Light From Fire

Before it is too late, I'd like to give a little love to the light bulb, old school edition. I'm not talking about the kind filled with toxic gas that glows cold and white when excited by electricity. I'm talking about the real deal: the inefficient, endangered, incandescent, campfire in a bottle. So, a toast: here's to getting our light from fire. End of an era. ... Here's to the scientists who captured fire in a glass prison, and here's to Thomas Edison who perfected the technique, enabling the fire to burn without burning out, by robbing it of oxygen. Brilliant madman.

Frequent readers of my blog may wonder why I'm not writing about candles or lanterns, or hey, maybe torches, as beautiful old-timey sources of illumination. I know that a century and a half ago, the light bulb was not a low-tech reminder of simpler times. It was probably a spooky reminder that we were determined to conquer nature, no longer to be subject to the natural rhythms of day and night: the light bulb may have given my low-tech lovin' ancestors something to fear. Imagine: Edison made a bamboo fiber burn for 1200 hours. Think about that. An inextinguishable flame ... a thing that burned for what seemed like forever. Sounds vaguely demonic.

But one of the reasons I write about the things I do, is that our drive to innovate usually involves ditching simple, functional, beautiful tools in favor of hastily designed, indurable, inelegant, ugly things that do very few things only slightly better than the thing they are replacing. Often, when we choose to upgrade to get a single improved feature, we lose an ecosystem of form and function.

Government bodies are beginning to legislate the end of the incandescent bulb (by 2014 in the U.S.) in favor of compact fluorescent lamps (CFL), which last longer and use less power. That's two good features. They also contain mercury, are a documented danger to low-income workers who manufacture them for export to the U.S. and other western nations, and cannot easily, cheaply, or safely be disposed of (the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommends that fluorescent bulbs be double-bagged in plastic before disposal, even though two plastic bags won't stop the leaching of mercury. Nice.) Far more energy is used in the manufacture of CFLs than in the making of incandescents. They are also very expensive, can fade light-sensitive paints and textiles, and have a number of problems depending on the kind of electronics used, related to operating temperature, orientation, and noise. Sure, most of these problems can be solved. But they'll never make a CFL look like the bulb in the picture above. That makes me sad, and I'm surprised to be sad about it. I'm hearing Joni Mitchell right about now: Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got till it's gone?

I was about to call that light bulb a work of art, but that's silly. It never was meant to be a work of art. But sometimes a simple thing made well approaches a kind of elegant beauty, by chance, or by some inherited creative spark left over in us as a part of the Image of God ... occasionally we do beautiful things even when we are simply trying to solve problems, or make life better. Occasionally. I think incandescent light bulbs, with their warm, quiet, clean simple light, are very beautiful. Only not when they are frosted. Frosting is for cupcakes.

An incandescent light bulb hanging in the fire house of the nearby city of Livermore has been burning continuously, with only a few very brief interruptions, for almost a million hours, since 1901. It's got the record, in case you're wondering. This very bulb (there it is in the picture to the left) burned for every minute of the last thirty years of Thomas Edison's life, and has been burning ever since. The bulb managed to outlive my grandmother, born the year it was turned on, though my Grandma only just passed away a couple months ago, at the age of 108, and was as bright and clear-eyed as this bulb to the end.

One of the reasons proposed for the Livermore bulb's long life is that it's burning at a very low wattage (four watts, which apparently was enough for a fire station night light back when Grandma was young). Low wattage means low heat. Low heat means long life.

So, here's the deal. Why not just use lower wattage incandescents: let's split the difference--halfway between 4 and 60 (the most popular wattage in incandescents) makes around 32 watts, still far more than the Livermore firefighters would have dreamed of, and plenty of light for a reading space, if not for a large room. Lower wattage means less power consumed and a longer life. Problem(s) solved. And while we're at it, I bet most of us could walk around our home or workspace and turn off half the lights and not suffer for it. I wouldn't even mind a little legislation encouraging me to find creative ways to cut my consumption by half. Why is it necessary to legislate the adoption of an immature, dangerous, toxic, fussy, ugly, and expensive technology? Can someone call the government and ask?

I know, I'm a silly idealist, and it will never work. It's easier to ask Americans to spend $15 more on a light bulb to solve a problem, than to do less of anything to save $15 and eliminate the problem. I think we feel that we have the right to daylight brightness for 24 hours of the day, and if technology can provide it and boost the economy in the bargain, what's wrong with that? But it gets tiring answering questions like that.

What I'm really worried about is what will become of lava lamps?

Grooming Habits and The Cult of Innovation

I don't hate innovation. But I do hate innovation that has been driven by the desire to sell more crap and not by the needs of human beings. Proctor & Gamble, one of America's largest advertisers (and that is saying something), is a company that markets and sells such commodity products as toothbrushes and shaving razors. In the early 90s advertising book, Where the Suckers Moon, Randall Rothenberg describes Proctor & Gamble as "... the corporation that pioneered the selling of mass products to mass audiences through mass media" and that has an "expertise at moving undifferentiated commodity products unmatched by any other marketer." In order to continue to grow, companies like P&G need to continue to "innovate". That means ... get you to buy a "new and improved" thing, even where the existing product does a fine job of cleaning your teeth, or whatever. With Proctor & Gamble and other consumer goods companies, every day in this great country is a day for revolutionary product design.

What, you thought that your old toothbrush was getting your teeth clean? How sad. I guess you can't be blamed. You made do with what was available to you. After all, until today, no company on earth had yet invented the revolutionary sonic vibrating, ProSoft, CrossMax, Interslide, Power Tip, Micropulse, Indicator-bristle Warrior Brush 2000! Your plaque is doomed. It's the battle of Helm's Deep in your mouth.

But, hold on there soldier! Before you make the mistake of thinking that your brush is actually doing anything by itself (you have so much to learn), you'll need a toothpaste with our revolutionary cavity-crusading crystals, rainbow swirls, bleaching chemicals, breath-fresheners, plaque disintegrators, tartar control, enamel protectors (makes you wonder what your enamel needs to be protected from) and a few other chemistry-set ingredients that should trigger alarms at the airport--and why not? Your mouth is a battlefield. Whatever you do, don't use baking soda to brush your teeth: it's not at all minty. Or dangerous. Or expensive.

And, sorry. Men, are you still shaving with less than five blades? Does your razor not have a revolutionary battery-powered beard trimmer in the handle or Micropulse vibration in the blades? Are you not experiencing the revolutionary benefits of on-blade Indicator lubricating strips or enhanced Microfin stubble stimulating technology? Then you are not sexy. You aren't groomed until Proctor & Gamble says you are. In fact, I'm willing to bet you haven't even gotten to second base with your razor: P&G's Gillette Fusion web site seductively invites you to "Go further ... with body shaving!" (And don't assume I'm the one with my blades in the gutter ... I will not. repeat. their. advice.)

I don't like to upgrade my tools or technology unless the benefit is obvious and looked for. Trade in a hot and sweaty rubber raincoat for waterproof and breathable rain gear? Easy ... yes. Trade in cheap and heavy hi-tensile steel tubing for lightweight and strong steel-alloy bicycle frame materials? Easy ... yes! Trade my triple-bladed razor that cuts my beard just fine for a 5-blade fusion razor? Easy ... no.

I use a three-bladed razor because that's the blade replacement that fits on the handle that I received as a gift years ago. I've used twin-bladed disposables and not suffered for it (though there are way, way too many of these razors thrown away each year). I'm pretty sure I only need one blade, and would happily downgrade if there wasn't such a high cost of (re) entry. I've seen retro-productions of the old "safety razors" (see retrorazor.com ... really) that hold double-sided razors, but I won't be paying 50 bucks for a setup (yet! I still have to use up my 3-fers. I found out my dad still has the safety razor that I remember from my childhood--above--and thought I might take possession of the old treasure, but it turns out he's still using it!) And besides, I'm not sure that I'm convinced by the satisfied customer on retrorazor.com that said he was only nicking himself once a week ... after practice (the starter kit on that site comes with a styptic pencil. That's good marketing: according to Wikipedia these 'pencils' work by "contracting tissue to seal injured blood vessels". Hm.) I'm willing to concede that someone actually pulled off something good with the upgrade to multi-blade safety razors, cause I do not cut myself shaving.

One shaving-related hill I'm willing to fight on is the question of shaving creme. In order to shave you need wet skin and a little lubrication. Hot water in the shower is almost enough, but a little soap goes a long way to keeping your stubble wet for the blade, and adding a touch of slippery. Below is my rig. A funky old travel brush (the head unscrews and hides in the handle) and a cake of shaving soap in a metal cup from the gift shop on Alcatraz (The soap fits perfectly, and I think the cup is really cool--see, it's metal so it can't be broken to be used as a shiv if there were ever a riot in my bathroom.)

I've used cans of shave creme which are a horrible waste: they do not last and too much metal and plastic gets thrown away (to say nothing of the propellant that escapes into the atmosphere. So what if it's CFC free, can anyone say it's a good thing to be releasing compressed flammable gas in the shower?). These products simply reek of invented need. Is it quicker to push a button on a can than to lather up with shaving soap? Yes. Will you regret those lost seconds when you look back on your life? Unlikely.

There is also a temptation with the push-button solution to think the product that comes out is all you need. But in fact the one thing you need for a close (and safe) shave is wet skin, and since water isn't needed with a can of insta-foam, you are less likely to wet your face every time. This means that P&G gets to 'innovate' new ways for their millions of blades to slide over your skin without cutting it. Washed and wet skin is not nearly as exciting (or marketable) as lubri-strips and micro-fins.

There are also really nice shaving cremes that come in squeeze tubes. I've used them for years: a pea-sized bead and a brush produces the same lovely lather that you get with the soap (or the can), but I think the soap is the easiest on the environment, with the least throwaway. It's also the most work: about 10 seconds to produce a lather each day, which works out to one hour a year. You can get that hour back, with dividends, by turning away from the television whenever a P&G ad comes on, and taking the opportunity to tell the other people in the room that you love and/or appreciate them (and that they should not, under any circumstances, buy you the Gillette Fusion for Christmas). Everybody wins.

As for toothpaste, I've never liked the perpetual innovation machines that turn out minty abominations as fast as consumers can buy them. I'm can tolerate the natural 'spearmint' flavor from Tom's of Maine (but worry, now that Colgate-Palmolive bought them, that the integrity of their all-natural product will slip). My favorite flavor of toothpaste? Tom's Silly Strawberry, without question. Yes it is a children's toothpaste. It's flavored with strawberries and banana. It's a great toothpaste, and doesn't pretend to explode in your mouth with minty amazingness.

Ok, I see the way you're looking at me. You are wondering if I have a paranoid fixation on the flavor mint. Not true! Just because it would be possible for P&G to mask mind-control drugs in their toothpaste with minty crystals in order to influence the entire country to think that a six-bladed razor would help them Face the Day With Confidence, doesn't mean they are planning to do that. Yet. Seriously, in my defense, allow me to describe the landscape as I see it. To take one example, following are the actual flavor names that involve mint in P&G's current Crest brand toothpaste line: 1) "Invigorating Mint", 2) "Cool Mint", 3) "Sparkling Mint", 4) "Fresh Mint", 5) "Long-lasting Mint", 6) "Clean Mint", 7) "Clean Night Mint", 8) "Minty Fresh", 9) "Super Action Mint", 10) "Fresh Clean Mint", 11) "Soothing Whitening Mint", 12) "Moonlight Mint", 13) "Revitalizing Mint", 14) "Refreshing Mint", 15) "Refreshing Vanilla Mint", 16) "Minty Fresh Striped", and last but not least (but probably not even 'last'), 17) "Extreme Herbal Mint".  I'm not even listing the sparkly variations on peppermints, wintergreens, or the non-minty fruits, burstin' bubblegums, and others. One reviewer on Crest's site has this to say: "I demand minty fresh breath everyday. This is the only toothpaste I have ever used that has kept my breath really minty fresh for hours ...! (Five stars)." 

So who's got the unhealthy fixation now?

When I run out of Silly Strawberry--and I can't find any in my kid's bathroom--I brush my teeth with baking soda. It tastes bad. I dub the flavor, "Extreme Powdery Non-Mintiness", but will say that it is, in fact, refreshing, and works really well, costs next to nothing, and involves very little throwaway (a recyclable cardboard box). If you're game to use one of the original tooth cleaning products, I have a simple piece of advice. Don't get it from a box that has been used to absorb odors in your fridge or a musty closet. Simple. Wet your toothbrush and mash it in the powder, and brush.

But be warned, if you're not getting your daily dose of mint ... you may start to wonder why you spend money on various mass produced consumer products that only solve problems you learn about in commercials. Confidence to face the day ... for free: how revolutionary.

bag

My Bag has one pocket, and it's BIG. I like simplicity in my bags. I do not like complexity. My bag used to have a single inside flap, stitched to the top lip of the opening, with an assortment of little pockets for organizing stuff, but I removed it. It's not that I don't like being organized: it's just that I don't really like having someone else's principles of organization forced on me. The organizer pocket that was stitched inside this bag had a couple pen slots (I carry more than that and so I use a pencil case, which you can see in my profile picture), a wide pocket sized for something like a palm pilot (which most people now keep in a box in a closet, while they wait for the museum to call), a tinier fleece-lined pocket for a phone or media player (which is now a single device, and holstered to my strap for quick access while riding), and other miscellaneous slots that simply didn't fit the stuff I have. So out with the perma-pockets! The bag's a little lighter, it sits open more readily because there isn't a heavy array of pockets pulling the lip of the bag down, and is ready to be customized according to my needs.

Even when it left the factory - organizer pocket intact - my bag was downright simple compared to the modern daypack. Daypack design has gotten a little silly: the more specialized pockets, ports, sleeves, techy functions, fobs, and space age suspension technology a bag has, the more X-Treme you are, and the more money you will be separated from and ... the more doomed you are to throw away the bag as soon as your needs change. Think of it: you buy a new bag to fit your stuff. Your stuff breaks, or gets replaced with new stuff, or you stop using this stuff, or somebody invents a new piece of stuff that has an entirely different form-factor ... then you have pockets and features that are no longer relevant.

What if you don't have an MP3 player? Or you want to put it somewhere other than the specialized, padded media-pocket with a custom port for the headphones? What if you buy a bag with a padded pocket for your 12-inch laptop, then upgrade to a 15-inch? What if the water reservoir that came in the special insulated hydration-sleeve breaks or gets funky (it happens) and the new one you buy has the tube-thingy coming out of the wrong part and so doesn't reach out of the special hydro-hole and so on?

Custom pockets and padding and extra zippers add weight and more points of failure, and often stay empty for want of the Right Sized Thing. My bag, a Timbuk2 large Classic Messenger Bag (made in San Francisco), on the other hand, is insanely durable and beautifully flexible. In the one pocket of my bag, I have at different times carried a case of beer and snacks (ahem, to share), a full-size bike stand (a four foot long box ... it stuck out), camera bodies and multiple lenses, groceries, full picnics for a family of four on the beach or in the mountains (then all the rocks and stuff we collected to take home), and small ad hoc reference libraries. Basically, I can carry more in my bag than is wise, comfortable, or safe for anyone to carry while riding a bicycle. Of course when I only have a few things in it, it collapses to fit. It has no frame or foam suspension. It's a bag: it has the shape of the things it is carrying.

I do have the need to organize and carry small things: bike tools, pump, lights for night riding, food, extra clothes, books, journal, pencils and pens, and various other possibles. I have cheap little ditty bags and stuff sacks for all the things I carry, each one perfectly suited to my purposes because I chose it. If my needs change, I swap out the cheap bags. I put my laptop in a neoprene 'sleeve' that fits it like a glove. If I were to buy a bigger laptop, I'd get a different sleeve to fit it. What happens if the sleeve is stitched into the bag? And for that matter, what does the pocket do when you leave your laptop at home? What else do you put in a permanent, rectangular, foam-padded pocket? A very carefully folded sweater?

Bags with tons of pockets are also a serious liability in the rain. Bags with a lot of pockets and openings either have to use waterproof zippers and specially sealed seams (every stitch point is a point of entry for water in a downpour) or must be under a waterproof cover. My bag has one large, vinyl-coated, rain-proof flap, with no zippers to fail. Simple, beautiful, and durable.


(One extra provision I make for the possibility of really bad weather is the stuff sack that holds my rain gear: this bright orange bag is also waterproof. If the weather turns bad, the rain gear comes out and anything really sensitive to moisture goes inside the bag as extra insurance against water finding its way in.)

(low) tech writer principles. Rigid compartmentalization and design complexity limit flexibility and shorten the lifespan of a thing: complexity wears out its welcome sooner than simplicity. Complex things slow you down, require more maintenance (of a more specialized kind), solve problems you probably don't have, and cost more in the bargain.

Simplicity in design is more enduringly functional, flexible, adaptable, durable, and inexpensive (both on the day you buy it and when you need to repair it).

Old Atlases, Printed Maps

There is another book that I like to put on my music stand (see my previous post on old dictionaries): my old Times Atlas of the World, found in a used bookstore 10 years ago. It's old enough to show a divided Germany, Leningrad-in-the-USSR instead of St. Petersburg-in-Russia, and countless other geo-anachronisms, but oh, is it beautiful to look at. And really, do we care what the politicians say about where the borders are, or whose ego is institutionalized on the city masthead? Yes, ok, sometimes we do need to know such facts. But that's what Internet maps are good at. I am well aware of the other ways that computerized maps and atlases are superior to the soon-to-be obsolete printed variety: they are up-to-date (i.e. -to-the-minute), truly comprehensive, and augmented in infinite ways with personalized layers of meaning (see the history of natural disasters for the city you're visiting, or see where the coffee shops are).

Claims of comprehensiveness and currency in a printed atlas always assume you will buy the latest version, which, if you are buying a nice atlas, may run you a few hundred dollars. And why would you not buy a nice atlas? You can get ugly atlases online. So, my recommendation for the killer combination? A nice old Atlas (cheaper, probably prettier, and still 90% accurate) and the Internet to supplement your old beauty with the latest facts. The picture above, of Oban, in Scotland, is from my old Times atlas (be sure to click on the image to see a bigger version).

I love maps, and love studying maps of a place before, and after, visiting it for real. My introduction to maps was via the topographic maps produced by the United States Geological Survey, used by everyone from soldiers to miners to hikers for navigating in the wilderness. There was a USGS office in Menlo Park, a few miles from where I grew up, so we got to browse the beautiful, poster-sized, four-color maps whenever we wanted. On a trip to my wife's family home in Greece, I visited that country's equivalent of the USGS, the Greek Army Mapping Office. My brother-in-law and I were planning to climb Mt. Olympus, and I also had plans to camp out in the Peloponnese. When I asked for the maps that covered the westernmost finger of that peninsula, the army officer looked at me suspiciously. He fetched his commanding officer and they grilled me: "Why do you want to go there? There is no camping there! What is your business?" I tried to assure them (with the help of my Greek brother-in-law) that I was just going to find a place to put down my bag on the coast and enjoy the sea and stars. They never did give me that map. I forgot about the incident until I was awakened on my hillside perch near Koroni, overlooking the Mediterranean, by what sounded like bombs going off. What had sounded like bombs going off was in fact bombs going off .... Turns out the Greek Air Force likes to practice their aim on the little island of Skhiza, which was just about a mile south of my sleeping bag. I watched jets looping and dropping bombs for an hour. No wonder the army guy was suspicious.

Since I can't show the map with Skhiza on it (ahem) ... here is my Greek Army Map of Cape Tenaron, about 40 miles southwest of my camping spot near Koroni. Maybe nothing is as interesting as being woken up by jets dropping bombs at the foot of your sleeping bag, but the topo map below shows the tip of the Mani Peninsula, itself a very interesting place: in the cove near the southern end, surrounded by wind-torn, razor-sharp white rock and ancient ruins, is the cave of Tenaron, the mythical entrance to Hades.



Strangely, USGS topo maps were the thing that reignited my interest in computers, after many years of abstinence: in the mid-nineties, a San Francisco company, Wildflower Productions (now owned by National Geographic), was scanning all the topographic maps for the United States, in various scales, digitally stitching them together, and adding tools for searching and customizing. When I first got a look at their product on the shelves at REI where I worked, I called the company and asked them what I needed in my new computer (the one I didn't have yet) to run their product. At the time, I didn't care what else the computer could do.

I still have a soft spot for this product because it's based on pictures of real maps, made to be held in your hand. The computerized version allows me to look at topo maps for anywhere in the country, and of course you can't own that many printed maps. I understand how computers add value here. But I still say printed maps and atlases are so much more beautiful and satisfying to hold. And they provide much the same opportunity for serendipitous discovery that a printed dictionary does, as I detailed in my previous post. The maps in my world atlas are produced by the famous John Bartholomew & Son cartographers in the UK. Their maps, especially the old, hand-lettered ones, are so pretty to look at, and so clear. Am I repeating myself?



If you can afford the already-obsolete current edition of the Times World Atlas (obsolete, because world atlases go out-of-date about as fast as newspapers these days), here is a link to the Twelfth Edition of the Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World. But my strong recommendation is to search your local used bookstore for an older version, if only for the joy of the maps.

More Homemade Stuff - Not Just For Hippies

If Panasonic were to make a lens hood for my LX3 digital camera, it would probably cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $50. All the accessories for this camera are ridiculously expensive.


I wanted a way to protect my little camera from the rain and ended up with a perfect lens hood in the bargain, for about 2 dollars and a half-hour of work. The project was featured on instructables.com (where you can read about the benefits of the hood, and the process of customizing a $2 piece of plumbing for my high-end digicam):

Digital Lens Hood / Rain Hood on instructables.com

One of a number of clearing houses for the DIY set, instructables.com is a great place to find elegant (or funky) ways to solve any problem you can think of, usually for cheap or free, from recycled or otherwise lowtech stuff. Make Magazine (and their Web space and blog) also features daily projects for solving problems in ways that will save you lots of money and give you lots of low-tech satisfaction: solve a problem by making something and you are beating a socioeconomic system that only knows how to offer prepackaged, mass-produced solutions for high prices.

Another Nice Steel Knife

It doesn't have any special technology for quick deployment of the blade when under attack from a mountain lion, nor does it have a fiberglass-reinforced nylon handle. It will never be featured on the late-night knife collectors show on the Home Shopping Channel (where Rambo meets samurai meets ninja).

This Opinel, which comes in many sizes (but few variations on the basic hardwood handle), has a beautiful, razor-sharp, carbon-steel blade, of the kind I have written about recently. It has an ingenious locking ring that twists to keep the blade open. It's light and gorgeous and I've never broken one, though I've owned several and used them for everything from picnics to backpacking. The #8 Opinel costs only $10 today. Amazing. When I was young, the Early Winters backpacking catalog gave these away with your order. Me and my buddy Randy used to laugh at the guys who brought "Rambo" knives up into the wilderness ... probably because we remembered doing it too when we were young. But you only make that mistake once: too heavy, too expensive, too much. Unless you hunt Elk, all you need is a sharp, short blade for cutting your salami, cleaning trout, and trimming rope.

I'll make an allowance for the Swiss Army knife or Leatherman, if you need extra tools (screwdrivers for campstoves, scissors for first aid, can openers for your peaches, corkscrew for ... well for untying wet knots of course), but I would always carry one of these no matter what because it's so light and elegant. When I read on the Opinel Website that shepherds decorated their Opinels by burning designs into the wood handles, I had try it. My wife was not impressed.

Andy Goldsworthy on Tech

Sculptor Andy Goldsworthy writes on his process: "The work itself determines the nature of its making. I enjoy the freedom of just using my hands and 'found' tools - a sharp stone, the quill of a feather, thorns. I am not playing the primitive. I use my hands because this is the best way to do most of my work. If I need tools, then I will use them. Technology, travel and tools are part of my life and if needed should be part of my work also. A camera is used to document, an excavator to move earth, snowballs are carried cross country by articulated truck."*

I am very comfortable with this pragmatic approach to technology. The problem (here begins my opinion) is not technology, in itself, it's in the adoption of technology, or technique, as "the way" (or even "the best way") to fulfill a desire. When a community (artists, for example) discovers a piece of technology that makes a part of their job easier, or a technique is developed that introduces efficiencies into a process, this is not a bad thing, per se. But if technique precedes meditation, exploration, and inspiration, then creativity withers.

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*From the introduction, Andy Goldsworthy: A Collaboration with Nature.Take a look at Andy Goldsworthy's other books at Amazon.The DVD, Rivers and Tides is a very good documentary, rich and satisfying. Remember, if you can find these books at a local independent bookstore, get on your bike and go. Photo of The Neuberger Cairn (2001) at SUNY, is from Wikimedia Commons, and is in the public domain.

Home-Made Leather Wallet

This is my wallet. There's not much to it, so there's not much to say about it except ... that two pockets are enough and it has no plastic card holders to get old and cracked, no Velcro to startle librarians when you open it to take out your library card (and ultimately to get fuzzy and useless), and no strange and expensive hide (eel? Snake? Ostrich?). The leather of my wallet (cow butt, I'm sure) is so thick and wonderful, it will never crack and fray like the thin and delicate stuff that men's wallets are usually made out of. If it's not clear from the pics, the pockets are only accessible when it is opened past 180 degrees: nothing ever falls out, even when it's lying open and flat.


The pockets are deep and wide enough to carry lots of stuff: it carries cash, cards, a little emergency kit (made up of some bandages, bike tube patches with sandpaper, a sewing needle, and a small wind of dental floss for emergency repairs, or emergency flossing) some duct tape folded over a wallet-sized piece of itself 10 times (the second-most used thing in the wallet), pictures, and a plastic ball point pen cut to fit at the bottom of one side under everything else.

The only competition to this wallet in my eyes is the duct-tape wallet given to me by my friend Linda ... but that wallet has been nabbed by my daughter.

Making kid-simple things like this out of natural materials gives me lots of pleasure: it's free or close to it, and has an organically satisfying feel that can't be beat.

(Low) tech writer principle #3: a truly functional and durable thing made by yourself or someone close to you is a wonderful thing: unique in the world.

Here's a pen/pencil holder I made from the same scrap of leather. We disassembled an ancient, worn out shoulder bag my wife had gotten at the Monastiraki market in Athens when she was a kid (she grew up there). These bags, when new, are usually stiff and faded, pale and dry from hanging in the traditional leatherworker's shop year after year--they have not been treated, oiled, or otherwise preserved. When you first get one of these bags and empty a whole bottle of neatsfoot oil on it, it looks like you've poured water on desert clay. But once it's been oiled a few times, the thing takes on the rich and deeply beautiful quality of fine leather. Which is what it is.


It's filled with good tools of the low-tech variety.

Old Steel Knives, and One Cheap One

I'm glad that the blades on my pocket knives (I have Leatherman and Swiss Army knives) are stainless steel, because they have to survive in the wet, in bags I carry while commuting, sometimes in the rain, or while otherwise roughing it. But in my home, I much prefer the non-stainless variety: some are folders (Opinels from France), some straight bladed (flea-market beauties, as above). These blades are sharper, more flexible, and have considerably more character than any stainless blade.

Stainless steel knives are ... stainless, and so keep their shiny look. Big deal. Stainless steel is either inexpensive and horrible (inflexible, nearly impossible to sharpen, and brittle), or horribly expensive. When kitchen geeks test knives and make recommendation purely on quality, it could cost you well over $150 (sometimes closer to 800) per knife to follow their advice. When they make recommendations for those on a budget, you can still expect to spend more than $50 on a decent knife (with a plastic handle).

But you can also find an old steel knife at a garage sale, or estate sale, or flea market (like mine) and spend well under $20, then spend a little time with some steel wool, and uncover a beautiful old tool. The handle will be beautiful wood, and maybe you'll even find one with shiny brass rivets like mine. The old wood handle adds fathoms of character, feels warmer and just nicer in your hand, and is in fact more resistant to bacteria growth than synthetic. That may seem counter-intuitive until you realize that air drying kills bacteria and wood promotes this. a crack or seam between plastic and metal does a great job of creating the kind of environment where stuff can grow.

My steel knives may need to be sharpened more often than an expensive stainless steel knife, but they sharpen like razors. They may need to be protected a bit more from water, but I personally like the patina that metal takes on with age. Age = patina = character = signs of life. Old steel looks, and feels, more natural. That is ... aging and showing signs of age and wear is natural, and, in my humble opinion, beautiful.

Allow me to cut to the chase: our culture is obsessed with youth and health: we hate it when anything shows signs of age or wear (before you suggest jeans with holes in them, please note: those holes are probably not signs of age. They are signs of something else, less impressive). Our fear of age and the signs of age applies to utensils as much as it applies to our faces and bodies. And our attempts to counter the effects of age, whether in our own flesh, or in our tools, introduces layers of complexity and expense, and is successful very little of the time.

(Low) tech writer principle #2: When a technological solution is devised to counter the effects of nature, it generally results in a thing being more complex, less flexible, less functional, and/or more expensive.

There are some simple carbon steel blades being made these days: Sabatier makes some blades that are not stainless. The problem is that the cheap ones cost close to a hundred bucks and have plastic handles. If you want such blades for cheap, you've got to go searching for the cast-offs, and it may take some care to restore them and their handles. But, for me, the satisfaction of polishing an old steel blade and cleaning and oiling an old piece of wood matches the pleasure of using the old tool.

For all the benefits of stainless steel (you won't catch me suggesting that spoons shouldn't be stainless), I don't trust it. I wonder if it doesn't all come down to our distaste for stains ... stains that remind us that nature wears things down, marks things with the passage of time. Oh, alright, it's nice not to have to worry too much about rust, and stainless steel blades will not be ruined by an absent minded cook who doesn't dry their blades and can't be bothered to oil them. But then, should we let people who are so absent minded and lacking in respect for tools use sharp utensils anyways? I love old knives partly because you have to take care of them. There, I said it.

Don't even get me started on serrated knives. The only reason why these un-sharpenable knives sell so well is that a salesperson comes into your home and tells you what you already know: your knives have not been sharpened in years and are dull. Instead of solving this problem (by selling you a good, easy-to-use sharpener so you don't have to throw away your knives), they sell you another one: a knife that won't dull so quickly, but that can't be sharpened by you when it does. This is not to mention the fact that serrated knives have to saw through food, which in some cases just feels wrong. Now, a sharp straight-steel blade cutting through a nice steak? That feels right.

There is one exception to my dislike for serrated blades. There is no other blade for cutting fresh bread. It has to be serrated for something so soft. Thankfully you don't have to spend more than 20 dollars to have lots of good choicesfor a bread knife (but, of course, if you want to spend more than $150 you won't have to look far, and the choices are few and far between if you want to have a nice wooden handle). The knife below was $6 new, at a fancy kitchen shop no less. The serrations are not some unnecessarily fancy design, but simple scallops that can be sharpened at home with a needle file, or a rotary grinder, which is how I did mine when it was 5 years old and needed a little refresher.



When the handle began to loosen a bit from repeated washings, I just wrapped it tightly with a common whipping, a beautiful and simple binding knot that I use often to repair tools, or finish some other kind of craftwork. (Knots is a subject to which I will have to return.)

General's Semi-Hex 498 2 2/4 ... Reasons Why #1

An attempt to begin to explain why these things matter to me. I'll call it Reasons Why #1 because I know I won't get it right the first time, but I'm content to try.

I like technology. I've lived and worked among Technical People my whole life, and it would confound my friends if I called myself anti-tech. I love computers as tools, and do much of my work in front of a screen. I am not a hacker, but I am a "tweaker": I never learned how to work on cars, and maybe for that reason, I have taken to getting under the hoods of my computers. I have built and rebuilt computers and messed with operating systems. I was putting Linux on laptops in 1999, and have even squeezed Linux onto various Macs over the years. I taught myself how to run Linux from the command line (which is harder because there are, like, no pictures).

I went to Crystal Springs Uplands school in Hillsborough, California and graduated in 1984, the year of the Macintosh. Apple's John Sculley had a daughter at the school (a year or two younger than us) - I went to his house once with my friend who was dating his daughter and saw his computer room (among the early Apples, he had a Lisa, rocking a 5MHz processor and 1 meg of ram), and I assume it was he who donated a bunch of Apple IIs to our school. One of my classmates wrote the original Music Construction Set on one of those apples. My dad also got one for the family. I taught myself basic programming on that Apple II and even wrote a small text adventure game (I was inspired by the old Infocom game Zork, which you can now play online, still in glorious text). All this, I believe, gives me what my friends would call Geek Cred. ...



But then there are the pencils. I have a mild obsession with pencils, especially the General Pencil Semi-Hex 498 2 2/4. Mmm, ceder. Some years ago, I needed a pencil to mark up a book I was reading for seminary, and went looking for one. I did not find one pencil. I found fourteen scattered through the house. I would have stopped at one, but my curiosity was piqued to see all the different brands and styles that we'd accumulated. I decided that I couldn't just pick one at random, I would pick the best one. So I sharpened them all and put them to the test. Of course I had to smell each one before writing, just to take note of the "nose" (the winner had that powerful ceder aroma that true pencil aficionados prefer. I think.). After writing with each pencil there were two that stood out. I didn't care for the people's favorite Dixon Ticonderoga, but went with two by the General Pencil company, the last company making pencils in the USA. I liked the "Badger" a lot, but my favorite was the strangely-named "Semi Hex 498 2 2/4". Best pencil I've ever used. It didn't check my affection to learn their factory was nearby in Redwood City. The name describes the shape (Semi Hex refers to the rounded points of the hexagon shape) and includes the model number (498) and the hardness (why 2 2/4 instead of 2.5 or 2 1/2? Who cares? For me it adds to the charm).

Low-tech wonders stand out when compared to their replacements, the products that are manufactured to improve and supplant them. I think of all the ergonomic mechanical pencils and gel-grip disposable pens, none of which impress me or replace my pencil. The pencil has a beautiful simplicity to it, and an efficiency, and 95 percent of it is compostable (versus the landfill that is the fate of plastic writing tools). And there is some mystery to the pencil too. How does rubber (named for it's ability to "rub" pencil marks away) erase the marks of the graphite without causing it to smudge? It's the original word processor, complete with backspace.

My seventh grade science teacher had permanently written on her blackboard, "Even God does her math problems in pencil!" Yet, she found herself living in strange times: the advent of the erasable pen. The question that shook the foundations of Pencilogy? 'Could we use the Eraser Mate to do math problems?' Did God feel that the ability to correct mistakes was the important thing - which would mean that the Eraser Mate might be an acceptable tool - or was God a pencil lover too? Furthermore, did He hate it when I scribbled over my mistakes to hide them, and did that move Him to insist on the correctability of any writing technology ... or was God, like me, enamored of the heady aroma of freshly sharpened wood, the smooth-scratchy graphite marking core, the soft pink eraser waiting to be bitten off? These questions were too weighty for a seventh grader, and for our teacher, who gave up the fight: I remember many smudged and messy assignments written with the erasable pen. The manufacturer said that the easily erased (and so easily smudged) ink would become permanent within days, but by then the damage had been done.

Regular pens left no room for correction. Erasable pens left a gooey, smudgeable mess. Nothing has surpassed pencils for working out the truth on a piece of lined paper, whether mathematical or theological. But what does God think?

I think I know the answer now. I can sniff out a hint of divine terroir lurking in the humble pencil. Is it in seventh grade science that we learn that diamonds and graphite are both made of the same stuff? While the diamond is the hardest mineral known to humanity, and graphite one of the softest, each have the same carbon chemistry. But the real mind-bender is that the more stable and permanent of these two carbon polymorphs is the stuff inside my Semi Hex. Don't believe what DeBeers tells you: graphite is forever. The fact is that all diamonds that have made their way to the surface of the earth are slowly undergoing a transformation into graphite. It's only a matter of time. And so I think I'll risk formulating a (low) tech writer principle. Call it principle #1.

(low) tech writer principle #1: The thing that appears to be the most permanent, the most robust, the most durable, aint necessarily so. Sometimes it is the dull, plentiful, inexpensive thing that wins the day and survives.