I,Pencil Response:

I, Pencil - By Leonard E. Read is about the general history of the pencil, what it is used for, how the everyday person does not really think twice about using it. Very few take into account the many hours of labor that went into making such a ordinary, everyday object. A pencils journey to life is more complex than most would expect, using a Cedar tree from California to form the exterior eventually traveling to the Mississippi river where clay is collected for the graphite. Going through hours and hours of manufacturing to make school and office supplies for the millions of people in America. It not the people who produce the pencils that demand them, they do it because they have to make a living for themselves.The pencil wants the person using it to let creativity flow, great ideas and meaning full thoughts can evolve from it.

"Pick me up and look me over. What do you see? Not much meets the eye -- there's some wood, lacquer, the printed labeling , graphite lead, a bit of metal, and the eraser." That is the pencil talking explaining how most people just see the pencil for what it looks like and not how complicated the design actually is. One thing i found every interesting while reading was this quote "It has been said "only god can make a tree." why do we agree with this? Isn't it because we realize that we ourselves could not make one?" I think that makes a lot of sense, many people believe that what we as humans have no control over on a "higher power" or some spirtial performance. What we can not prove people have a hard time believing. "I, Pencil, seemingly simple though I am, offer the miracle of my creation as testimony that this is a practical faith, as practical as the sun, the rain a cedar tree, the good earth." very simple objects can play a large role in someone else's visions, weather it be artistic or not. Objects we take for granted are made from the environments that surround us.