Sounds pleasant, doesn’t it? A fishy old notebook? But this is actually a pretty cool story! One day in June 1919, workers in a busy Canadian cannery in Port Essington rushed to clean, cook, and can the bright red flesh of a huge number of sockeye salmon hauled from the nearby Skeena River. Watching the … Continue reading Century-Old Salmon-Smeared NotebooksÂ
This lovely notebook belonged to Ian McTaggart Cowan, a Scottish-Canadian zoologist and conservationist. The image is from the archives of the University of Victoria, where you can flip through the rest of its pages. (The text is also transcribed next to the images, in case you can’t read the small handwriting!) The journal covers 1957-1958, … Continue reading Ian McTaggart Cowan’s Travel Journal
Father Thomas Lawrason Riggs was the first Catholic chaplain at Yale. He was a member of Yale’s class of 1910, where he met Cole Porter, the composer. He later attended graduate school at Harvard, where he roomed with Porter and Dean Acheson, a future secretary of state. During World War I, Riggs returned to Yale … Continue reading Thomas Lawrason Riggs’s Notebook
A gorgeous example of a natural historian’s field notes. This belonged to August F. Foerste, an American geologist and paleontologist. From the original article at the Field Book Project website: Field notes are well known to be essential, primary material that provide details about collections and expeditions that aren’t found in published material or specimen … Continue reading August F. Foerste’s Field Notebook
The Kokuyo Sketch Book is a Japanese classic with a cult following. In Japan, this style of notebook is known as Sokuryo Yacho: Sokuryo Yacho = surveying field book, Literally Means A “Surveying Field Notebook.” It’S Often Simply Called “Yacho” By Our Loyal Users. You could compare it to the government issue Memorandum notebooks used by … Continue reading Notebook Review: The Kokuyo Sketch Book
I came across an article from The Economist about a new exhibition at the British Library, which sounds great: it’s all about the history of writing and note-taking. The article is behind a paywall, unfortunately, but here’s a taste: NEATLY HANDWRITTEN, with a simple diagram below a numbered list, the sheet looks like any fussy … Continue reading Writing Exhibition at the British Library
It’s the perfect time of year for this article from Delaware’s Cape Gazette about a workshop on garden journaling: Kelly Sverduk, a teacher and an artist, says “I used to only keep nice sketchbooks when I went on a trip somewhere, but eventually I realized that I wanted to treat my day-to-day life with the … Continue reading Tips for Starting a Garden Journal
Neat article about the original Bigelow pharmacy store in NYC. They have a collection of artifacts which includes old notebooks of recipes for medicines! Established in 1838 by Dr. Galen Hunter, the store was originally called the Village Apothecary Shoppe. In 1880, Clarence Otis Bigelow purchased it and renamed it after himself, moving it 22 … Continue reading A Notebook from the C.O. Bigelow Apothecary
A curious item from the online archive of the Psychiatric Services Collection of Museums Victoria in Australia: Hand-written student nurse’s notebook written during nursing training at a mental health hospital, Mayday Hills, Beechworth, Victoria, Australia, circa 1955. Read more: Nurse’s Notebook – Mayday Hills Psychiatric Hospital, Beechworth, circa 1955
For the Strategist column at NY Magazine, Molly Young reviews the Grids & Guides Notebook and it sounds like she might have a new focus for her notebook addiction! In the past I’ve stocked up on whatever cheap-ish notebook hits these requirements: 1. Sturdy cover (won’t get dented in purse) 2. Opens flat 3. Good … Continue reading Notebook Addict of the Week: Molly Young