Moleskins and 3X5s

"Obviously the work of Hemingway and Picasso had about as much do with their Moleskines as it did with their khakis (which both men wore, according to that Gap campaign). Yet the Moleskine just looks like a thing that holds interesting, and possibly important, jottings and sketches. Even if you're carrying it to another boring staff meeting to take notes about sales projections, the notebook makes for a fantastic emblem of creative possibility. Of course, people who actually write for a living sometimes have a different relationship to blank pages. One quotation that probably won't be used to sell Moleskines is John McPhee's 1996 sardonic remark in the journal Creative Nonfiction: ''Anything beats writing.'' Maybe he wouldn't have felt that way if he'd had a cooler notebook."
Look Smart
by Rob Walker
NYTimes Magazine
6.26.05

And then there's the trusty filecard PDA. Guess I'm not the only one out here using the ever-reliable 3X5. Check out these related analog sites - A Million Monkeys Typing and Journalisimo.com.

'How to Be Idle': Being and Do-Nothingness

'How to Be Idle': Being and Do-Nothingness
By Tom Hodgkinson, reviewed by Jeffrey Steingarten
NYTimes Book Review June 26, 2005

What do idlers do while they idle? A provisional list can be found in these pages. Idlers contemplate, meditate, appreciate, imagine, feel a sense of peace and calm, follow their dreams, go fishing (Izaak Walton is the star of the 7 p.m. chapter), smoke tobacco, stare at the ceiling and gaze at the stars. . . . They may work for themselves or engage in meditative tasks like chopping vegetables for dinner -- but they do not work at jobs. Jobs are a relatively recent invention, a creation of the Industrial Revolution, Hodgkinson writes, relying on E. P. Thompson's pioneering work, ''The Making of the English Working Class'' (1963), and Bertrand Russell's essay ''In Praise of Idleness'' (1932). (If you check it out in the O.E.D., you'll find that things are somewhat more ambiguous. Before the 1920's, the word ''job'' generally meant a small, discrete piece of work, what jazz musicians would call a gig.

Which reminds me of the book Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs. Written after the fashion of Studs Terkle's Working, Gig is a contemporary compendium of interviews with working people about their "jobs" and work. Here's a list of job titles included in Gig.

Salon review of Gig

Moonlight Graham

Archibald Wright Graham made his major league debut on June 29, 1905, with the New York Giants. It was the same day he retired from professional baseball.
Field of Dreams Movie Site - Shoeless Joe Jackson
Moonlight Graham's Legend Lingers On
NYTimes June 25, 2005

Searching for Steinbeck

Searching for Stenbeck on Steinbeck scholar OU Professor Bob Demott.
The Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies

Bloggies - Fifth Annual Weblog Awards

Fifth Annual Weblog Awards

Sculpt the Vote

Kinky Friedman to Sculpt the Vote for Governor of Texas

By MICHAEL HOINSKI
Published: June 19, 2005
"Soon to roll down the lost highway: a fuchsia teardrop trailer wearing a 10-foot-long cowboy hat and smoking a cigar. It will be a mobile kiosk - stuffed with T-shirts, bumper stickers and other swag - slated to cover more than 50,000 miles of Texas's nooks and crannies during the next 17 months. "

Neil Pollack's Persona

Neil Pollack on Neil Pollack
NYTimes Sunday Book Review
6.19.05

Wendell Berry: Why I am not going to buy a computer

Wendell Berry's standards for technological innovation are as follows:

1. The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces.
2. It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces.
3. It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than the one it replaces.
4. It should use less energy than the one it replaces.
5. If possible, it should use some form of solar energy, such as that of the body.
6. It should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence, provided that he or she has the necessary tools.
7. It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as possible.
8. It should come from a small, privately owned shop or store that will take it back for maintenance and repair.
9. It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and community relationships.

Community in 17 Sensible Steps from Utne Reader

Why I am not going to buy a computer

Scythe Supply Wendell Berry essay: "A Good Scythe: Here's a case where a hand tool outperforms its motor-driven counterpart."

A Few Words in Favor if Edward Abbey

'You've got to find what you love'

Steve Job's Commencement Address at Stanford

Smart Mobs - How to Recognize The Future When It Lands On You

Smart Mobs - How to Recognize The Future When It Lands On You

Bloggers Add Moving Images to Their Musings

The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > Basics: Bloggers Add Moving Images to Their Musings

American Chestnut Foundation

American Chestnut Foundation

AP Reading - Daytona 2005

Daily Dose of Doonesbury

Daily Dose of Doonesbury and Bushisms

Graduation Advice

War on Terror Dominates Talks Given at Graduations
By SAM DILLON NY TImes June 12, 2005

Smart folks concocted a computer simulation of gridlock to determine how many cars should be taken off the road to turn a completely jammed and stilled highway into a free-flowing one. The results were startling. Four cars needed to be removed ... four cars out of each one hundred. ... Call it the Power of Four. ... If merely four people out of a hundred can make gridlock go away by choosing not to use their car, imagine the other changes that can be wrought just by four of us out of a hundred. Take a hundred musicians in a depressed port city in Northern England, choose John, Paul, George and Ringo and you have "Hey Jude." Take a hundred computer geeks in Redmond, Wash., send 96 of them home and the remainder is called Microsoft.

Tom Hanks, Actor - Vassar College

Grokker and Clusty

Enough Keyword Searches. Just Answer My Question
By JAMES FALLOWS NYTimes June 12, 2005

Dylan on Tour, Still and Again

Dylan on Tour

The Earth From Above

MANGROVES IN EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK
By photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand at SierraClub.org