As with most writers, the tools of the trade mean a lot to me. Over the years these tools have become so complicated it’s hard to keep track of them. The long journey from charcoal to software has been full of twists and turns and unexpected developments.

Since word processors were invented, pencils have seemed so outre. Even when typewriters first came on the scene, the humble wooden scribbler still had some meaning in life. Now, alas, this most simple of utilitarian inventions is regarded with disdain by most people. Except … some of us.

Ever since hearing that Henry David Thoreau didn’t live off a hill of beans while staying at Walden, I’ve thought of him as a pretty shrewd sort of guy. He was a man who wrote arguably the most successful book in history about surviving in the wilds.

Close inspection of his methods, though, reveals that he situated his “hut” just a mile or so from his home town of Concord, Mass., so that he could drop in on his friends for dinner, and even go home for weekends. Why do I find that so admirable?

Even more resourceful was his insistence on keeping the family pencil factory going while he struggled for sustinence in the woods. Why pencils? Well, he was a writer, and this was the middle of the 19th century, before typewriters came on the scene. In those days pencils were big business, and siting one close to sources of timber and charcoal was a surefire guarantee of success.

I mention all this as a preamble to an interesting blog I stumbled on during my increasing rare rounds of the blogosphere. It’s called The Pencil Revolution, and what it doesn’t know about pencils could be written on the end of a pencil. Thoreau would have loved this one.

Pencil Revolution