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Posted October 11th, 2007 by Daniel
Short pencils: a library fixture you probably take for granted. But not anymore! Using archival footage from the Prelinger Archives, Nick "March of the Librarians" Baker's latest comedic offering delves into the stubby writing implement's exciting history: “It all began thousands of years ago...."
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The trees depicted are
The trees depicted are indeed redwoods---Sequoiadendron giganteum in the Sierra Nevada. However, these are not used for pencils. Virtually all U.S. pencils come from the Western Red Cedar--- Thuja plicata, which like redwood has very soft wood and can grow quite large---up to 20 feet in diameter. The Eastern Red Cedar of the Midwest (Cedar Rapids etc.) and East is a juniper---Juniperus virginiana---that is a much smaller, tough juniper and not used for pencils. FJW, Iowa City
Short Pencils
Yeah, so buy Thoreau pencils, a long pedigree and no red woods. Leave the shorties to Republican golfers. "I use the eraser more than the lead" Arnold Schonberg.
danielharrismusic.com
Short Pencils
This is great! We all need a good laugh once in a while. The lesson isn't bad either :)
Short Pencils
haha.. yeah so the other half is trashed. Hm.
Truncation or concatenation?
What a biased view! Everyone knows that short pencils were made first, then (sometimes) glued together to make long pencils.
Short pencils are the True Original items, "normal" pencils are modifications.
In my humble opinion,
A nonny mouse
re: short pencils
This was basically how I thought short pencils were really made. Except in my theory gnomes entered my house in the middle of the night and sharpened down the pencils.
Sorry, but watching the
Sorry, but watching the redwoods get cut down makes me feel ill. :-\
Hard to watch a mighty redwood be cut like that.
Have to agree with someone else's comment - watching that redwood be cut made me ill, too.
Also agree regarding the
Also agree regarding the redwood -- kind ruined the doc for me.
It's not a documentary,
It's not a documentary, dummy. Unfortunately, it's not all that funny either.
Leave Nicky Alone!
Leave Nicky Alone! All you people care about is readers and making new patrons off of him. He's a human! Leave Nicky alone. You’re lucky he even makes videos for you librarians! Leave Nicky Alone. PLEASE!
I just got it.
I just realized this message is a "Leave Britney Alone" reference. Very clever! For the record, of course, we here at AL Focus love Nicky very, very, very much.