During our visit to Malmö in August I received the generous gift of some fountain pen ink sample bottles from my friend Nene. To that point, I must admit, my knowledge of fountain pen inks was limited to a general notion that there was blue ink and there was black ink, with the occasional red ink thrown in for effect. The notion that there was Morning Star ink–one of Nene’s gifts–and innumerable other inks covering the entire spectrum, was an unexpected delight to discover.

And so I dove in, following the URL on Nene’s sample bottle to PenChalet.com and acquiring four samples–Supernova, Adzukiiro, Kitano Ijinkan Red, Yellow Sunset, all pictured below (the similarity of fountain pen ink names to cannabis variety names is duly noted).

I’m so looking forward to trying all of these out.

I hosted the monthly Pen Night, for fountain pen aficionados, here at the Reinventorium tonight, and provided members with a cook’s tour of my letterpress shop. This was followed by a wide-ranging general discussion of everything from how to clean fountain pens to the ins and outs of vintage mechanical pencils. We meet again on November 25th at The Bookmark at 7:00 p.m.; if you are fountain pen crazed or simply fountain pen curious, you are welcome to join us.

This was my first go at hosting an event here in the shop, and it worked well: it helps to be housed in the Parish Hall where there are folding tables and chairs handy-by.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac webcam has been a longtime and surprisingly popular feature of Almanac.com, to the point where readers passing through rural Dublin, NH will often stop in the parking lot and set themselves up in front of the webcam for a special guest-starring role.

To enhance this experience, we’ve developed a system that allows visitors to text their email address to a special mobile number to start a the recording of a 10-second video clip by the webcam; this clip is then emailed to them for posterity.

Here’s an example; if you look carefully you can see the five members of our web team on the roof waving hello.

Here’s my colleague Lou coaching some visiting Finnish tourists, geocaching in the area, how to use the new system.

On the third floor of the Sagendorph Building here at Yankee Publishing, at the end of the hall near where my temporary office sits, is a room called, internally, the “crow’s nest.” Many of my meetings this week have been hosted there, and in previous years I’ve set up temporary office there; in an earlier incarnation it was the office of my friend and colleague the late John Pierce.

I can walk out of the Crow’s Nest and unto the roof of the building and appear on The Old Farmer’s Almanac webcam; here’s me doing just that (the image is tilted because the camera got tilted by construction workers):

I noticed this morning that the phone in the room is labelled “Crows Nst,” which takes its unofficial name into officialdom. I love this.

Anne Gibson writes, in To whom does the burden fall?, about accessibility:

When is it the responsibility of someone with a disability to use unnamed tools to somehow make your content accessible, when your organization has not done so yourself?

Never. It is never their responsibility.

Read the entire post: it’s a well-worded call to arms.

Radiolab aired an episode featuring Kaitlin Prest’s 2017 podcast miniseries No this week. Radiolab host Jad Abumrad prefaced the episode with a caution:

Just as a warning, there are scenes in what you are about to hear that are sexually explicit, very much so, at times, and strong language… probably not the kind of thing that you want to listen to with kids anywhere nearby.

I disagree with his suggestion: listening to No is something that people of all ages need to hear, especially young people. It is a powerful examination of desire, sex, power, consent, language, and behaviour. There is open and honest talk of sex, in real language, but falling back on euphemism would work against the series, adding cloudiness to a message that at its heart is about clarity.

From the first episode:

“Come on, gimme a blow job…”

He’s gonna make me say it again.

“Ah, no… I don’t want to”

[Sigh] “Come on… gimme a blow job”

It wasn’t easier the second time. At all. He puts my hand on his dick. This was the moment that I learned that saying no wasn’t enough. Someone could wear me down, little by little. That it would start to feel like a Twilight Zone moment. Where everything was normal before, and now suddenly the walls are bending in on each other and you learn that you’re actually a ghost. You start to think you’re crazy. You feel trapped. You’re having an argument about whether you’re gonna suck a guy’s dick, and even though the air is super-tense with this argument feeling, he still wants you to suck his dick. The only way for this awful moment to end is just to do what he says. And you do it.

Maybe you tell yourself that you’re enjoying it. Maybe you tell yourself that there’s something tender about this moment. At the same time, part of you is silently screaming. It’s like a dream: you open your mouth and nothing comes out.

This is only the first of many times that I will say no and it will be ignored.

Oliver and I listened to the Radiolab episode, and then to the first episode of No, in the car together this weekend. It led us to a conversation about consent, and how you know if and how somebody wants to have sex with you, and it led Oliver to email his high school principal “Need a Conversation with Students for #MeToo. We’re Living in a Different Age of Feminism.”

He is right. And No is one of the routes to helping us understand that more deeply.

(Prest has a new podcast, for the CBC, called The Shadows, released last month)

The thing I miss most about not having proximate day to day co-workers is office hijinks. Fortunately my colleague Alan, here in New Hampshire, stepped up this morning to fill this void for my visit.

If you’re driving through Windsor, Nova Scotia on the main highway, you cannot help but notice the impressive abandoned mill building off to your side. As we had some time on our hands, on our pass by yesterday I pull off the highway to take a closer look.

The building, formerly home to Nova Scotia Textiles, has a fascinating history; its end came as the result of the Iraq war:

Oddly enough the final nail in the coffin came about as a result of the Iraq war. The mill had a contract with a company called Morning Pride, based in Dayton, Ohio, that specialized in making protective wear for firefighters. The mill had a contract to manufacture Morning Pride jackets, but a shortage of fireproof material called Nomex meant the mill’s only profitable contract was now impossible to complete.

Normex is made by DuPont, an American chemical manufacturer. Nomex, a fire-resistant, petroleum-based fibre, is a variant of Kevlar, a component of bulletproof vests. DuPont has a contract with the US Military and must fulfill these orders before it can deal with commercial orders.

In August, 2006, DuPont sent a letter advising its customers of a shortage of Nomex because of ‘continued and unexpected demand for Nomex … by the U.S. Military.”

After closing, the mill was on the cusp of redevelopment into condominiums and retail space, but the 2008 recession ground that process to a halt.

Musician Terra Spencer has a lovely song about the mill; in the song I learned that in 1897 the town of Windsor burned to the ground:

Residents were forced from their homes, but made brave efforts to save some of their belongings and homes. At the time grand pianos were one of the most valuable pieces in a home and many people pulled their pianos into the street but had to abandon them when the fire got too strong. Imagine the sight of a row of burning pianos on the streets.

Every church in Windsor was lost except the Anglican Church. Tradition tells that the students of Kings College saved the building by pouring water on the roof. Damage was estimated at two million dollars but only six hundred thousand dollars was insured. The miracle of the fire is that no lives were lost.

Regular readers may recall that my ancestors have some familiarity with towns burning to the ground.

My phone isn’t well-suited to taking three dimensional panoramas (or I’m not good at taking them); most of the time they end up as a jumble of disjointed images.

But sometimes the jumbled result is itself interesting.

(Notice Oliver’s head popping up from below).