Tomorrow, breast cancer awareness organization Rally for the Cure is hosting a tennis benefit at the Columbia Tennis Center on 218th Street in New York; it’s $20 to play and free to watch. We’ve donated several pink planners, stationery sets, and some pink fountain pen ink that will be used as prizes, so good luck to all who attend!
To learn more about hosting a Rally benefit at your local sports club or school, click here.
If you live nearby, and you don’t have any plans this evening, you might consider checking out a free concert by percussionist Glen Velez and rhythmic vocalist Lori Cotler at the Public Library in Montclair, NJ. I’m not familiar with their work (though I have it on good authority that it’s terrific), but if this YouTube clip is anything to go by, you’ll be in for an amazing evening.
For more information and samples, check out this Biffybeans post.
Reading about a new book by E. L. Doctorow, “Homer & Langley,” got me thinking about the clutter in my life. 
Whenever my room or my sister’s room looked particularly messy to her, my mother would stand in the doorway and say, “This place looks like the Collyer brothers.”
That was her hint the room looked pretty cluttered with books, clothes, shoes, sneakers, records (yes, I know this dates me!) and various stuff I found or collected. It was time, according to my mother, to get it put away or throw it out.
The more my room was cluttered the harder it was to get started. It was an effort even to decide where to begin.
Accumulation creeps up even on the neatest person, as anyone will attest as they pack up an apartment or house for a move. Where did all this stuff come from? Pick up an object that you have completely forgotten about, but holding it brings back memories of people, places and events of the past. “Should I put it in the box or get rid of it?” sometimes becomes a very hard decision if we reconnect with a strong emotional attachment or memory.
Some people, myself included, need to create in the middle of a mess, with papers and objects strewn all over close by for reference and ideas.
But when does “good clutter” become overwhelming, debilitating, isolating? Does cluttered time mirror a cluttered space, or can the two be separate in a person’s life?
There are a lot of things that need to be put back in order when you come back from vacation, including, Wednesday, my Internet connection (now thankfully up and running), my schedule, and various parts of the garden that still need to be pruned, picked, or weeded.
One of the more surprising things I found I had to do: reink my fountain pens, which I’d foolishly left out on my desk and were all but totally dry. I’d heard about this problem, but never imagined it could happen so quickly — 2 weeks on a flat surface that’s lit by a south-facing window, and they were toast… I guess it’s just a habit you have to adopt if you write with fountain pens: remember to put them away, or at least put them out of the sun.
Lesson learned…
A number of things are under study or in process for Quo Vadis USA: 
- One of the Rhodia Weekly Notebooks sold out and another is close to sold out, so we’re reprinting 2nd editions.
- Many 2010 planners will include a combination bookmark/elastic closure.
- We’re studying the production of a Notes insert for most if not all our planners. It may be available as soon as 2010 if sold separately. In the future, inserts may be included with the planner in lieu of an address book insert; sold separately, sold in packs of two or something else.
- Limited stocks of popular, but discontinued Club cover colors may be reintroduced in 2010. They include Bamboo, Raspberry, Mandarin and Canary.
- The 2012 editions will include the Baha’i holidays.
- Earlier this year we reached an agreement with a bookstore in Australia to sell Quo Vadis planners. They are now available at retail locations and for sale online.
- Quo Vadis makes planners in 14 languages including French, Spanish, German, Italian, Dutch, Korean, Japanese and Chinese. (Note: these editions do not include U.S. or Canadian holidays.) We are considering importing a limited supply of each language edition to the U.S. for sale beginning in 2010.
- Based on a suggestion we received from author Jeff Abbott, we’re looking into the possiblity of recommending a “Maker’s format” to Quo Vadis or Exacompta Prestige.
- Finally, we’re debating whether or not to produce a new sketchbook at the Hamburg, NY plant or wait and see if one is manufactured by one of our French parent companies–specifically–Rhodia. This notebook would have ivory or off-white blank paper, 100g or more. This means our current Habana notebooks will keep their distinctive white, ruled Clairefontaine paper (which should make Kookychick very relieved and happy!). We have a very large supply (several thousand) of the Exacompta sketchbook “Livres d’Or” and may reintroduce with it with Madeira covers in red, green, yellow, blue and black.
I may also look for a craftsman/craftswoman to make custom folios for people who would like one for their sketchbook (or planner for that matter!)
More soon. I will keep you posted on our progress.
I just got back from a lovely vacation in Westport, MA, where the weather was great and the outdoor activities plentiful and diverse. I’ll blog more about it in the upcoming weeks — I went lobstering, musseling, and digging for steamer clams, among other things — but for now, here’s a video I shot of a baby razor clam digging its way back into the sand.
Check out that frilly little tongue!
