For a Holiday Greeting I share this Christmas letter from a writer special to me about “Writing by Hand” 12/25/07

Dear Bill, Just a few odds and ends thoughts are included for your advanced education regarding fountain pen use:

Included with your package of fine Christmas gifts is a scotch tape dispenser. The tape of course is obviously handy as just plain old scotch tape. But the real reason that I am sending it is for its utility as a desktop pen holder. You may have seen my use of it at home *for this purpose but if you haven’t I include this description as a verbal and practical gift to you.

Lay the scotch tape dispenser on its side with the center hole facing up (and down as well). This will allow the pen’s cap, which you have untrapped from the pen itself to stand upright although at sometime of an angle with the cap in this position the pen can be lodged temporarily *while taking a break from writing. This is a very handy way to store a pen because these days pen desk sets are impossible to find new although they were very common in my youth, but save-the-less scarce even on E-bay.

Since joke, screen and script writers seem like they will be on strike forever, why don’t you endeavor to be a writing scab. It would give you experience at both.

The asterisk (*) indicates when I have had to advance the ink in this pen. This ink is Waterman Blue Nuit. The paper is Costco issue notebook filler paper which, if I remember correctly costs about 
                                                            $8 for 1000 sheets = 1 cent per sheet.

*I suppose that you would get 150 refills on the $8 bottle of ink and I have produced about ten handwritten pages with one filling on this pen. That means that ink costs about 1/2 cent per page. Although this paper is crummy, actually unacceptable: 
                            One can get by writing for 1.5 cents per page if you write on only one side of the paper.

                                            Is this a bargain hobby or what?

Accounting for inflation from 1599 AD when Shakespeare wrote As You Like It, I calculate the cost of writing the line, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts…” (Act 2, Scene 7) along with the remainder of the play was a fraction of quid at the time!    Love, Dad