Scribe

What episode was that when we forgot to record it?

And take the lens cap off. Right.

Hello, and welcome to episode 210 of the erasable podcast. What if I told you that Bloomsbury recently published a lovely little book in their object lesson series about the humble pencil. What if I told you that we scored the author on Erasable to chat about pencils journalism and her new book? And what if she could say hello, like right now?

Well, hello, I'm here.

Tonight, Tim and I are joined by Carol Bege to talk about her really cool little book. Like, as someone who makes books, I appreciate how this book was put together about our favorite writing instrument. So thanks for joining us tonight. Carol showed on Monday night.

Hey, thanks for having me on. And yes, I really do. Of course you love to see it's my book, so I would like it in any form. But these really are well, well thought out. It's part of a series. Bloomberg did their object lesson series to just go into object and now they're getting close to announcing the hundredth title. I have no insight into what that'll be, but I'm just as interested as everybody else. But there are sweet little additions.

Yeah, they have some really cool topics like air conditioning.

Yes. The bark, the barcode. Air conditioning and swimming pool came out with mine. And soon to come out are the land the rover, like the Mars rover. They're doing one on a space rover and then they're doing one on soon to come out newspaper. Which not to tip my hand, but you'd think I might have written that one. But no, given my background. But. So there's a range of them from tumor to. One of my favorite is the book on Tree by Matthew Battles. So there's some wonderful skateboard stroller Battles. Yes.

I think so.

He works for Arnold Arboretum here in the Boston area. Yeah, yeah. And almost, you know, I don't say to people like I. I try to encourage everybody to come up with their own title of what their object lesson would be for you guys. I beat it. A pencil. But the. Sorry, can't be that one. But I. I tell you folks to look at Matthew's book, but don't read it before you go to write your proposal because you'll be like, no, I. It's so well written. It can be discouraging when you read something that beautiful. You know, when you read Something you either want to edited or have wished you have written it yourself. So. Yeah. Right, right.

Well, I got the second impression a bunch of times reading your book.

Oh, well, thanks.

I love this little book. It's really cool. I hid it from my kids. They wouldn't lose it before we record it. So now I should let them read it.

Now we can share it with a family.

Yeah, like, Daddy, why are you writing your books? Like, shut up. Don't you write in Daddy's books if

you can stand a little thing? And there's one part which, of course, all of the folks in our group and the Erasables, particularly the folks on Facebook, will know. I don't got through this book and didn't need to use any swear words, and I just didn't feel like I needed to use them. And then all of a sudden, I was speaking about John Wick and you have to use the F bomb, right? So I went back and forth with the editors and I said, I feel really weird. I mean, I'm not a prude, but I worked in daily journalism, you know, so I knew that you have to be. You're putting it out there and it's in print and all that sort of stuff. So I wasn't trying to be prudish by putting the expletive in the par. In the parens. And not saying the F bomb, but. But I just thought it would stick out, you know, all of a sudden to have me like, hey, and pencils. And they collected them in the Midwest and, oh, by the way, F bomb, you know, like, so, you know, like, it's one of those editing choices where you go through and it's like. But, you know, if this were. What? If this were a pen book, you'd have to have F bombs everywhere, Right? Aren't pens more. They're not as nice as pencils, I guess, right?

Or not, as my pencils never explode.

More brash, right? They're not as brash. They're not as rude.

I don't have to clean out my mom's pencils when she leaves them for too long with ink in them. It's a service embry. I'm happy to provide. So we're gonna have next time Fresh Points episode where we're gonna talk about the spring releases that we have not talked about yet. But we have devised what we hope is a cool interview with Carol. It's a lot to talk about in this book, and we can't talk about everything, unfortunately, but, like, we could talk about a lot. So I'm going to grab the first question because I'm already talking. And before we get too deeply into this, I'm probably right and guessing there are some listeners who aren't in our Facebook group and don't know you. So can you tell folks a little bit about yourself and how you came to write this book?

Sure. And it's an interesting thing for me that these books. So my background is in journalism, in daily journalism, back when we killed trees by the forest loads and printed them and sent them out. I'm that much older than, I guess, a chunk of our listeners and even. But not really that's the thing that I will interrupt my own introduction to myself and say that I love the most about the group, and particularly your listeners, is that it's such a range of ages and people and backgrounds. And so I've always liked that. But this book is a lot more, maybe biographical, autobiographical than traditionally, you know, those of us trained in journalism are used to. But I found that was the best way to tell the story and. But it really is drawn out of my journalism background. I mean, I grew up in the near Midwest. I grew up, Johnny, in your part of the world, right, The Mid Atlantic that people don't think exists. You know, I'm all the way over there on Western Pennsylvania. No, it's not the Midwest. You know, it's truly the Mid Atlantic. And I came to Boston to go to school and stuck around. So I guess that's story number B for the Boston area, right? You know, you came and you went to college and you stuck around. And I ultimately worked in the suburbs and everything, and I worked at the Boston Globe for a bunch of years, and I was lucky enough to be offered a buyout back when newspapers really weren't shrinking, they were just reorganizing. And so, you know, I've been out in the world. And when people say, who do you write for now? And the answer is for anyone who will pay me. And I have been doing a bunch of things, and this book, I talk a little bit about it. This book came about because I was at another book signing at the Harvard Bookstore. Johnny, I'm sure you've spent some money there. One of my favorite books, an independent bookstore in Harvard Square, and there it sits. And I was there for a book signing for another, not anything I had to do with as a listener. I was leaning against the literary criticism in the anthropology section and the cultural studies. And I said, what is this little series of books? And I found Tumor and I found Tree you know, and I started poking through them, and it was just fascinating to me that these existed. And then I poked around a little bit, and at the time, the Atlantic was running a lot more of the essays that were about the subjects and about the objects. And so I cooked up an essay that's really my chapter five here. I believe it's chapter number five on can you use a pencil in space? Because I thought it was a quirky way, you know, to talk about how not research, you know, and how people make things up. And then, you know, and I thought it was fun. And I submitted it and they're like, yeah, I sort of got. Not rejected, but kind of put on hold a little bit. And I'm like, what's the problem? And they're like, well, we want you to turn this into a book proposal. And I'm like, well, where's the book on pencils? I assumed there had to have been one, right? It's the most object out there, at least in my world or my view. And. And sure enough, they came back and said no one had done one. So I was asked to put in a proposal. And then, of course, this has happened with everybody. Covid kind of screwed up some of the timelines of things. But when things got back up and running and I was finally able to get the book out, so it started off as really an essay, and then it. We weren't quite sure what it would be, and then it became something else. And then it. But always within this parameter of working with these folks. And then they accepted it and it went flying along. So that's how me and the book got here today.

Awesome.

Right.

Oh, rust. I have it. It's wonderful because it's sciency, but not too sciency for those of us who, you know. Like I said, I came from the mid Atlantic, so I know the rust. I know the rust belt. That's a good one. Recipe. Recipe, which is both tangible and not, was also very much like, you know, written by a professor, a historian. And so it's both cultural, but it's also very science based. And then it's not. It's totally emotion. So it's kind of fun to go through them and just pick off the ones you you like, you know, and look at them. And there's a couple of other series I'm sure you've run across some of them. Bloomsbury also does for music lovers like the 33 and a third series. Oh yeah, and they're wonderful. Like they're just deep dives on individual group, you know, bands.

There you go.

And Oxford University. Oh, which one?

Yeah, that's amazing. And like the very short. There's also a very short introductions from Oxford University, which get a load of me putting myself in this company, like comparing anything. But they are these wonderful books that were set up as small, truly very short introductions. And the idea is that you'd be able to read it, you know, on a plane ride or in an afternoon to get ready for a topic. And they're often written by true experts in the field. And those are very much follow the academic rules. And then MIT has a series that kind of mixes up all of these things called the MIT Essential Knowledge series. And it's just wonderful because they'll go from 3D printing to what is cloud computing and you can read it. And I still don't understand all of it, but I feel like I now know a little bit more or I have been exposed to it. So I'm just glad that this book doesn't sit out there. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but that it's part of a larger story. And like you said, some of them are object objects you can tap on them. I mean, a tumor is obviously an object and rust is obviously an object, but it's not really the kind of thing that you embrace as what we come to think of as an object.

Well, you know, one that. I don't know why it came up to me, because they do. You know, I was talking to one of the editors at one point and one of the folks involved and, and this is totally out of left Field and grave hadn't been done yet. And I thought of headstone because I've just, you know, they're fascinating to me. Right. You know, but I. It's not. Again, it's not like an object I have in my house or something. But, you know, when you realize you. They're both historic and they're pretty. And then I even thought about that again when I was out there poking around. You know, when you look around in life, not just for family stuff, on the sadder stuff, but when you do research and you go out to people's graves and they're. You can have two dates and a name. And sometimes that's the most important piece of information that is left from anybody. Right. You know, that was one of the ones. And yeah. And I. I did think about newspaper, but it's done and it's soon to come out. It'll come out in May and it's done by someone else. And that'll be wonderful. There's also one that was supposed to be out by now, but they've switched up the publishing train and that wasn't. Yeah. And train is coming out. And that would be one that I would have. Love to have done. You know, it was already done when I came there. The book sticker is actually wonderful. And it's really interesting because he kind of took the Caroline Weaver approach. Each chapter is a separate sticker that he writes about and brings it into his own life and all of that. So it's the Mr. Yuck sticker or the smiley. You know that. The happy smiley face sticker. And he goes through the histories that way. So they really let you run with it. Once you tell them what it is that you're looking to do, they really let you run. Like I said, I thought my. I would kick things off with. You can't really use a pencil in space. And that became the fifth chapter and it kept getting pushed back. It was the first one done, then it was the first one redone, then it was the first one blown up. And then all of a sudden it's sitting in the middle of the book.

When you saw. Oh, what did you guys. What were you. What were your.

I can't help but notice there's Not a book on there.

Right. There's bookshelf. There's bookshelf, but there's not book on book. You're right. There's not one on notes. There's not one on notebooks either. Gosh, that's. I. The.

Oh.

Dude, I would read that forever. Yeah, also. And then you'd have to get a tattoo of guitar pick.

That classic Fender one, but instead of Fender Tim, because the cursive T and a cursive F. Yeah, that's true.

You're welcome.

So, yes, and gladly. Any excuse to talk about John C. Burke, the former metropolitan editor of the Boston Globe. He was sort of right out of central casting. You know, sandy, reddish hair that was grayish white as well, beard, spoke very softly. But that never stopped him from being heard in a very loud newsroom. Could scare the heck out of you. Because I was a whopping, you know, 18 or 19 years old. And he'd come up behind you and go, I need 30 twills in an hour. This isn't a weekly. You know. And you're like, okay, yes, sir. Now I. What was I writing? You know? But he was also like the guy that they gave every new young person to nights and weekends and that sort of thing. And he chose to work nights and weekends. And when I, at one point was given a choice of what shift I wanted to work, I thought, I'm going to work Monday, I'm going to work. I'm going to work. Take. Have off Saturdays. Fridays and Saturdays. Right. I want to work Tuesday, you know, that Sunday through Thursday shift. And he walked up to Me. And he said, no, you'll never make page one of the Sunday newspaper that way. This isn't about, like your social life. So, you know, he was that kind of encouraging. Like, no, you're going to do this because this is better for this. So that when you finally, like, what are you here for if not.

Yeah, yeah. And I truly miss him. He lived a long life and he worked for many years. Even after retiring. He came in as a freelancer and ran election coverage and everything else for the Globe for years. And so when you finally get that call and it's like being whatever the folks are used to, it's being on the bench and getting sent in the soccer game or the baseball, getting called to go pitch or something like that. You're sitting around and finally you get the call to go out to a breaking news event. So you have to get up and get quickly, you know, get out of there quickly. Of course, you always would grab a notebook and you could do that, whatever you want. Some people, particularly those who covered politics, would cover, would also carry tape recorders and things. And this was in the days where we were just getting into micro cassettes. So some of these things were large. Right. But you could have your notebooks and for the notebook fans out there, it was kind of magical. But you could have regular reporter notebooks, which we've all seen. They have the strip of metal across the top, you know, so you could flip it over. And some people liked to use the wider style notebook, particularly those who worked in courtrooms and stuff, so that it gave them more room. They didn't have to keep flipping pages, you know, while they're writing everything down. But I always like the traditional reporter's notebook. But John Burke insisted. And it wasn't something that was ever written down or wasn't passed down. It was passed down from him to each reporter, not like from each one of us on. You had to carry three. You had to also take three items, three writing implements. And they are the rock, paper, scissors of the newspaper business. This, that is. You have to take a felt tip pen. You have to take, you know, usually there they were, the black paper mate ones. I don't remember ever seeing any other color, but I'm sure we still had them. You had to take a pen of some sort. And I always prefer to click ballpoint pen. But it had to be a ballpoint pen, not an ink pen. It had to be something that had that movable ball that moved the ink along. And you took a pencil at least One pencil. And so people always ask, like, why those three things? And here's why I always say the rock, paper, scissors is because a ballpoint pen will work and work wonderfully, except when it's cold or except if you can't write down. Like, if your notebook isn't, you know, parallel to the ground and you're writing, as you all know, when you start to lift it up or you have to write or move, it sometimes starts to run out. And that doesn't always work in the real. In the cold, a felt tip pen will get you through writing in all angles, up and down. Except if you're, like, at a fire and it starts to. You get the blowback of a firefighter's hose or the spray, or you. In certain times, it will run, it will mist, it will muck up on your page. It doesn't ink up and clot as much as an ink pen, but fountain pen of some sort, but it still doesn't work in all instances. And then the pencil, which will work, and now, you know, it can get a little smudgy and all that sort of stuff. But even if it breaks and you start to chew on it or whatever, you can always get to some kind of core or something there and you can write along with it. And, you know, particularly back in the day, people carried pocket knives that made it even easier. But you. You know that that pencil was always there to bail you out. And so between, you know, it's like having golf extra clubs in your bag or something like that. Those were the three that we always had to have. And. But he didn't explain it to you in great lengths. He's like, take all three. And then eventually you'd learn this very quickly after you went out. And sure enough, I needed to use more than one implement the first time that I went out to my first big, you know, fire, because you're just getting soaked and it's cold. So that's why we always use those things. And I have to give a shout out. And you guys read this in the book. And I know that I probably spent too much time on it. But something that the kids these days will never know is the beauty of the office supply cabinet. And particularly when you had people whose job it was back in the fat days of offices where nobody questioned that we only are going to order one box of pencils. And in those days, you could have walked up and said, now we had pens that were printed Boston Globe on them and that sort of stuff. And they were the property of Pencils. These were not given out as promos. They said Boston Globe on them so that we would have them. But you could have said to them, I like to use this other pen or this other whatever. And the people in the office would have ordered it for you. Because there were five different styles of notebooks. And a lot of. Like I said, court reporters use the stenographers notebook because they also use legal pads, you know, because they had a place to. To sit down and. Or the people who covered the state House or in Washington, they would use legal pads. And there were, like, nine different kinds of legal pads in the. Yeah, like, it was just. You opened it up and. Yeah, exactly. Like, I need a choir of angels. Do you have any sound effects you could put in? And we'll go like, oh, you know, like when it opens. Yeah, because it's just like, that was the experience. And it wasn't even under, as would happen later. But when I was first there, nothing was under lock and key. So you could just walk open, throw open those cabinets, and go, I need these batteries. I need this thing. I need this. And you know what? I never stole too much because it was always available for free. I mean, that's awesome.

Yeah. So because we, you know, we like to get specific. What did you get out of the cabinet? Like, as specifically as you want to get for your pens and your pencils or even, like, brand of notebook. I know those portage ones that come in different rulings.

Right. I use regular importage. And there was. You know, some of them were printed here in Massachusetts. So there was a. You know, some of the portage came right out of Norwood, Mass. So, you know, and I knew a lot of reporters just grabbed and there's people at home who won't believe this, thinking I'm lying. They came in, packed 12 packs that were shrink wrapped, and you just grabbed the pack of notebooks because you were going out or working, you know, you always had them. So, you know, you have some in your desk. So I liked those because they would fit in my left hand and I would wear my watch, you know, so that the face. Back when we actually wore watches, right. So the face was on. I'm a right hander. And so the face would be on your left wrist because my hand would be that way so I could see the watch all the time. Right. You know, when you're interviewing folks. And I loved to take, you know, more than a few pencils and, and, but those were the days when Dixon Ticonderogas were made in the U.S. you know, and we had a lot of like, Dixon products there in the room. We also had a lot of china markers which were, you know, great for marking up not just photos but your files and things rather than using a lot of magic markers. And so for the folks, the china markers are the ones with the. They sharpen by pulling the string and the paper comes off. And it's such a wonderful feeling to do all of that. And I always made sure that I carried the. I like the ballpoint pens rather than the stick ballpoint, you know, the click ballpoint pens rather than the stick ballpoint pens, which always came with like that eraser on the top of it that would, you know, pretty much rip paper and you know, like. But it, but still it looked like a pencil pen or whatever. And back in those days, in newsrooms, our notebooks, like for every day writing for on your desk, they made tablets downstairs in the job shop, there was a print shop within the building. And so they made tablets for you out of newsprint so you could get them in three size. So they were sort of like 5 by 7ish, you know, 8 by 10, and then a larger one for the people who did the layout. And so which meant for you pencil fans that if you were taking your notes in pencil, you could not really sharpen it to one of those death points. You know, you had to make sure that it was a little because it would just scratch right through the, you know, the newsprint. So but we use those on our desks and everything. And I always made sure I had plenty of that. And I really almost took it for granted. I mean, I wish I could tell you that I squirreled it away or asked them to like please stalk only black wings, you know, or anything. You didn't. Nobody, whatever you wanted was there. So it was like, ah, I should have asked for more or different. But I fear I did not. I know there were some everhard favors, you know, because they could just get them right. Just order them up so well.

Right. I just always miss. I mean and I've said this to others, like the microtomics and the Van Dykes were such a range of pencil that like that's when you look and you say, oh, right. Because people were picking. Because they're. They were graphic artists or they were engineers. So they were picking a 5B or a 7H or something of those ranges and they seem like those. I've always been trying to find people who did other things with their pencils. Like they were the engineers and I talk about them a little bit, but I, you know, know that we're probably losing more and more of those people who in the 70s would almost whittle away nearly all of the wood surrounding it. You know, like the. So it was just like this long piece of lead with a little bit of wood and they would put them in holders and that was so they could just sketch or write all day long, I mean on plans and things like that or do mass equations and. But I was really beating up, you know, it's the difference between, you know, somebody driving a truck sometimes when you're working as a reporter and somebody who's driving their classic car. You know, like nowadays I'm very nice to my pencil. I was not at all nice to my writing implements or my notebooks or you know, anything back then because it was, it truly was a tool. It was a tool I loved, but it was a tool.

That truly is the. The. Probably the biggest change. I mean, you'll notice that even the newest, youngest reporters, writers, content creators, I've start. I've started to notice that they're using more pens and pencils and things to write down at least where on the recording that they are. Right. You know, which they're trying to figure out. Because nowadays you can record everything. And I've seen people who don't carry a separate recorder, they've now gone so far as to carry a separate phone that they'll use one for recording and one for like their. And so. And they obviously have two phone numbers for that. And, you know, there's ways to do that. And the idea is, because your recording device now is also a broadcast device, so that puts it light years ahead of other things. But what happens when all those, you know, batteries and things go out? And I'm lucky enough to, you know, when I'm working on projects for people or even this, you know, pencil book, that I'm lucky enough that I get to go into stacks and do some research and in libraries and things like that. And you can't take every piece of electronic equipment and you can't take a pen with you, and you can't take anything that would remotely spill any ink on anything. And I was working in a now in a college library here in the Boston area at one point when they were getting ready to switch up what they did, it was a big anniversary coming up, and the librarians would not let. They would hold my water or the bottle of water or whatever out there. The only thing I could take in was one piece of like a hardtack mint candy with me in these dusty room because that wouldn't destroy what I was touching, you know, so you take, you can only take a pencil and a piece of candy in with you. So you've got to find the way to use the tools. But I am one of those people who's always tried to find the right tool for the right thing. And I'm, you know, that much older than so many of the listeners, but I am, I'm not a first wave adopter. I, you know, I will jump right on it as soon as I watch that. Somebody else blew up the car. Okay? I. Now I know how to do this, and I'm not afraid of technology. But I know that the first time that I went out where, you know, you could even use your ipod to record and all that, you know, we were recording audio And I'm gonna name drop a little bit. The first time I was on the Oscars red carpet and I had to carry, you know, recording devices. You know, I would find myself sticking my notebook out because it was the wrong hand, you know, like, whatever. And once you get used to that, you're like, hey, this is pretty cool. It's just a different technology and so many more people interacted in a different way. So. But I'll tell you what, my notebook still had the questions written in it and all of that sort of thing. I don't know. I've watched people try to use their same phone to record everything, never writing anything down. How do you ask your questions? And I never wanted to abuse the patience of the people I was interviewing because I got my start in breaking news and in hard news and later got to cover celebrities and things like that. And it's the same for both. They have about three seconds of patience with you, and they might give you five minutes. So I don't want to be like clicking over here and going, hold on while I record. I want it lot, you know, and go. And I want to be able to use what I need. So in that case. But for me personally, you know, I still always have a pencil nearby and I still have that ballpoint pen. I don't always carry a felt tip pen, but I usually have two out of the three that I was trained at the earliest age to have. And, you know, in that sense, it's whatever tool helps you get your job done. But circumstances dictate what you need to use. A lot of times, I think, for getting your stories done. It's a beautiful thing when you're working on something and you can actually, you've got two, three film camera operators and a sound guy, and you're asking questions and you can float along, and your job's just to read the questions, right. But if you're working as a reporter chasing someone down, you better be able to get all your information, because you can't go back and go, now, I know you're really angry at me, but the thing I really meant to ask you was really, did you kill your neighbor? You know, you don't get a second chance at that. You better have it written down. You know, So I just try to adjust to the assignment, I guess.

Well, so in talking about tools of then and now, my oldest kid has a cell phone. And my principal argument for it was, that's where all the kids are. So you're going to be left out of everything. But you talk a lot in your book about pencils being uniters, which, you know, in the 2000 and 20s seems like a weird statement, but we know that it's true. So I was hoping you could elaborate on that a little bit, especially in the context of like specific, like self selected online communities. Right, Like a certain Facebook group.

Right, a certain Facebook group and some of the people who are adjacent to you, you know, and there are others who I won't name who got it all wrong, you know. So for me, I wanted to say something that I hint to in the book. I think I actually write it out as more than a hint. Until I actually shared the manuscript of this book, I had never met anybody who hated pencils. You know, it just like that was never anybody's reaction to me, you know, as I hate pencils. You know, where you could say, like, talk about stickers or skateboards, somebody would say like, I hate skateboards. That makes sense. Okay, I get that. I don't know, at least to me, because you could cart yourself for some, I don't know, or you run over. But how this object that we all have had in our hands, because still in kindergartens today, in the most electronic world we live in, right. Kids are handed pencils in kindergarten or pre kindergarten. So I had never seen that. And then one of the folks who worked on the book said, I have to confess, after reading the book and it's now moving forward, I have to confess, I never really liked pencils, but I had to start to like them because my kids do. And I thought, oh my goodness, what do you mean? Wait, go back. What do you. Why did you ever say yes to this book? And who are you? How do you hate pencils? Who hurt you? Yeah, like who? Yeah. What happened? And, and it just seemed like because there sort of everywhere, that's like saying, you know, what did a pencil ever do to anybody? It's not a parking meter. It didn't give you a ticket. Right. You know, it's not like in your daily life, what did it do for you? It's like saying, I hate the object. A book. No, you can hate what's in a book. But so it was really that from that space that I had already said, pencils are this uniter, because I thought it's something anyone can talk about, right? You and I can have a conversation with someone and maybe even learn something new about a. A pencil. And we've spent how much time learning about pencils or researching them and looking at old catalogs and listening to Other people in the erasable podcast group. And I learned stuff every day, and. And yet I'll learn something from somebody else. Did you know that, like, In World War II, they took back the pencil, you know, and you're like, wait, what? Tell me that story again. It was your learned life experience that they did this with pencils or that they cut all your pencils in half. And I learned something new today from the pencil.

And.

And pencil opens a lot of doors because, you know, you've talked to people about them almost to the point of maybe boring your friends and family. You know, my family rolls their eyes at me whenever. There we go. They all know what to get me when they go on vacations, don't they? And so I. And then that for me, when I started to spend more time online, as we all did, and I finally joined the American Pencil Collector Society, which is decidedly not an online group, but a real group. And they are, you know, now doing electronic newsletters and that sort of thing, which is great, but I hadn't really spent a lot of time with people. And then I, like everybody else, I found your podcast, found the group online and had been out there paying attention to it, and then jumped in with both feet. And I found right away that you could say something. And you're like, I had learned this, and in this particular group, and I, this is the hill I'll die on is that, you know, I've never had anybody in. Even during those dark times where you were one of the groups where I did see some people kind of get uneasy about, like, I don't want my pencils to be political or whatever they wanted to say. And it's like, no, you really have it wrong. And the group self corrected. I mean, I'm glad that you all were good leaders and kind, you know, guides through all of that. But the group I feel, at least from where I am as a member, took care of its own. And it's. I don't want to name some other groups, but there are some out there in some worlds, and you see it with, like, even some, like, typewriter groups and things like that, where it becomes a sales group first and foremost. Or people are like, that's not true, you know, or, this isn't this, or. And I'm like, no, I'll float something. Like, hey, I was told by the old guys at the American Pencil Collector said those were called property of and somebody else is why that. And then it goes off, and then I get something back that I didn't know from Somebody else. Because the conversation will go on. I mean, you've seen it, right? I. Oh, yeah. Whoever. One of us is the first one to post a black wing thing. There's sometimes where that goes 50, you know, 50 comments later about, like, it could be this. It could be this.

What about deleted the post title, right? Like, what about the advice part? Did you guys not want to.

And I also. And I. The idea of, like, find your people, which is what I called my sort of group, you know, chapter there. And for me, that's because how many times have people say, welcome, here you are, send me your address. I'll send you some pencils, you know. And for me, that was a key to it. And I also write about a gentleman who has since died. He was a former president of the American Pencil Collector Society. And back in. I think it was 2016 or something like that. And obviously, you know, we were in a different time then. Weren't we all scared? So, you know, 20. 2016, I got the notice that they were having the American Pencil Collectors, there's a society's convention out in Iowa, and the then president was hosting it. And I sent him an email saying, hey, I think I'd like to come out. And he called me back in like, five minutes, right? Called me back. And I'm thinking, well, that's interesting, right? You know, and after talking to him and, you know, I don't want to make it be too much of a, you know, after school special or something, but it was like, you know, too much of a Disney show here. But, like, here's a guy who I probably don't have 10 things in common with, but I have, like, I like Pencils. I. And then when you go through it, you're like, obviously, it's craftsmanship and history, and it becomes all these other things, right? And I shared enough of that and respect that I, you know, I met him, and I was truly saddened when he died. And here's a guy who made me feel welcome in his hometown, like, please come, and here I'm going to show you whatever I can. And, you know, as they're with the rest of the people in the convention, and again, I don't think if it hadn't been for Pencil, what would I have ever had the connection with him with. And. And I don't mean that in a rude way. It's just the way we all are, right? You know what? Why would I have been able to get out there? And I know there are other pockets and corners on the Internet, but I wanted to make sure people knew that exists, at least right now and at least in your little world and that you've created for us and in some of the other groups where it's just like, we're here to talk about this. And we saw it during COVID right? I mean, we even had the, like, you know, different folks were organizing, like, zoom calls and sort of meetups online, and it was just great to see other people and talk about things that wasn't death and dying. Although my headstone book, you know, whatever. But, yeah, that's what I meant by the community. And, you know, I. There are, like, two jokes that I find myself cracking all the time, and the community has yet to run me out for cracking them. You know, like, which one is when somebody puts the tiniest stub ever, instead of, like, how did you do that? I always write, no one likes a quitter. And every time somebody has one of those, like, my favorite pencil got, you know, jammed up under the car. And I always write thoughts and prayers, and so, Like, means as much as any other time, right? We all just say that. What does it mean? Right? And so. But the group's never, like, thrown me out for that. And other people crack their same jokes, and people know that, like, Tina likes the color pencils, and Gary wants to know the history. And Dave's gonna be able to tell you what the air. John's gonna know this about the Japanese pencil or, you know, and that's become fun too, because I don't have to know everything about everything one of you guys does. Right. You know, so that's. It's just fun to share that way for sure.

Right. Well, you know, thorough or Thoreau, which is oft debated as to which it is. But so here he was. And you know, at the risk of getting thrown out of the group, I think if he were alive today, he would be. We would call him an influencer. Right. Because he dabbled in all these things, did things, made big headlines, and then sort of moved on. Right. You know, he had that famous saying of anything done well done once, you never need to do it again. Right. I mean, that was his whole premise of, like, I've done that. I moved on. And you look at his, you know, by his own hand, he would be like, I'm this, I'm that, I'm a, you know, I'm a poet, I'm a surveyor. But, oh, well, I'm also a pencil maker because his family, like so many other folks out in the Concord, which is like the Assabet Valley area, that's where American pencil making took off or started, if you will. And it's because you had a lot of cabinet makers and a lot of woodworking shops and they needed things for people to do when they weren't making, doing the jobs. Right. So the Thoreau family, John Thoreau, had such a shop and they made pencils in their downtime. And our beloved Henrid figured out a better way to make the pencils, not just the manufacturer and to get better and different wood, because they were bringing wood up from the, from Mississippi and, you know, from the American south to get those true the red cedars and the heart, the quality woods and up there to make furniture and all the like, but also to make pencils. And he also figured out a better way to mix the graphite. Because when you really go and I'm lucky enough to live within, you know, A short drive of. Maybe I could even take public transportation to the Concord Museum. They have Thoreau pencils on display. And a lot of this explained. He figured out better ways to mix the graphite and to make the core be more substantial. And they were expensive, you know, pencils. If you read Petroski's book, there were times when Thoreau's pencils were selling for 25 cents a pencil. I mean, that's more expensive than the black wing, right? You know, if you adjusted for, you know, the time and the inflation and all of that. So you really did have a quality product that was being made in their downtime. And he figured out how to do that. What you can't ever get from people. And actually, I'm gonna post on the. Because I'm gonna. We'll probably run out of time. I will make sure I post. There is a talk that's actually being run by the Thoreau Society that's like this Thursday. I think it is this Thursday or on. On Thoreau's pencil manufacturing that's being run. And you can attend it online, I believe. So I'll post that. I will. I'll post it in the Erasable. So most people will only get this right the day of, but I'll put that in the Erasable podcast Facebook thing tonight. I promise you I will do that as soon as we're done. But it talks about. And it's going to be, you know, Augustine Sedgwick with Robert Gross, who was the. A history professor. Robert Gross wrote the Transcendentalists and His World and Their World.

I'm reading that right now.

Yeah, it's an amazing book. And he gave me a quote for the book. So I, you know, I love this guy and because of his insight and everything else in the area. And my reason for bringing all of them up is like Henry David kind of did all this and then kind of moved on as he did with everything else in his life. Right. He kind of moved on and then he went off and did a lot of his other stuff, but he was still around the area and he is credited with doing a lot of the modernization. And, you know, Joseph Dixon, the. Joseph Dixon was making crucibles and using graphite and everything up in the North Shore of Massachusetts. And he apparently came down to. It would be a, you know, a ride by in those days. He came down to actually work in some of the factories on the graphite and to teach some of that. So he's involved with pencil making in the Concord area. You know, before he moves to New Jersey and takes all of his operations down there. And they're, you know, Benjamin Ball and the Monroe Pencils. And I. You would ask me if there's anything else I wanted to bring up, and I think now would be a good moment. I don't want to blow anybody's, you know, mind or anything in our group, but the aforementioned Professor Gross read my book and was kind enough to give me a quote. And being a true historian, he then gave me some things to think about. But we were pretty far along in the process at that point, Right? And, you know, in the book, I mention how one of the reasons why Thoreau pencils are always considered to be among the most valuable is because they are actually embossed, right? They have the indentation of John Thoreau and Son, or John Thoreau and Sons in the pencil. And so I say the repeated thing of, like, they seem to be the only ones who were. They were clearly marked. Professor Gross said, are we sure? Like, it seems like if one person did it, the others did it. And I. And there was, like, dead silence. And he's like, is everything okay? And I'm like, oh, my God. You realize that like. Like the completists and the collectors and the historians and now everyone else, not to mention the Bob Trubies and the websites, are gonna go, there could be something else out there that I have to go find and collect. Because he's not wrong. I mean, I said, look, the Ball pencils had a label and they were wrapped together with a label. They didn't emboss them. But if you saw that your competition was doing that, why wouldn't you? It never occurred to me in all this time that we should probably be looking for somebody else's pencils with the embossing on them. You know, not the print, like ink, but the embossing using it has to be out there, right? I mean, I throw that to you. Wouldn't it have to be out there?

Yeah.

Right? And we've just taken it as a fact, like, the. Like, they're the only ones with the mark on them. And I'm like, oh, no, don't tell us this. We're all going to be out there looking for them.

You've gone to like, all these house sales and yard sales and things, right? You know, it's. You'll find, like, three Black Wing, you know, original Black Wing 602s in somebody's drawer, you know, with, like, some dead gum and, you know, whatever else nobody thought, like, oh, I'm gonna get 80 bucks a piece for these or something, you know, but, yeah, the. The idea that they're out there and, you know, like, Thoreau. I both love and hate him for being the dilettante, but if he wasn't, then we wouldn't. Who would have remembered him? Like, who would have done any of this? But, you know, it really is funny to go out there. It'll be like dead snowstorm. I even went up there one time when there was a ton of snow, and sure enough, people had pencils out there on the grave already, you know, and, yeah, at this time of the year, it'll be getting cleaned up a little bit, and there'll be pencils there and Louisa May and everybody else who's his neighbors up there in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. It's. It's worth it. Not just for. That's the beauty of some of our world is that it's not just like, hey, I like a pencil. You're also getting some US History and some great storytelling and some real, you know, creatives and artists. I mean, I am fascinated by the fact that, like, Henry David Thoreau never thought of himself as any kind of a journalist or a writer, but he did get paid by newspapers and magazines to write, and on his walks to Cape Cod and all this, like, please, we'll pay you. That's a journalist, right? Or that's at least a writer. And, I mean, he did consider himself a poet with, like, air quotes, but I think he got pushed back by some of the leading poets of the day so that he didn't want to step too far, you know, in that area. But, I mean, his verse survives, right? So that's what I was more interested in is that, like, people are still reading him and they're still debating whether or not he's a poet. So.

So that's a good lead in to the next question. It's National Poetry Month, of course, and we haven't talked about that. That although we have in the past celebrated it. So at the end of your chapter about Thoreau, you write that to write a poem is to explore an unknown space and to embrace not knowing where one might end up. And you refer to poetry as a sort of intentional aimlessness. So this is when you Were talking about Walden and I was wondering what your thoughts are on. So we're, you know, we're all wirelessly wired to one another into the machine and. But then, you know, like, like we mentioned, there are still people who carry pencils and paper and I'm wondering what you think that does to, you know, the writing of poetry and personal and philosophical endeavors and just, you know, creative thinking these days.

Yeah, I really love this area of thought and that comes from a conversation or not one conversation, maybe a three year long conversation with Zach Bond, who is a Boston area poet, teacher, works and has worked in bookstores and libraries and all of that sort of thing. Youngish guy, younger than me and you know, I think he's in his early 30s or so and he himself is a great, you know, a great writer and poet to, to my ear, but also a member of the community. And so when I was having those conversations with him, you know, it came from some of that, like, why do people love, hate Thoreau? And where my thought was coming from was how do we fall in and out of favor? And is it that, that people maybe like Thoreau more because we're getting so, like, the times are really tough right now and the world's so awful. Like, let's take a moment and go back and if it sounds, I know Johnny Bendawalden Pond, right? I mean, in that area. And so, you know, it's this wonderful mix even today of being very much next to like a pretty busy highway and very close to downtown. And the reality is that like Thoreau himself walked home from his little hermit, you know, to go get his laundry done by his sister or have dinner at one of his neighbor's houses or steal food from somebody else. He didn't exactly, you know, live out there. So I've always loved those juxtapositions of even then, it wasn't like he wasn't Ansel Adams carrying his camera up on the top of the mountain right when he was making his art. He was going in and out of a pretty developed town that was on a railroad line, you know, ultimately. So you're like, I love that mix of both of them. So I had even said to Zach, the idea of, you know, Henry David Thoreau goes in and out of favor. Oh, look, Robert Frost loved Henry David Thoreau and realized that Robert Frost even went in and out of favor. And, you know, part of that conversation that we had, and I'd even love to hear your thoughts on this is I've always been amazed that in bookstores and in libraries, poetry is filed with fiction because you have to put things in categories. And yet poetry is probably the most honest stuff that's in a. A bookstore. Right. You know, it's like. And it's anything but. Maybe it's all the similes and everything. So it was that mix of. I think Thoreau will still be spoken of, not just for Walden, but for all of the work that he's done. He'll be remembered now forever as the pencil guy, as the surveyor, back when that was a really important job, because how did we know how to get anywhere? And I can't imagine he was an easy person to be around, but he would have been, you know, fun to have spent some time around. But I think he will always have a place. And whether the poets of any given day, the tastemasters of any time, say he's in or out of favor, there will always be people who study him. And I think his importance cannot be underestimated in that sense of being out there and the first to bring all of those worlds together. He should be spoken of in the greatest writers of the English language. I mean, in the American English language. But I think Frost deserves to stay up there too. And I'm not somebody willing to give them a up, but I know that I've just identified two now long dead white guys. So, you know, I'm mindful of that. I don't want to make them go away is what I was, you know, sort of hinting to, let's what can we learn from them? And I hope that there's many more who build on that and they. Who don't look at or sound anything like them.

Yeah, there's a. There was a bookstore in Baltimore where they kept poetry and philosophy together, which I really appreciate it. That made me happy.

That would be great.

When I went to graduate school, it was like the program in the country that specializes in American philosophy. So we. They taught Thoreau as a philosopher, not as a poet or nature writer, even at Whitman, as a philosopher.

And there are some who absolutely, you know, Dreiser and others, they just will not ever during their time, would never let the word philosopher be after, in the commas, you know, after Thoreau's name. Right. And then there are some now who think like, he should not be listed as a poet. And you know, I say his writing is his writing. He was what he was of his time. And I know that we need many more voices since then and we need many more voices now, but I refuse to make them go away. I think they're important to understand where we came from. And, you know, he was so darn sure he was right about everything. And it turns out he wasn't wrong about, you know, he was wrong about not a lot of it, you know, and it's worth considering, like not, you know, know what he was doing at the time. And. And yeah, like I said, I can't imagine he was an easy, you know, an easy friend or something like that. God bless his sister for.

Like, is he

like, you would not pick him to be in your band?

So we couldn't be in a band together. It's a grumpy and quiet,

but it, you know, it is, it's wonderful to see, like, that people will still, you know, like you said, is it philosophy or is it poetry? And there's some times where I'm like, do I have to pick? Why do I have to pick? And I do love that, you know, poetry gets a month with, you know, nearly, you know, like a full month. And we get to celebrate it. Right? And it's spring and all of that. It's not. Because otherwise, can you imagine if like Poetry Month were February or December or something, it would be all the. The dreariest of them. Right? So at least this way it's celebrated and, you know, you can pick up some great stuff. But yeah, I do. And I again, and I was impacted by the fact that it. Frost considered Thoreau to be a major influence. And then you can see that. You can see that through line, at least from where I was reading. And for what I wrote. Again, it's not the be all and end all on it. It's on those people. And in the context of. I came to it from pencils, of course.

The Dirty Secret of. Come on, did you write it with ink? So I. I did use pencil. I did use pencil a lot. I did. Because I was. Cause I I just. And I used pencil and I also used like wide open white 8 by 10 paper when I was doing like some of these chapters. Cause it. And then I would do that, then put it electronically into a computer, of course. And then my writing now, when I want to get something completed, all of my thought processes work with my hands to cut and paste and all of that. Like, you know, move things around. The editing process for me is much easier that way. But I did map them all out and I, you know, did the whole thing at one point. I even had. As though it were a work of none as a work of fiction, rather. I had a door length sheet of paper that I kept writing in. Like, oh, no, gotta put this back in here, gotta put this back in here. And that was a piece of string with a pencil on the end of it with a nice piece of like, you know, almost like butcher's paper, you know, just so I could write it all down like what I had forgotten. Because it was getting that way for me. Like, oh, you forgot this tidbit or can you do anything with this? But it also gave me an excuse to use both real life research and. Which again, you have to use a pencil if you're going into the state archives or any of those places. And online research. Because a book like this is so much easier in the world of newspapers. Dot com. I found that there's a piece that I reference in there. And I was just. I don't even know how I stumbled across it the first time. But it's a newspaper that only existed for like 20 years out in the middle of Kansas. And there's this story and I have the whole page. So I'll find a way to share that with other people. I downloaded the whole page and it's a story on page one of the Christmas edition that is just how pencils are manufactured. And you know, because those are the additions that they needed to typeset beforehand, right? So that nobody had to come into work that day or the night before. So of course they had room to run that. But I'm like, this whole story of it. And I didn't have to wait for Henry Petrovsky's book. I could have read it in the 1890s or whatever. But I did use pencils and I used a lot of them and I sort of Used whatever was nearby. Sometimes I have a weakness like everybody, for the ones that you can't always find in your local stores. So that's our curse, I guess. I do love a lot of, a lot of the, you know, the vintage pencils but of course you can't use the erasers or anything like that because they're always the first thing to get crushed or they're just dried up, but they're. I love that lead is still wonderful. And sometimes, you know, I had a friend who worked in the world of wine and said to me, if they own a, if they own a bottle of wine that's 80 years old, it's not the same wine, even if it was kept in perfect conditions. And, and it's not the same wine that somebody drank 80 years ago or 75 years ago. But a pencil is pretty much the same thing once you sharpen it, right? I mean, it's giving you the same writing experience as it was 120 years ago. And I love that aspect of it. And so because it slows you down a little bit and it makes you write and think. At least it does for me. But I've recently been using. There's a tiny little store in London actually they have like 15 outlets or so in London. They're not big buck stores anywhere, right? At least, least in, in London proper. Kensington and all of that. It's called Ryman R Y M A N. And they have these wonderfully cheap pencils. Like buy two boxes, get a third free. So you can walk out of there with 36 pencils for like five bucks or whatever, less than ten, ten dollars. And I've been using those a lot. They're really light. They even make one now with an eraser on them like everybody else. I always look for any, if not American made, then do we have any Mexican made? Do we have any Thai? You know, are these made Ey cinxy. You know those Crayola pencils that come pre sharpened. I think those are made in Brazil, but because they're wonderful and I think it was part of, you know, maybe one of the other companies. So again, a light wood, wonderful core. I do use, I do use black wings. But when you're working on a project like this, black wings are so soft sometimes for writing. It's like I don't want to Steinbeck and go through 25, $4 pencils in a day, you know, like. And sharpen. Although, you know, deadlines can make you want to sharpen a lot of pencils. And, and I Was using a variety of things, and I used a fair amount of, you know, pens when I needed to fly along and everything else. I used whatever tool I needed to. I reverted to my, you know, my feral, as in wild, not feral, as in, you know, that I reverted to my wildest, like, earliest sense of, I gotta get this thing done.

Whatever I needed to do, gotta, done, we're getting it out of here, you know. You know, keeping a bottle of booze in my bottom drawer or something. And tap, tap on the. You know, I was. I thought about how I shared a photo at one point on the Erasables that I had borrowed from, like, a Globe former, like, colleague. We all have a web, a Facebook group of the former employees, and somebody had posted a photo there of, like, the Globe newsroom In the 1950s, one of the desks. And it's back in the days when they literally typed and cut and pasted, you know, things and typed paper and somebody. One of the comments was, what do you remember the most about? Like. And they were still doing some of that. They had big pots of paste and glue and things on the desks. And one of the things I remember about when they were still doing some of that in my earliest years is how because people smoked in newsrooms, the desks could catch on fire because paste and some of that stuff was highly flammable. So they just set their cigarette and it's like, excuse me, but the desk is on. It's on fire. You know, what do we do here? But I have one thing to sort of ask you all, because I did not write about this, but I've thought it for a long time, and that is that none of us really ever says what our absolute favorite Holy Grail pencil is, because we're all worried or believing that it's going to come up on ebay. And if I say, you know, that I like to. I want to find a box of flamingos or something like that, or metropolitan writers or something, one of you is going to be out there, like, ebaying against me or something, you know, that sort of thing. But you know that none of us ever is really totally honest on what that Holy Grail pencil is. That's just my thought.

Some of us are so, like, in tune to all of the nuances and that, you know, I don't like this pencil at night, but I like this pencil in the morning.

Like, it's too scratchy for morning.

I can use this on my lap, but not at my desk. It's like too much.

Oh.

So I could narrow it down to 20 without lying or ignoring things.

Yeah.

I was going to say we have the artists, you know, who. You look at their kit and it changes because like every time they post something, you're like, oh, look what they were using, you know, And I'm like, how would you know what to take? But I guess they got their training the way I got mine or something.

Right?

Right. We all want to cabinet the Cabinet360, you know.

Right now it's like, you know, that's the world, right? All of our people, they're like, hey, it's a pencil, and it had an eraser on it, you know, or something. Yeah.

Oh.

Stenographer pencils that were thinner, easier, and, you know, they sharpen them on both ends so that people could write, and if you broke your point, they could still take their notes. And I'm like, see, the marketplace was really working then. I mean, I think, you know, what a great job it would have been to be in, like, the Eberhard Faber, you know, factory or whatever in Brooklyn, and just like, hey, you know, hey, Andy. Hey, Johnny, do you want to make, like, some green pencils today? No, Tim says, let's make some blue pencils today. You know, it's because, you know, that's what they were doing. Right. I mean, there's no rhyme or reason. None of the typefaces match. None of the construction matches. They don't follow any rules. I mean, none of them look like they're in the same. And I'm thinking, which makes it so much more fun to try to collect. And I know that I went through the period as well of trying to be the completest, but who among us could ever collect even a fraction of what it is that interests us? Right.

You know, so, yeah, I mean, even something modern, like Black Wings, there's some, like, what was that one? The House of Style or something? It was one of the first ones that you could not buy in America, and they only made a little bit. And, like, aside from the fact that they're going to cost a lot of money, good luck finding them.

Right, Right.

Like, I couldn't imagine trying to even, like, get a list of everything that ever heard favor made.

Right. They don't even know.

The names they used to come up with were, like, crazy. Like, really, like, why is this called the Table?

Right.

Like the lamp pencil? K. Right. Why? And there's probably a really good, specific story for it.

I have the bookmark pencil, which is flat, like a bookmark. That makes sense. Okay. But you know why? You're absolutely right. Why was this called the Metropolitan? That one called the Writer. Aren't they all for writing, you know, or. This one's called, you know, that's actually fascinating to me, and I just think that. I don't think drugs happen there, but it just seems like somebody came in and went like, hey, let's just do this today. You know, let's Just make whatever. We're gonna do this. Yes.

Someone needs to make one that's like three feet long and an inch, maybe an inch thick and call it the Defender. And you just like sharpen it, it do a razor point and keep it behind your door. Somebody tries to break in your house, like, look what I got. And they just run.

As a cane, right.

Yeah. The feral is at a right angle. It's ergonomic, non slip grip.

And nobody's ever improved on like the technology is pretty much the same as the pencil that's on display at the Faber Castell Museum, you know, and you know in Europe you've got like two pieces of wood with a piece of string holding them together. It's like, okay, it's the same technology.

I mean, there's the opex, which I think improved on it entirely. Yes.

Which. Which I do. As you know, in the book, I'm like, you got to carry one of those in your kit all the time because you know, you can prop open a car hood with it. You keep a door with it. You could, you could, you know, John Wick somebody with it. I will tell you though, that when I was lucky enough to get a chance to travel to South Africa and we were able to visit some schools when we were on our trip, and they don't use the Wopex by name, but they will say, please don't bring any extruded or plastic pencils. They don't want them because it destroys the sharpeners and. And the shavings aren't biodegradable or recyclable. They use shavings as kindling in compost. You know, they want. They use it all the way to the end. And you can't take the Wopex.

Yes.

It's just like making me cry.

I was using one today. I was like, well, you don't expect it to be dark. It's pretty good.

Yeah.

And then they made them in other colors. Not just the green, but in the. Then in the glow red or that, you know, that reddish, whatever. And I'm like, why did they need to make them in all these other colors? But, you know, somebody went to work that day in the pencil factory and said, let's make them in other colors.

The finish is not painted. It's part of the extrusion.

Yeah, but you can peel them to make like a naked vopex. But it looks like a skinned animal. I wouldn't recommend it, really.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Is it like baby squirrels or whatever? When you look at them, they don't have their fur yet or something? You're looking and they're going like, are they okay? Is that what a Wopex looks like without its fur?

Yeah, it's Earth day today, so just fake eco pen insoles. But I think that Statler's been sort of rebranding them now. They call them like the. The Norris extruded or something.

Right. It's something that didn't make me happier than Wopex, you know, because Wopex at least sounds like a villain in a bad sci fi movie.

It sounds scientific. There's an X in it.

Right. Right when it's at the end. It's that hard X. You know, like it's Professor.

So, well, is there anything else that you wanted to bring up or wish that we asked?

Oh, no. I mean, we're like, how many listeners do we still have? Right. I'm an hour on my book. I could talk for forever. But no, hey, I really appreciate the time and the chance to actually thank you guys.

Thank you, you.

And also just your community, keeping the community alive and for, you know, making sure that we all have a safe, fun place to come play too. So it's been wonderful to have the community and, you know, now that the book's out in the world and of course, you know, in this kind of publishing world, you get to go back and make some of your corrections and everything, but. And it's been overwhelmingly received. Right. You know, and I'm thinking, like, how great is this? But I'm hearing from people. I didn't even even, you know, know about before or people have. And it's such a great thing. And I keep hearing more about that. It's like, thank you. And it's just pencils. But I'm so happy. And I'm like, yes, exactly. That's what I was hoping would go from there. But when you guys come out with yours in the object lesson series, please let me know early on what it is you pick as your topic and or others in the group. I won't give it away. I won't give it away, you know.

So.

Yeah.

And thank you also to our Patreon producers who are folks who belong at the Nubin Stage every month. Those folks are Ellen Mack Tucker, Nathan Rebeck, Dana Morris, Liz Rotundo, John Ringwald. Sorry. Melissa Miller, Angie Aaron Bolinger, Elvin Hirtus, Tara Whittle, Ida. Um, First, David Johnson, Phil Munson, Donnie Pierce, Valerie Brad Drew, Tom Keakley, Andre Torres, Paul Moorhead, William Modlin, John Capuluti, Stephen Francali. Fransali. Sorry. Aaron Willard, Millie Blackwell, Michael d', Alosa, Tana Feliz, Ann Sipe, Michael Hagan, Chris Metzkes, Mary Collis, Kathleen Rogers, Hans Neuteman, and John Wood. Thanks a lot and we'll see you next time.

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