Monday, March 30, 2026

To Hymen (A poem for National Pencil Day)

It was on the 30th of March, 1858 that a stationer named Hymen Lipman made the pencil great by patenting a model with an eraser attached so that errors could be rubbed out instead of merely scratched.

So let us all give thanks to dear Hymen
for making writing more facile.
It's because of him that correcting errors
is no longer such a hassle. - Jeff Barnes