While watching Wedding Crashers (2005, New Line), I noticed that John Beckwith (portrayed by Owen Wilson) and Jeremy Grey (Vince Vaughn) both have multiple card indexes in their offices in the movie.
One can’t help but wondering if their work leverages one of the variety of card index filing systems? Were they commonplacers? Zettelkasten users? Were they maintaining them as basic databases? Monster rolodexes? There are definitely a lot of them around.
It’s obvious that Jeremy actively uses his as in the opening scenes, his card index is on the credenza behind him and later in the movie it has moved.
Vince Vaughn obviously explaining the most important points of knowledge management in the office: a zettelkasten (or card index), bubblegum, and plenty of bourbon.On a side desk in his office Jeremy Gray has a 3×5″ and a 4×6″ card index near all of his most important reference volumes.Along with shelves full of reference books, John Beckwith has a huge collection of card index boxes of various sizes including 3 3×5″ boxes, 3 4×6″ boxes, and even one 5×8″ box.
A Zettelkasten for Wedding Crashers
Of course, the real aficionado of Wedding Crashers will suspect that at least one of Jeremy’s card indexes is full of weddings they’ve crashed, related research, and maybe women he’s encountered. Maybe names and legends of the people they’re pretending to be (“We lost a lot of good men out there.” “Guess who’s a broken man?”) Naturally there would also be a huge section with the numbered rules of wedding crashing as handed down by pioneer Chazz Rheinhold.
IndieWebCamp San Diego 2024 Project Goals
In honor of S. D. Goitein, I have a drawer in my Macey Co. filing cabinet labeled “Genizah” where I put all of my “worn out” notes. They get transferred weekly into the circular file.
Perhaps lamenting too much technology, Dickerson says he’s got two screens on the computer in his office as well as an iPad and a phone. But he’s also got “a notebook [that] does only one thing”. He’s also got an old black lacquer Underwood standard typewriter (No. 4, 5, or 6?) on his office desk. Typewriters only do one thing too.
Wonder if he still uses it?
It seems so on brand for a book about writing using a zettelkasten, that the author would leave a lovely little example of a fleeting note on a slip (1 3/8 x 2 1/2″) inside the front cover of the book!
Dan Allosso’s (Obsidisan) Book Club will be reading Bob Doto‘s book A System for Writing (2024) as their next selection. Discussion meetings are via Zoom for 2 hours on Saturdays starting on 2024-10-19 to 11-02 from 8:00 AM – 10:00 AM Pacific. New comers and veterans are all welcome to attend.
The book is broken up into 3 parts (approximately 50-75 pages each) and we’ll discuss each on succeeding weeks. The group has several inveterate note takers who are well-acquainted with Zettelkasten methods.
If you’d like access to the Obsidian vault, please email danallosso at icloud dot com with your preferred email address to connect to the Dropbox repository.
DM either Dan or myself for the Zoom link for the video meetings.
Miles (1905) has some interesting things to say with respect to collecting, “business-like brevity” (aka atomic notes), annotations for thinking/arranging/marking cards, summarizing, etc.
Miles, Eustace Hamilton. How to Prepare Essays, Lectures, Articles, Books, Speeches and Letters, with Hints on Writing for the Press. London: Rivingtons, 1905. http://archive.org/details/howtoprepareessa00mileuoft.
In the second lecture of David Blight’s Devane Lecture Series 2024 entitled “Can It Happen Here Again? Yale, Slavery, the Civil War and Their Legacies”, he makes a passing mention of historian, professor, and prolific writer Paul Conkin’s office desk and side tables being covered in index cards full of notes. Further, he says that Conkin admonished students that for every hour they spend reading, they should spend an hour in reflection. The comment is followed by a mention that no one does this with the implication that information overload and the pressures of time don’t allow this.
Of course those with a card index or zettelkasten-based reading and note making practice will realize that they’re probably automatically following the advice of this towering figure of American intellectual history as a dint of their note making system.
Chris Aldrich has the most multi-disciplinary resume I’ve ever seen, with a background that includes biomedics, electrical engineering, entertainment, genetics, theoretical mathematics, and more. Chris describes himself as a modern-day cybernetician, and in this conversation we discuss cybernetics and communications, differences between oral and literary cultures, and indigenous traditions and mnemonics, among many other things.
A while back, I recorded an episode of The Informed Life with Jorge Arango, and it’s just been released. We had hoped to cover a couple of specific topics, but just as we hit record, our topic agenda took a left turn into some of my recent interests in intellectual history.
Jorge has a great little show which he’s been doing for quite a while. If you’re not already subscribed, take a moment to see what he’s offering in the broad space of tools for thought. I’ve been a long time subscriber and was happy to chat with Jorge directly.
Given that George Eliot had her own commonplace book, it’s fascinating but not surprising to see a section of prose about note taking and indexing practices in Middlemarch (set in 1829 to 1832 and published in 1871-1872) literally as the romance story is just beginning to brew. [Naturally a romance with index cards at its heart is just my cup of tea, n’cest pas?] Presently it’s not surprising to see the romance of an independent thinking woman stem out of an intellectual practice (dominated heavily by men at the time) that was fairly common in its day, but for it’s time such an incongruous juxtaposition may have been jarring to some readers.
In chapter two Mr. Brooke, the uncle, asks for advice about arranging notes as he has tried pigeon holes as a method but has the common issue of multiple storage and can’t remember under which letter he’s filed his particular note. [At the time, many academics would employ secretarial staff to copy their note cards multiple times so that a note that needed to be classified under “hope” and “liberty”, as an example, could be filed under both. Individuals working privately without the support of an amanuensis or additional indexing techniques would have had more difficulty with filing material in the same manner Mr Brooke did. Digital note takers using platforms like Obsidian or Logseq don’t have to worry about such issues now.]
Our heroine Dorothea Brooke mentions that she knows how to properly index papers so that they might be searched for and found later. She is likely aware of John Locke’s indexing method from 1685 (or in English in 1706) and in the same passage—and almost the same breath—compares Mr. Casaubon’s appearance favorably to that of Locke as “one of the most distinguished-looking men I ever saw.”
In some sense here, we should be reading the budding romance, not just as one based on beautiful appearance or one’s station or even class, but one of intellectual stature and equality. One wants a mate not only as distinguished and handsome as Locke, but one with the beauty of mind as well. Without the subtextual understanding of knowledge management during this time period, this crucial component of the romance would be missed though Eliot later hints at it by many other means. Still, in the opening blushes of love, it is there on prominent display.
For those without their copies close at hand, here’s the excerpted passage:
“I made a great study of theology at one time,” said Mr Brooke, as if to explain the insight just manifested. “I know something of all schools. I knew Wilberforce in his best days. Do you know Wilberforce?
“Mr Casaubon said, “No.”
“Well, Wilberforce was perhaps not enough of a thinker; but if I went into Parliament, as I have been asked to do, I should sit on the independent bench, as Wilberforce did, and work at philanthropy.”
Mr Casaubon bowed, and observed that it was a wide field.
“Yes,” said Mr Brooke, with an easy smile, “but I have documents. I began a long while ago to collect documents. They want arranging, but when a question has struck me, I have written to somebody and got an answer. I have documents at my back. But now, how do you arrange your documents?”
“In pigeon-holes partly,” said Mr Casaubon, with rather a startled air of effort.
“Ah, pigeon-holes will not do. I have tried pigeon-holes, but everything getsmixed in pigeon-holes: I never know whether a paper is in A or Z.”
“I wish you would let me sort your papers for you, uncle,” said Dorothea. “I would letter them all, and then make a list of subjects under each letter.
“Mr Casaubon gravely smiled approval, and said to Mr Brooke, “You have an excellent secretary at hand, you perceive.”
“No, no,” said Mr Brooke, shaking his head; “I cannot let young ladies meddle with my documents. Young ladies are too flighty.
“Dorothea felt hurt. Mr Casaubon would think that her uncle had some special reason for delivering this opinion, whereas the remark lay in his mind as lightly as the broken wing of an insect among all the other fragments there, and a chance current had sent it alighting on her.
When the two girls were in the drawing-room alone, Celia said—
“How very ugly Mr Casaubon is!”
“Celia! He is one of the most distinguished-looking men I ever saw. He is remarkably like the portrait of Locke. He has the same deep eye-sockets.”
—George Eliot in Middlemarch (Norton Critical Edition, 2nd edition, Bert G. Hornback ed., 2000), Book I, Chapter 2, p13.
If you’re an analog zettelkasten fan, I just bought a few bricks of 500 index cards for $6.08 each at my local Amazon Fresh. Most brands list for $12-$16 for this many; even Amazon.com is currently listing them for $10.50. Sadly it doesn’t match my all-time-best of $2.06. What’s your best? 🗃️📝
On March 11, 2023, I’d gotten a nice deal on a Remington Streamline portable typewriter in a generally uncontested online auction. I was certainly taking a small chance on a typewriter only by a few photos and the label “untested”, but I couldn’t resist the mint blue color which seemed like it would be a close match to my TWSBI Eco T fountain pen and my custom General Fireproofing 20 gauge steel desk.
Yesterday, the typewriter arrived, and today I took a short break to open it up and give it a short test drive. In addition to the fantastic news that the machine is in stunning shape, its color is about as perfect a match to the pen and the desk as one could ask!
Overall
The overall condition was beyond my dreams for this vintage and with some plastic portions. The typewriter only has a few signs of use and wear with some paint worn off at the corners of the back and on the right hand side where the platen knob meets the body. A bit of the “R” on the top Remington logo is worn off and seems to be thermally printed on, so I wouldn’t recommend heavy scrubbing, harsh abrasives, or caustic chemicals when cleaning the bodies of these for fear of removing the logo all together. These small flaws gives the machine some nice patina and the street cred of some reasonable use as a portable. There’s some small wear to the plastic hood where the two position return lever has rubbed against it. Otherwise it is in about as good a condition as one could hope.
All the keys worked with some severe stickiness on the “L” key. The smallest of tweaks on the head of the typebar remedied the issue without resorting to cleaning. The margin release wasn’t operating properly, but only because an obvious and easily re-mounted tension wire had become unhooked.
There is some minor grime and dust inside the body which could stand some cleaning, but it’s in great shape right out of the box. I’ll try to spend some time blowing it out and cleaning it up internally while I await some replacement ribbon.
The typewriter itself is has a metal chassis which is permanently screwed into a slightly darker plastic green base. This base dovetails with the plastic lid to create a case with a rubber-like plastic handle. Sadly the lid of the case was badly cracked and splintered into a dozen or so pieces in shipping, so I’m going to consider the lid a total loss. I’ll have to fashion some type of cover to keep the dust (and more importantly the German shepherd fur) out of the internal mechanisms.
On this model, the serial number is imprinted on to the black metal bottom chassis between the “U” and “J” keys when looking down at the typewriter from above. The serial number on my particular machine is AX 16 74 89. Sadly, the Typewriter Database doesn’t have serial numbers for this model or the late 60s or early 70s timespan in which these were made. One model in the database is dated to 1969 with a serial number starting with CX so it’s possible mine may be as early as ’68 or ’69 but sadly without better data, one can’t be sure.
Given the time period and the metallic mint paint, I do sort of wish this model also had Positraction, but then I suppose it would have needed to be produced by GM rather than Remington.
Keys
The keys appear to be thin beige pieces of almost bone-like plastic floating in mid-air but have thicker plastic and metal bases which give them a nice action. There’s a standard back space (curved arrow on the left), a margin release (double arrow on the right), but surprisingly for the age, is missing a dedicated 1/! key. There is no built-in tab functionality.
Ribbon
The machine has the typical larger Remington ribbon cores and this one included a dead, improperly seated ribbon on original metal rings. I swapped these out briefly for a new ribbon, though the plastic hub doesn’t seat as tightly as one would wish for the ribbon advance to work properly. I’ll get some new ribbon and handspool it onto the original cores and we should be off to the races. I’ll note that no metal ribbon covers, which had been standard on earlier models of this make, were present, though its probably just as likely that these were never included on their later models either for weight, functionality, or manufacturing cost reasons.
I’m don’t see any switch or button for the spool reverse, but suspect that the built-in mechanical sensors will operate as expected for Remingtons of this era. If not, it’s easy enough to actuate the switch manually with the hood off.
Also not available on this model is a switch for using two colored ribbons, so I’ll just have to be satisfied with a single color.
Other Functionality
As a later portable, the machine is missing some of the additional niceties of heavier late 50s or early 60s desk models. It does have a “card finger”, though only on the left. The return arm has two positions and a simple friction fit operation—one for use and the other for storage.
The machine has a carriage shift rather than a basket shift. The platen knobs are rather on the small side, and don’t have a typical button for variable line spacing. This line spacing functionality is built into the small switch on the left hand side for single or double spacing, but is labeled as “0” for small adjustments. It doesn’t appear to have a carriage lock of any sort, but does have margin stops and a satisfying bell.
In general, this model is a no-frills portable meant for basic functional typing on the go.
Typeface Sample
The pitch on this machine is 10 characters per inch (pica). The full platen is 85 characters wide.
Since I don’t have a properly inked/fitted ribbon for it yet, I’ll post a typeface sample at a later date.
Jorge Arango
