I’m finding it difficult to locate any information on how gauchos carry their office supplies. And I’m sitting in the Library of Congress as I write this.

I know, swoon, right? The. Library. Of. Congress.

Sure, they’re nomadic, and when I describe them as people good with their hands, I don’t mean they’re known for their handwriting, paper folding, or filing. But they must have had use for writing, at least a little. Sending word to another group; maybe even, buying into the romanticism, sitting around the fire with stars overhead, chronicling the day’s thoughts or recording weather and vegetation changes.

Friends recently returned to Portland from Buenos Aires and in appreciation for my watching their pets, they gave me what was billed by the market vendor as a gaucho pen-and-pencil holder. It’s brown leather, with a decorative stripe. The stiff leather is stitched down the middle to form two long, skinny pockets that each snugly hold one pen or pencil. Yes, it does look rather like a pocket protector, evolved to migrate from breast pocket to jeans pocket. A strip at the top folds over to snap around one’s belt. But I say, it’s really not so much a protector or a holder as it is a holster. I hear the clomp of boots on hard-packed earth, there’s a swoosh of fabric as two men turn to face each other, paces apart, and then: draw!

Since trying to find out more about this, I’ve come to realize that just because something is called a gaucho this-or-that doesn’t mean gauchos really use them. I’m ready to believe this about the pen holster, but I can’t believe the gaucho jewelry bag or the gaucho key chain. Also, gauchos don’t wear belts.

A friend told me about her recent stop at a New Jersey wayside, at which she enjoyed reading a heated political debate between Obama and McCain supporters, scratched in various shades of blue and black on the inside of one of the stalls. These people weren’t going to return to see how their written opinions progressed the conversation, the communication, the meaning. Their words weren’t going to get reviewed, or letters to the editor, or online comments. But if you brandish a pen, instead of just dig one out of your purse, and if you take the safety off, instead of just uncap, your words will always matter.