PERSONALBEST / My Collection The Discerning Doodler Astrophysicist and TV star Neil deGrasse Tyson loves the feel of a fancy pen 1

GROWING UP in the Bronx, I’d doodle when I got bored in class. But whereas the other kids were filling their notebooks with dragons and planes, I was polishing my . I had noticed that the New York Times banner shared letters with my own name—the “N” in “Neil,” the “T” in “Tyson”—so I would labo- riously copy out that Gothic lettering and practice my penmanship. 2 I quickly discovered, however, how hard it is to form Gothic letters with the cheap plastic ballpoint pens we had to work with back then. It felt freeing when I started to experiment with inexpensive calligraphic pens. With them, I could add a little flour- ish to a word if I decided the tone of 3 the statement deserved it. When I started studying astro- physics in graduate school in 1988, I received my first , a Mont Blanc, as a gift. That was the first time I could combine calligraphic lines with something I felt proud to display in my pocket, and I still use 4 that pen for book signings today. These days I like to write by candle- light. When I dip one of my quill pens into an inkwell, I feel like I’m com- GROOMER: STACY BENEKE/ZENOBIA AGENCY muning through time, sharing 1 2 3 4 the thoughts of others who came Knights Templars Copernicus A.D. 2000 Stars & Moons before me—medieval monks, maybe. I have a soft Inspired by the Zodiac Festooned with As I sit and write in the relative dark, spot for knights heliocentric Representations heavenly bodies, in the same manner in which they and their quests, model of the of constellations this pen is ideal wrote, I gain a better understanding and this Visconti known universe, in the night sky for pressing pen features a this Visconti decorate this down hard when of what it meant to solve the problems Templar cross like design has the pen you have to of their day. —As told to Michele Shapiro those often found name “Coperni- celebrating the make “carbon” Neil deGrasse Tyson, 58, hosts the National on battle stan- cus” etched on dawn of the copies of signed Geographic Channel show StarTalk. dards. a band. third millennium. documents.

70 AARP THE MAGAZINE / Real Possibilities PHOTOGRAPHS BY PATRICK JAMES MILLER