Why I switched to a Fountain Pen.

You know, I never much thought about what type of writing utensil I used, but I have decided that I will use fountain pens from now on. Why you might ask? The answer is pretty simple, it makes me feel much, much cooler. Well, ok, that's only part of why I made the switch. Firstly, I think writing is dying. I mean the actual putting of pen to paper, not the act of writing as a profession. Put don't write things any more, and I am as guilty of that, actually probably more guilty of that than anybody. The other day I actually wrote a check, the first one I have written in a long time, and I found it strangely satisfying when I wrote my signature. I thought about it, and I realized that things that used to be staples of life, such as letter writing are now dying out. This is the point where this blog completely shifts gears and talks about something else. The lack of letter writing will eventually have an affect on how we study history. A good portion of what we learn about historical figures is through personal correspondence. It is often the best way to learn on insight of a personal nature about somebody who is a public figure, and who has a public persona. Basically it helps historians figure out who the person is behind the history. Now of course there is a trade off here, we are in the information age of course. We are 24/7 on the internet, with out tweets, facebook updates, and ridiculously invasive news coverage. However, is that a good trade off? At least for historians, not really. This barrage of information is the obvious stuff because people control the image they send out as much as they possibly can, keeping the true person hidden. So in one hundred years what will we truly know about the important men and women of this generation? We will perceive them in two ways, the image that they wanted to portray to the public, and the negative image that the press tries to portray to the public, the real person, of course, will be something somewhere in the middle, leaving us without the personal knowledge that collections of personal letters tends to give us. Oh yea, and I switched to fountain pens because they make my poor, oft dislocated fingers from hurting when I write, they really are marvelous for that.