Stationary Store Blues

Moleskine journalist's notebook

Hardcover, 8" x 5.5"

Over at The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross has a plaintive post about changes to the Paper Mate Sharpwriter #2, a vital tool in his life.  The post includes a funny/sad video by Adam Savage, which I urge you to watch in full. Savage does not comment on one change, a new, blunter font used on the pencil itself, but I noticed.

I don't use this particular pencil, but of course I have a personal stationary tragedy. Sometime during the pandemic, Moleskine discontinued the classic journalist's notebook, which had a flip-over hard cover. I didn't go to j-school and never worked at a newspaper, so when I started reviewing, I found a notebook I liked to write in rather than using cheap reporter's notepads. I have not yet been in a situation where such a notepad would be useful, such as pursuing some unwilling public figure while trying to get them to comment on an unpopular subject. In such a circumstance, I'd probably be trying to get my phone in front of their face anyway.

I don't care about reviews telling me that there are notebooks with better paper than the Moleskine. I miss that notebook and learned it had been discontinued too late to try to buy up available supplies. 

It's true that Moleskine makes a miniature version of the flip notebook, but it is seriously too small to be useful to me either for concert notes or interview notes or reading notes. I have used the lined classic Moleskin as well, but my handwriting is not good and even though I am right-handed, I worry about smudging notes of already dubious readability during a concert. There's much less risk of that with a flip notebook. 

Moleskine also makes, or made, a soft-cover full-sized reporter's notebook, and one year I accidentally bought one of them. I took a look at it yesterday and saw that its first use for music-related notes was a season-announcement press conference at SFO. The first note reads:

- Pat, Pat, Pat, and Pat

Clearly, this was the press conference for the 2013-14 season; as announced, Patricia Racette had four roles in three operas. After Dolora Zajick dropped out of Dolores Claiborne, that became five roles in four operas.

After some investigation into alternatives to the journalist's notebook, I would up using a soft-cover notebook that is sturdier than a reporter's notepad but smaller and much less stiff than a hardcover. It is intended to be used as a landscape-orientation sketch notebook, but I use it in portrait orientation. Nonethless, I miss the Moleskine notebook and wish they'd bring it back.