My name is John Morgan and I'm a professor of Economics. I've got a wife, Heather, who I adore, and a child (as yet unnamed) coming soon. I also have a guinea pig named Licorice.
I came to fountain pens when I was extremely young and became fascinated by my mother's Esterborrks from her high school and college days. Being about 8 years old, the intracacies of the lever fill mechanism and the opportunity to "stress test" said mechanism by repeatedly pulling the lever proved irresistable. I also loved writing with her pens -- the glossy finish of the wet ink and the fact that it was so different from the usual way made the whole experience irresistable. Unfortunately, the wear and tear of an 8 year old combined with a few ink related disasters eventually caused my Esterbrook privileges to be revoked. I would pick up the No Nonsense fountain pens my mother had around and play with them from time to time during high school and college, but I was only amused for short periods.
After college, I went to work in an accounting firm with strict rules about dress, comportment, and so on. Faced with these restrictions, junior accountants sought out ways to express individuality at the boundaries of the rules. I fell in love with splashy socks, splashy ties, and for the first birthday I celebrated after marrying my wife, a splashy Montblanc 146. While I did not know a heck of a lot about pens, I liked the empowerment of having the same pens as the partners of my firm had. I may not be able to afford the $1500 suits, but dammit, I can afford thesame pen. I loved the pen though it was a disaster with the Montblanc ink it came with. It had a bad habit of "sweating" ink all inside the cap lid and thus causing me to revisit my ink disasters of yore -- only now in the public sphere of meeting with clients. The discovery of Waterman ink cured this problem.
I went on to graduate school happy to have the Montblanc but not really bitten by the pen bug. After graduating and getting my first professorial job, my wife got me another birthday gift, a black lacque Parker Sonnet. The semi-flex (or squishiness depending on your perspective) of the nib was a real eye opener. I absolutely loved this pen. Then I asked for a Pelikan. I remembered from work the endless debates about the virtues of Montblanc versus Pelikan (at the time I was on the dark side) and wanted to explore the other side of the debate. Once again, my enabling wife produced a marbled blue M200 which, at the time, I thought was even more fabulous. It's been a downhill spiral since.
My collection -- though I don't like to think of it that way -- consists mainly of modern pens. My favorites right now are a pearl and black international Duofold, a green striped M600, and the wonderfully retro Waterman Opera. The Montblanc still has a special place in my heart as well. When I was learning about pens, I found it incredibly frustrating to troll a million internet archives to get reviews of those that caught my eye. I also didn't like some of the reviews in magazines because it seemed like they though every pen was good and, being a good pessimist, I just flat out didn't believe it. So, I set up oPENions: The Site of Fountain Pen Reviews. (http://go.to/openions). This is the site that I wish was around when I first got interested in pens.
Apart from pens, my interests include hiking, birding, and rotisserie baseball. I've also written several virtual volumes of poetry from the point of view of another guinea pig I had, piggywig. You can read this as http://www.fortunecity.com/bally/minogues/107/. I have a number of pet theories about fountain pens. Specifically 1.Nib break-in period is a myth. 2. That changes in pen design had less to do with fashion than people think; and 3. That folks who think that fountain pens will be rediscovered by the populace at large and return to popularity are nuts. I defend these vigorously on Pentrace, where I post simply as "John." Eventually, I'll post essays on my theories to oPENions. That's about it.
Blog or Homepage:
http://go.to/openions
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