Moleskine 2006 datebook review

[Welcome, Moleskinerie readers.]


I gather that the 2006 Moleskine datebooks are not that widely available yet. Here are my first (and happy) impressions.

I bought the week-on-two-pages pocket datebook, which is a little thinner than the standard pocket notebooks. Like every Moleskine I've bought, it's beautifully made. The rounded corners and the slight bumps on the back cover from the glued-in ends of the elastic give the book a satisfying feel--more like, say, a leather briefcase than a memo pad.

Many pages precede the datebook pages themselves: an i.d. page ("In case of loss..."); a title page; a personal data page; calendars for 2006 and 2007 (one line per day); two pages for travel planning; a map of time zones; and pages listing international holidays, average temperatures, city-to-city distances, international calling codes, measures and conversions, and clothing sizes. Finally, there's a 5-inch/13-centimeter ruler printed along a page edge. At the back of the book, a detachable address book tucks into the familiar Moleskine pocket. There's also the folded page with the Moleskine story. No writing stickers though.

What makes this datebook useful to me is the switch Moleskine has made away from thin columns and back to lined pages. (The columns kept me from buying a Moleskine datebook for 2005.) Having nine lines to write on (eight for Wednesday and the weekend) allows for to-do lists and notes, not simply notations of events. I particularly appreciate the absence of printed hours, which always make me feel that I'm not using a datebook as I'm supposed to be using it.

I gave the other Moleskine datebooks a careful look--the pocket and large day-per-page books seem to have the same layout as for 2005, with hours running down the edge of the page (I didn't own one of those, so I'm going from glances here and there at the 2005 books--I may have missed some small changes). These books are simply too bulky for my taste, but anyone whose days are heavy with appointments should consider them.

I was surprised to see that the layout of the large week-on-two-pages datebook keeps to thin columns across the page, which I'm guessing might lead to some confusion and disappointment. It seems too easy for someone to assume that the large and pocket versions have the same format. So look carefully, and if you don't want to be fenced in, stay away from the large week-on-two-pages datebook.

Of all the datebooks I've owned, this Moleskine is the one that most delights me. Its many features appeal to my Swiss-Army-knife gene; its excellent paper takes fountain-pen ink well; and its small size makes it more useful to me than larger books (like Quo Vadis' Scholar). And unlike my Palm 515, it has no battery in need of endless recalibration.

"Big"

From an interview with James W. Keyes, chief executive of 7-Eleven, marking the return of 7-Eleven to Manhattan:

Q: Aside from the Slurpee, several of 7-Eleven's label products emphasize their size. There's Big Gulp, Big Eats Deli items, Big Eats Bakery and Big Bite grill items. Is big what you think Americans want?

A: Our definition of big means more quality and popularity. If you will, it's kind of an attention-getter, a brand name that we started using in the late 1960's, the early 70's and it stuck, so it's a trademark. But, it's definitely not intended to portray, in all cases, large.

So the 44 oz. Super Big Gulp is about quality and popularity, not more sugar or caffeine (or just more soda). Now I understand.

Auden, London

The novelist Ian McEwan, writing in the New York Times:

In Auden's famous poem, "Musée des Beaux Arts," the tragedy of Icarus falling from the sky is accompanied by life simply refusing to be disrupted. A plowman goes about his work, a ship "sailed calmly on," dogs keep on with "their doggy life."

In London yesterday, where crowds fumbling with mobile phones tried to find unimpeded ways across the city, there was much evidence of the truth of Auden's insight. While rescue workers searched for survivors and the dead in the smoke-filled blackness below, at pavement level men were loading vans, a woman sold umbrellas in her usual patch, the lunchtime sandwich makers were hard at work.

It is unlikely that London will claim to have been transformed in an instant, to have lost its innocence in the course of a morning. It is hard to knock a huge city like this off its course. It has survived many attacks in the past.

But once we have counted up our dead, and the numbness turns to anger and grief, we will see that our lives here will be difficult. We have been savagely woken from a pleasant dream.

You can read the complete piece by clicking here.

Moleskine 2006

A small delight in a crazy world: the 2006 Moleskine datebooks are now available. July is the month when next year's calendars begin appearing in stores (as stationery obsessives already know), and I've been waiting for the new Moleskines to show. Talk about obsessive: I signed up for e-mail notification from MoleskineUS. The e-mail hasn't arrived, and the new books aren't yet listed on the MoleskineUS site, but they are available at Borders in Champaign, Illinois, and who knows where else.

London

From a statement by Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London:

This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at Presidents or Prime Ministers. It was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old. It was an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for class, for religion, or whatever.

That isn't an ideology, it isn't even a perverted faith--it is just an indiscriminate attempt at mass murder and we know what the objective is. They seek to divide Londoners. They seek to turn Londoners against each other. I said yesterday to the International Olympic Committee, that the city of London is the greatest in the world, because everybody lives side by side in harmony. Londoners will not be divided by this cowardly attack. They will stand together in solidarity alongside those who have been injured and those who have been bereaved and that is why I’m proud to be the mayor of that city.

Finally, I wish to speak directly to those who came to London today to take life.

I know that you personally do not fear giving up your own life in order to take others--that is why you are so dangerous. But I know you fear that you may fail in your long-term objective to destroy our free society and I can show you why you will fail.

In the days that follow look at our airports, look at our sea ports and look at our railway stations and, even after your cowardly attack, you will see that people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world will arrive in London to become Londoners and to fulfil their dreams and achieve their potential.

They choose to come to London, as so many have come before because they come to be free, they come to live the life they choose, they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live. They don’t want that and nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail.

You can read the entire statement by clicking here.

"Rip-Off"

From "Rip-Off," an essay by "Shari Wilson," a pseudonymous adjunct prof:

According to the students, the less they were taught, the better. But I knew better. And I had been on the receiving end of some of these half-taught students. One of my colleagues at a large community college in California had confessed that he passed any student who would sit through his course. With no work to grade them, he simply gave them all C’s. He was not the only one, I realized.

When I had struggled with a student whose grammar was shockingly poor and who could not form a decent paragraph or essay, I sometimes wondered if they had simply tested well on the eligibility exam or if an unwitting colleague had passed them on to me.

And what did the students get out of this? Yes, their semester was easier. Yes, they had less homework. Yes, they could spend more time on sports. But at what cost? Their education was being whittled away by instructors who could not or would not insist on the curriculum.

You can read the essay, from Inside Higher Ed, by clicking here.

Brueghel painting

3808 students: Here's a link to a reproduction of Brueghel's (or Bruegel's) Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. Click on the Image Viewer below the thumbnail for a dazzling full-sized image.

Louis Armstrong's advice

Louis Armstrong gave his birthday as July 4, 1900. As we now know, he was born on August 4, 1901. It doesn't matter. If anyone should have been born on July 4, it was Louis Armstrong. Here's some of his advice for younger generations:

My belief and satisfaction is that, as long as a person breathes, they still have a chance to exercise the talents they were born with. I speak of something which I know about and have been doing all of my life, and that's Music. And now that I am an elderly man I still feel the same about music and its creations. And at the age of "sixty-nine" I really don't feel that I am on my way out at all. Of course a person may do a little less -- but the foundation will always be there. . . .

On my sixty-ninth birthday, all of the kids in Corona [Queens, New York] where I live came in front of my house and wished me a Happy Birthday, which thrilled ol Satch. Saying carry on until you're a hundred years old. I have seen three generations come up in the block where I live. Many kids grew up, married, and brought their children to visit my wife Lucille and I. And those kids grew up -- Satchmo fans. Just want to say that music has no age. Most of your great composers -- musicians -- are elderly people, way up there in age -- they will live forever. There's no such thing as on the way out. As long as you are still doing something interesting and good. You are in business as long as you are breathing. "Yeah."

From "Goodbye to All of You," published in Esquire (December 1969), a feature in which twenty-five famous old people offered their advice to younger generations. Reprinted in Louis Armstrong in His Own Words, ed. Thomas Brothers (Oxford University Press, 1999).

"Weddings and Celebrations"

The "Weddings and Celebrations" section of the Sunday New York Times makes for interesting reading. The details of the ceremonies sometimes read like the work of wealthy surrealists:

The bridegroom, a 33-year-old hip-hop D.J. in New York, ran in slow-mo down the aisle to the "Rocky" theme. (Cuff links that were golden impressions of Ms. Ruderman's [the bride's] fingerprints fastened his wedding shirt.)

The bride, 34, a designer and host of "Trading Spaces: Boys vs. Girls" on NBC, made her entrance standing at the bow of the historic fireboat John J. Harvey, which spouted water like a mechanical whale. A band of red fabric, the length of two city blocks, was unfurled to wrap the couple and all 200 guests like a construction by Christo and Jeanne-Claude.

You can read the rest of the story here.

P.S. 131

Not long after writing about P.S. 131 last night, I saw my old school on television, a really wonderful surprise. I happened to have the television on while waiting my turn to be online. (Wireless network? Bah. We take turns.) WGN was showing Home Delivery, a show I'd never seen. Very strange--these four demi-gods show up at people's houses and apartments to help solve problems. John was helping Antasia, a young girl with problem hair.

And suddenly, there's 44th Street, Boro Park, Brooklyn, with the fence of the schoolyard of P.S. 131, and the elevated train tracks over New Utrecht Avenue and Fort Hamilton Parkway in the background. A half-dozen or so other shots of Antasia outside her school confirmed that it was indeed P.S. 131.

There's real consolation in finding that the places of one's past are still there, and more or less the same. I was lucky to have that consolation when I visited P.S. 131 in 1987, on a schoolday, with a tour of the school from a member of the safety patrol, and in 1998, on a Saturday, when I happened to find the school's custodian just finishing his morning's work. (He turned out to be the son of Jimmy, the custodian when I was a student, as I found out when I described Jimmy to the current custodian and asked if he had known him.) Most of the details of the school building were still there when I visited--the classrooms had been modernized, the old desks and the globe lights removed, but the tiny water fountains outside the kindergarten classrooms were still there (yes, I took a drink), as were the strangely industrial staircases, the thick wire gratings protecting the hallway radiators, the beautiful Board of Education doorknobs, and the cool, smelly basement, where everyone assembled on the first day of school. Walking down the steps to the gym or into the auditorium or past "the office," I felt like my K-6 self.

The P.S. 131 fence played a large part in my childhood--one had to be able to climb it to get into the schoolyard to play ball. So at some early age, I learned. The fence--maybe eight feet high, made of bars six or eight inches apart--could be climbed only at one corner, where it angled in close to a ledge in the schoolyard. So by extending a leg through the fence, it was possible to pull up via the ledge and then climb over. It was literally a matter of climbing through the fence so as to climb over the fence.

My teachers, even the youngest ones, were all gone by 1987 (many to death, as I've discovered by checking the Social Security Death Index.) Nowadays (or at least in 1998), the schoolyard gate is left unlocked. But like the Native American canoe in the Museum of Natural History (so beloved by Holden Caulfield), the fence is still there, same as it ever was.

Here's a photo of the older part of P.S. 131, though it doesn't include the schoolyard.

Related posts
P.S. 131, 44th Street, Brooklyn (With photos of the school)
Some have gone and some remain (With a photo of the fence)

P.S. 131 class photographs
1962–1963 1963–1964 1964–1965 1965–1966 1966–1967