Penmanship, Tony Stewart, and Sharpie pens

NPR featured an interview with Kitty Burns, an author who writes about the decline of penmanship in our digital age. There is a big debate on the NPR blog about whether penmanship is important or not. Of course I'm of the mind that it is. I suppose it's just an aesthetic sort of thing. I want for my kids, grandkids, and great-grand-kids to have real pieces of paper that I wrote on someday when I'm long gone, and not just bytes and things I typed that ultimately come down to codes made up of 1's and 0's. So I suppose it's the history of it that appeals to me. The being able to hold on to something, to save something, that someone else has touched. Which is one reason I'm not into ecards. They seem like a lazy-person's way out. I mean, if you want to send me a card, that's great, and I'll keep it, and remember that you were thinking of me when you held it in your hand and wrote it out, and put a stamp on it, and put it in the mailbox. If you send me an ecard, it's like, "oh, they thought about me for the thirty seconds it took to put my email address into the 'to' field" and it doesn't quite mean as much. Also, I can't paste it into my journal and remember it forever.

So yes, I'm a big fan of penmanship, and refuse to accept that digital greetings mean as much, especially in personal settings, as ones written out by hand.
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When going to big-box stores for stationary I'm going to have to stick to Office Depot these days, since they are now sponsoring Tony Stewart in Nascar. While I liked Carl Edwards, and thought he was super-cute, I never felt guilty going to another store, nor did I fear that it might make him lose the race. But who knows what kind of weird energy vibes I might be sending Tony's way if I go into an Office Max? When he was sponsored by the Home Depot, my hubby never set foot in Lowes, fearing that it could bring harm to him. Now he gets to go to Lowes, and I'm stuck with Office Depot. It's ok, though. Out of all the big-box stores, Office Depot is my favorite, so I'm all right with it.
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Finally, I have started using a sharpie pen. I really love sharpie markers, but I have so little use for them, it's really quite wasteful for me to get them. However, Sharpie has introduced this great line of pens, available in all the big-box stores. They have a fine line, and do not bleed through paper, which is the main reason I don't use Sharpie markers, even the fine point ones. I just can't take the bleeding. But these pens - no bleeding. And yet they feel and write like a real Sharpie - just with a smaller tip. They come in a two-pack of either black or blue.

There is a great review on them already, on the Pen Addict website, and they had a great conversation going on over the merits of the pen. The only thing I would add that they don't, is that the pen itself is very thin. I prefer a bit more to hold on to when writing. It makes my own lines steadier, and is more comfortable to me. So I won't be using this as my everyday pen simply because it's not very comfortable for me.