The blog since 2013
261 posts since September 2013 by Nathaniel Cerf: how to start collecting, what happens at the repair bench, inks under the sun, fake Montblancs, and the pens of presidents and writers. "It is a space dedicated to pen lovers old and new."
July 2021 By Art Cerf Sunset Behind the Wisconsin River. Wausau, Wis. April 2020. By Nathaniel Cerf By now, billions of people, indeed, half the world’s population had succumbed to Covid-19a. A year ago, people got tired of sheltering in place and ignored all the scientific warnings to stay in place and keep social distancing,…
Among my many careers, I was a fencing portrait photographer. The following are photos I used as advertising and pose options. I own the copyright to all of them, so please don’t steal them, without permission. Latching the floor cord to the D-ring just above Jill’s left hip, Dan took a moment to appreciate that…
This is me on the left with my University of Montana fencing mates after we had just kicked the asses of our arch rivals at Montana State…on their turf. Snapping a crisp salute by bringing his foil blade parallel to his unmasked face—inches from his nose—Dan’s grey eyes sharply gazed upon his opponent across the…
Carlotta By Art Cerf Carlotta was a killer. Ruthless, relentless and no regrets. She had been that way it seems forever, and she never considered being anything else. And if she had children, she assumed that they would be killers, too. And she showed no bigotry in selecting her victims, black or white, rich or…
The Taste of Brown By Nancy Bach This White-Breasted Nuthatch in its tree-hole nest has nothing to do with the story. Stories just seem to get more attention with photos. Crouched in the humid, smothering darkness, Magda Zeller examined the dead thing. It lay buried in a shallow trench at the base of the newly…
Lester Duncastle by Art Cerf If you were looking for a single word to describe Lester Duncastle, it would be annoying. He wasn’t bad or evil, just annoying. He’s the fellow who stands too close to you, speaks too loudly, tells rambling, pointless stories and laughs at his own jokes. If you had a middle…
Starlight By Nancy Bach It was a steamy Chicago night when I pulled the thread of her unravelling. I squatted beside the dumpster in the alley, my eyes glued to the back door of the gallery where I had worked for the past five years. A car’s headlights chased shadows across a brick wall, and…
“Oh my God, Ray,” said Valentine, sliding into his side of their usual booth with a tumbler of craft bourbon. “I just had the worst date of my life.” Ray cooly swirled his bourbon around an impossibly oversized single ice cube. “Worse than the blind date your boss set you up on with a high…
MR. HOBBS By Art Cerf This is a story about Mr. Hobbs. Not Roy Hobbs, the baseball phenom played by Robert Redford in “The Natural.” And not Jimmy Stewart’s Mr. Hobbs in “Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation.” Robert Redford is handsome. Jimmy Stewart was charming. Our Mr. Hobbs was neither. He was a solitary man,…
Author’s Note: A.) I’ve always enjoyed short-story contests of 50 words or fewer. B.) As of this writing, pangolins are one of the animals most suspected of giving humans this strain of coronavirus. The pangolin hunter smiled, looking at his wriggling snare. “Listen,” the defiant pangolin said. “I’ll make you a deal: Let me go,…
Even under the age of 10, I was one morbid kid with a dark sense of humor that would have suited me to be leading member of the Addams family. Among my youthful obsessions was the Bubonic Plague that wiped out a third of Europe in the middle of the 14th century. It terrified and…
Have you ever lived through a hurricane? I was visiting my grandmother in Cocoa Beach, Florida, in 1995 when Hurricane Erin struck. It was a minor, catagory 1 hurricane, but it was impressive for this Midwestern boy to witness and experience. Whereas hurricanes strike a much smaller location than a global pandemic, hurricanes were all…
