What This Section Is All About
Thoughts that lead to my using this implement are sometimes significant, sometimes not. They are all here. If I think they are significant, I will write about them. If not, I'll leave them for you to decide if they are significant to you. If so, write about them and share them here.
It has been estimated that the average human brain processes (internally and eternally) about 25,000 "thoughts" every day. Most of them (a vast majority) go away unprocessed. Some of them "stick".
I am a person who has, over my life, had many and varied interests; things that begin as thoughts in my brain. Sometimes those interests are generated in very strange places. Perhaps, like me, this happens to you. By illustrating the thoughts that uncap my fountain pen, you may discover (to your shock, surprise and/or horror) that the same thing happens to you. I once read a recipe for making a loaf of simple white bread, and began a multi-weekly journey into making bread in my kitchen. More than a new passion, this was a re-visit to my youth, when making white bread was a weekly activity for me and my paternal grandmother. Has that ever happened to you? Did you ever choose to write about it?
One of the greatest features of hand writing with a fountain pen is the creation of new thoughts in your brain. But, along with that is the purposeful decision to use both.
That is what this page is all about.
I hope you will join me on this incidental, irregular foray into my hand writing. I hope these writings will spur your brain, and your imagination to the point that you will connect your brain with your fountain pen, and write down those uncapped thoughts. I hope you will share them with my readers here. It could grow...a lot. Guess why? Because,
Writing is FUN!
Bud
"What You Can Do For Your Country."
While perhaps difficult to remember, this phrase is part of a quotation by President John F. Kennedy when he used it in a speech to the American people, and to the world. I suppose that is a kind of a "big" deal. That is NOT what makes it a big deal to me.
What should be known, and remembered is, for me, two things:
1. The quotation he used came from an essay written in 1940 as an entry into a nation-wide contest, sponsored by the Algernon Sidney Sullivan Committee. The topic for this particular essay contest was offered to Journalism majors across the USA: "What Democracy Means To Me".
In 1940, and especially in the USA, that truly WAS a very big deal, indeed. When one considers the state of the world in 1940, and the state of political life in the USA at the time, this topical essay challenge stood to (potentially) either begin, or continue (depending on where you stood on the matter) a firestorm of journalistic endeavor around our nation, in our news media, on college campuses, through political campaigns, and in many American homes. There can be no doubt that most citizens of college age in 1940 had relatives who could tell personal stories about "The Great War" (World War I). Inagine. Let your brain see life in your family as it may have been in 1940.
Look at the topic offered to Journalism majors at Colleges and Universities. for some, it would be like a moth to a flame. For others, it would clearly have been a topic to stay as far away from as possible. I wonder what American Japanese Journalism majors thought about it, for instance. How wierd is that?
Regardless of these thoughts, there is a thought which lingers in my mind still at this moment. It definitely requires the use of my fountain pen.
The contest had a winner. One.
The concluding paragraph of the winning essay said:
"Therefore democracy to me does not mean asking what your country can do for you, but rather asking what you can do for your country. This is what democracy means to me."
2. That winning essay was written by my mother.
The person who, the Christmas just before my 8th birthday would give me the only Christmas present I would receive that year, a Journal and a fountain pen that had belonged to my Grandfather. A journey that continues to this very moment. I am currently hand writing an essay to be published that uses this quote as its foundation.
I'll let you know how it goes.