Staple Day 30

A MONTHLY UPDATE FROM INSIDE FIELD NOTES

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Hi, it’s Jim from Field Notes. This is our 30th 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.

Short Version: Stationery, Spring, Deal, Looking Ahead, I Do, Pixel Portaits, Recognition, Rooster, Contest.

In Like a Lion

This Saturday and Sunday we’ll be at the 2nd Annual Chicago Stationery Festival and we made a special collectible set for attendees. If you’re in the city for the fest, why not come and see us at HQ tomorrow or Friday (3/12 & 13) from 9-5? We’ll break out some fun stuff from The Archives, you’ll get a special Guest Pass Memo Book with any purchase and, of course, we’ll offer our full line of products, plus plenty of nerdy printing and design conversations.

Almost Sprung

We shot the film to accompany our Spring Limited Edition on location the day before yesterday and absolutely lucked out with a sunny, 70 degree early March day. Barring something unforseen, we’ll drop this Edition a week from today (3/18) and host a Launch Party Happy Hour at HQ in Chicago the following evening. We’d love to see you.

The Road Goes Ever On

Due to an unusual burst of pre-planning we have both our Summer and Fall Editions already in the works. The Summer release will be sweet, and unlike any Quarterly Edition that has come before it. The Fall concept came out of a chance encounter with an artist who works with unusual materials, a rich imagination, and also has a Chicago connection. For what it’s worth, we talked about a lot things in our initial meeting, including this poem. Winter is anybody’s guess at this point.

Consider joining the thousands of people who have signed up for a year-long subscription to our Quarterly Limited Editions. You’ll be in time for our Spring release and along with lots of other benefits, your first shipment will come in our 2026 Subscriber Box, created by the one and only Jen Farrell of Starshaped Press.

Ring Boxing

I’ve mentioned before that we get invited to dozens of weddings each year. Couples use our note books to record their vows, as gifts for the bridal party, and even to indicate seating assignments. And they frequently send us an invite to the ceremony. We have a big bulletin board filled with these at HQ. We have not RSVP’d to a bride and groom yet but nothing makes us happier than to be included in their thoughts and plans. Here’s a note we recently received from Cameron.

“I’ve been carrying around one of your notebooks in my pocket for the last six years. It’s mostly filled with reminders, to-do lists, and miscellaneous notes. In August of 2024, I decided to propose to my girlfriend on a hike in Door County, Wisconsin.”

“I was sitting at my desk contemplating how I was going to fit the ring box in my pocket without her noticing it on our hike until it dawned on me. After modifying a new note book with a Sharpie, a center hole punch and a twist tie: I had a new ring box that was not only discrete, but felt special to me. We’re getting married in August.

Note: Congratulations to Taylor and Cameron. Julia and Carson, thanks for inviting us. And to Oliver and Alyssa, we trust everything went great, under a new moon, at Death Valley National Park.

Warning: Graphic Content

Back in the early years of Field Notes I started making little pixel-art versions of each of our limited editions. I’d add them quarterly to a file that served as a fun, visual reference. I’m not sure why I stopped but the last one I made was for The “Shenandoah” Edition in 2015. Anyhow, I stumbled on the file a little while ago and posted it to the HQ Slack and Casey got it up to date. You can download it here.

The Heart of the Matter

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.

As if all there were, were fireflies
And from them you could infer the meadow

Note: From “Dark Matter” by astrophysicist Rebecca Elson. Her collected poems can be found in A Responsibilty to Awe. I’m grateful to have been introduced to her work via Robert Macfarlane’s book Underland which has just been adapted into a new film. We’ve collaborated with Robert and artist Stanley Donwood on both the “Underland” and “Is a River Alive?” Editions.

There’s only one subject for fiction or poetry or even a joke: how it is. In all the arts, the payoff is always the same: recognition. If it works, you say that’s real, that’s truth, that’s life, that’s the way things are. “There it is.”

Note: From a 1985 interview with Robert Stone. I recently revisited his A Flag for Sunrise, which I read first in college. It holds up, and in some ways seems more true to the world today than it was in 1980s. Also, his memoir of the 1960’s, Prime Green, is great.

Once More, Into the Brackets

Our special “Rooster” Book, that we make every year as part of our Sponsorship of the Tournamant of Books, sold out very quickly. Thanks for that. The first round of the 22nd ToB is in full swing right now. Jump in.

Read, Write, and Shoot

This month’s contest is inspired by the list on the inside back cover of our Field Notes Brand Books reissue of The Maltese Falcon. To enter, just send a mail to [email protected] containing a photo of a book you are reading and a Field Notes you are using, or any interesting combination of the two items.

For example: “Mile Marker” and On the Road by Jack Kerouac, “Great Lakes” and The Gales of November by John Bacon, or “Three Missions” and The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe. We’ll pick ten winners and send them each a long-sold-out Quarterly Edition from the Archives. Enter by Friday March 27th, 2026.

Thanks for reading. Hope to see you this weekend, or at our Spring Launch Party, or in a future Staple Day.

^*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.