Issue # 111 / 5 December 2008 //

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The Weekly Planner Project

With Just a Few Simple Tools, You Too

by Britt Leach

HERE ARE PHOTOS from a recent project: The Pocket Planner Project. I wanted, even needed, a weekly pocket planner. And when I say pocket I mean tee-shirt pocket because I wear tees year-round. Short-sleeved tees in summer, fall and spring and long-sleeved tees in winter. So the planner couldn’t be so heavy or so large as to destroy the drape of my tee-shirt cloth, which must fall pleasingly straight before it is interrupted by the exciting curvature of my gut.

The ready-made pocket planners are out there. Moleskines and various logoed items from companies like The Economist and The New York Review of Books. But I needed something light and small for my tee-shirt pocket for the reasons of fashion just stated.

There is one other quality that I require, other than size and weight with their accommodations to fashion: the acceptance of fountain-pen ink. My weekly planner must take fountain pen ink without feathering or bleed-through. And even though it’s the claim of the Moleskine people (Mol-uh-skee-nuh pee-pul) that Hemingway, Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas and Jesus used Moleskine notebooks, the things are lousy for fountain pens; in fact they are worthless.

I’ve been using Field Notes Brand pocket notebooks for a year or so now. I use them for word lists, to-do lists and notes about cheap, non-toxic wines. Field Notes use fountain-pen-ready paper and have an ascetic, Luddite look about them, which is most pleasing; much like my tees.

So I did the smart thing and using basic tools (straight edge and ball-point pen) constructed a most handy weekly planner out of a blank Field Notes. Required about two hours and one glass of Pepperwood Zinfandel. You can find the photos artfully scattered around this page.

Full disclosure: I was so happy with my creation that I sent these photos to Field Notes Brand and they kindly included a photo essay on their website. A useful website with useful products, including pencils, ball-point pens (perfection is elusive) and an eighteen-month calendar, just right for a desk or a wall or to hang from your rear-view mirror.

N.B. I have received no compensation from Field Notes Brand for recommending their products. It is the policy of Veritas: Any Day Now to be above reproach in terms of pay-offs and bribes. Except in the matter of wine. I’ll take wine from anybody, anytime and say anything they want me to say. And in that regard I encourage quantity as opposed to quality. A seventy-two dollar case of twelve bottles versus two thirty-six dollar bottles or three twenty-four dollar bottles. You get the idea and remember: I’ll say anything you want me to say. I prefer Merlots and Zinfandels.

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