Contributor Biographies #17

 

W. M. Reger IV

OK, I've lurked enough. It's time to come in out of the cold.

I was born on the banks of the mighty Mississippi barely in time to "like Ike" - but I have lived in the past for the last 2 decades. I was born to root around in the dustbin of history and drag out whatever treasures I fancy and show them to the world, tail a-waggin'. Yes, ladies and germs, I am a historian (motto: "Historians do it TO the past). Lately, though, Madam Clio has been rather frigid, so I make my living teaching the up-and-coming generation how to read and write.

When I am not in the classroom, I write. I am presently trying to coax a book and a couple of articles into print, and I have a novel manuscript that I toy with in my free time. (If you or anyone you know is presently in need of a ghostwriter to write that sleazy, tell-all memoir that will make millions, I'm your man!) When I am not teaching or writing, I am at home with my very beautiful and patient wife, Mary, and our multitudinous offspring and their pets.

My hobbies include extensive reading, numismatics, travel, and the learning of languages. I speak Russian, Dutch, and German, and read fairly well in French, Spanish, Swedish, Polish, and Belorussian. I am presently trying to become conversant in Italian, so if you snail mail me and you know Italian, feel free to make me work harder and write me in Italian. I am an unabashed Europhile and have lived extensively in Belgium and Russia. I hope to return someday and live for awhile in Italy.

I have been a left-handed fountain pen user since High School. My mother was telling me just the other day her memories of my fat, black Sheaffer. It fairly slobbered ink - blue as I recall - all over the paper and myself. Still, I came to enjoy the slight scratching of the nib when I write, and I have remained devoted. My collection has grown slowly as I received or gave myself FPs for various occasions in life. I associate pens with people and times. But I am also a "user" more than a collector, and write almost exclusively with fountain pens. Having said that, though, my recent association with Pentrace has awakened in me the desire (call it lust?) to own at least one vintage pen. Can I own just one? We shall see.

I am attaching an artist's rendition of me shortly after completing my dissertation. I still look like this, but perhaps not as goofy.

 

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Rod Ragner

I was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin on (July 16, 1957) my father's twenty-first birthday, which was the first in the continuous succession of bizarre coincidences and odd occurances which is my life. I left La Crosse at 18 and transferred to Iowa State University, in Ames, where I got my B.S. in Computer Science. I have only had one profession, thusfar, in my life - I either write computer programs or teach other people how to write computer programs.

In February of 1998, I decided that I wanted to write a letter by hand for the first time in over twenty years. For over two decades my writing instrument of choice had been a computer and printer. Periodically, I would jot a note or two with the mechanical pencil that my father gave me when I went to college, but I had not written anything in cursive for at least twenty years. I found a cheap ballpoint pen and tried to write the letter, but immediately realized that I could not remember how to form cursive letters. Coincidentally, an unsolicited Levenger catalog arrived in the mail that very day. I wrote the letter with a computer, but ordered my first fountain pen, a gunmetal Waterman Maestro, the next day.

I had never even touched a fountain pen before; I found the experience miraculous. I started working as a Software Consulting Engineer for Apple in March of 1998 and spent eight months in Manhattan working at Standard and Poors on Wall Street, then training a small team of developers at HBO near Times Square. I commuted home (to Ames, Iowa) every other weekend (only home for 36 hours every two weeks), and spent most of my time in Manhattan, where I discovered Fountain Pen Hospital.

Unfortunately, the enjoyment of my new found obsession with fountain pens was rudely interrupted. On the day before Thanksgiving of 1998, I was diagnosed with cancer and spent all of 1999 in chemotherapy. The accompanying picture of me was taken at the 2000 World Wide Developers Conference, shortly after my hair started to grow back (I look much better now, honest). Before chemotherapy (BC) I usually wore my very long hair in a pony tail down to my waist, so it was quite a shock to be bald. Correction, I was hairless - shave your head, then cut your eyebrowse and eyelashes off and you might understand what it was like to look in a mirror.

I was so sick during and for a long time after chemotherapy that I did not even try to pick up a pen until January of 2001. The chemicals that kept me alive also gave me Raynoud's Syndrome, which is a condition that peridocially throughout the day causes pain in my hands and feet. When I was finally able to write again, I "went nuts" and spent $10,000 on forty two fountain pens in the first five months of 2001. I am "trying to cut back" at the moment, but my love for fountain pens has not been diminished.

As of this writing (June 23, 2001) my collection is comprised entirely of modern writing instruments, but several of my new PenTracer friends have offered to help me start buying vintage fountain pens. My current favorites are Visconti Michelangelo, Titanic, Voyager, Manhattan, and Copernicus, Stipula Etruria and Saturno, Aurora 88 and Optima, Bexley Carved Obsidian and Deluxe Demonstrator, Pelikan M800 and M600, and Waterman Man 100, Opera, and Patrician fountain pens. Of course, like most PenTracers, my list of favorites grows and changes daily. My favorite nibs are Mottishaw Flexible Extra Fine, Italic, Stub, Oblique Double Broad, and [Extra] Fine.

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