The Plight of the Pencil

Shannon South of the Dallas Morning News wrote a great editorial last Sunday about the pencil. Here's an excerpt:

Don't touch my pencil.

I mean it.

You can cut me off on the highway, and I won't flinch. You can go through the "Cash only" checkout line holding a checkbook in your hand, with nary a complaint from me. You can disparage my mama's intellect, physical appearance or army boots, and I'll just ignore you.

But if you mess with my 100 percent premium cedar pencil with a premium eraser – or any other version of wood and carbon fashioned into a writing tool – you may discover that tampering with elements that have born witness to historical genius carries consequences.

If you haven't done so in a while, hold a pencil. Grip it between your fingers and feel the pulse in your fingertip mingle with the wood, graphite and clay. Inhale the scent of cedar.

Make some marks on a piece of paper; listen to the soft scratching sound. This is the same sound that van Gogh heard while he sketched.

Henry David Thoreau knew the importance of that quiet harmony. At one point, Henry, who was raised in his family's pencil-making business, embarked on a search for a pencil that would make his words cling to the page with just the right value and hue in its line. He invented a grinding mill for his own mixture of clay and graphite, producing a superior pencil that made a softer and darker mark.

Walt Whitman, O. Henry, Thomas Wolfe, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway – they all listened to that same elemental whisper as their stories first drew breath.

Link. (Thanks, Notebookism!)

-Andy Welfle

Comments

[slywy]

A former coworker, long ago, before I had any interest in pencils other than as tools, gave me a Sandra Boynton pencil cup with a threatening-looking cat that says, "Keep your paws off my pencils." I don't think this kept co-workers from stealing, and it definitely doesn't keep my cat from chewing (yes, the cat likes to chew on the thicker pencils like the Magic ones . . .).

But it's still fair warning.