Staple Day 34

A MONTHLY UPDATE FROM INSIDE FIELD NOTES

Sign up for The List to receive Staple Day* mailings first, including occasional one-day-only offers, right to your inbox every month.

Hi, it’s Jim from Field Notes. This is our 34th 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: Delish, Jep, Purloined, Inspo, Subs, One Job, Incidents, Accident, Flows, F Dox.

The Sweet Life

Thanks to everyone who visited HQ last week for our Summer Launch Party, especially to our friends from Paletaría Los Magos, who brought frozen treats and elotes for all. Learn more about them in the short documentary for our latest limited edition, The “Paletas” Edition.

The bright, textured “flavors” in the new release new have been a big hit, and the numbered and embossed press proofs are selling quickly too. Not since 2013’s “Drink Local” Edition has the production of a quarterly release involved so much ice-cold deliciousness. And it couldn’t have come at a better time, considering the weather in Chicago lately.

I’ll Take Field Notes for $400 Ken

If you’re ever curious to know which of your relatives watch new Jeopardy! episodes as they debut on weekday afternoons, just have your brand name show up as the title of a category and watch your inbox and messages. (Thanks fam!) Alas, the only clue that was even remotely related to us was the answer to this local clue, “Play ball! It was built in 1914 on the site of a former seminary on Chicago’s North Side.”

Related: Matt Wheeler writes, “You may be interested to know that Field Notes played a role in my preparation for being on, and winning on, America’s Favorite Quiz Show.”

“In the third stage of auditioning for Jeopardy!, we were asked to bring a stand-in signaling device. For me, the choice was easy. I regularly carry one of my many black Field Notes Clic Pens. So, not only in that audition, but also in many practice rounds of the game at home, Field Notes was with me, helping me hone my buzzer timing.”

“It worked, too. If you check Season 42, episodes 199 and 200, you can see how I did. It turns out that the classic Clic Pen is useful beyond being a reliable everyday writing implement!”

Pilferage

Michael B. Dougherty’s request, “If I ask you to put a pen in your pocket just take it and act cool.”

Future Forward

A quick reminder that year-long subscribers are receiving all three 3-packs of The “Paletas” Edition. Our Fall Limited Edition is heading to press shortly and we shot the film for it in Michigan a couple weeks ago. We have two concepts for Winter and Spring but we’re not quite sure which one is which.

Then there will be Summer.
Our 75th Limited Edition.
And Subscriber Bonus.
Oh Man.

Subscribers are the very heart of Field Notes. Your faith inspires us to be ambitious and take chances with what we make next. Just wait, you’ll see. Start a new subscription or renew a current one.

Things Got a Little Out of Hand

“And each of them, I’ll associate with memories of the month I spent using them. It’s a neat and for me unexpected combination of being pretty enough to enjoy using them, but not so precious that I don’t want to sully them. The size becomes a feature, too — instead of being A Big Book of Everything, the limited life span of a memo book means it’ll forever be associated with a very specific time.”

Chuck Jordan on moving to analog note taking and, lucky for us, adopting Field Notes as his primary tool. I love the idea of a particular design serving as a memory token to a particular time. Similarly I’ve occasionally used a single Memo Book for a specific travel destination, writing the place and dates on the cover and chucking it into a box when returning home. One book, one trip. It seems like the ideal job for a single-use Memo Book. I went back to one of those for today’s first Commonplace entry.

Accidental

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 entries.

7/26: Henry James around the corner from Seamus at NPG.

Note: From a 2024 trip to London. Noting two portraits, like their subjects, completely different in manner and style and each, just exactly perfect. Henry James by John Singer Sargent and Seamus Heaney by Tai-Shan Schierenberg.

But the polished ring of Polish flint...
Is the stone hurt? You asked, kissing
My elbow. Oh no, it is of a marvelous
Hardness. It is used to tipping arrows,
It can take the falling, falling.
The weight of two people
And a bicycle built for two.

Note: From a lovely new poem by Patricia Lockwood in Poetry Magazine. I’ve read it multiple times since it appeared and it really sings when read out loud. Her new collection, Agate Head/Stone Soup, will be published by Penguin this fall. Also, see her whip-smart, and very funny diary entry in the latest London Review of Books.

Rivers Run Through It

Last month we asked folks to take a photo of a Field Notes Note Book near a river, stream, or creek and tell us about the location. We got a flood of entries and we’ve just published the twelve winners on our site this morning and will send them each an “Is a River Alive?” 3-Pack. Watch for a new contest next month.

In Witness Whereof

If you’re a High School Civics Teacher, Scout Troop Leader, Chief Justice, or the Exalted Ruler of an Elks Club Lodge and you’d like to provide your group with copies of The Founding Documents, our pocket reference of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, you can save 25% on packs of ten from Field Notes Brand Books. Need a lot more? Drop us a line and we can, um, amend the price.

Thanks for reading and all the feedback too.

^*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.