Staple Day 35

A MONTHLY UPDATE FROM INSIDE FIELD NOTES

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Hi, it’s Jim from Field Notes. This is our 35th 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: 75, Final Exam, Archives, Senses, In-Between, Archy, Stickers, Contest Contest.

But Who’s Counting?

Our Fall Release is at the printers and will drop in September. We’re working with an innovative artist who employs a unique process to produce thoughtful and evocative work. We’ve documented the creation with a new film and we can’t wait to introduce her, and the edition, to you.

Start a year-long subscription with our “Paletas” Edition or, if you have those already, pre-order a sub starting with Fall. Either way you’ll also receive the Winter Release, which will be perfect for year’s end, and you’ll be all set for our 75th Limited Edition in the Spring, including a special subscriber-only bonus, plus first access to events and related nonsense we’re cooking up for the anniversary.

Mind Your Margins

Dzul Fazly recently found an unopened Field Notes package from 2017 and had fun revisiting an old subscriber exclusive. Unfortunately he missed the contest deadline by over nine years.

Active year-long subscribers who received the “Utility” Edition were also sent a surprise shipment of Field Notes “Blue Exam Books.” We always wanted to make these and bring back that tense, nervous feeling from our school days, and we got the opportunity when we found out that our pals at The French Paper Company had manufactured a ton of these classic essay books. So we designed and commissioned a run of our own.

In addition to the Blue Books, we included a Final Exam assignment for the “Field Notes Correspondence School” and a return envelope. A slew of students sent us back completed essays. After we graded them all on originality, grammar, and especially penmanship, we awarded prizes to the top six students.

Senses Working Overtime

“Journaling is a deeply sensory experience. The Paletas collection somehow manages to hit almost all of them: the vivid, fruit-inspired colors that delight your eyes, the gloss-and-matte texture that begs to be touched, and the crisp sound of the pages as you turn them. The only sense still left out is taste, but that’s what an actual paleta in your other hand is for. Go grab yourself a pack and maybe a mango con chamoy while you’re at it.” –Thanks to Ida Torres for her post at Yanko Design.

Origin Story

Some Field Notes are “Field Notes-ier” than others, and our Winter 2023 edition, “Heartland,” might have been the “Field Notes-iest.” If you’ve been following us for a while, you know that Field Notes were originally inspired by notebooks that seed, tractor, and fence companies gave to American farmers as promotional material. We asked artist and screen-printer Dan McCarthy, to create a rural panorama across the covers of three books, each depicting a different time of day: sunrise, midday, and evening to capture the spirit of American family farm life.

The In-Between Time, is a quiet, contemplative film that Steve and Bryan shot while staying at a small farm in southern Wisconisin.

A Grasshopper, a Roach, and a Cat

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.

We had Portuguese superstitions so my mother couldn’t sweep the floors if it was dark, because it would bring the dead out.

Note: Frank Gaspar on growing up in Provincetown, Massachusetts, the long time home of poet Mary Oliver, whose life and work is detailed in the great new documentary, Saved by the Beauty of the World. I was tempted to quote the final line of Oliver’s “The Summer Day,” a poem that runs through the film but decided it would be much better if you experienced that in context.

Archy and Mehitabel, between the two of them, performed the inestimable service of enabling their boss to be profound without sounding self-important, or even self-conscious.

Note: From E.B. White’s introduction to The Lives and Times of Archy and Mehitabal. OK, stay with me here. Created by newspaperman Don Marquis in the early 1900s, Archy is a poet, and also a cockroach. He jumps from key to key on an old typewriter to compose beautiful, funny, and wise free verse. He can’t operate the shift key so it’s all lowercase. Mehitabel is an alley cat who claims to be the reincarnated spirit of Cleopatra. Really. To learn more, start here.

Nombres de frutas

Desktop Nerd writes, “I absolutely love the new Field Notes ‘Paletas’ Edition. It’s unique, colourful, and having everything printed in Spanish is part of the fun. Small problem: I don’t speak Spanish.”

“So I opened Illustrator and made myself a little visual translation system, inspired by the tiny stickers you see on fruit at the supermarket. I printed them and added one to each book so I can tell them apart without guessing. Problem solved.”

Note: We should have thought of that.

Contested

Sorry, I ran out of time to get a new Staple Day contest together. Have an idea for a future one? Drop us a line and if we use it, we’ll send you a big Box-o-Swag. Thanks, as always, for paying attention.

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^*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.