We are happy to be able to post some work from artist Graham McArthur from Australia, along with an essay on pencils:

For as long as I can remember I have loved to write and draw and for as long as I can remeber the pencil has always remained my first choice for both writing and drawing.

There is nothing like a good pencil, and I can’t think of a more versatile, immediate or interesting medium. Being so universally familar and easy to use makes the pencil the most immediately accesible tool for most people. Used mainly as a linear writing or drawing instrument, the graphite pencil is very much at ease creating tone and textural effects as well as implied colour. It is these properties in particular that interest me the most. The availability and range of pencils seen today makes the medium more attractive than ever before providing unlimited potential for an open mind and inventive imagination.There is great joy to be had in spending endles hours gently persuading the pencil to leave its silky grey tones on delicious paper. The implied colour of graphite can be enhanced with a restrained use of a single coloured pencil creating a sense of mystery and inviting the imagination of the viewer to create more implied colours in the mind’s eye.

As a semi-retired illustrator my work these days is just for fun and self indulgence. I no longer try to please the client or the unknown viewer. I still like to paint and to experiment with a variety of media. However, without the restraints placed on me by the brief, I find that I am being drawn more and more to the simple but incredibly and wonderfully expressive nature of the most versitile medium of them all. Long live the pencil.

Many thanks to Graham, whose blog — featuring lots of great artwork — you can check out at Eidolon.

[Image and text, G.M. Used with kind permission.]

Best-selling author Trevor Romain writes about what the world would be like if children did not use pencils in school on his blog:

I read yesterday that some schools are going to stop teaching cursive writing and instead kids will be taught how to write using a computer keyboard.

I am truly saddened.

I am saddened because this action is certain to spell the death of the #2 pencil.

The loss of the good old #2 will be tragic.

I mean, let’s face it, that ageless yellow friend with the useless pink eraser on the top is the one common thread that ties the world of creative expression together….

The #2 is amazing. It does not have an instruction manual. It doesn’t need a warranty. It can draw in any language. It can be chewed and stomped and it will still work. It doesn’t need a battery. It floats. And it works just fine after getting wet.

Without the #2 how can children send quickly scribbled notes to each other in the classroom? They would be reduced to sending instant text messages that can never be kept in a scrapbook.

Read on.

[Image and text, T.R. Used with very kind permission.]

We are not divisive enough here at Pencil Revolution to hate pens. Ink users will not be guillotined, French Revolution style. Rather than putting pencils over pens, I personally seek instead for the more realistic and peaceful telos of obtaining for pencils equal status with their inky counterparts. Along with my private stockpile of pencils (for when the Revolution really comes), I do have a lot of pens, with a particular affection for Fisher Space Pens.

This is a great photo by Jennifer Guillory of This Is Your Brain On Lithium (see photos here) that depicts graphite and ink in the same Moleskine notebook. A testiment of what is possible.

[Image J.Guillory. Used with permission.]

Our Comrade at Ninth Wave Designs writes about her quest for the perfect pencil, a hybrid of several great pencils around presently:

“I have been piecing together the perfect pencil in my mind lately, exhuming the parts from the assortment of good pencils I regularly use to create the ultimate writing tool.  In order to create the perfect all-around pencil I first need to harvest a few parts.  My goal here is a pencil that would be highly functional for day-to-day use, comfortable for writing for longer periods of time, and not too specialized (i.e., it doesn’t also have to be the best sketching pencil)…

….I don’t expect I will ever find a pencil that possesses all the qualities I have stitched together here, but it is fun to dream of the perfect pencil. In reality what is perfect would vary from person to person and job to job, so it would be impossible to accomplish this for everyone.  Until my Frankenpencil is given life by a pencil manufacturer (It’s alive, it’s aliiiiiive!), I will just have to be happy with the variety of pencils I have on hand.”

Read the rest of the post here.

[Images and text, N.W.D.  Used with kind permission.]

David sent us a great article about carpenter pencils:

Comrades, it seems to me that the Revolution has been a little silent on an important front, namely carpenters pencils, which even today still quietly carry out their traditional function in the workplace. I thought that these photographs and a few words might inspire some Revolutionary activity around carpenters pencils. As an engineer, I am perhaps the black sheep of my wood-working family –- son of a boat-builder, nephew of a wood-turner, brother of a carpenter, etc. Architects, engineers, inventors and the like have increasingly turned away from graphite, conducting their business on computer screens, but when it comes to actually making their designs a physical reality, the pencil still plays its important role. Whether you can see the marks or not, there’s every chance that your house and furniture, some of your most important possessions, were marked with pencils by the people who made them.

The photograph above is of a couple of my father’s old pencils; they’re at least 30 years old. Sharpening is of the “rough and ready” kind, usually done with a chisel. You can tell that my dad’s an old school type of craftsman: don’t throw your pencil away until its far too short to actually hold; the saw is fine Philadelphian steel engraved that its properties “…can not be Excelled,” and the ruler is in inches. He works in inches, his children work in millimeters but know inches.  His grandchildren don’t even know what an inch is. For those of you not familiar with the ways of the wood, the “vee” mark drawn against the pencil line indicates which side of the line you should cut with the saw, to leave the wood the correct length.

Modern carpenters pencils here in New Zealand seem to come in grades hard, medium and soft, and cost about US$1 retail for a name brand like these Rexell’s, and US 80 cents for a “no-name generic” pencil with absolutely no markings whatsoever. But “trade” and “volume” discounts could easily be in the 50 – 90% range. They have a rectangular core, which allows sharp or wide lines to always be drawn by simply turning the pencil through 90 degrees. Of course the rectangular body is to stop your pencil rolling or blowing away when you put it down. So that’s my carpenter pencil primer. Over to you!

[Text and images, D.P.  Used with permission.]

This article comes from Germany (Deutschland): Jon-Paul at Freelancers’ Guide.

They say money won’t make you happy. Berol’s Eagle Greenback Pencil is trying to argue the point.

Before we get into the review, here is a thumbnail history of the Eagle Pencil Company:

Eagle Pencil Company was formed in 1856 in New York by the Berolzheimer family. About fifty years later, the Empire Pencil Company was founded. Eagle started building operations all over Latin and South America while the Empire folks kept growing. In 1969, the Berol Corporation formed, merging no less than nine different office supply companies from North America and the UK. In 1986, Empire bought the Berol Corp making an office supply superpower swimming in pencils, which was then called Empire-Berol. In 1995, the Sanford Corporation acquired Empire-Berol, where it has remained since. (Reference.)

And that brings us to today’s discussion of the Eagle Greenbacks. Yes, they are pencils that are, as quoted from the front package, “made from RECYCLED MONEY!” There are six No. 2 pencils in a pack, with each pencil containing on average $7.33 of recycled U.S. currency. These pencils are PMA certified and are made in the USA out of US currency mixed with plastic. These pencils are supposed to be great for the environment since no trees are destroyed.

And don’t forget the “copper-colored eraser bands that look like shiny, new pennies.”

And now, my 2¢:

Writing with the gimmicky pencil isn’t nearly as fun as spending the pre-recycled materials. While they are light and smell nice, the buck stops there. The lead isn’t worth one red cent, a light gray that doesn’t keep a point, since it’s plastic and extruded with the barrel. The “wood” is soft and, frankly, makes your palm sweat. You can bend the pencil quite a ways before it breaks because of the plastic, so if you like pencils as solid as clams, this definitely will bug you. They are the standard 7.5” long with a green eraser that tends to make your page look like lettuce.

If you’re looking for a fun pencil gift to give your grade-school aged friend to show off to his or her friends, this is definitely the one. However, it’s not a serious pencil to carry out all of your favorite tasks.

Wise people say to beware the wine that comes in a fancy, colorful, bright and shiny bottle: they are selling the bottle – the wine is junk. And so it goes with pencils.

[Text and image, J-P. Used with permission.]

We here at Pencil Revolution are not snobs. There is no price requisite for the pencils we use, etc.

“My name’s Ashley, and I love cheap pencils!

I am wondering if anyone else has this same predelection or habit. I hesitate to call it a ‘vice’ :) I find it such a thrill to discover that a nondescript, ‘no name,’ overlooked pencil, languishing on my daughter’s closet floor, is also a good one. After doing a bit of sleuthing, I found that this particular pencil is part of a 24 count pack at Target, selling for 97 cents. It is a humble number two, with a gloppy paint job. I doubt that its wood casing comes from Cal Cedar (the wood looks like pine) , or is FSC certified. But it writes smoothly and softly, sharpens well, has a decent darkness, and a nice eraser. Best of all, it cost roughly four cents!! Now, I love my Palominos, but a bargain is a bargain!

Suffice it to say that cheap pencil hunting is my new pastime. I don’t want cheap at any cost; that is, I want remarkable quality for the low cost. I will not rejoice over atrocious pencils. But to all those out there at the Revolution who share my enthusiasm, hurry to Target, with just a dollar in your pocket!”

[Text and images, A.M. Used with kind permission.]

In the days where standardized tests and driver’s license exams are given on computers, it would not seem that pencils would come up in rules or regulations. But our friend Alcarwen writes about an instance in a university where one professor is no fan of graphite:

“Yesterday, during an exam, I was tempted to take it in pencil; maybe it would help the ideas flow better or something. I had some vague idea that perhaps our Prof would disapprove, so I opted for Gel Ink instead. Two classmates went the pencil route.

At the end of the exam, our Prof heartily expressed her disapproval of the pencil route. She told us that someone might erase the answers.

Erase the answers?

Has academic dishonesty gotten that bad? That someone might sneak into an office and erase someone else’s exam? Or a prof could change a student’s answer in order to fail them? Yikes!”

Read the rest of this great post here.

[Text and image, Alcarwen. Used with permission.]

Our friend Woodchuck writes about wonderful things in store for us in 2006:

“On the underground communications front I have just published today my new Pencil World Squidoo lens. This new site highlights some of my more industry focused Timberlines posts along with some key reviews and posts I like best from Pencil Revolution. Also the lens features additional resources on using pencils creatively in a bit different way than simple links from Timbelines blog. So in effect it’s a good place for a quick and easier look at a lot of key Revolutionary activities and resources and can serve as a companion site to the Pencil World Creativity Store.

Finally and most importantly for you Palomino riders I will very soon be adding the option to pick and choose the graphite grades, colors and aquarelle color pencils you want most in your own configurable packs on Pencil World. Some courageous comrades even received a sample pack as part of a Christmas thank you mailer. Rumor has it that KUM pencil sharpeners may be part of some upcoming promotions and a special new alliance is in the works to expand new points of distribution for various parts of the California Republic line to supplement what’s available through the Pencil World store.”

Check out the rest of the post here.

[Text, Timberlines. Image, J.G.]

Our Comrade Loudstyle writes about his new-found love for pencils:

“I have always used pencils (who hasn’t?) but the reviews on Pencil Revolution alerted me to their finer details. I realized I had a couple decent pencils around the house and I tried out some others to see what all the fuss was about. I soon became pretty well addicted…

….Keith Haring Doubles from Acme Writing Tools. I received a nice metal tin containing a dozen of these fine pencils for Christmas several years ago. They feature the colorful and energetic artwork of Keith Haring. For the longest time I shied away from using them often because they looked too nice to sharpen away. I finally got over that silliness and now use them regularly.”

Read about the rest of some favorite pencils at Loudstyle.

[Image and text, Loudstyle. Used with kind permission.]

Since this is the year in which the Faber-Castell Castell 9000 turns 100 years old, it’s only fitting that we end the first calendar year of the Revolution with a piece about this great green pencil. This piece is from pencil Comrade Michael Leddy.

Serious pencils indeed.

My love of “supplies” — pencils, pens, notebooks — goes back to Saturday morning trips with my father and brother to Alan’s Stationers in Brooklyn. My dad was (and is) a meticulous artist, and his affection for tools and materials was something I picked up on very early. I remember my own early “supplies” very well — a series of miniature Carter’s dip pens, which came packaged with miniature bottles of ink; a Scripto mechanical pencil; dozens of Venus coloring pencils; and a gray “T-Ball Jotter” (I never thought of it as a Parker) with thick, fragrant blue ink.

As I’ve gotten older, the fascination of “supplies” has fused with my deep affection for the artifacts of what I like to call “the dowdy world” — modern American life before it was refigured (or disfigured) by certain forms of technology. My affection for supplies has become, of necessity, an affection for what is largely past. As I’m writing these words, I’m looking at a Mongol ad from the 1950s, framed on the wall to my right:

Your Best Buy’s
MONGOL
2,162 words
for
one cent

In the dowdy world, people took their pencils seriously.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s I found some wonderful traces of the dowdy world in Warner’s, an old-line office-supply store in downstate Illinois. Warner’s has long since moved to an emphasis on office-furniture and “gifts,” a necessary choice for economic survival. But back then, the store featured an entire aisle of typewriter ribbons, most of them for machines already extinct. The ribbons had long since dried out, as I discovered after buying a supply for my Olympia manual. But other stuff was still as good as new, more or less — Listo pencil leads, gummed airmail labels, card pockets for library books. O Warner’s!

My ultimate Warner’s find (in 1991) was a cache of A.W. Faber Castell 9000 pencils. I came away with two-dozen pencils in tins, and a few loose pencils in a third tin. I’ve sharpened and used up a few of the loose ones over the years (down to the bittersweet end, with a pencil extender), but the dozens remain untouched. These are serious pencils indeed.

Consider the box, which suggests the sort of presentation more frequently associated with fine cigars. (The box came along for free with the pencils.) I like to imagine an arrangement of these boxes, perhaps in a store window, eye candy for the pencil connoisseur.

The pencils are packed twelve to a tin, each tin complete with a seal. (I’ve seen photographs of Vladimir Nabokov at work with this kind of tin at his side.) The lead is dark, rich, smooth. The wood, so far as I can tell, is red cedar. Yes, red cedar. Simply sharpening one of these pencils is a delight. The shavings are smooth and papery. The fragrance brings back dim recollections of closets and clothes chests. No other pencils I’ve used have smelled like these.

And now for the most remarkable feature of these pencils. Their history is inscribed, a bit blurrily, on their sides:

LEADS IMPORTED FROM
AMERICAN ZONE GERMANY

Which is to say that these Castell 9000s were made between 1945 and 1949, when post-war Germany was divided into four Allied sectors. And these Castell 9000s were still sitting on a shelf in 1991 (and selling for 1991 prices too, about seventy cents a pencil, I think). I said something in the store — something vaguely articulate, like “Wow! These are really old!” “They never sold,” was the plainspoken American-gothic reply. And now here I am in 2005, vaguely articulate once again.

Michael Leddy teaches college English and has published widely as a poet and critic. He blogs at Orange Crate Art. Many thanks to our hard-working Comrade!

There are two other great articles about the Castell 9000 on the web for your reading pleasure. Faber-Castell has a great article in English on the German site (here), and there is a very very fine piece at Paper and Pencil (here) on our green Comrade.

[Images and text, M.L. Used with kind permission.]

Philofaxy writes about mechanical pencils and the love and comradery we feel for our mechanical Brothers and Sisters, not to mention our inky Cousins:

“Some days, I worry about world peace. Some days, I worry about my family. Most days, though, I worry about what writing implement I should carry in the lone pen loop in my Filofax. To date, I’ve been using a nondescript, black-barreled Uni-Ball (blue ink). But, as I’ve noted before, ink carries with it a price: the price of permanence. A choice made in ink cannot be undone. A choice made in pencil, however, is inscribed only in dust. And we know how permanent dust is. (It blows in the wind.)

I’m a man of impermanence, not permanence. So I’ve switched to pencil. The problem with the usual wooden pencil, though, is twofold: (1) You have to have access to a sharpener at all times; and (2) it doesn’t stay in a typical planner pen loop, because it is a cylinder of uniform diameter. Problem No. 2 is probably decisive; Problem No. 1, however, is no small matter. In combination, they left me with no choice for general planner usage: mechanical pencils. The folks at Pencil Revolution have assured me that mechanical pencils are not necessarily evil. (They say that, but I note a conspicuous lack of mechanical pencil porn on the site.)”

Read the rest of the post here.

[Text, Philofaxy. Image, J.G.]

A good friend and colleague of mine gave me permission to quote from an email she sent me about pencils, Thoreau and a Mars Lumograph 100 that I left in her mailbox. I’ve been thinking about environmental issues and how they relate to throw-away (non-refillable) pens, etc. And the issue of quality versus value pencils comes up often in our little community, so I thought I’d post this:

“I know I’ve teased you about the extent of your fascination with pencils, but I understand where it comes from. These are the tools of our trade, if we’re doing philosophy correctly. We might need the laptops to do academic philosophy, but to really think and explore the meaning of life, we need quiet time to ourselves, away from the hum of electronics; time alone in nature, with a means of recording our thoughts as they come to us. Most pens are disposable, and their use reflects our attitudes toward the environment, others, and ourselves. Pencils are finicky, and they need care. If we don’t sharpen them, they won’t write, and if we don’t use caution, they will break. Using pencils — in a strange way — cultivates stewardship.

Also, it’s encouraged me to take note of the quality of the things that I usually take for granted. There is a demonstrable difference, and we should aim for quality. And all too often, the quality gets disregarded, especially as we search for good deals. I’ve almost gotten to the point of doing searches for quality chalk for my classes, since there are some years that the school’s chalk simply doesn’t work. What’s kept me in check is the fact that I know I’m nowhere near organized enough to keep it on me. I’d have a crate of the good stuff in my office and nothing on me when I got to class.

And I get the same looks from my family that you’ve gotten over the pencils. When my aunt and I get to talking about spices and various brands of olive oil, it’s as if we’re speaking Outer Mongolian. One of my uncle’s called me a pseudo-intellectual snob because I knew what Earl Grey tasted like.”

[Text, Tanya J., used with permission. Image, J.G.]

Cyber Lizard, a very very brave Comrade of the Revolution is writing a novel this month entirely by pencil!

“I am insane. Really. I am participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). I am writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. And as crazy as this seems, that’s not what makes me insane. It’s the fact that I’m writing this novel by hand, in pencil. My Moleskine notebook is filled with almost 10,000 pencil-written words. Needless to say, this gives me ample opportunity to try out different pencils. I have bought several of the pencils reviewed here and used them to some extent. Here is what I have discovered.

Dixon-Ticonderoga Tri-Write HB: I found this to be a pretty good general purpose pencil. Not dark enough for me, but I like it for sketching.

Mirado Black Warrior HB: The crispness of the line was great. For some reason, I set this one aside and haven’t actually used it for my writing. I need to pick this back up and give it a go.

Dixon Tri-Conderoga HB: I love the feel of this pencil in my hand. Its finish is amazing. I really wanted this to be my favorite. Unfortunately, it was not quite dark enough for my tastes and it required more frequent sharpening to maintain a good point.

Faber-Castell GRIP 2001 2B: This one was my favorite for several days. It kept a point well and was fairly dark. I didn’t find it as comfortable as the Tri-Conderoga, but my hand held up well for long writing sessions with it.

California Republic Palomino HB: Currently my favorite pencil. I love its terrificly dark line, and it keeps a point very well. I can usually get about a half a page written before I feel the need to sharpen.

My biggest issue right now is that I need a good eraser. My two favorites, the Palomino and the GRIP don’t have erasers. I’ve been keeping an unsharpened Tri-Conderoga out when I write for the eraser, but I’d like something more compact. Any suggestions?

Now I need to go catch up on my word count since I’ve wasted my precious time writing for Pencil Revolution instead of my novel ;-)”

[Image and text, Cyber Lizard. Used with kind permission.]

For a long time I lived in the Santa Cruz Mountains, in Central California. It’s damp up there, cold, and gray most of the year. My house was heated by a environmentally-correct woodstove. In the mountains, because of the weather, after a while, you get a little book-ish. Down the highway about 10 miles or so, in the city of Santa Cruz, well, there was an art supply store called Palace Arts. This store carried Blackfeet Indian Pencils. Now I grant you that I have always been a pencil freak. It’s just now, with your wonderful site, I can come out of the closet about it. I have always loved pencils. Some of my favorites have been, over time, the Venus Goddess, the old yellow Mongol #1, Black Warrior #1, and the Tombow Mono B. The Blackwing, of course, cannot be mentioned in the same sentence with any other pencil. It is the high chieftain of all pencils. Somewhere, however, between the Blackwing and the Tombow Mono B, there is a place for the Blackfeet Indian #2. A person who understood me really well once gave me a gross of Mongol #1 pencils for Christmas one year. I was happy for months.

The Blackfeet Indian is almost impossible to buy now, but I remember a time when I could go to Palace Arts in Santa Cruz and buy them by the dozen. They are beautiful: simple hardwood, lots of grain, very simply varnished. The eraser worked like a Pink Pearl, and although you could get them with a gold ferrule, my favorite version is the one with the black ferrule. It looked so minimally beautiful, matching the simple black print on the pencil body. The gold ferrule, to my eye, was a little too flashy, a little too Hollywood. I loved the black. The lead was magnificent. It was never gritty. The line was an impressive black. It did not smear. It held a point pretty well, and what’s even more impressive, I never had a Blackfeet Indian pencil turn into one of those nightmare pencils that break when you sharpen them, and the lead never fell out of the wood after sharpening, either. The lead in these pencils also would last. I bear down when I write and I can use up a Faber Castell Grip 2001 in a couple days. Not so with the Blackfeet Indian pencil. The weight of this pencil was also wonderful, not too heavy, not too light. Some newer pencils, well it feels like the wood is really dried out to the point of where the pencil lends no weight to the writing job. You have to bear down to get a line, some. The Blackfeet, well, it is equal to the task of writing.

I am an internet ranter. When it became clear to me that it was going to be hard to get more Blackfeet pencils through stores, I began to beg them from my pals on the net. A dear friend in Minnesota found that she had a whole box of them, and she sent them to me. She doesn’t use pencils. I have given single pencils from my stash as special gifts to dear friends. Some of them upon receiving these pencils, look at me a little strangely. But I always smile at them and say: there is a poem, or a story, or a drawing, in that pencil, waiting to come out for you. Then the odd look melts into a grin, usually. I only have about a half dozen of these pencils left. I have been looking for suitable substitutes. Consequently I have an embarrassing number of pencils in my house, of which only the General Cedar #2 and the Pacific Music Papers “Magic Writer” come anywhere near the Blackfeet Indian Pencil. The General #2 is a little gritty for my taste, although the aesthetics of the pencil itself are magnificent. The “Magic Writer” has a good lead, except it wears down too fast. Ideally, my pencil would LOOK like the General Cedar, and behave like the Tombow Mono B or 2B. Right now I am writing with a Staedtler 4B lead in a red Koh-i-Noor Lead holder. It’s a little thick for me, but at least the line is black. I bought some TriConderoga pencils, and while I like those, I am not in love.

Based on what I read on your site, I bought some Palominos and some Forest Choice. I am hoping that one of these will be my new Blackfeet Indian Pencil.

What I want to know is this: why is it that when people make something that actually works, like the Blackwing and the Blackfeet pencil, that automatically it just goes away? For example: for a while, I could get the Noris ErgoSoft HB at Office Depot. Now this pencil is both elegant and functional. It doesn’t sharpen away into a nub in two days. The pencil is also beautiful to behold – it has a real Art Deco paint job. Everything works on this pencil, and it’s 3 bucks a half dozen — Okay, so a little expensive. But Office Depot won’t carry this pencil anymore. Nope. You want to buy a pencil at Office Depot you have to settle for a school pencil. Now I’m not in love with the Dixon Ticonderoga #2, but I love the #1. I’m willing to deal with the yellow paint for the sake of the lead. Can you find a #1 at Office Depot or Staples? No. At Office Depot or Staples, I can buy all the cheap Pentech atrocities I want. But no Noris, No Ticonderoga #1. For Dixon #1, I have to go to a store across town. For Noris Ergosoft, I have to buy online – General Cedar and Black Warrior #1 I can only get on line, too. To get Mitsubishi or Tombow pencils (and Japanese woodcase pencils are EXCELLENT) I have to drive downtown to Kinokuniya bookstore in Los Angeles. I can get the Faber-Castell GRIP 2001 in stores, but not the excellent Faber-Castell 9000 (and it is, to my way of thinking, a much better pencil).

Sometimes all of this drives me to use a Pentel .9 mechanical pencil, but that does not make my soul happy. I write for a living. I want REAL pencils.

Thank you, I feel better now.

(Many thanks to Humdog for a great contribution!)

[Text, Humdog, used with very kind permission. Image, J.G.]

Kevin Kelly famously writes about his favorite pencil, the Derwent 3B:

“A pencil can generate megabytes of text, needs no batteries, and has no user manual. It is comfortable to hold, it smells good, and it is relaxing to turn around in your hand as you try to think of the right words. Pencils don’t need ink; all they need is a sharpener. They are warm and friendly; they have souls.”

Thanks, Kevin!

[See Why pencils? (i).]

Those among us of an academic bent are familiar with the C.F.P.s (Call For Papers) we get in our email inboxes almost daily. We’re not that…stuffy here at the Revolution. However, we are issuing our first “Call For ~” in order to integrate the People and to promote sharing among the Comrades of the Revolution. In other words, I — at least — think it’s safe to say that we are no longer a website with readers but are a fledgling community. And I think that having myriad contributors, at least from time to time, is a good thing now.

What are we after? Reviews of pencils you like or don’t like, or erasers, sharpeners, pencil boxes, etc. Essays about pencils, erasers, sharpeners, and other pencil gear. Photos of the same. Drawings with graphite, colored pencils, watercolor pencils, drawings of pencils. If you have a drawing that needs scanning, please contact us via email, and we can arrange to scan it for you and return it to you unharmed via physical mail.

While we are not going to issue any explicit guidelines, we do reserve the right not to publish what we deem offensive or irrelevant. Please don’t send us a list of aphorisms on where pen users can stick their pens. We still love our brothers and sisters of ink, and — though pencils are sharp — they are not weapons. We reserve the right to edit work, and consent is implied in submitting that we can use said work on the site, with all due credit given, of course.

Perhaps not everything submitted will make it onto the site, but we will try to publish all we can. We are not going to be Puritanical in our tastes of art work when we decide what to publish, but bear in mind that people of all ages and backgrounds are members of our community when submitting. But also bear in mind the kindness and openness displayed by the People on every available occasion. We are an accepting and brave People.

Please feel free to bear your pencil soul.

[Please continue to Submission Guidelines in the permalink or comments section.]

As many of the People already are, no doubt, aware today kicks off the National Novel Writing Month for 2005. What is NaNoWriMo? In short:

“National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.”

Check out Libby Copeland’s article in The Washington Post for more information.

We are wondering if anyone in the Revolution is participating this year, and if said brave writers might be interested in sharing with the People their work, or bits of it, on PencilRevolution.com? If so, please leave a note or email us (see right) directly to discuss.

But first off, who’s writing in pencil?

With the recent discussions about the environment and wood, it seems very appropriate to mention some great recent posts by our good friend Woodchuck on why Incense-Cedar is such an excellent wood for pencils:

“Incense-cedar originally began to be used as a substitute wood for Eastern Red Cedar (Juniperus virginiana) which was the premier wood for US produced pencils and some European pencils dating from the mid 1800s through the early 20th century. It is commonly thought that the main purpose for the shift to Incense-cedar was due to dwindling supply of Eastern Red Cedar and there is some relevance here, but primarily from a comparative economic standpoint only. ERC is still widely used for commercial purposes today for products which most benefit from the technical characteristics contained in the natural cedar oil extractives of this species. Products such as closet lining, shoe trees, coat hangers, storage chests and natural oil extractives used in the essential oils industry for perfume and other cosmetic and scent purposes.
So what is the full story for the transition to Incense-cedar?” (Read on to find out!)

“Unlike species that occur in groves, Incense-cedar can be found scattered among Douglas-fir, Jeffrey Pine, ponderosa pine and other species that dominate the mixed-conifer forest. Within the state of California, Incense-cedar generally comprises about 5% of the trees in a stand while just 1.5% in it’s southern Oregon growing range. Despite it’s popularity in a range of uses, Incense cedar has never become a mono-cultural plantation species as with other commercial western softwoods. As a prolific seed-cone producer it readily regenerates and proliferates throughout it’s growing range aggressively repopulating any available site on the forest floor. It’s germination and survival rate are excellent relative to other softwoods….there is more Incense-cedar growing in California forests today than at any time during the past 50 to 70 years based upon data from the US Forest Service mandated Forest Inventory and Analysis Project.” (Read on!)

[Excerpts, Woodchuck at Timberlines. Image, Oregon State University.]

Johnny writes about childhood pencils in MungBeing magazine:

“When I first arrived at Kindergarten, we all had little boxes that we put onto the top shelf of our cubbies, standing on five-year-old tiptoes. In my little blue box that day was a Faber-Castell GOLIATH - a thick, red pencil with soft-feeling lead and a nice pink eraser on the end. Of all the goodies in my blue box - scissors, paste, a ruler, etc. - I was most excited about my big pencil. There were boxes and boxes of markers and wax crayons at the pre-school and even more at home that my parents provided for my brothers and I.. But one pencil, only one. And so grown-up looking! I had just turned five and suddenly felt immensely important that I had been given a single pencil that would allow me to do so much. My introduction to pencils was thus to a quality German pencil, and the rest of my childhood pencilship was tainted by this….

….But I think that what people love about pencils is not necessarily something akin to childhood innocence. I don’t think it’s possible to recover the naivety of the sandbox, nor is it desirable to do so. The responsibility that comes with knowing what we know that we did not know as children - whether we know it from education or worldly experience - is not something that we can shirk off just by using pencils or any other magical tools. The reason pencils resonate with adults is that they remind us of the sense of wonder that we had as children. Only, as adults, this wonder is armed with some degree of practical wisdom in that pencils put us into a position of wonder that is coupled with power and freedom. We look at the world differently when we remember being kids, and we have the freedom to explore our world that we might not have had as school children with homework and parents and curfews. Most importantly, we have the power through what we already know to look in the right places for what we still wonder about as adults.”

Read the rest of the article here.

[Image, J.G.]