Home

Choose Better

: Written by: Liz McGuire; Category: Ponderings; Published: 05 October 2025

You're probably here for fountain pen stuff, but what's in the article has to be said.

Burned Church Building in Michigan — Church in Michigan, after it burned down; attacker's truck
(And yes, visitors are still welcome in every Church meeting house)

One week ago, on Sunday, 28 September 2025, in Grand Blanc, Michigan, a man rammed his pickup truck into the front wall of a church building belonging to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (hereinafter, "the Church"; members are sometimes referred to as "Mormons"¹). On the other side of that wall, roughly 150 people (children, parents, grandparents) were in the middle of a worship service. The attacker proceeded to shoot at members of the congregation and then set the building on fire, using gasoline as an accelerant. He killed 4 people and injured 8 others before police stopped him. Thankfully, the man never had the chance to use the IEDs he brought with him. (You can read more in this Deseret News article, or just do a web search.)

These were my people.

The Adventures of Quin and Makhabesh: Part 8: The Ice Fields Adventure

: Written by: Liz McGuire; Category: Fountain Pen Related; Published: 23 July 2025

< back to Part 7: The Grey Spot Adventure

Part 8: The Ice Fields Adventure

352 Robert Oster Deep Sea
“My dear friend, Professor Eenness, has gone missing,” Heilari said. “You must find her.” She opened a door. “Her office.” Essri studied the room, afraid to say that he couldn’t find a person he’d never seen before. “Eenness studies objects and species with natural magical abilities and properties. Much of our understanding of how magic works is because of her…” While she spoke, they entered the Professor’s lab, filled with strange objects, all neatly arranged. Heilari held out a message paper book that Quin accepted. “Her last report was from the ice fields.” Essri gasped. “I’m a thnek. I’ll freethe.”

353 Montblanc Irish Green
Heilari propped her fists on her hips. “Am I a first-year student? Warming enchantments only go so far, so you’ll need warmer clothing…” “I gotcha covered, little buddy,” Makhabesh whispered. “Don’t worry,” Quin added. Vika remained oddly silent. In Professor Eenness’s home, Essri felt like a thief, slithering around her belongings. Heilari provided a painted portrait and described her friend. “One more thing, and the reason I know she lives—a heartstone.” She held out a pulsing red stone. Essri touched it and tried to sense where the Professor was, but got nothing.

The Adventures of Quin and Makhabesh: Introduction

: Written by: Liz McGuire; Category: Fountain Pen Related; Published: 09 June 2021

Background

For some bizarre reason, many fountain pen ink reviewers write pangrams as sample text. Pangrams are useful for learning to type, but they're somewhat absurd for demonstrating fountain pen writing - it's not as if the fountain pen will write differently depending on the letter of the alphabet. Anywho, it's a common practice.

So, when I started doing ink reviews, I decided to have fun with these pangrams. One of these pangrams is "The five boxing wizards jump quickly." Eventually, this morphed into stories about "the fifth wizard", who was given a name by the user "yazeh" on the Fountain Pen Network.