Please allow us to insert a well-worn wingtip into your front door and we’ll tell you all about our 16th limited-edition FIELD NOTES COLORS release. The TRAVELING SALESMAN EDITION is an old-fashioned ledger book with modern practicality in celebration of the door-to-door salesmen who moved product and kept the American economy humming throughout the last century.

Please take a look at the new release here. Individual 3packs are sold out but you can still get the TRAVELING SALESMAN EDITION by starting a COLORS subscription, then you’ll be all set for Winter, Spring and Summer too.

Door-to-Door, a FIELD NOTES Podcast!

When we set out to find an expert on the subject of traveling salesmen, we were surprised to find one who lives just up the road from us here in Chicago. Ron Solberg is the author of the highly recommended, foremost guide, The Whizbangs of Oohs and Aahs, which offers up hundreds of stories, anecdotes, quotes, thumbnail biographies, and even a play he wrote, based on a salesman’s diary found in the Newberry Library archives.

The son of a Fuller Brush Man, Solberg worked in traveling sales for years, then moved on to marketing and advertising. These days, he’s a social studies and history teacher. Ron very graciously lent us a good deal of his time and expertise, and shared many stories about the history of traveling sales and the characters therein.

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Our latest offering, the “National Crop” Edition, returns to FIELD NOTES’ agricultural roots with six notebooks in a custom-made box with a big poster and a embroidered patch for your overalls. It’s available by the box, while they last, or as part of a FIELD NOTES COLORS subscription.

You’ll also want to watch our new film “FROM SEED” featuring Aaron Draplin cheerfully ramblin’ on about his huge collection of vintage notebooks that inspired FIELD NOTES.

If all that isn’t enough to get you way-damn-excited about pocket notebooks, we finally got serious and posted a huge-ass gallery featuring more than 300 books from Aaron’s collection.

Apologies if we’re belaboring the point, but “National Crop” sales are going strong, and when they’re gone, they’re gone, stock up while you can!

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Thanks to our favorite airline for featuring us in their in-flght magazine this month. You can also win one of 20 “National Crop” Edition box sets from Southwest too. Here’s how to enter. And thanks to Cameron Brain of XYDO for being quick with the camera while waiting at Gate 29.

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April 25, 2012

Howdy, Field Notes Crew,

It started innocuously enough; I ordered my first 3-pack and knew I’d be getting something awesome, and you didn’t disappoint; I was in love. Should I go all in for the Colors subscription? Hell yes, so I signed up for the National Crop Edition.

But nooo, you couldn’t just stop with taking my money; now you gotta start taking my spare time as well.

See, I started collecting past editions, and I finally got my hands on some “Fire Spotters.” Aww, yeah. Your lovely page about the Fire Spotter Edition was a thing of beauty. And damn you, there were LINKS on that page. People click those links, y’know. So I learned about fire spotters, and the history of the towers. I read Young Men and Fire, and read the instruction manual for the Osborne Fire Finder. The spark caught hold… and now I’ve signed up to be a volunteer fire spotter in Angeles National Forest this summer. Orientation starts next week, and I couldn’t be more excited. When my friends ask me how the hell I came up with this crazy idea, I just say, “See, there are these incredible notebooks…”

Thanks for the adventures I haven’t even had yet. Love you guys.

Lee Coleman
San Gabriel, CA

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We’ve got (at least) two former Boy Scouts and two current motorscooterists working here at the Midwest HQ, so it was only a matter of time before we put out a FIELD NOTES patch. The new (and limited) “Crop Edition” (and its accompanying triangular embroidered emblem) is out in the wild, and we’re starting to see some action on Flickr. We’re especially excited to see where the patches are going. Get sewing, load your Argus C3 with some Verichrome, and post your photos in the FIELD NOTES in Action Flickr pool or email ‘em to crew(at)fieldnotesbrand(dot)com. We’ll choose a couple favorites and send out care packages.

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FIELD NOTES COLORS seasonal 3-Packs are sold in limited quantities and they have a tendency to sell out almost immediately after they’re announced on our email list (sign up at the top of the left column!). With that in mind, we’ve introduced a subscription model, giving those who want first crack at each of our limited-edition releases (and who didn’t want to camp out in front of a browser, hitting refresh) a simple method to guarantee delivery of a year’s worth of new COLORS as they’re released. Check this quick film on recent seasonal editions.

Start your COLORS subscription right now with the just-announced “National Crop Edition” Box Sets and you’ll be all set.

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Angela of Vancouver just snagged the very last COLORS subscription starting with our Winter release, The Northerly Edition. We’re deep into production of the Spring edition and can say it is totally different than anything we’ve ever done before. If you’d like to make sure you get yours when it’s released (subscribers to our mail list will, as always, get first crack) you can start a COLORS subscription sight unseen right now.

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Information about the Fire Tower featured in our material relating to our Fall 2011 limited release, The Fire Spotter Edition.

Located in Oconto County, Wisconsin in the Chequamego-Nicolet National Forest, just two miles from the community of Mountain (pop. 860) and just off Forest Road 2106, the Mountain Fire Lookout Tower rises 93 feet, well above a tree line crowded with pines, oak, and maples. The Model LS-40 tower was built in Chicago in 1932 by the Aermotor Company, and was erected by the Wisconsin Conservation Commission, first several miles east-southeast in far more isolated location reachable only by foot trail, and then disassembled by the CCC and moved closer to service roads in 1935.

In use for nearly forty years, from May through September of each year a trained fire spotter would live at the site, spending every daylight hour up in the cab keeping watch for smoke, reporting possible fires via phone to a central Northern Wisconsin fire suppression station. At one time rich with thick forests, which in turn created a massive lumber industry, the area was prone to raging fires like the 1871 Great Peshtigo Fire which resulted in thousands of deaths, twelve completely decimated towns, and millions of scorched acres. Incidents such as these created a dire need for towers like the Mountain Fire Lookout.

Originally surrounded by small living quarters, a latrine, and storage sheds, the tower itself is now all that is left on the site. The last fire called occurred on April 25th, 1970, and it is one of only 2 remaining towers from the original 19 that were built in the immediate area. After its decommission, it served briefly as a radio antenna/relay for local ambulance and law enforcement services. Between 1993 and 1994 the site was rehabilitated and converted into a public site. The Mountain Fire Lookout Tower was entered into the National Register of Historic Places in 2008.

Further Reading/Information:
Mountain Fire Lookout Tower, Nat’l Register of Historic Places (pdf)
Norman Maclean’s incomparable Young Men and Fire
Philip Connors’ Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout
Lookout Info from the History of Architecture of the USDA Forest Service
The Forest Service Lookout Cookbook
Collection of Former Fire Lookout Sites
Fire Tower Blueprints
General National Resource
Adopt a Lookout
How To Use of the Osborne Fire Finder

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3-Packs of our Winter Limited Release, The Northerly Edition, are all sold out. Thanks everyone. You can still get these snowy white and silver beauties as a part of a COLORS Subscription. Sign up now and you’ll get “Northerlies” right away and you’ll also get our next three seasonal editions as they are released. Trust us, you are going to want Spring. Oh yes you are. And Summer. Oh boy, if we can pull off what we have planned…

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We’ve pushed up the release date of the thirteenth in our series of quarterly, limited editions of our memo books in seasonal colors and styles by a couple of weeks. We were caught a bit off guard when our fall release sold out so quickly and we wanted to make sure there would be plenty of time for you to give these new ones as holiday gifts. The winter release is “The Northerly Edition” and it’s unlike any version we’ve made so far and it’s available to order right now in 3-packs and as part of a COLORS subscription.

Thanks to James White of Signalnoise for the lovely photo above. BTW: James is a bit of a collector.

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