Greetings from the Offices of Pencil Revolution, after a year and a half’s time. Apologies that comments have not been moderated since the summer of 2006. There are still several thousand of combined spam and comments to be trudged through, one of these days. There was a lot of dust when we checked in — and many comments that lead us to suspect that there are some things that need to be clarified.

We never sold anything or made pencils. We certainly wish we could take credit for crafting things like Palominos, Forest Choice and Dixons. There were a lot of requests for information about California Republic (Palomino) products and many nice comments about the same. We would direct you to Woodchuck for all praises , which he deserves for making such a wonderful pencil, and also for questions, which he will be able to answer.

We never took money from anyone and never made any money on the site. Pencils sales and shops probably spiked a bit (who knows?) as a result of the Revolution, but we never accepted money for this. No one was paid for reviews. If we were, comments about these reviews which might have been negative would never have been allowed, which they were.

Rude, mean, offensive and insulting comments will never be published, even if we stop by more than once a year and a half to check on things. You’re wasting your time and not making anybody laugh if you post the “you guys suck” comment. Poorly written accusations of gross commercialism, untrue claims that this was a money-making scheme and questions about the rigor of our research will also pass the spam filter.

Anyway, the contact link was taken down because, frankly, I could not keep up with writing back to folks, answering questions, researching problems, etc. It became a full-time job, which I could not handle with a cross-country move and a doctoral dissertation to write beginning in 2006. I am very sorry to lessen contributions from talented people, but the multiple hours a day that running this site required just became impossible to maintain as something fun on the side.

If you are still seeking new pencil adventures, Notebookism does, from time to time, post pencil related articles and always has something interesting to read.

We will continue to host the site for the foreseeable future. However, it would be cruel to suggest that normal posting will resume any time soon. Perhaps one day…

Yours in the spirit of Revolution,

Your Editor.