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Has anyone purchased the new Optima color, Aurora Optima Rossa? When it was announced, I thought it would be a hot commodity since (as far as I can tell) the 75th anniversary pen in the same finish was very popular. But since then, I haven't seen any threads about it. I am very curious to see it in person, and waiting for my local pen store to get it in stock. It's a flashy color for sure, but oh so fun! So far, the only places on the web I've seen pictures are: https://www.gouletpens.com/aurora-optima-fountain-pen-rossa-chrome-broad/p/AU-996CR-B and on the nibsmith.com.

Dearest Members and Guests of our Little Fountain Pen Nut House on the Digital Prairie, We are investigating the possibility to create a special News section based on RSS-feeds from the industry. So far, it appears rather hard to find the relevant RSS-feeds, or Atom-feeds for that matter, because there appear to be relatively few. We would therefore like to ask you to help us in the search for relevant RSS-feeds, which could be added to this particular section. In the Community Feedback forum (only visible to signed-in Members), there is a topic on this subject, and we would appreciate it if you could add any RSS- or Atom-feeds you know about. Thank you very much in advance! Warm regards, Wim On behalf of the FPN Admin Team

Discovered this video from a couple of years ago about LA store The Fountain Pen Shop, on a Los Angeles television station. Starts off with a cool 1950s TV ad for the Sheaffer Snorkel: http://www.myfoxla.com/story/22237011/tonys-la-meet-the-king-of-fountain-pens

I have been helping HBO's news program LAST WEEK TONIGHT research a matter relevant to my profession and to our shared interest: namely, misrepresentations made by legislators in numerous US states, in order to require cursive. That I dislike so much about cursive-as-we-know-it is not the point of the program — the point is that the cursive boosters are systematically misrepresenting research documentation in order to make the documentation support cursive. This has been going on for a couple of years now, as you may know, in a number of state legislatures and school boards where various organizations and lobbies are "working with" state legislatures to have those legislators present — under oath — misstatements on handwriting as fact because such misstatements are necessary in order to promote cursive. The legislators, in bills they introduce & in hearings/testimony on those bills, misquote research they cite — and make other documentable misrepresentations — which the salesmen for certain textbook companies, as well as pressure-groups such as "Campaign for Cursive" (yes, an actual group!) are presenting to the legislators as fact. In some cases, it gets worse, and the legislators involved have not been "fed" anything by lobbyists, but have outright and unashamedly been making up THEIR OWN facts.) This is why the LAST WEEK TONIGHT researcher, Liz Day, phoned me yesterday for help (she'd been reading things I post as blog-comments on the Net, as well as news-pieces citing me, and had also seen state-legislature footage that showed people who were under oath, stating "facts" that were easily documented as being misrepresentations of the stuff that these people claimed to be quoting or citing), so I have spent today and tonight getting together all the documentation to send to her. So I MAY get on TV ... Or at least, my information will, and I will apparently be credited in some way. The episode airs on Saturday, November 2, 11:00 PM Eastern time.

WOW! A handwriting-related message by me got "favorited" BY THE NEWS-MEDIUM that I was countering therewith! See below ... (The news-medium is an education-news service which had been promoting, as fact, a PBS news-segment that misrepresented research on handwriting to make it appear to support cursive.) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: NewsHourAmGrad (via Twitter) <notify@twitter.com> Date: Wednesday, May 7, 2014 Subject: NewsHourAmGrad (@NewsHourAmGrad) favorited one of your Tweets! To: Kate Gladstone <handwritingrepair@gmail.com> Kate Gladstone, Your Tweet got favorited! Kate Gladstone @KateGladstone @NewsHourAmGrad Research shows that #cursive does NOT #help #reading, #language, or #spelling. See "Does (cont) tl.gd/n_1s1lkq1 12:51 AM - 07 May 14 Favorited by NewsHourAmGrad @NewsHourAmGrad @NewsHourAmGrad reports with in-depth coverage on the latest in education news. Ideas? Contact ejones AT newshour DOT org