San Francisco Fountain Pen Show

So, I went to this show, two weekends ago. San Mateo, actually, rather than San Francisco but the gravitational pull in the area of SF is such that the name fits.

This was my first pen show and, perhaps, my impressions are colored by that.

By nature I am somewhat shy — no, honest! Stop laughing you. I mean it. I really am shy. :-)

I often stand on the outside, looking in. This comes to the fore, particularly, when I'm around groups of people who are already tightly knit.

And pen show persons are a rather tightly knit group. That is not a bad thing in and of itself. But it brings all — or a goodly number of — my insecurities to the fore.

I have quite a collection of pens. I know a reasonable amount about them. But I am hardly any kind of expert. And my handwriting needs work.

The Japanese company, Sailor, was represented. You could sit and try different nibs — and Sailor has a large variety of same. I couldn't. Simply couldn't.

I don't really know enough about how different nibs behave to have, as they say in Ireland, made much of a fist of it.

We are masters of our own limitations, as I once mentioned to a friend.

I did, however, encounter a type I abhor. Over the years I've become used to, not yet inured to, the type. He, and so far I've only encountered the male exemplar of the type, attends shows — technology shows being mostly my experience — for the purpose of impressing on all around him his knowledge, his 'in-ness', his being one of those who knows all the...unimportant minutiae.

And this will be done by monopolizing exhibitors, as many as can be fit in whatever time is available, and demonstrating his greater knowledge and understanding of whatever-it-is — greater than that of the exhibitor, and certainly greater than that of those standing around in awe of this paragon of techno-savvy. Or at least those trying, in vain, to get some of the exhibitor's time for actual enlightenment.

Maybe encountering this type in a different setting, something non-technological in a way, was more unsettling than I expected.

But, even in an area in which I can hold my own — software technology — I still abhor the type.

For a better view on the San Francisco Pen Show you might wish to view this — by Lisa Miyako. I got the link from the Fountain Pen Day facebook page.

Enjoy.