Staple Day 26

A MONTHLY UPDATE FROM INSIDE FIELD NOTES

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Hi, it’s Jim from Field Notes. This is our 26th monthly newsletter containing a variety of stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere else. Please respond to this email with comments, questions, or suggestions. I’d love to hear from you. You can find recent Staple Days here.

TLDR Version: Deadline for Murder, Disarray, A Deal, Forensic Design, Writing for Home, Leads & Lists, Frank and Rembrandt and Jeff, Market at 401 North Racine.

Cracking the Case

A quick reminder to all the detectives out there working to solve the murder mystery contained in the Halloween memo books we gave away with every purchase made on Wednesday, October the 22nd. The deadline to submit your entry for a chance to win one of ten year-long subscriptions is Monday (11/17). While hundreds of folks have already entered, you still have a pretty good chance to win. Sandy and The Mystery League, who created the puzzle, don’t mess around, and as of this morning less than ten-percent of entries submitted have correctly identified the murderer and weapon. So, the game is still afoot.

HQ is a Mess

Carts of equipment are everywhere. Power tools and paint cans too. Furniture and rugs have been moved to inconvenient places and stacks of lumber are leaning against random walls. Nope. We’re not remodeling. We’re getting ready to spend way too much time and energy to produce a relatively small, but ambitious, film. You can see if we were successful next week, on November 20th, when we roll out our 69th Quarterly Limited Edition for the Winter of 2025. Oh, and there will be a podcast too.

At Once Enticing, Gratifying, and Satisfactory

“I always say ‘Vintage’ and ‘Modern’ are both great, but ‘Retro’ is usually a disappointing compromise. We try not to get nostalgic so much as learn from the past to make a useful, attractive, sort-of-hopefully-timeless product.”

Becca Quon chatted with Field Notes designer Bryan Bedell for the Northern Illinois University Council on Library and Information Resources about where we find inspiration and reference material when designing and researching our Quarterly Limited Editions, and specifically, how CLIR helped us create one our all-time favorites, the “Dime Novel” Edition in 2017. This discussion is particularly relevant to the production of our 2025 Winter Edition.

Focus on What’s Important

Pretty much every one of our products includes this line. “Tell us how you use your Field Notes. Please submit a scan or photo, accompanied by a brief description to [email protected].” We love getting these mails. Thanks to Braden for this one.

“I have a couple notebooks in which I’m currently writing down an entry each day when I think about my wife and son. I’m deployed and they are back home, on a completely different time zone, and we don’t get to talk much. So this helps me when I’m really missing them, I jot down my thoughts and keep my mind focused as much as possible. I love your products, and these are going to be very special ones. I have one for my son and one for my wife that I’m going to give to them once I get back home so they can read all my entries.”

All the Groceries that are Fit to Print

“Even if you’re not a reporter, the narrow width of the Field Notes Front Page Reporter’s Notebook is ideal for making lists or taking short notes.” Michael Hession, NYT/Wirecutter.

For the fifth year running, our Front Page has been named to The New York Times Wirecutter list of The Best Notebooks of 2025. While lots of folks in the press swear by our reinvented Reporter’s Notebooks we have noticed another very popular way they are being put to use. The tall, ruled, and easy-to-tear-out pages make them perfect for grocery lists. So, whether you’re chasing down leads on a big story or want to make sure you don’t forget the avocados, leave one on the kitchen counter.

One Point Perspective

As noted in previous Staple Days, I’m keeping a commonplace book to record quotes that resonate with the present me, so that the future me knows where he’s been. Here are a couple recent entries.

I look | at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world | except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick | which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together for the first time

Note: I rediscovered Frank O’Hara’s lovely poem “Having a Coke with You” and saw Rembrandt’s Polish Rider at the Frick Museum a few weekends ago in NYC. In person, the painting is overwhelming, and you can walk a few steps to the right and find yourself standing in front of Rembrandt’s self portrait which was made just three years later. A memorable afternoon.

I get so far behind I forget I’m following
That’s the kind of sad I wallow in
I’m the last in line and the line’s moving fast
No one stands a chance getting caught up in the past

Note: Jeff Tweedy’s Twilight Override is in heavy rotation around my household. Here’s John Pareles on the record for the Times.

Holiday Market

Saturday, December 13th we’ll be hosting our annual Holiday Market at HQ in Chicago. (We should have the current mess cleaned by then.) We’ve invited a bunch of friends who make cool stuff to set up shop and we’ll have coffee, snacks and some other surprises too. It’s one day only this year, watch your mail for details.

Talk to you next week,

^*Coined a long time ago in the Field Nuts Facebook group, “Staple Day” is traditionally observed when a writer reaches the exact middle of a Field Notes Memo Book, revealing the metal fasteners which bind the cover and the interior pages together.