you just need some Ted Lasso positivity in your. In your life. And so I've just been re. Watching that on my own. And then the saddest thing on my list is I have been watching a lot of, like, disc golf tournaments on YouTube. Yeah.
Why?
This is a safe space, right?
Yeah.
Nobody's listening.
I just. I'm very curious what watching this is like.
Yeah, so it is. So the feel of watching it, because I play disc golf and I've been getting back into it over the last, like, month, and so I've been playing a lot. And so I've been trying to just like, watching stuff just to see what people who are actually good at this do, because it's just a good excuse to get out and walk through the woods. But the watching it is actually.
It's.
It's. It's like. Let me finish the sentence before you respond. It's like watching golf. But. But the. But the tournaments are. They don't actually show them live. They don't actually show it live. So you only see like, every throw. So, I mean, they're throwing like, like 400 yards. I mean, these like, crazy long distances and wrapping them around trees and throwing them under, over these, like, sort of like, overpass obstacles and stuff. So, yeah, I've been watching a lot of those. And so they. They take like a whole tournament that they film and then they compress it to like 40 minutes and you just see like, the highlights.
So is it kind of like watching like, trick pool?
There. There are like, trick throw people out there, but this is more like. I mean, these guys are just like throwing the first. Be like a mile and just like doing all these. And so I guess it can be like trick pool. Like, if they have to get around trees, they'll throw these crazy discs that go like 200ft up in the air and wrap around the tree and then go into the basket. So that's pretty cool. But, yeah, so that's just. I'm just being honest. That's what I've been doing. Late at. Late at night, I'll put on some. Some disc golf videos on YouTube and I'm not ashamed.
Walks in. What are you. What are you watching? And you just switch right away to something else. Like, nothing.
Close your laptop.
Yeah, like nothing.
Porn.
Nothing. Yeah, anything but telling her it's disc golf. Yeah, so that's. That's me. And I have been writing with a. Actually, I. I found. The other day, I was heading out of the house and I picked up like a Beyond Steinbeck Stage 602 that was all like, chewed up by the Sharpener and stuff. And I. It's just kind of stuck with me for a couple days. And so I've still using that. And I am using the, like, craft brown spiral notebook I talked about a couple episodes ago. No, but the. The one that. It was almost my perfect notebook for the moment of what I was looking for. But then I realized that all the pages were perforated and it kind of bummed me out.
Does the craft ones. Does the spiral come undone, like the covers come off?
No, it hasn't yet, but I haven't been using it that long though.
So that's my one complaint with the black plastic one.
Does the ones come off?
Sometimes.
How does it come off if it's plastic? Just from the. The spiral. Like.
Yeah, like the spiral has. Does that thing where it, like, separates a little bit. I don't know how to just.
Oh, I guess, like, where, like it's almost like a claw. Like it grabs. Yes. Through or whatever. Yeah, okay. No, this one is spiral, like the kind you like, the Lisa Frank spiral. Like the ones you. The ones you get at like, Walmart or whatever. It's just. Let's spiraled all the way through.
So I got the Lisa Frank spiral.
Less. Less cute. Like husky and penguin cartoons.
Yes, exactly. So that's me. How about you, Andy?
Well, if you think disc golf tournaments on YouTube is exciting, just wait till I tell you what book I'm reading right now. It's called. It's called Track Changes, A Literary History of Word Processing. And it's about the history of word processing. I just. I've been. It's a book that I've been aware of for a few years. I was at City Lights bookstore and I saw it there and I took a picture of it and I meant to, like, go back and get it, but they were out. They didn't have in stock anymore when that happens, so kind of put it on hold for a while. And a friend of mine is moving and she owned this book, and she was like. She was like, you should like, can I give you this book? It seems like something you would like. And it's like, oh, my God, it's exactly what I want to read. And it's. It's interesting because it's about sort of like. I mean, it's about the history of word processing, but specifically seen through the eyes of authors and people who are, like, writing, like, text and literature with it. Like, how does it affect your. How does it affect the author's kind of, like, process and perception of. Of the novel? Things like that. There's a really good part in there about, oh, the book that. It's called the Talisman. It was a book from the 80s that Stephen King wrote with somebody else, another kind of horror author who I'm trying to blank on right now. But it was, as far as they can tell, the first book that was ever written like co. Written through email. And they would transfer. I. I don't think it was email protocol, but it was like they would transfer using a modem text files back and forth with each other. And there were all these things, they were using different styles of computer and they weren't super compatible with each other. Like all the quotation marks would not, would not translate. So they, they would use like other symbols besides quotation marks when they would like send it back and forth like things that were compatible with each other. It was, it's really fascinating.
Interesting.
And yeah, there's the first ever word processor that was made for a personal computer was called the electric pencil. And it's, it's really, it's really fascinating. If you look up electric pencil word processing, you can see all of these really amazing like loading screens that are all. It's like on a green screen computer, right? It's from the 70s and they just start like ASCII art pencils.
Oh my God, that's awesome.
Yeah, I'll. I'll see if I can get a picture maybe for show notes or something. But yeah, I just something I learned in, in reading, reading this. So yeah, it's a really interesting book. I'm only partway through it. It's a little bit dense, so it goes kind of slow. Another thing I never really realized is that, you know, there are these word processing apps like WordPerfect, which was a big thing. And there was one called LetterPerfect and something else that had perfect in the name. And I didn't realize when you're talking about like typing, the word perfect is like used to, to denote like a specific thing. Like, you know, you have a, if you have a perfect copy of something, it is all typeset. There's no mistakes, there's no whiteout. You right, like you like, it's, it's like ready to go. And so when, when they used to use the word perfect in that sense, that's kind of what it meant. It was like a metaphor that was very much geared toward, toward typing. And of course now like with a word processing app, everything is perfect. Nobody's crossing out anything or you know, accidentally going off the page or outside of the margins or anything. So it's like one of those metaphors that just don't. Don't need to exist anymore. So yeah, this whole book is kind of about that. That relationship and kind of how it changed the way that people think about writing and think about. Think about processing words, which is really cool.
Awesome.
And I am writing in a write Notepads kindred spirit, which is one of my favorite pocket notebooks. And today I've been using actually right here in front of me. I have Both a Musgrave News 600 news and a really beat up Blackwing 5:30, which is that gold one with the black stripe which I really like.
Ooh, it's like charcoal and fire with your.
Yeah, they're definitely a lot different. Got the extra firm black wing graphite and then the. The news graphite. Yeah. Which is just like a crayon. I don't know. Like, like. Yeah, like black crayon.
Yeah.
That's like anti matter wrapped up like sidewalk chalk.
Yeah. You can't touch the two tips together. Also, you know, the universe will
cross the streams.
Yeah. Don't cross the streets, Johnny.
It is.
What's up with you?
So I recently watched a mini series on Britbox called Unforgiven that was really, really good and also really, really depressing. It's about this lady who. She gets released from prison after 15 years for murdering two police officers and then goes back to live in that she let do before. It's. Some of it is hard to watch, but it gets very good.
I thought you were going to be talking about Clint Eastwood. I got excited for a second. He said Brit box. I was like, oh, okay. It's one of Johnny's British shows.
One of Johnny's British.
I'm a sucker for a nice like five, six episode miniseries.
Yeah.
I was also watching Quirk, but I fell asleep during the last one, so I'm not gonna.
I tell you, Johnny, you would love Mayor of East Town.
Yeah, that's on my list.
Or seven episode miniseries.
And I also watched Halston recently, which is a newish miniseries on Netflix about the fashion designer starring Mr. Ewan McGregor. And we were talking about this before we record it. There's a scene with a very stylishly dressed Ewan McGregor having a walk with Kelly Bishop, who famously played my serious crush Emily Gilmore. And it's just, it's a very beautiful scene. It's worth watching the series just for that.
So, Johnny, I've always been a little confused about this. Is it specifically Emily Gilmore that you Have a crush on. Or is it like Kelly Bishop?
Well, it was Emily Gilmore, but now it is. Okay, it is, but she used to
be a ballerina, so.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, we can just add all these layers to how amazing Kelly Bishop is.
Yeah, it's true.
Houston sounds like they had me editing in their cuss words. So seeing Kelly Bishop repeatedly dropping F bombs was really funny and satisfying.
Yeah, but figure out how to, like, take the audio of Halston and drop it over a Gilmore Girls episode or something.
Ooh, make like a deep fake.
Oh, my God, that'd be awesome.
But it was. It was a really, really good series. And of course, lots of pencil porn, it being about fashion design, so that was cool. And Bill Pullman, who seems to be having a sort of Bill Murra but not funny renaissance in his career, was in it. And he was like a corporate bigwig. And it's the first time I've seen him in a while not bearded. So that was interesting. And I'm embarrassed to say I'm still reading that giant thorough biography because it's slow going, but it's. I've read a couple thorough biographies and none of them go into a lot of detail about, like, his note taking process. And with this being a quote unquote intellectual biography, they talk a lot about Thoreau's reading and how he was sort of like a chain reader. Like, he'd find one book and then just like go down a rabbit hole. Of all the books that inspired that and that he had extract books of like, stuff about Native Americans, stuff about Carlisle was just really, really interesting. I always just thought of him as having a bunch of journals, and instead
it's an extract book.
I mean, it's not a commonplace book because it's themed. So I guess it's like quotations from books he got out of the library at Harvard or borrowed from Emerson. But they all survive, evidently, which is super cool. I think they're sort of spread out between the Morgan Library and Concord. But yeah, if you really want to dive deep down some kind of really nerdy hole, it is good reading. I enjoy it. And it has enormous margins for jotting stuff, which we can talk about later. And I'm rocking a Musgrave single barrel in a Rhodia goal book. I bought one of these a couple months ago for a bullet journal and I hated it. And I don't know what changed, but I bought another one and it's like a completely different book. The lines aren't too dark, the paper feels amazing, and I Got sapphire blue and it's so pretty.
But is it the regular rodeo paper?
Yeah, but it's cream colored and it's like. You know how some like 1 in 5 Leuchtturm books you get will have some kind of rough paper going on? My last one was like that. So writing. And this has actually made some of my pens squeak because it's like smooth on smooth. It's really just weird. But in a good way.
Yeah.
So when I jump into some fresh points before we go doodling in the margins. Sure. I want to hear about this store. It's killing me.
I been dying to like, rant and rave about it because when I discovered it, I didn't immediately have somebody to just start squealing at. So I started squealing at the poor ladies who work there. So let me just start off by saying it's my two dream stores sharing one space. On one side they have this beautiful, very minimalist plant store called the Moss and Green. And it's this woman who has all these like gorgeous little plants that she specializes in Kokedama, which is. It's kind of like bonsai, but it's smaller and a little bit more compact. It's like these little balls of moss with a plant growing out of it. They're so pretty. But next, right next to it is a high tide slash penco store called Corner Shop. And they are carrying all of the best Japanese stationary stuff you could ever want in this, like teeny, teeny, tiny, smaller than the original cw, mind you, like tiny space tucked away in Williamsburg. I'm not kidding. I almost cried, like, because the. The Penco, like my favorite thing from Penco has always been their little plastic boxes. I don't know what it is about them. They're just like, simple. I don't know. They have cute little, like, labels that come with them. They look a little bit like retro. And they have every single size of that. They have these great. It's not like wax canvas, but they're. It's like that plasticky tarp roll cases that are incredible. And they carry those in every size. So you can have them for your pens and pencils, but also for your like, gardening tools. So many notebooks, so many pens. My favorite pen I actually picked up there though was their free business pen. And I wish I had gotten more than one. I'll have to go back and try to get you guys one of these because it's like, it's just like a big crystal. But it's this like, really nice off white and it's made by Pilot. So it's like a plastic, like the plastic Pilot version of a Bic crystal.
Whoa.
Would you say that like Penco is to like Japan nostalgia as field notes is to like American nostalgia? I'd say.
I mean I'd say similar vibes for sure. Because Field notes I guess is trying to bring back the feel of the like. Like actual field notebooks where Penko. Yeah. Is kind of doing this like really minimalist, kind of classic looking almost industrial in some ways.
Maybe it's better to say like Draplin. Like DDC is like.
Yeah, yeah. I think you can say it's a little bit similar but they have like all the little like gadgetry too. Like they have these like click manual labelers. You know like the P Touch Brother Labeler, but the kind that's like manual and you click the letters.
I still have one of those. I love it.
Yeah, there's. It's just so much fun stuff. That was very.
I'll tell you, I met the. I met the High Tide CEO. Oh really? Bruce Eman, who is a guy in the Bay Area who I'm friends with and is pretty well connected to Japanese stationary stuff. I just ran into them at the Renegade Craft Fair in San Francisco the year before like probably 2019 and oh wow. Bruce was. Was there with. With him and just like oh hey Andy, meet so and so. Yeah, it was. I didn't realize until later who it was.
Oh wow. I love that.
Yeah. Yeah, there was a really good High Tide pop up in a shop in San Francisco a few years ago. We don't have a storefront yet but I think there's a few around here that carry High Tide and Pimco stuff. So I love it. This.
The store actually just did a pop up that's closed now with an LA brand and I wish I could remember what it was. I'll have to share it with you later. But it was just like even more Japanese stationary wonderfulness. It's like how many pencil cases is too many cases? I kind of want them all.
Well if they all have to them
and say how many pencils do you have?
Yeah, well you know what? I could start just separating them into all like little pieces. Just clutter everywhere.
That's it.
That's what I got.
How about you, Tim?
Oh, I only have one. I don't have much to report, but I am. I did a little bit of writing for Johnny's upcoming Pencil Revolution zine. Yay. That's coming out and that was a lot of fun. And it's just kind of a weird conversion of Steinbeck because that's going to be, you know, the subject matter of what. What Johnny's working on. It was a lot of fun to write, and I happened to kind of work on it the same weekend I got that book. So I was all revved up, and it was a lot of fun. I tried to. To kind of get in the mindset for writing this piece. And so I wrote it like him. I used the biggest notebook I can find, which was the. Which actually, this is relevant to the marginalia stuff. But I. I used my bloichterm master. Was it called the master book? That gigantic thing. Use that. And I used my original 602 that I. The only one I have sharpened. So. And that was just a very fun, very fun time. And what I was gonna say about the marginalia is that one of the things that I've learned, and I can't remember if we've talked about it before, is that Steinbeck was so, like. I don't know if it was stingy or like, he just, like always. He just had, like, a scarcity mindset. Like, he was always just acting as if he had nothing. Which, I mean, I know can benefit in some way, but, like, he would write sometimes, like, two lines per space, like, per row on a page. Like, he was writing so small, and he would even write, like, sideways in the margins. Like, so he would just keep composing in the margins. So by the time he was done, these big ledger books that he would write with would just be like a solid sheet of. Of graphite, which is just. That's so kind of insane. And there was. I didn't write about. I didn't write about this for the thing, but one of my, like, favorite stories I came across this weekend, which you probably saw a few years ago, but one of the videos that Blackwing put out when they did the 24 is they. They told a story about how his handwriting was so small in. And, like, indecipherable, that when the. The person who is at his publisher, who typed up all his manuscripts and, like, edited them, like, died. Like, finally died, like, later in his career. They're like. They actually had to contact him and say, no one here can read what you're writing. Like, we can't read your writing, so you need to get a typewriter and type this up. And he was, like, pissed.
Can you imagine what Steinbeck would have done with a word processor?
Oh, yeah, he was. But he was he was pissed. And so he went out and bought a, an IBM Selectric and it was just like super loud and he was all pissed about it because he was a bad typist. So he had like, he typed with like five fingers or whatever. And then it's like revenge. Apparently he, he went out and bought Selectric font balls in like Russian and like all these weird languages. And then he would like send them typed up manuscripts just using the English keyboard but putting like the Russian ball in. He would send it to him, be like, can you read it now?
Oh, that's awesome.
Yeah, there's a video. Blackwing has a video from their interviews with Thomas Steinbeck and he tells that story. And I just thought that was really hilarious. Yeah, that's all I've got.
Yeah. I'm not saying this to promote my zine, but Tim's piece is really, really effing good. So tune in.
Well, thank you, Johnny.
You can promote a lot of work. That's what this whole thing is for.
Andy, how about you?
Well, I'm a little embarrassed to say that the only pressure points I have here about fountain pens, not pencils, which is like, I don't know, I feel like you should put me in a penalty box or something.
There's like a fountain pen creep happening on this podcast.
Yeah, we tried to claim away from us in that other podcast, but who do you blame?
John?
I was gonna say I blame Tim, but it's not Tim's fault.
Yeah, you should.
I think it might be my fault.
All your fault.
Definitely.
One of the things I wanted to mention is I made a nice big healthy order on the well appointed desk shop the other day. That's Ana Reinert's online store attached to her blog. I bought, I bought a little thing that lets me clean rubber stamps. And I also bought a really cool little rubber stamp of one of her cats. I think it's Lucy of totality looking up at you from inside a box, which is really great. But I also, the main reason I shot there was I really wanted a color ring, which is that thing she sells that are basically like blank Japanese flashcards, like little, oh, 2 inch by 4 inch pieces of paper on like a ring. And she sells them to use for like ink swatch samples because I think I mentioned it last time, but Johnny sent me a bunch of different green colors and I was having trouble sort of remembering the like, slight differences between them. So now I have a little place to hold fountain pen ink swatches. And how many are in here? Like, I Think there's a hundred cheats in here. So that means I can get a. A hundred different shades of green.
That. That is a good title.
Yeah. 100. 100 shades of green. New Slash fic Fountain Pen Slash Fic by. By Andy Wilfully. Yeah, you know, we had that at one point. Me and Michael Hagen from leadfast were going to start a green pen blog. And the best we could come up with as a. For a title was Green with pen V. But I think. I think 100 shades of green might be better. Green with pen V was pretty bad and we never got around to it because, like, who needs yet another blog? But. Right. So yeah, got one of those and I can't wait to. To use it. I've been looking at some of the color ring users on Instagram to kind of see how they. How they document it. Also, I. In sort of preparation for loading up a bunch of fountain pens with these various green inks, I pulled out an old fountain pen that I got. It's not that old, it's currently made, but it's an old Kaweco AL sport that I actually won from a pen addict giveaway that he did.
Oh, neat.
And it is. I. I love the form factor and the size of it, but I have since discovered I hate the. The. The nib. It's a medium nib, so it's a medium Kaweco nib. And it just compared to the medium fine. And the fine nibs that I have is just like. Feels like I'm writing with like a. I don't know, like a dull marker. It's just so I like. Yeah, I had one of those too.
I had a Al sport with a medium nib and I hated it. Like, I just hated it. I use the fine and I like the broad even. Like, that was kind of cool, but the media, it was just a. It was a mess and mine was skipping a lot and it's like. It's like they made 50 million of them and they just like have to work through their stock or something.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I might. I might just order a fine nib for this and replace it.
But yeah, I have a fine in mind. And it's like really fine. Yeah, like a lot finer than I'm used to, but it's smooth.
Yeah, I think. I think my. My Parker and my pilots are the, the two pens I think I like the best. I'm still. Still figuring this out. Yeah, that's it for my fresh points.
So real quick, because this isn't written down, I Just got a shipping notification that my Parker 51 Deluxe is on the way.
Yay. Oh, you ordered the deluxe?
I didn't order it. It was a present.
Okay.
Well, I mean, I was gonna order it, but someone didn't do it. So the plum was on like ultra back order because if you see it, you'll know why it's so pretty.
But.
So my little Henry has started bullet journaling every morning, which is really cool. I think we. I don't know if we've talked about this in the show before, but he seems to have inherited some of my brain quirks and he doesn't focus very well. So he started keeping his bullet journal and he just, you know, does a little a few bullets and a little gratitude section. And then I'll give him like two or three writing prompts like, you know, what's up this weekend? And he uses his little fountain pens, whichever one he wants to use. And after seven days, he got a wax seal or a brass seal for wax. And anyway, his birthday was last week, so he had to do some thank you cards and the kids exchanged letters with their grandmother at least once a week. So he sat down and wrote five thank you letters, a very elaborate picture for a card, and then wrote in his bullet journal. And I swear it's because he bullet journals every morning. So I'm taking full credit for this. It's like a big turnaround. It's really cool. He's. He's not like a very confident artist and he's left handed. And you know, they haven't been in school this year, so his handwriting could use some work.
So is he the only lefty in. In your. In your house?
Yeah, I think I only know three people who are left handed. Him, you and my or Henry, you and my friend Paul who plays guitar right handed, which is interesting.
Anna Reiner is also left handed.
Oh, awesome. We should have like people a left hander club. But yeah. My only other thing is that the Tuesday scene, which is not written by me, is two months old as of when this comes out. The number eight is out, which includes an homage to Bellatrix Lestrange. And I also put out a in a larger one that's got all of them together, which is cheaper to buy and easier for me to make, called two months of Tuesdays. Very creative. So it'd be fun to count how many times the F word is in there because that guy who writes that is some kind of dirty mouth search
find how many I might blow up.
Google Docs. Yeah. So you Want to move on to our main topic?
Sounds good.
So I had assigned myself the task of digging up some information about famous margin writers, but the only one I can think of is Hemingway, because I didn't do it. Sorry. He was famous for, like, writing all over his books. I would love to check out some of his comments. Do you guys have any famous or notable marginalia folks?
I know that Sylvia Plath did, and I don't know. I don't know much more than that. I should see if I can. I remember reading something about it. I should look it up. There was a 2012 New Yorker article called the Marginal Obsession with Marginalia. What it looks like. Oh, it looks like Edgar Allan Poe did. Edgar Allan Poe wrote in 1844. I have always been solicitous of an ample margin. This is not so much through any love of the thing in itself, however, agreeable as for the facility it affords me of penciling in suggested thoughts, agreements, and differences of opinion, or brief critical. Critical comments in general.
Oh, that's awesome, Johnny. You can get that tattooed on your back.
Yeah, I think you can.
Yeah. I'm real good.
On your lower back.
Just.
Just written.
That's gonna wrap around my torso. You have to gain another COVID 19 to fit it, I guess.
I guess if it's marginalia, they should write it kind of in between your other tattoos, right? Just sort of like. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Just, like, wind it all the way.
That's like filler.
Yeah.
Make it, like, completely illegible. Little coffee sleeve.
That's just marginalia.
I am dying for another tattoo.
I can't remember where I saw this exhibit. I want to say it was at the Cloisters, but marginalia, like, used to be big in olden times. That sounds really dumb, Caitlin. In, like, biblical manuscripts. So, like, eliminated manuscripts, where they're like, monks were, like, writing everything down by hand. They would, like, basically doodle in the margins, except for it was a lot more elaborate than doodling. So, yeah, it's like even in the. I'm literally Wikipedia this as I'm speaking, just to make sure I'm not completely making this up. It just was like. Like kind of a thing. And it kind of made the copies even more unique because they wouldn't draw the same pictures throughout, like, all the copies they made.
Yeah.
It's just sort of like their weird personal touch.
Yeah. David Foster Wallace. Yeah.
People have been doing this for centuries.
It's true.
Yeah. Yeah. David Foster Wallace is the one that I was going to mention. I remember hearing about his a while back, because he would. I remember that I had found out about it because there was something about how he had written in the margins of his books a lot, but also in books that, like, you wouldn't expect him to be, like, marking up, like. I mean, I see a picture here of Silence of the Lambs is one. But like, Stephen King novels and stuff that, like, he read just kind of for. For enjoyment. Like, he would still fill those things up and. And write all over in his kind of crazy handwriting. I love. There's this picture of his he drew on the face of Cormac McCarthy. So I don't know if that counts as marginalia, because it's right on top of his face, but enjoyable.
So we were talking about this. Andy confessed that he doesn't write in his books. So Andy is going to ask us questions.
And also. And also sort of. Yeah, and also sort of talk about that, too, which I'm happy to do.
Yeah, I definitely want to hear about that.
Yeah.
So you want to take it away.
Yeah. So I guess my first question is why. Why do you mark up your books in the first place? And what do you. What do you get out of it? Like, what do you like? I'll ask some kind of process questions, like, after this, but just. Just open forum, broadly, why do you do it and what do you get out of it? Anybody want to start?
Can I jump in first? Because I'm the oldest.
Go for it.
Sure.
For me, mainly it's memory issues. I need to refer back to stuff. And a lot of it, you know, carries over from graduate school where I can't find that passage and like, crap. So then the next time you read a book, you really write all over it.
So what you're saying, Johnny, is you're not writing it down to remember it later, you're writing it down to remember it now.
I'm writing it down to remember it anytime.
I was actually going to quote that for my. For my reason. Like, I don't actually look back at my annotations very often, but it's just like, my thinking in the moment. It's like processing things as I read is why I do it a lot of the time. Marking things down or underlining things that I find interesting. And I'll copy stuff out that I really want to keep, but I don't often look back at the notes.
Yeah. Caitlin, do you. Do you marginalia?
I tend to do it mostly with, like, poetry, like, just lines that I really like. And I'll go back to them and, like, revisit them. It goes hand in hand with, you know, dog earring, some of my books. In other words, I'm not particularly gentle on my literature, but that's also one of the things I sort of find satisfying about it. The first time I wrote in a book, it was kind of like, this is my book, and I can do what I want. So there's, like, some sort of, like, satisfaction I get out of defacing a book a little bit. But, yeah, I agree with what Johnny and Tim were saying. Like, sometimes I'll just write stuff in the margins to sort of, like, process it or ask myself, like, a question about it, and I'll come back to it eventually. Maybe not ever, but it's there. It's sometimes kind of like a fun surprise because you forget what you write in books sometimes.
Oh, man. I love when you look back at a book that you've read before and you find something that you've written in the margins, and it just makes you cringe where you're like, oh, my gosh. Like, I thought you were so smart when you wrote that. Like, you thought you were so cool when you noticed that, oh, this is, like, the Christ figure of the book or whatever. Like, in college, like, where you're, like,
constantly reading the line, the wish in
the wardrobe, constantly looking at this. Yeah. You're constantly looking for the same three things to pop out at you or whatever. I had a professor when I was a freshman. I had never written in the margins of my books, really, until I got to college. And I had a professor in humanities who. His name was Denny Helbeck. And it's like he was, like, 112 years old when he's teaching the class. But I remember him, like, holding up a copy of the Odyssey by Homer, like, on the. In case you mixed it up with another Odyssey. I thought I'd throw in Homer there. But he held it up, and he's like, this is not a trophy. This is not something that you have to keep in pristine condition. He's like, get yourself a highlighter and write all over it. Cover it. And he, like, flipped through his book and showed us, and there was just, like, tons of notes going up and down the sides. You know, like, he just plastered it with all the notes from teaching it over the years. And that was the first moment where I was like, oh, I have permission. You can do that. I didn't know you could do that, because at that point, I think I would have, like, a notebook that I would write things in. As I was reading and I was like, oh, I could just take out the middleman and just write straight in the book. But thank you, Dr. Helsink.
Well, I, I've been trying to think about why, you know, ever since we started talking about this topic. Why I don't. And I, I, this is just completely like psychosomatic analyzation of myself but like analysis of myself but like, I think like, so in, in grade school, I, we did a lot of, like, we would turn in our books at the end of the year and then like the next, you know, next year the, the next students would use them until it just got like, really, really gross. So I, we were always sort of discouraged in grade school from writing in our books just so they would last a while. I went to a just sometimes slightly underfunded Catholic school that like, you know, you, you know, you pay tuition, tuition to go to it, but still somehow underfunded. I'm sure Johnny remembers that.
Oh my God.
So I would, you know, we would do that thing where we would wrap up our books in brown paper just to kind of keep the covers nice. And I would doodle all over that. I would doodle on the, on the brown paper cover, but I would not do it inside the book. And I have zero idea if that has any, any bearing on why. I don't. I also, I got a lot of library books when I was a kid. Like, I mean, I had a lot of books, but also I got a lot of books in the library and I just didn't want to, you know, you don't, you don't take margin. Do marginalian library books.
Books are sacred.
Yeah, so, So I have zero idea. But it just, like, it makes me uncomfortable to. Even if it's a book that I own, like, it is. Because you're right, it's not a trophy, right? Like, it's. This is, this is yours. If you give it to someone, you can, like, you know, they can, you know, look at, take a glimpse into your wisdom or whatever. But I just, it makes me really uncomfortable to try to like, like think of things to write in it. And what's weird about that is when I read Kindle books, I highlight passages all the time. Like, I don't usually take notes in them, but you know, in Kindle you can just like tap on some text and drag and highlight a passage. Do that all the time. So it's fine for ebooks, just not paper books.
So when you were in school, if you had to do a paper that was like, you know, a really close exegesis of a, a text. You wouldn't like touch it with a writing instrument at all.
I mean, I, yeah, and I, I usually did that in a notebook like on the side. I would, you know, if I. And I, I mean I have. There is a difference I think in my head between like highlighting passages of a book with a highlighter or an underlining or whatever and writing marginalia. Like I, I have definitely highlighted into books a lot more, but most of the time I've, you know, just kept a notebook, like a side notebook to, to remember like, oh, page 43, second paragraph or whatever to keep track of that stuff. I remember. I can't remember what I was reading. Like a. Probably a Victorian novel where like there's a bajillion characters and all of their names are familiar, are similar. Sir John or something. And I remember at one point keeping, keeping track in the front of the book, like on the, the one of the header pages, like just a list of characters and they're like relations to each other. And I just remember feeling real weird about that. Like, hey, I'm just writing in the front, but at the same time, like, you know, I was going to sell my book back to the, to the bookstore after I was done with it and you know, maybe somebody else could benefit from that. So I completely see what you're saying about like how it's interesting to go back even if you're cringing, even if you can kind of go back and see what you were thinking at the time or if, you know, you're passing this book along. It's useful to somebody else, but it's just like one of those things that I just, it's hard to, to get over. I think part of it is it's kind of uncomfortable for me to actually write in margins. I don't think that's just a left handed thing because if a right hander was using, was trying to write in like the right margin, I imagine it would be like the same sort of uncomfortableness.
But yeah, it is weird.
Yeah.
It's interesting that you brought up the, the book covers because I, the schools I went to were the same way. We were really underfunded and so we had all these different hacks for like covering them in newspaper and then covering the newspaper with like contact paper. So it was like really protected. Yeah, yeah. You, you would get in big trouble if you ever, ever wrote in those. What's funny is I like you're talking about this and it popped into my head the dictionary at that school and the dictionaries were all defaced and written in, but with like, fake definitions. And there's one that like, I can still picture this in my head. Written in the margin of the F page to this day. Fart Desperate cry of a lonely turd.
Amazing.
I remembered this since I was in like the second grade.
Pre Urban Dictionary.
Pre Urban Dictionary. One of those big, like green covered Merriam Websters.
Yeah, that's so good.
That kind of marginalia special.
Yeah. You don't forget that. That's awesome. So I would love to know maybe from some of you more prolific marginali writers a little bit about your process. Or maybe you can walk me through like a book that you write in. Like, do you, do you do this to all books? Do you just do it to nonfiction or just a fiction? Or like, do you. How polished is the idea that you write in there? Like, how much are you sort of self censoring or editing before you put it down? Or is it just whatever?
I'm definitely just like, whatever. I put down all kinds of stuff. But I do have like. I guess there are like a few categories that end up happening. If I think about, like, one thing I've gotten into the habit of doing over the last decade or so is always marking words that I like. Like, if there's a word that I don't know that I want to remember, I'll usually, you know, circle it or underline it and then I'll write the definition in the margin. So that's something that I. I do.
See, what's nice about a Kindle is you can just tap on it and it pulls up the, the definition. And sometimes when I'm reading a, a paper book, I get frustrated that I can't do that.
I just, I literally, and I show my students, like in class, I'll be like, what's that word mean? They're like, I don't know. Can you guess? No. How about you ask Siri, because your phone is three inches away from your face and they're like, so they'll be. So we'll be reading and the kid will be like, hey, Siri, what does a affable mean? Or whatever, you know, they'll write it down. But so I do that. And then of course there's like the thinking and processing stuff. But one thing I like to do is the. In, especially in fiction or in an essay, like the, the last page of it, there's usually like the gap in the page, like the, you know, last half Page that's empty or whatever. I'll put some. I'll write like final thoughts about what's going on in that chapter, what I thought about it, especially with non fiction or essays. I only do that in fiction. Really. If it's like. If I have like a task, like when we were doing the membership podcast, if I was thinking of things that I wanted to talk about or whatever, then that's a place where I would put it at the end of the sort of like the last. The part of extra half page at the end of a chapter.
That's why you're an English teacher. That's amazing.
Yeah. Far less intentional or even detailed than that. Mostly when I'm writing in my books, I do a lot of underlining and I prefer to underline than highlight for some reason. And it's mostly in fiction or like poetry. And it's like, like an appreciation of a sentence. I really like. Like, I just like the way that it was crafted. I don't often write in books,
I
guess I just don't often write in books for. With like a purpose. It's just more.
You just have your pencil in hand, I guess. Yeah.
Huh.
You just have your pencil in hand when you're reading and you know, just kind of extend it like as. As part of reading. I mean, it is a more like active reading.
Yeah, it's like a little bit of like appreciation of the literature, you know, just like. Oh, that. That was so good.
Yeah. Yeah. What kind of stuff do you usually write?
I did a lot of like themes when I was working on my dissertation and I had to use a lot of Nietzsche's text. Like all of my Nietzsche books have marked off every time he mentions hate or despising and enemies and stuff like that. Like in the entire effing book because the indexes are useless. So there's a lot of stuff like that.
And you could turn that into a Tuesday zine.
Oh my God. Yeah, my dissertation was on hate, so I had practice. I should make that a zine. It'd be more funny. But yeah, there was definitely a purpose to that. But now when I do it, a lot of it's just to remember things like him said a word that I want to explore a little more later. Or, you know, anytime that in a book about Thoreau they mention his pencil manufacturing, I tend to mark that off and put a page in the back listing all the pages where that's listed. Or Jhumpa Lahiri has so much good food writing that a lot of times I'll have a list, like, writing in the back of the book about, oh, lapsing souchong tea and your latte bowls and stuff like that. But a lot of mine, the process is just sort of like grouping things together so that I can refer back to it later, if that makes any sense.
And do you like. Do you refer back to it, like, right after you finish the book or years later or something else?
Both. For all my Nietzsche books I used for undergrad and my MA and my PhD. So there's, like, layers and layers of marginalia in there. So looking back at them is actually tricky because I can't read my own writing from 20 years ago.
Yeah.
A lot of times, you know, for the zine or something like that, I want to look up a passage from Hemingway. And I have it. I know I have it marked off, and I sort of have, like, my memory sucks, but it's visual, so I can picture, like, what side it's on and if it's at the bottom and I can find it more easily that way.
That's the same. Same for me.
Interesting.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there. Oh, and I'm haunted by. I swear that in the Varieties of Religious Experience that William James referred to the writings of Nietzsche as like, the screechings of a dying rat. And this was 2002. I still can't find this damn citation. And it would have been perfect for my dissertation. Couldn't find it. The Internet was no help. I, like, scoured my book that I wrote all over. No help. So ever since then, I'm very paranoid. I write down anything that's that. Awesome. Because that was pretty awesome.
I would have underlined that for sure.
So let's. Let's say. Let's say you walk into a bookstore and you find on the shelf a book that you. You really want to read. It's a used bookstore, and you open it and you're looking through it and there's just like. It's full of marginalia. Written by somebody else. Would that encourage you or discourage you from buying that book?
Be a hard pass for me.
Yeah. Yeah.
Was it. Was it like, you know, like the author and a book that they wrote, or was it, like, you know, a famous person, or is it just, like, some Joe Schmo? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Generally, though. Generally they'll pass, right?
Yeah. If I. If I. If I'm at a used bookstore and there's stuff written in the margins, I avoid it if at all possible. I've had. I've bought books used before that had, like, a handful of things written in them, and I've, like, had to go get another one.
Unless it was a really sickness. Unless it was a really thoughtful definition of fart.
Yeah, exactly. That would have. That would have kept me. Kept me engaged. But, yeah. And I do have the. This actually reminds me. Have you. Do you guys know about the book? S. Or Ship of Theseus is like, another name of it. I haven't read this yet, but. But it's. It was. It was an idea that was conceived by J.J. abrams, and it came out in 2013, and it was a novel that this guy, Doug Dorst, like, he wrote a novel called Ship of Theseus by, like, this fictional author, but then the actual, like, story happens in the marginalia.
Oh, interesting.
Like, so there's like. So the book is printed with, like, stuff written in the margins.
Yeah, interesting.
That makes sense. And so I have a friend who. I need to borrow it because she's. She's recommended it to Jane and I, like, several times. But it's. It's out of print, so it's a little expensive to get now. But it. She, like, was just in love with this book, and I need to check it out because it's like. Yeah, the whole, like. Like a bunch of loose, like, stuff is, like, tucked into the pages and stuff's written in the margins, and, like, a lot of the story takes place on the extra stuff that's, like, oh, cool. So, yeah, that one I would buy because it's on purpose, but.
Yeah.
Have you read House of Leaves by Danielewski?
Mm.
It's sort of, like, layers and layers of text and footnotes and marginalia. I don't know why I didn't think of that before tonight. I read it.
I read it in college, but, yeah,
that book was creepy. Oh, my God. Loved it.
Caitlin, would you buy a book with somebody else's marginalia?
I think it would depend just a little bit, but I would, because I kind of find it a little bit charming. It would depend, because, of course it wouldn't. I don't think I would go and buy something that was, like, annotated, like, super scholarly. But if it were just, like, somebody, like, enjoying a piece of literature and kind of commenting it on it throughout the way, I kind of find that nice. Like, if you buy a used book and you find the old library card still inside.
Yeah.
Yeah, I like that.
I ever tell you that I. So I bought this. I think my mom bought it for me. It was just one of those old books from, like, the 40s, 50s, 60s that are. That are kind of like gold foil embossed on like fabric, just. Just that really fantastic texture. And it was purchased at a used bookstore and it recently had belonged to our local public library. And a coworker of mine who was quite a bit older than me checked it out in 1962 and she was like 8 years old. And I later sent it to her. I was like, hey, you read this book when you were 8? Because her name was still written on that library card. It was, it was so cool.
That's so special.
Yeah, sorry, side. Side conversation there. No, it's cool.
That's cool.
Yeah, I like that.
Johnny, would you. Johnny, would you. Would you buy a book written by somebody else or written in the margins of somebody else? Depends.
Maybe I. I have before if it was like a really rare book and I couldn't find another copy of it, but generally no. But I do like to buy books that have the dedication written in them.
Yeah, that's fun.
You can pick up on the vibe, like when someone's like, it's also kind
of sad when they're like, I think you'll love this book. And it's like, I'm buying it a
used bookstore like a year later.
Clearly they hated it.
So. And so I read about this and thought about you right away.
Great, thanks. So, of course, this is a podcast about tools. And do you use a pencil or a pen or highlighter or something fine tipped or broad tipped? What do you use to write the margins? Johnny, how about you?
Always pencil? Yeah, because in part, you know, sometimes I, you know, misspell something and it just looks terrible. And I have gone through books before and been like, why don't I highlight that? That's not important. And now it's really distracting. And also, if I ever wrote on them, I usually would use a ballpoint pen and it destroys the paper. Yeah, like, you know, if you pick up something 15 years later you're like, oh, that's why you're not supposed to use a Bic.
Do you think? Something pretty firm or pretty soft.
So this is super nerdly and I can talk to you guys about it. I have like a small fleet of pencils that I like to use for marginalia and I test them them in the back of a book before I use them because so many books have, you know, such differently textured paper. The one I'm reading right now, a velvet number two is perfect because it's got a nice tooth to it. Yeah, yeah. It actually gives Me. Nice. Yeah. It's like some pleasurable. It won't smear. I can still see it.
That's a really good idea.
I'm a little bit more about what's on hand.
Yeah.
When I'm writing in books, but I generally go for pencil, especially in, like, paperbacks that sort of like really textured paper. Pencil's so good for that.
Yeah. It feels really good. Tim, do you have a go to.
Not really. I mean, I'm a big highlight. Highlighter person. I. I underline stuff sometimes, usually pencil. But I really. It really bothers me if I can't write a straight line, like underlining things or if, like, I squiggle over the words. Like, it just drives me nuts and so has to be pencil so that I can fix that. But I usually. It's highlighter within the book, unless I'm circling something, like the word or whatever. And I usually write in the margins of the pencil. And it's. I'm not too picky, I guess. I mean, just kind of the same stuff I always, always use, I suppose. Just not. It's nothing too soft because usually book paper, it just seems to be a little. Yeah.
Yeah. It seems to me that a. That a bridge pencil would be really good for that because you can kind of like.
Yeah.
Tuck. Tuck it away, like in the book when you're done with it pretty easily. Yeah. Like if it's a paperback. Yeah.
Also disappear in my hand while I'm writing.
Yeah.
Where'd it go?
Tim, do you ever use those highlighter pencils?
I've tried, but I just didn't like them. Yeah, I have a couple of them. I just didn't care for it. Some were given to me and then I had. I think some of those you buy or ub or whatever from Target ones are bad. Yeah, those are bad, but I don't really care for it. I like a good bright, like, green highlighter, so.
Yeah.
Or orange. I like orange,
yellow, blue, or yellow.
There's also blue, red, black.
Love a black highlighter.
Black.
Oh, man, those mild liners are a thing.
Blackout bones.
I like to black it out so nobody else can. Can read it once I've read it.
This is mine.
Yeah.
It'd be amazing if somebody did that, like, to everything. Like an entire book. Like to know instead of a bookmark, they just like, sharp out every line after they read it. Like, it's like.
It's like Snapchat, but for reading a book. Like, you can only read it once. And then we're just Going to black it out.
Oh, my gosh. I finished this one. And then you put it up on the shelf and, like, can I borrow that? You don't want to borrow that. Why does it. Does it suck? Good. Good luck. Yeah.
Like, it has no story at all.
Yeah.
Last question from me. And then if anybody else has anything they want to share, ask. Love to know it. If you are, you know, talking to somebody about as. As you are now who are hesitant to become a margin writer, what would you say to convince them? What's your. What's your value proposition here? Caitlin, how about you?
Oh, I'm immediately gonna go with the crime angle.
Be bad.
That's it. That's all I got for you. Do it because it's yours. It's your book. You could do whatever you want to it.
I'm probably gonna have to ding this out, but, you know, you can. You can write in the book, you know, because the police.
Exactly.
There you go. It's almost like I kind of equate it to, like, putting your own, like, personality stamp onto a book in some ways, which. Not, like, that's not, like, why I do it, but afterwards, that's how it feels, you know, Like. Yeah, it's like you get. You get. You pick out a new baseball glove, and you're like, this is the perfect glove for me. And you get it all broken in, and you play with it for three years, and then afterwards you're like, oh, that's got a lot of character to it. I wasn't playing baseball in order to give it character. I wasn't, like, wearing these boots every day to give them character. As if I had ever worn cowboy boots, but, like, you know, so I think it's just. It's kind of a cool way to let you in the book, kind of blend together a little bit and blur the. Blur the. Blur the lines or whatever.
Yeah, it makes it so much more personal. Yeah.
Yeah. After. After the fact. I mean, it really is pleasant to look back over a book. Book. Especially when you really enjoyed it and look back and kind of re. Experience your first. Your first reading of it in some ways, or second reading. Like, I. When working on that thing for. For Johnny Zine, the. I got my original copy of Grapes of Wrath out that I read in college, and I was, like, looking through the margins, and I saw all the little. Which we didn't mention these, but those plastic, colorful tabs.
Oh, yeah, stuff.
Like, I saw all those and was just flipping through and looking at them, and I was just like, Transported back to that. The afternoon I like blew through the second half of the book when I was poaching my neighbor's couch and like, or my, my suite mate's couch and like, because it was more comfortable and read through that book and I could just flip through it now and just sort of relive it. And that was, that was pretty cool.
I do love a plastic tab.
Yes, I do too. So that's what. I don't know. I guess that would be my answer. It's a way to kind of put your stamp or to. It's like a time capsule, I guess, is what I'm saying. Like a time capsule of your personality and how you interacted with that book down the road.
Oh yeah, I like that. It's really cool. Johnny, what do you think?
I'm that guy that gets people what I'm into for presents and tends to be kind of pushy and proselytizing. But I don't.
What all these fountain pens I have in my desk. I don't know what you mean, Johnny.
All these green inks showing up.
Yeah, I don't, I wouldn't try to do it because I mean, if somebody is a reader and they don't write in their books, like, whatever they're doing is working unless it's like, you know, a specific advice for, hey, if you don't want to mess up grad school, like, you better really read closely and this helps. But even then, if whatever works is working for somebody, I don't want to mess with it. Now I sound like a jerk.
Those are some really different takes.
Yeah, absolutely.
Don't do it. Do it because it's special. And
I don't, I don't. And Johnny's like, I don't care if you do it or not. Just, just read.
Yeah, you do. You man, you do. If you write in my book, I will break your effing arm. That happened in, in college. I lent someone a book and they wrote all over it because they thought they were smart and I threatened him. It was bad out.
That's kind of criminal. If you write, if you loan a book to somebody and they write in it.
Yeah, I think it's criminal that I didn't follow up on my threat.
I, as a teacher, I, I literally spend the first week of school teaching my students how to do this. I'm not going to go into all the detail, but I like, I have a pretty hardcore, like week long system of teaching them how to like, read closely and write in the margins that I do every year that I've been doing for, like, five years. So it's. Yeah, it's not what we're talking about, like, the enjoyable stuff. This is, like, when you're reading, you know, reading with a purpose, like, for school or something. But it's. But like, by the end of the year, I've always got. I've got all my kids trained. They look for. They're underlining and writing about the main idea. They're asking questions, they're highlighting vocabulary. They're making connections to history, other texts in their own life, and then sharing, like, their own opinions and ideas. Like, those five things. They're always, like, trying to do all five of those things on every page that they read, and they're. They're writing it in the margins. Then I. I literally, like, grade their. I grade their margins when I. After they read something to see how closely they read. That's, like, the best way for me to tell.
Tim's not going into it, but if you pay 89.95 on Masterclass, you two can learn from Tim.
Yes. Yeah.
How to write the market and three
small payments of 39.99. I'll send you the. I'll send you the VHS.
Get a free trial.
Is there anything on it? Do not be alarmed if a pirated
copy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
I would be so happy.
Hell, yeah.
Yeah.
All right. Any. Any closing thoughts? Anybody want to talk about something I did not mention here?
I would mention? I have one random question. What do you guys use for sharpening? Do you, like, long point, short point for this kind of thing? Because, like, this matters. Like, really does.
So people are listening to this?
Of course.
Yeah, of course. Of course. Long point. Long, probably.
Sorry.
See, I would think that I got some grunts from that.
You did.
I'll tell you. I bet. What's the word I want. I don't have as much access to great pencil sharpeners as I used to.
What's. It seems like you would want to, like, a short point so you can, like, really choke up on the pencil because you're not going to be able to, like, you're gonna have to rest your hand pretty carefully in order to write in those margins.
I think the long point helps me write smaller and, like, more precisely. Especially for underlining.
Yeah, like.
Yeah, like. Like a firm. One of the firm black wings is, like, perfect for it.
Yeah.
I'm totally the opposite. Like, shoot.
Mechanical pencil. The right width for underlining, but, you
know, some mechanical pencils are cool. I mean, if you had like a vintage celluloid shaffer that weighed six pounds with gold trim. That'd be neat. Is that what you use?
I don't think so.
One of those lead holders that, that Tim got at the.
Oh, yeah, yeah. That would be a nightmare. No, no, thank you. Not that one. I'll. Yeah, yeah. I'll take a mechanical pencil once in a while, but not that one. I did not like that thing. I like looking at it. I just don't like using it lately.
I have one of those Kum anniversary. Like the little glass jar sharpener that I use for twiddling them. Because the pencil I was using was too short to fit into my electric sharpener because it has a clip on it. So instead of taking the clip off, I just grabbed a different sharpener and I grew to kind of like it.
Yeah.
Huh.
You know, I. I just. This is like a slight, slight, slight tangent, but it is about sharpeners. I discovered recently that one of my bosses has the like ideal electric sharpener. The, the Panasonic. The big like manila colored ones, the
faux wood front with the wood grain.
Yeah.
We were talking about these.
We were texting about this last night. Like about that sharpener.
Yeah.
You know what you're about.
Yeah.
But she brought this sharpener. They just had their headshots done. The owners of the company I work for, and she brought the sharpener as her prop for the headshot.
That's awesome. That's a good move. I like that.
Yeah. Right before Tim texted to say that he's running a bit behind. It's a message from Johnny that reads, I wonder if I can buy some kind of wood grain adhesive on a sheet that I could cut to fit over the front of his X Acto sharpener.
That's right.
Just talking about that Panasonic.
I mean, it's not a sexy machine.
Yeah. That's amazing. Cool. So that's the last main topic. That's a wrap up for me. I'll toss it back over to Johnny.
Okay. So thank you for joining us, Caitlin. Can you tell folks where to find you on the Internet?
Thank you for having me. Really only one place these days which is just Instagram. It's just Kate Elgin. Follow me for lots of plants.
How about you guys, regular folks?
Well, you can find me on Twitter, Tim Wasem. And I'm on Instagram at Tim Wasem.
And I'm on Twitter, Twitter and Instagram at Awelfley. And on the other one, the web at andy. WTF. How about you, Johnny?
I'm@apencilrevolution.com and on social media at Pensolution. And you can find. Excuse me. You can find Erasable on social media at Erasable podcast. You can find our Facebook group@facebook.com groups erasable. And our page is facebook.com erasablepodcast. You can find us on the Internet via a web browser if you're feeling really old school.
What?
I keep forgetting that we have a website.
A word processor.
Yeah, yeah, you type it. Er, it's Erasable Us. And this episode will be at erasable us165. You can support us on patreon@patreon.com erasable and these very fine folks support us at the producer level, which is $10 a month. I'm going to take a big breath and I don't have any water here.
Do it all in one breath.
If I pass out, I'm going to tag one of you into so many thanks to David Johnson, Phil Munson, Nate Rayback, Donnie Pierce, Bill Black, Miriam Beckout, Harry Merks, Allison Sapita, Diane Oakley, Tom Keakley, Andre Torres, Kyle Paul Moorhead, Andrew Squish, Alicera Jamelia, Stephen Francali, Aaron Willert, A.O. pryor, K.P. millie Blackwell, Chris L. Hunter McCain, Bob Ostwald, Michael Diallosa, Adam Prabola, Jocelyn R. Myers, Tana Feliz, Anne Joe Crace, Measure Twice, Michael Hagan, Chris Metzkus, Bill Clow, Random Thinks, Jason Dill, Dave McDonald, Mary Kullis, Alex Jonathan Brown, Andre Prevost, Kathleen Rogers, Bobby Letzinger, Fourth Letter, Kelton Wiens, Scott Hayes, Hans Newdeman, Terry Beth, Jay Newton, Stuart Lennon, Dave Tubman, Chris Jones and John Wood. Many, many thanks. And we'll see you guys guys in two weeks.
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