JakeWeidmann slides into a booth
at the Miller Time Pub in downtown
Milwaukee and orders a Cobb salad.
“
Hello again,” a waitress coos, while a
group of middle-aged women waggle
their fingers in his direction.
Weidmann, 28, is muscular and
attractive, but it’s his handwriting
that gets hearts fluttering. In 2011,
Weidmann became the youngest
person ever to earn the title of “mas-
ter penman” from the International
Association of Master Penmen,
Engrossers and Teachers of Hand-
writing, essentially marking him as
one of the world’s best calligraphers.
Partly due toWeidmann’s pres-
ence, perhaps, there’s a real buzz
at this year’s IAMPETH convention,
which is being held at the
Milwaukee Hilton. For an
art in danger of going the
way of barrel hooping or
musket making, the young
calligrapher represents an
opportunity to pass the pen
on to future generations.
“
Our elders want to give us the
tradition,” Weidmann says, “but a
lot of designers my age don’t care to
understand it.”
Weidmann has long been an
exception to this rule. In college,
his professors would say, “Oh, so
you’re
the one whose essays look like
the Declaration of Independence.”
Even his grocery lists, he says, are
“
ridiculously written.”
At the IAMPETH convention, he
leads a “Fundamentals of Flourish-
ing” class, his pen strokes projected
onto huge screens. Afterward, he
sells autographed copies of his quill
curlicues for a quarter and accepts
hugs from grateful veterans of the art.
“
We’re such a close-knit group, I
feel like a family member,” he says
during a lull. “With a hundred sets of
grandparents.”
—
NICOLE FREHSEE
ARGENTINA •
Clarita Lamas doesn’t
speak a lick of English. She lives in
Jujuy, a province in northwestern
Argentina, in a se lement where goats
outnumber people. She bakes bread in
an outdoor mud oven and walks four
hours a day to tend to her livestock.
More o en than not, she’ll have a visitor
tagging along—someone fromAustralia,
say, or Israel. This is because, more or
less by accident, Lamas has become an
adventure-tourism a raction.
It started a decade ago when Lamas
took in a stranded hiker, who returned
to Europe and spread the word via the
Internet. Suddenly, people from across
the globe were knocking on the door
of her small adobe house, all with an
interest in helping her milk the goats.
Lamas, who doesn’t have a phone, cor-
responds with her guests online, which
requires her flagging downa bus and rid-
ing 10 miles to the nearest town. When
asked if communication gets tricky,
given the wide range of nationalities
involved, she slaps her knee and says,
“
Internet translator!”
—
CHANEY KWAK
THEWRITE STUFF
THE WORLD OF CALLIGRAPHY GETS ITS VERY OWN ROCK STAR
REMOTE ACCESS
STRETCHING THE WORLDWIDE WEB A LITTLE BIT FARTHER
MILWAUKEE
THE HEIR
UP THERE
The British royal line
descends fromEurope’s
second-tallest building
Looking up at London’s
newest skyscraper, the
1,016-
foot Shard, it’s just
possible to make out an
antlike speck near its
pinnacle. The speck
is Prince Andrew,
the reigning British
monarch’s second son, who has volun-
teered to rappel down the building for
charity. Even from far away, you can see
that he’s not entirely comfortable with
the decision.
On the opposite side of the building,
commuters stream over London Bridge
and into the city, unaware that the only
thing between the Duke of York and a
perilously rapid descent is a nylon rope
with a few strategically placed clips.
Directly below the speck, meanwhile,
a small crowd has gathered. “He seems
nervous,” remarks one onlooker.
In fact, Prince Andrew doesn’t seem
nervous so much as paralyzed. “They
have to go slow,” says another spectator,
who apparently knows about such
things. “It’s a steady walk down.”
A er half an hour of steady down-
ward walking, the prince reaches his
destination, the 20th floor, and disap-
pears from view. With this, the cluster
of onlookers dissolves into the morning
flow, a fewwearing expressions of mild
disappointment, as if they’d expected
something a bit more TomCruise-y.
Prince Andrew, at least, does not find
the experience lacking in excitement.
When asked what he thought of the
descent, he responds, “I will never do it
again.”
—
SARAHWARWICK
LONDON
24
DECEMBER 2012
•
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