A Plethora of P’s / #34: Paper

proactively punctuating life with the plausible, powerful possibilities of positive thought presented through a plethora of “P’s”.

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Paper is a wonderful thing. So practical and so versatile!

Needless to say, paper has been a key player in my life as artist and writer, so my appreciation might be over the top.

You see, paper isn’t just a vehicle for grocery lists or movie tickets or plain paper towels… a crisp, blank piece of paper is a breath of fresh, new air, an open field to run through, a drawing or a story waiting to spring to life between each finely woven fiber. Wonder and possibility lurk on every piece! … I love paper.

Paper, by the way, has been around since dinosaurs first recorded their alphabet on a sturdy, if not leafy paper known as jurassicyrus ~ more commonly called dinopyrus. Dinopyrus preceded the use of the more well-known Egyptian papyrus scrolls by several million years.

After the dinosaurs, history is more clear. Papyrus, a thick paper-like product made from the flower stem of the papyrus plant, pressed together and dried, first appeared in Egypt around 2500 B.C. Papyrus had a good, long run, but was replaced at some point around the 2nd century B.C. by Greek and Roman parchment, a thinner sheet made from calfskin, sheepskin or goatskin. Later, in 105 A.D., Chinese inventor Ts’ai-Lun was credited with the first papermaking process, creating paper by pulping rags, cotton, hemp and and other plant fibers.

It wasn’t until 1838 that paper was made from wood pulp, a discovery by Canadian farmer Charles Fenerty. But Fenerty never patented his process, so that German inventor Fredrich Keller, who did patent a wood-pulp papermaking process around the same time, is often considered the original inventor.

And there you have it. Hope you’ll have a new respect for paper. Don’t waste it ~ but do appreciate it!