A local fellow blogger just published a post about fountain pens that I wish I would have beat her to! Now I have to stand in her shadow and try to come up with a witty observation or two . Damn…

I started using or trying to use a fountain pen back in college after hearing the writer and historian Shelby Foote discuss writing all his manuscripts out longhand with a dip pen. As a history major, that sounded like something amazing to do and I took a cligraphy class and wrote letters at the dawn of the e-mail age with a leaky black bakelite stylo. Though, like many things started in college, it fell to the way side as the rest of life swirled around me – picking up my lone surviving calligraphy pen every now and then to address Christmas cards or to add flair to a note or sign. I didn’t become a complete fountain pen convert until we lived in Germany for a couple of years: ALL the “smart” engineers had a nice pen to initial drawings and sign docs with (being engineers, there was the ubiquitous mechanical pencil as well). I wanted to be Euro/Old-World cool!!

I jumped right in and bought a couple of cheap cartridge pens and worked out which nib size and ink color was best for me. I now have a quiver of Lamy Safari pens with different nibs (from EB to EF) and a weighty stainless Lamy that my bride gave me for Valentine’s day one year. I use it for signing legal docs and for writing her love notes.

After trying Montblanc and Parker inks, my pens are now loaded with Noodler’s Ottoman Azure, Bulletproof Black, and #41 Brown. I have some blue Lamy refills – just in case, but the only time I have used them has been on travel when I ran out of the good stuff. Note: I find that Montblancs seem to find their way into the hands of the pretentious…

I have converted my wife as well. Any ‘Thank You’ cards or notes she sends out are written with either her glass pen or a compact Scheaffer. Though far from a luddite, I hope that more and more people switch back to fountain pens as the amount of auctual writing we do every has dwindled, I feel it is important to add weight to the words we choose to scribble instead of type.

For like-minded brethren go HERE

And for Shelby Foote/Civil War highlight reel: