David Rees thinks he knows how to sharpen pencils. He says people have entrusted 1,500 pencil points to his sharpening business. I know a little something about working with sharp pencils, and let me ...

“How to Sharpen Pencils: A Practical and Theoretical Treatise on the Artisanal Craft of Pencil Sharpening” (Melville House, $19.95), by David Rees, is not your average book about pencil sharpening. In ...

Which electric pencil sharpener is best? Given how much time people spend on their smartphones, laptops and tablets these days, it probably doesn’t seem like there’s much need for pencils. But whether ...

Although it’s not very glamorous, everyone needs a reliable pencil sharpener in their home. Whether your kids write with pencils every day or you turn to your colored pencils and your calming coloring ...

When's the last time you sat down and wrote something with a nice, sharp pencil? You'll be happy to know that it still feels, sounds, and smells great. But a sharp pencil requires a pencil sharpener, ...

So when we heard that political cartoonist David Rees would be at Pete’s Candy Store in Brooklyn on February 13th offering tutorials on “artisanal pencil sharpening,” we thought it was a brilliant ...

There is a crisis on campus. No one's life is at stake, but a lot of people's homework is. I refer to the lack of decent pencil sharpeners on campus. The only place I have been able to find decent, ...

In the barroom outside the shotgun performance hall at Pete's Candy Store, a woman's singing threatened to drown out a free lecture on artisanal pencil sharpening. "They're making an acetate record ...

Long lines at amusement parks. Traffic stalled at rush hour. Cycling uphill. To most of us, these are just minor problems we face in an otherwise comfortable existence. To Anwar Farooq, they are ...

As post-war shortages faded in memory, the 1970s-80s became a time period when middle-class Americans felt relatively comfortable financially and increasingly able to indulge themselves. During the ...