Oh, Oh — Here Come The Former Beaux!

What do you do when the boys from your past show up?

Facebook makes it easy.

So does Google.

So I’m now back in touch with three men I was crazy about in my early 20s, each of whom found me. They all live far away and one is happily married — I’ve been with my sweetie for eleven years.

Much has been made of the midlife nostalgia that prompts us to want to re-connect with the men and women who once made us swoon and indulge — certainly in my case — in some interesting behaviors.

One of the men, now a stolid, solid educator, was a hopelessly romantic redhead when we met, a mass of walking muscle training, he hoped, for the Olympics as a rower. I’d never seen anyone eat so much or so often!

Nor had any man, before or since, sent me a bouquet of flowers so enormous that I couldn’t see the deliveryman’s head. “I’m not dead!” I said, when I saw the mass of red roses. What an astonishing, lovely gesture from a fellow college student. I always wondered what had happened to him and was happy to hear how nicely his life has turned out since then.

Another man is a doctor, never married.

The third is a man I lived with in my 20s, who proposed, (and I refused), then went on to date and marry a woman working for the same company, where we all saw one another every day.  Not fun! I would overhear her in the cafeteria gloating about their upcoming wedding. Even if I didn’t want to marry X, we had still spent several tumultuous years together.

Now, hard to believe but I’m fine with it, we’ve become Facebook friends after he reached out to me. He’s divorced, still good friends with his ex, his kids now adults. We live in different countries, so I have little concern this is a flame being re-lit, more of a mid-life reassurance that we’re not forgotten, that our shared memories still carry some currency.

I have no intention of zipping off into the sunset with them or exchanging steamy, longing emails.

But I am glad to reconnect with men who once loved me and who I loved in return. There weren’t that many!

Here’s an interesting post from my ex True/Slant blogging colleague Marjie Killeen about the dangers of re-connecting via Facebook.

Have you reconnected with a former beau/belle — or several?

Or vice versa?

How’s that working out?

Hanging With The Royals: Welcome to Kate’s New Life!

Image by JeanM1 via Flickr

Very few people will ever get close to royalty. I did.

On my kitchen wall is the thick white cardboard invitation, engraved in gold, from the Master of the Household, inviting me to drinks aboard the Britannia, then the Queen’s personal yacht.

I spent two exhausting, fun, disorienting weeks following Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip around New Brunswick, Ontario and Manitoba as they toured Canada. I was then a young reporter for The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national daily newspaper of record, and being assigned to cover a Royal Tour was the most impossible of assignments.

It meant producing front-page copy every single day on tight deadlines about….nothing! What the Queen wore. Where she walked during their walkabouts. The ribbons she cut on a highway to open it officially.

We were actually handed a small slip of paper every morning with the words we were to use to describe the Queen’s outfit that day, like “eau de Nil” (water of the Nile)….not light green!

The press pack was enormous and, on that trip for the first time, literally penned into a small enclosed space whenever the Queen actually did something, to make sure we would not disturb the event.

It was the most wearying but cool two weeks of my life as a reporter. My glimpse beneath those ermine robes, as it were, included:

the “purple corridor”, the airspace one must leave behind the Royals’ jet after it takes off;

The Detective, the small, short, quiet, totally nondescript man in a cardigan I met at the final party who is the Queen’s personal bodyguard;

her sparkling, glittering OMG-they’re-real jewels, from her baby-fist-sized emerald pin to her tiara;

the ladies-in-waiting and equerries;

the little semi-circles we were all formed into — like mini artificial harbors — when we were finally introduced to her at the Britannia reception.

So….what’s she like?

Frosty as hell to me, my dears. I’d written a few front page stories about her during the tour that she didn’t care for.

“It’s a pity we haven’t had time to read the papers,” she told me.

Right. Like a President or Prime Minister, she is presented daily with coverage, and the Globe’s would have been top of the pile.

The strangest part of my time around the Royal Family was finally realizing, which you can only see close up, how stage-managed their lives are.

While they’re warm and friendly when they choose, they are utterly unlike the rest of us, even the wealthiest and most poweful.

The Royal Family owe allegiance to no one: no boss, no political party, no donors, no fund-raisers or investors. They have courtiers and castles. The live in a protected, gilded, scrutinized bubble.

One afternoon, desperate for any scrap or detail my many competitors on the tour might not find, I peered into the car that was being used to transport the couple.

A small suitcase sat in the back seat with a large bright red paper tag attached that no one else could possibly claim.

The Queen.

One day, it will be Kate’s.

Since When Are Latinos “Alien”?

The percentage of Latinos by county.Image via Wikipedia

With a green card that formally and officially names me as a “resident alien”, I’m the certified foreigner in our household, not my Hispanic partner of eleven years who is first-generation American, of Mexican descent, but who is resoundingly and red-bloodedly American.

He wears khakis and polished black loafers, loves to golf, reads business magazines like Fortune and Forbes. He works at The New York Times, arguably one of the most establishment of employers, and has for decades. He drives a Subaru, drinks gimlets, takes the commuter train to Grand Central Station every weekday with legions of lawyers and media guys and non-profit executives.

He’s just one of the guys — even if he keeps a bag of pozole in the freezer and a beloved black pottery pot of his Mom’s from New Mexico, where he was born and raised.

But that’s about it. Issues of race and identity are much less compelling to either of us than the usual mid-life, mid-career questions:

When and where will we ever be able to retire? What’s for dinner? What are we doing this weekend?

Which is why I found this Wall Street Journal op-ed, by Janet Murguia, decidedly odd:

Like others who brought demographic change to America, our presence has stirred anxiety among some of our fellow Americans. A century ago, people expressed the same concerns about waves of immigrants from Italy, Ireland and Eastern Europe. It was understandable—but it also turned out to be unfounded. As the number of Latinos grows, our fellow Americans need to overcome the natural human anxiety that accompanies change and look for common ground…

It’s time for people to stop thinking about Latinos as “foreigners,” “aliens,” or “others” and start thinking of us as their fellow workers, classmates, colleagues, worshippers, neighbors, friends and family.

I’m clearly missing something here. I don’t see someone Latino and make any specific assumptions about their education or income or legal status.

We’ve attended meetings of NSHMBA, the National Society of Hispanic MBAs.

When I hit my local grocery store, in suburban New York, an aisle is devoted to Latino favorites, many made by the successful firm of GOYA, founded in 1936.

My local car wash is run by a man from Colombia,  a successful and hard-working man who employs other Latinos in his community.

Two of the most talented young recent college graduates I know are a photographer and a journalist; he’s won major national awards and she’s heading off to the Los Angeles Times soon for a job there.

When I see Hispanics and Latino(a)s, I see my in-laws, friends, neighbors and colleagues, all of them hardworking, talented, ambitious — and American.

Yet when Jose and I started dating, after he found me on-line, (under the truthful headline “Catch Me If You Can”), friends started pelting me with absurd cliches:

“Does he dance salsa?” “Does he wear a guayabera?”

Excuse me?

This is a guy whose Times colleagues dubbed “the preppy Mexican”…which left him nonplussed. Was this a compliment? Can’t Mexican men wear Brooks Brothers and Barbour and LL Bean?

I lived in Cuernavaca, Mexico for a few months when I was 14 and have been back to Mexico many times. I speak Spanish and it feels like home to me in some strange way. I have never understood why brown skin and a Hispanic surname offer license for all sorts of appalling stereotypes.

I’m aware there are millions of illegal aliens of Hispanic descent in the U.S. — while millions more, legally resident, also work hard, pay taxes and yearn for the same successes we all do.

Do you date or live with or did you marry a Hispanic or Latino(a)?

How, if at all, has this changed your life or your ideas?

How Many Irons Do You Keep In The Fire?

Image via Wikipedia

It’s one of my favorite expressions — having multiple irons in the fire. I’m not an ironworker or blacksmith, but a freelance writer and author. If I don’t have multiple income streams (21st century jargon for the same idea), I’m toast.

Now that one-third of us work permalance or as independent contractors or whatever you want to call people who leap from lily-pad to lily-pad to keep their bills paid, making small bets across a variety of disciplines, projects, clients and borders is now business-as-usual.

Even if taking risks makes us feel a little queasy emotionally (What if I fail?), we know it’s also necessary. By definition, not every project, no matter how well-planned or funded or filled with enthusiasm will succeed. Some will sag like an old balloon or blow up with  bang in our surprised faces.

But taking mini-risks remains essential to creative growth. So, every day, like so many others now do, I call and email people across the country, and across oceans, looking for ways to boost my income, add to my network of smart, hardworking, ethical people and see what shows up next.

A new book, “Little Bets”, by Peter Sims, addresses the reality every creative self-employed person must face: you’ve got to keep a pile of irons in the fire at all times. Some will be red-hot, others stone-cold. But as long as you have a dozen or so, (call it Plans A-L), you’ll be fine.

Some of these low-level risks, the little bets, won’t turn into anything. But, with luck, persistence, re-tooling, timing…a few will.

In my decades as a writer, several of them self-employed, I’ve seen this firsthand. I rarely panic about where the money will come from to pay my bills — and my monthly nut is four figures — because I am always exploring new avenues, making new connections and sealing a deal or two.

I’m not wealthy. It would be nice to worry much less and much less often, about money. But I have to be honest enough to admit — I enjoy taking (small, measured) risks.

It’s ironic as hell to me that, by taking a low-wage, low-status job working as a retail sales associate in a suburban mall, a desperation move to shore up my income, I may have opened more and better and much more lucrative doors than anything I’ve ever done in my life. By taking the risk of losing my clutch on middle-class life, wearing a plastic badge and folding T-shirts, I began to see many things more clearly, and wrote a book about what I saw.

Here’s The Wall Street Journal review of Sims’ book.

Tell me about the mini-risks you’re taking, your own little bets…

Promoting Your New Book: What It Really Takes

My second non-fiction book, “Malled: My Unintentional Career in Retail” (Portfolio) was published April 14. Yay!

But as every author knows — and every would-be author must learn — I’ve been working on promoting it long before the manuscript was finished and accepted for publication, in September 2010.

Today, (for which I’m grateful), it’s two radio interviews — Phoenix and D.C. — and a New York Times interview. Yesterday it was the Brian Lehrer Show and Tuesday was an hour of live radio with the legendary Diane Rehm, who has two million listeners.

(All of these are archived on their websites.)

Sleep? Sleep?

Here are some of the many things I’ve been doing to help get the word out, from local attention and events in my little town of 10,000 north of New York City to reviews and blog posts about it in Australia, Ireland, Canada and Holland:

Registered the domain name malledthebook.com and hired my longtime web designer to create a website for the book. He updates its press and media page almost daily with new audio, reviews and clips.

Created a Facebook page. Please visit and like it!

Signed up at HARO, a three-times-daily website heavily used by 5,000 reporters worldwide seeking sources/experts to interview and quote. (This works only for non-fiction writers, but well worth it. I snagged a Wall Street Journal blogger this way.)

Began blogging in July 2009 for True/Slant, a website (later bought by Forbes,) with a final monthly audience of 10,000 visitors and 239 subscribers

Began blogging at opensalon.com in September 2010

Began blogging here at wordpress in August 2010

Reached out to every single person I interviewed for the book to let them know the book’s publication date, asking them to tweet, blog and mention it on all their social networks and tell their family, friends and colleagues

I visit LinkedIn once a week to answer as many questions as possible, using my book title as my professional signature

I tweet about retail, the subject of my book

I started targeting colleges, universities and community colleges, locally and elsewhere, that teach retailing to see if I might give a guest lecture and sell books; three have said yes, so far

I reached out to the Canadian consulate in New York, (I’m Canadian), and asked them to mention the book in their newsletter and on their website and to create an event for me

I did the same with the University of Toronto, my alma mater; I’m speaking there May 28 at 10:00 a.m. Come visit!

I contacted local businesses and asked some of of them to keep a stack of my book’s postcard on their desks and counters

A local coffee shop — which has more than 2,000 Facebook friends — is letting me do a reading there

A local reading non-profit group where I volunteered is holding an event for me in their space and inviting their friends and fellow volunteers

I contacted a local indie film center to see if we could schedule a film night linked to my book’s themes of shopping, low-wage labor or working retail

I attended the two-day 15,000 person National Retail Federation annual conference in Manhattan and took two people to help me walk the entire floor for two days to hand out postcards and gather potential contacts for speaking, consulting, writing and book sales

I did a brief video for NRF while there extolling retail as a possible career

I collected contact information at the conference from several professors of retailing who might use the book as a text or have me guest lecture or speak

I contacted a Canadian retail blogger attending NRF who did a long video interview with me which will go up on YouTube and who blogged about me twice

I met another high-profile retail blogger for coffee, (while in her Canadian city on family business)

I asked my publisher to give me 5,000 postcards with the book’s cover on one side, a great blurb on the other, and a description of the book and my contact information on the back; I use them instead of a business card now, have used them for book party invitations and hand them to anyone who might find it useful

I’ve written — without pay — several guest blog posts at sites with far more readers than I have, like the Guide to Literary Agents (they approached me) and the Harvard Business Review blog (ditto)

I read dozens of blogs every single day to find sites and posts where I can leave a useful comment

I called a local language school teaching foreign students — who all shop like crazy in Manhattan! — and asked if I could come and talk; they said yes

I called a local independent bookstore and asked if I could do an event there; yes

I reached out to an editor I know at a regional magazine and they did a Q & A with me

I wrote, for pay, an essay for my alumni magazine about working retail

I contacted a local freelancer who profiled me for a local monthly newspaper

I contacted a local radio talk show host who is giving me an hour of air-time

And that’s not even the half of it…

So far, I’ve lined up more than 14 speaking events, several well-paid, like the closing keynote for the retailcustomerexperience conference this summer. I’m always looking for more!

What sorts of things have you done to successfully promote your book(s)?

Any great blogs or websites we should know about?

I’ll give a copy of my book to the person who offers the best suggestion!

What’s A Museum For?

Sir John Soanes Museum in London. Treasure trove!!! Go! Image by Mal Booth via Flickr

Do museums still matter?

In an era where we can now (which is fantastically democratic) access almost any image at our fingertips on-line, is it worth the time, energy and money to actually enter a building and spend a few hours looking at the real things?

I think so. Some of my happiest and most powerful memories are of museums in which I’ve whiled away hours. I inevitably come away awed and humbled, refreshed and inspired by the collective creativity of the millennia, all those ideas and fantasies and skill and global commerce — 16th. century porcelain! 12th. century jewelry! shields and armor and paintings and chairs used by those now long-gone….who were they?

Mine include:

— the amazing pietra dura (inlaid stonework) tables at The Prado in Madrid

— a room swathed in olive green raw silk, filled with exquisite Art Nouveau jewelry at the Gulbenkian in Lisbon

— Odilon Redon’s paintings at the Met

— the Venetian palazzo that is Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (and the subject of the largest unsolved art theft in history, covered in this terrific book)

— the impossibly fast Blackbird SR-71 jet, (Mach 3.5!) at the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson

— a gorgeous room-sized painting of Joan of Arc at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

— the funky leather chair that was Sigmund Freud’s at the museum that is his former home in London

— the small, perfect Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art in Toronto (my hometown)

Here’s an interesting recent interview in The Wall Street Journal with Arnold Lehman, director of the Brooklyn Museum:

In any case, Mr. Lehman has moved on to his next idea, which involves something many museums should be doing: focusing more on their permanent collections. “I have spent a lot of time,” he says, “looking at how this collection should be seen in the 21st century by 21st-century visitors, all of whom have a lot more access to information than even the most respected curators did 75 years ago.”

In part, this is pragmatic: With money tight, museums have had to cut back on expensive loan exhibitions. But in part, this is visionary. For decades, museums trained visitors to come for their changing exhibitions, all but ignoring the treasures they actually own. Frequently, permanent-collection galleries are virtually empty, left to the dwindling pool of committed art-lovers. “We will make the permanent collection the primary attraction of the Brooklyn Museum,” Mr. Lehman promises. “I don’t want to see our visitation going up and down because of exhibitions.”

And a profile of another one of my favorites, Sir John Soane’s Museum, in London by FT columnist Harry Eyres:

The Sir John Soane’s Museum is a museum like no other. I remember going to see it when I was still at school and immediately liking it, though I would not have been able to say quite why, or to pin my enthusiasm on any particular object. According to the dapper and smart new director, Tim Knox, the museum has a strong appeal for the elusive 16-30-year-old bracket, the kind of young people you imagine would rather be on Facebook than going to some fusty old house in a lawyers’ district of London.

Now I’m a bit older I still like the Soane, and can come up with a theory about why it might appeal to the young. It is a place liberatingly free of cant: the educational cant that tells you that you should be learning about the history of western painting; the scientific cant that will fill you with facts and explanations; above all, the cant of good taste…Soane committed a terrible sin by being eclectic; by filling his house with an unclassifiable collection of occasional masterpieces – paintings by Hogarth, Watteau and Canaletto – and odd plaster casts, a huge model of Pompeii, the tomb of his dog and, in the basement, the magnificent alabaster sarcophagus of the Egyptian pharaoh Seti I.

What are some of your favorite museums?

Can you tip us off to an object or work of art in one that you especially love?

“Malled: My Unintentional Career In Retail” — On Sale Today!

Finally!

My new memoir, which tells the story of retail work in America, is out today from Portfolio. It’s been getting terrific reviews — Entertainment Weekly calls it “an excellent memoir” and Herb Schaffner, a columnist for Bnet compares it to the best-seller “Nickeled and Dimed”, calling Malled “reality journalism at its best.”

I’m thrilled by the reception it’s gotten, with interviews and reviews, so far, from USA Today, The Financial Times, The Washington Post, the Associated Press and Marie-Claire. I’ll be a guest on NPR’s Diane Rehm show, with two million listeners, on April 19; on Marketplace and on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show on April 20.

I’ve also been invited to write a guest post for the Harvard Business Review blog.

My goal in writing this book is to make retail work — and the 15 million employees who make their living doing it — better understood. We all shop! The American economy, even in a recession, relies heavily on consumer spending, but we rarely talk frankly about what that demands of those workers, many of them part-time, with no benefits, earning low wages with little chance for raises or promotions.

I worked as an associate in a suburban New York mall, with some very wealthy customers, from September 2007 to December 2009, so this is also a portrait of the deepening recession and other workers who are taking low-wage work to make ends meet. I interviewed many others, from Costco CFO Richard Galanti to consultant Paco Underhill to best-selling author and owner of five elegant clothing stores, Jack Mitchell.

Like me, like this blog, “Malled” pulls no punches. It’s sometimes funny, sometimes dark, always honest.

And, yes, there’s plenty of outrage!

Wal-Mart has so far spent $2 million fighting an OSHA order and $7,000 fine to make their stores safer during sales  — after an associate in their Long Island store was killed when shoppers stampeded over his body.

Is this really what we want for our low-wage workers?

The sad thing is that such treatment is considered normal. In 1892, F.W. Woolworth disdained the notion of paying his workers a living wage — his business model, discount goods, simply didn’t allow for it.

I hope you’ll check it out at malledthebook.com, where you can read the introduction and Chapter One free.

You’ll also find there a listing of my many upcoming readings and events, most in and around New York City and some in Toronto; I’m talking at 10:00 a.m. on May 28 on the downtown campus of my alma mater, The University of Toronto.

The book also has a Facebook fan page; I hope you’ll “like” it and spread the word! If you enjoy “Malled”, I’d love it if you’d write a review at amazon.com

And here’s a funny/spot-on flow chart on what it takes to get a book published…

Woo Or Pounce?

Cover of Gone with the Wind

We watched “Gone With The Wind” recently — all four glorious hours of it.

I had forgotten Clark Gable, as Rhett Butler, snapping at spoiled little Scarlett O’Hara — “You need to be kissed, and often, by someone who knows how.” How deliciously assertive!

And then he did.

Swoon.

Which raises the larger question — when it comes to kissing, and whatever comes after that, do you prefer to be wooed or pounced upon?

Does it matter if, like me, you’ve been with your partner or spouse for many years? Does first or fourth date behavior need to change to something more subtle — or perhaps more assertive — with the passage of time and the growth of familiarity?

I admit to preferring the pounce, personally. I’m one of these laser-focused people who’s always doing something and hates being interrupted, whether cooking or reading or writing. Sex, romance, smooching — it all takes uninterrupted, undistracted time. And undivided attention.

Which, in college, I and my beaux had a lot of. I remember many long, lovely afternoons devoted to….not attending class!

But as I get older — sigh — I find my libido mugged by any number of determined assailants, from fatigue to a painful arthritic hip to worry about my mom with dementia in a nursing home far away to insecurity about my body to….you name it!

Pouncing, which sort of forces my poor sweetie to be a little leopard-leaping-from-a-tree-esque (decidedly not his nature), relieves me, I confess, of the need to initiate and squelches any ambivalence I might be feeling. On with it, then!

Which do you like best — to be wooed or pounced upon?

Toot! Toot! Tooting Your Own Horn

Every performer, by definition, seeks the spotlight. What about the rest of us? Image by Vivadança Festival Internacional Ano 5 via Flickr

If you work for yourself — and even when you work for someone else — you have to do it.

Do you dread it as much as I do?

The world of social media has made it much easier to spread the word, globally, about how fabulous!!!!! you are but sometimes, truly, I wish everyone would just button it!

I visit LinkedIn almost every day and I enjoy seeing what my contacts are up to. I loatheloatheloathe one woman who “updates” there every 13 seconds with work tips to make sure we do not waste even a single hour forgetting who she is. I know, I know, I can’t email her and say “Enough! Stop! You are boring and overbearing and horrible.”

But I’d sure like to.

With my new book out April 14, I have to toot long, loud, clearly, daily and — pardon the appalling biz-speak — across multiple platforms.Why? Because, in the U.S. where I live, 1,500 books are published every single bloody day!

Frankly, I’d rather organize the linen closet, but I did that last week. Or polish my shoes. Or go to a movie. Or make soup.

Yammering on about how amazing I am makes me feel a little ill. But if I don’t stake my claim, every single one of my loud-mouthed competitors will.

And guess who will sell more books? And get a bigger advance on the next book as a result? Not the shy, quiet girl in the corner.

I grew up in Canada, a nation — like the Aussies, Japanese and Swedes, to name a few with similar cultural values — that hates self-promoters and punishes them with the worst possible paddle. They ignore you!

I’ve lived near New York City for 22 years. You want pushy? Babe, we got pushy!

It’s been sadly instructive to watch the relative “Who gives a s–t? my book has been getting in Canada and the fantastic enthusiasm it’s been getting here. Which, and this is basic, is now fodder for more horn-tooting!

In Australia, it’s called tall poppy syndrome, where the highest flower, swaying happily in the summer sun, gets its gorgeous little head lopped off for — being the most visible. In Japan, they hammer down the tallest nail.

Don’t boast! Don’t gloat! Don’t tell people you’ve done some terrific work and people are liking it!

Yeah, be invisible.

There’s a strategy.

How do you reconcile the career-boosting need to tell others about your skills and work accomplishments and being (blessedly and attractively) modest about them?

TapTapTapTapTap — Ding! The Return Of Typewriters

Image via Wikipedia

Typewriters are back!

Not only are they back, but hipster kids newly discovering the joys of a Smith Corona (not some obscure beer) or Olivetti (not an olive oil!) are even holding type-ins to celebrate these quaint, sturdy little writing machines, reports The New York Times:

“Can I touch it?” a young woman asked. Permission granted, she poked two buttons at once. The machine jammed. She recoiled as if it had bitten her.

“I’m in love with all of them,” said Louis Smith, 28, a lanky drummer from Williamsburg. Five minutes later, he had bought a dark blue 1968 Smith Corona Galaxie II for $150. “It’s about permanence, not being able to hit delete,” he explained. “You have to have some conviction in your thoughts. And that’s my whole philosophy of typewriters.”

Whether he knew it or not, Mr. Smith had joined a growing movement. Manual typewriters aren’t going gently into the good night of the digital era. The machines have been attracting fresh converts, many too young to be nostalgic for spooled ribbons, ink-smudged fingers and corrective fluid. And unlike the typists of yore, these folks aren’t clacking away in solitude.

They’re fetishizing old Underwoods, Smith Coronas and Remingtons, recognizing them as well designed, functional and beautiful machines, swapping them and showing them off to friends. At a series of events called “type-ins,” they’ve been gathering in bars and bookstores to flaunt a sort of post-digital style and gravitas, tapping out letters to send via snail mail and competing to see who can bang away the fastest.

As someone old enough to have begun her journalism career working on a typewriter, I remember well the joys and frustrations — fingers covered in Wite-out! No delete key! Physical cutting and pasting! — that went along with it.

My first typewriter was a lightweight correspondent’s model with its own vinyl shoulder carrying case, a Hermes Baby. My lifelong dream was to file from exotic locales and, for decades, this was the tool to use! I loved its turquoise letters and drop-proof metal casing. As long as I had the essentials — paper and a fresh ribbon — I could write anywhere, anytime, knowing, and feeling a cool sort of kinship with, all the others before me who had filed their dispatches in similar fashion.

The part I miss the most?

That delicious Ding! when you hit the end of a line.

Not to mention the delicious crunch-and-toss of every offending page that just wasn’t good enough.