Carbon Paper Ribbons on a Deserted Island

Should you make carbon paper ribbons for your typewriter? That's a question only you can answer. Let's suppose you're stuck on some "desert island" with only a typewriter, plenty of typing paper, carbon paper, adhesive tape, a razor knife, scissors and a cutting board. Okay, maybe some driftwood would suffice as a cutting board. And a pair of empty ribbon spools. Let's just suppose.

At first glance, this scenario seems rather unlikely. Maybe you were on one of those special Office Supply Junky cruises to the South Pacific. You know the kind. Hobnobbing with like-minded pen and stapler geeks; seminars on the intricacies of paper sizing in the forward dance hall; unlimited food and drinks - and pens! And then bad weather hits. Maybe the captain was busy with some lovely young ladies, assisting them in refilling their fountain pen converters and didn't see the satellite weather map. It could happen, don't laugh! And then, while you were whiling away the late night, sipping brandy and conversing about fanfold paper reams, disaster strikes, the ship is tossed to and fro and you awake on the sandy shores of some uncharted island with your typewriter satchel and barely your senses intact. What's a person to do? Simple: make carbon paper ribbons.

Of course, to make this unlikely scenario more realistic, you had to have forgotten your extra typewriter ribbons back home, and then were kind enough to loan your last ribbon to the nice couple in cabin 4B, the night before the storm.

And let's pretend that Tom Hanks isn't onboard, because if you and him got stranded together, he's much more likely to survive than you. Just saying.

If you did succeed, between looking for drinking water and foraging for food, in making carbon paper typewriter ribbons, here is what the rescuers likely would find, when they eventually found your bones:



After carefully slicing and dicing the precious carbon paper into precise 1/2" wide strips and taping them together with the equally precious tape, you'd then have to tape their ends to those oh-so-precious ribbon spools, thusly:



It shouldn't have to be mentioned at this point that desert island castaways should tend extra special care to keeping sand out of said precious typewriter, between foraging for food and looking for anything resembling drinking water.

Next, you'll have to carefully thread the fragile paper strip into the ribbon vibrator. You may, between boughts of panic and despair, remember to set the bichrome control to red, and lock two adjacent typebars together to keep the vibrator in the raised position, making threading said fragile paper strip into the machine a bit easier, as you pause to scan the horizon for any sign of rescuers, who by now should be combing the waters of the Southern Ocean for any trace of survivors of the tragic loss of the S.S. Rolodex.



By now your spirits and blood sugar are trending rather low, but you've had it worse, remembering that time the Hermes 3000 was shipped to you broken in pieces by some careless online seller, the scoundrel - why did it have to be you that got stranded, why not him? Is there not any justice in the world? But small victories will save the day - you've managed to successfully thread said fragile paper ribbon into said precious typewriter, and have begun typing ... what? What is there to write about? Hmm, let me think, you think.



Now you're in the rhythm, an idea has caught itself in your craw and you're typing furiously - if only those damned fish would cooperate!



But alas, you've gotten too confident, that fragile paper ribbon shreds itself into tatters as you lie on the beach, sunbaked, and sob in despair at your predicament, wondering why life has to be so unfair, why you couldn't have simply used the carbon paper like normal people do; or wad it up in a ball and set it alight with the cigar torch you forgot you had in the bottom of your typewriter satchel, along with the satellite radio you so wisely brought but so foolishly forgot you had.



And that, dear reader, is why you should never, ever, embark on an all expenses paid transoceanic Office Supply Junky cruise of the South Pacific. Better to stay home and tend to your precious typewriter collection in the safety and security of your humble dwelling, and let the more daring venture forth.

Transmission from 57 Leonis

Strange things happen when you enter the Sandia Mountain wilderness east of Albuquerque.  Rumors have circulated for centuries amongst the indigenous, the Spanish, the anglo, and yet they remain.  Today we picnicked with friends, a celebration of my birthday, at our favorite spot, at about a 9000 foot altitude. Closer to the stars, they say.

I had just sat down at my typewriter, drink in hand, and was gifted with this seemingly extraterrestrial missive, hand-wrought, containing cryptic verse and imagery obviously intercepted by some mysterious radio receiver that watches our every move from outer space.

What is this mysterious symbol enclosing the transmission, a resin-like substance of some nonhuman origin perhaps? Dare I break the seal and glimpse what should remain unseen?

The message contained within started with this woodcut print, signed with the chop of Gustave Baumann, another longtime New Mexico resident. Mere decor, or a harbinger of more to come?

I was astounded by the origin story contained within. Almost as if my every moment were surveilled and recorded by something not of this world.

Details of the saga unfolded before me.

How could they have known?

My cover has been blown!

Are there still remnants to be uncovered?

A map back to my home planet perhaps?

It looks extraterrestrial to me!

At last the mystery was revealed, in all its typewritten glory:

If you see this man, be very cautious!

 

Thank you Kevin for the very creative card!

Notes From Safari

TJ is a school teacher in Los Alamos, and I have his typewriter, an early-1950's Smith-Corona Silent. It used to be mine, until I sold it to him (or, more precisely, his school system) for use in his classroom. Sometime last year he told me some of the key levers had been bent, by overly-eager (I'm assuming) students. TJ was able to drop the machine off to me for repairs later in the year, during one of our Sunday ABQwerty Type Writer Society meetings. I easily managed to put the key levers back into good order, but since then it's been difficult arranging for TJ to pick up the machine. And now, with everyone (supposedly) in lock-down it'll have to remain with me for a while longer.

But today I decided to set the machine on my workbench and test it out, to make sure there were no other nagging issues. It does type very well, no mechanical issues of note, even the ribbon is sufficiently fresh. And I'd forgotten how much I like the typeface. But I needed a piece of paper to test-type with, so I grabbed an instruction sheet from a pile of clutter on the bench, for a safari rack that me and my grandson had installed earlier this week on his truck, and I was sufficiently inspired by the word "safari" in the instructions to hurriedly compose this vignette on the reverse side. Afterward, I read it to my wife, and she was sufficiently impressed that she's now encouraging me to continue this story in installments.

No, I don't really know if you can weld broken steel in the bush with a makeshift thermite furnace, but hey, a little exaggeration never hurts! And don't go four-wheeling with that Smith guy, he'll get you in more trouble than you can shake a stick at.

The other day I'd felt sufficiently cinematic (is that a real feeling?) that I wanted to record some B-roll black & white video on my Lumix G7 with one of my Minolta MD lenses. It was snowing lightly, a rather rare occurrence in April (though our mile-high altitude doesn't preclude such an event) and the inclement weather was rather inspiring, since sunny days are rather commonplace. For adapting manual focus lenses to my digital camera I'd already been using the 7Artisans 25mm F/1.9 lens and the Minolta MD 50 F/1.7 at various times, but had never given the 58mm Rokkor lens a real test. After some test shots around my office and outdoors, I decided that the 58mm was at least as sharp as the 50. Naturally I'd need to reduce the light incoming to the sensor if I hoped to use the lens wide open at F/1.2, so I put on a variable ND filter, after futzing around with finding the proper adapter rings.



By itself the Panasonic G7 isn't that big of a camera, but with that big 58mm lens and even wider ND filter hanging off the front it's rather sizable. But it has a reassuring heft, and the haptics are about perfect for manual focusing, since the G7 has focus peaking and the G-series cameras pioneered the "tilty-flippy" screens (that other manufacturers pretend these days they invented), that makes these cameras so convenient to use.

One thing led to another, and before I knew it I was creating a motivational video on creativity and writing during this unsettled period. I thought the B-roll intervals between shots worked pretty well for the video.

U.J.T.U.

Post-Script: The feed rollers on my Rocket grip good enough, but when I fold this thin paper in half lengthwise it tends to feed wonky. This 13 CPI typeface needs a short line to be readable on mobile devices. Maybe I should just break out the adding machine paper roll for when I'm blogging on the Rocket?

I'm liking the idea of more frequent blog updates, perhaps on more mundane subjects. The "work flow" is still a bit tedious (it isn't work, neither does it flow!) Firing up the scanner - had to reset it once; getting the cropping, light & dark points and contrast set properly; then the full res scan; uploading to Flickr, etc. I'm still not pleased with how my iPhone takes photos of typecasts, especially the field curvature near the edges of the frame. I want to fill the frame with the long side of the piece for good resolution, but then the iPhone's field curvature makes the edges of the page wonky. Yes, there are aftermarket photo apps that permit adjusting field curvature, maybe that's the solution.

I've been thinking about how else "typecasting" can be used with social media, besides blogging. Obviously, many people shoot photos of their poetry and writings and post them to the various Facebook typewriter-themed groups. But today I was thinking about discussion forums (on whatever topic). Instead of replying to a thread via computer keyboard, one could type out a quick reply, upload to Flickr and link the image to the forum. This might be fun to do, especially on discussion forums that aren't specifically typewriter-themed; like RFF (Rangefinder Forum), for instance. The idea is to further infiltrate the digital world with the presence of typewriter-generated imagery.

I enjoyed my visit to Sweet Cup Coffee. This time of year, when the summer monsoons begin (the flow of moist air from the Baja peninsula up through the American southwest), the air is humid enough that evaporative coolers (like what I have at home) don't cool as well; the AC at Sweet Cup was, well, sweet! Another reason to write in coffee shops.



The piece above was an impromptu typing on my Olympia SG-3. It does this to me, inspires me to just bang out these sudden little inspirations. They don't matter all that much, individually. It's in the aggregate, when they begin to accumulate, that the impact is felt. I don't know why this machine inspires me like it does; perhaps it's the size and heft; or the confidence it inspires to work flawlessly; or the pleasingly dark imprint.

I like to collect these little gleanings. Sometimes they're just a sentence or paragraph amidst a larger amount of dross, in which case I'll circle it with a pen for emphasis. I don't know what will become of them, but I hope they function as inspiration for some new work, down the road.

Finally, a video Kevin and I made, about the Maritsa 11.

Typewriter Play

Post-Script: There's a lot more to say here about typewriter playing. They are indeed mechanical devices, which for many of us is an immediate inducement for further exploration. A lot of the magic of play comes from the power of words. Words fashioned into sentences have the power to fuel our imagination, through the power of language. Entire imaginary worlds can come into existence through language.

Typewriters are also vintage devices. They are foreign to our common experience, unless you're like me, with various machines sitting around the house just as much for decor as useful writing tools. As newcomers to typewriters, our's is a generation that has to rediscover their magic, their utility, their limitations. In previous generations they were treated pretty much as pragmatic tools for one dedicated purpose - document creation. But that purpose has, by and large, passed them by, supplanted in large measure by word processing. And so these wonderful machines find new usefulness in ways not dreamt of by previous generations. Like street poetry writing, or blogging, or even percussive music. Thus, through play we can find new things to do with these mechanical marvels.

In this recent video I also touched on the importance of copying. Not just for retyping the works of others for practice and inspiration, but as an aid in learning how language is crafted by masters of the art. Austin Kleon has much to say about this, through his wonderful book Steal Like an Artist, and also his blog. Be sure to check out both.

Here's the recent video I made about typewriter play:



Typecast on yellow tracing paper via Royal QDL (a.k.a Adobe Rose)