No More Presidents

In 2007, the U. S. Mint began issuing coins in their Presidential Dollar series, four different ones a year featuring former presidents in order, starting with George Washington.  They are "golden" coins similar to the Sacagawea dollars; that is, gold in color only.  So far they've been through our twentieth president, James Abram Garfield.  His coin came out last November.

This series was inspired by the State Quarters that were issued between 1999 and 2008 on which the Mint made a mint, as it were.  It costs about 7 cents to make a quarter, so for every one that was taken out of circulation and saved by somebody, 18 cents went into the Treasury.  The total profit from the quarters is estimated at $3 billion.

The presidential dollars haven't had the same success, and they're talking about discontinuing the series.  I think the problem is basically that people don't like dollar coins anyway so they really don't circulate widely and lots of people don't have a chance to see very many, much less collect them.  And, when it comes to sticking a coin in a drawer, never to be spent again, a dollar is a bigger investment than a quarter.

It will be ironic if the Garfield coin is the last of the presidential dollars since he was in office only six months, the last two in a coma.

What? Me speechless?

I'm in a slump.  I like to crank out a new posting on this here blog every day, but the last few days I just haven't had anything to say.

I actually almost came up with a topic yesterday while watching the Michigan State women's basketball game, not because they beat Penn State, but because of the star of the game, 5'8" senior guard Porsche Poole.  And not because she scored a career-high 32 points and had 6 rebounds, 6 assists and 3 steals.  No, it was because of her name.

Even though she pronounces it POR-shay, it still looks like the car.  And by the second half, instead of "Way to go, Porsche" I found myself saying "Way to go, Cadillac!" or "Nice shot, Honda!" whenever she scored.  I wondered if she had a brother named Plymouth, but then I decided that any brother of Porsche's would have to be called Jaguar, at least.

I thought it would be fun if she had a teammate named Volkswagen Smith -- then I thought, no, that should be Volkswagen Schmidt.  The rest of the team could be Fiat diBenidetto, Volvo Jorgenson, and, of course, the 7'5" center named Beatrix-Maria Wurstenburger, known to her teammates as BMW.

And then I got to feeling ashamed of myself.  That's not nice, making fun of the girl's name. 

So, I didn't write about that yesterday.

Bee-Bo-Banana-Fanna

I just had a piece of the yummy banana bread I made the other day. It's Grandma Bozzo's recipe, which I got from her granddaughter. In Italian, the family name is pronounced Boat-so. Some of my friend's cousins pronounce it Bah-zo, but her side of the family says Bo-zo, just like Bozo the Clown.

The reason I'm mentioning this is (a) Grandma Bozzo's banana bread is so good you would happily pay to eat it and (b) it reminds me of a time her granddaughter and I were shopping in a gift boutique. She was on the other side of the little store when I saw something I thought she'd like, and I said, "Hey, Bozzo -- come look at this."

A clerk who had been hovering nearby got an I-am-absolutely-appalled look on her face and reproached me with, "That's a terrible thing to call your friend!"

I retorted, "Well, first of all, it's none of your business, and second -- that's her name."

Bozo.

You said it, Jack

I see that today is the birthday of sportscaster Jack Brickhouse (1916-1998). He called games of Chicago teams for more than 40 years on WGN radio and television, but he is most remembered as the voice of the Chicago Cubs from 1948 until he retired in 1981.

Like most sportscasters, Brickhouse had a cache of things he said all the time. I can still hear him giving the Cubs’ defensive positions at the beginning of a game. During Leo Durocher’s tenure as manager (1966-1972), it would go like this:

"Williams, Hickman, and Spangler in left, center, and right; Santo, Kessinger, Beckert, and Banks, the infield third to first; and a battery of Hundley and Jenkins." (Or Hundley and whoever -- Holtzman, Hands, Pappas, Niekro, and many others.) 

In almost every baseball game I see, something happens that causes me to say out loud what Brickhouse always said in that situation:

When the 0-2 pitch was a ball: "He wasted one."

When it was time for the seventh-inning stretch: "All right, on your feet, you Cubs fans."

When the Cubs came from behind to tie the game: "We've got us a brand-new ball game!"

When the score was tied going into the Cubs' bottom of the 9th or any extra inning: "Any old kind of a run wins this ball game."

When the score was tied after nine innings: "We'll have an extra-inning ball game today."

When something really good happened for the Cubs: "Wheeee!"

When something really bad happened for the Cubs: "Oh, brother."

When the Cubs dodged a bullet on a close play: "Whew boy!"

And, of course, when a Cub hit a home run: "That's pretty well hit! Back ... back ... back ... Hey hey! A home run!"

Shame On You

The practice of performing our national anthem before sporting events began during World War II when it was sung or played before baseball games as part of an effort to boost morale.  The idea caught on, though, and within a few years even high school basketball games were preceded by the anthem.

At one time, spectators stood, removed hats, put hands over hearts, and even if they didn't sing along, they did face the flag, and even if they weren't exactly solemn, they were at least quiet for the duration.  When it was over, they applauded and cheered, not for the performance but for the anthem and the republic for which it stands.

Or, am I too naive?  Maybe it wasn't patriotism at all, maybe they cheered because they were glad the damn song was over and they could get on with the game.  Considering what came later, that may be closer to the truth, because as time went on, the sports crowds appeared to have grown quite impatient for the game to begin and started their cheers and applause before the anthem ended, somewhere around the last phrase, "...and the home of the brave."  Every decade, it seemed, the end of the fans' patience with it moved further and further back until the whole last section of the song was spoiled by premature applause, and worse still, the number of folks actually singing dwindled, along with the number who stood, removed hats, and put hands over hearts, or even, for that matter, paid attention to it.

This encroachment reached its absolute limit today at the NFC Championship game in San Francisco where the crowd clapped and cheered and yelled from beginning to end of the singing of the national anthem.

I freely admit that I am not overly fond of "The Star Spangled Banner" either as a song or a poem, but it is the official national anthem of the United States of America and, as such, deserves my attention and respect and that of very other citizen of this country.

The most disheartening aspect of that disgraceful display in San Francisco is that all those people should be ashamed of themselves, and they're not.

Another one bites it

A couple years ago I decided I needed to read Isaac Asimov's I Robot because I never had.  Not being much of sci fi fan, I was basically bored stiff by it.  There is one interesting thing I remember about the book, which, incidentally, was written in 1950.  Among all the robots, space stations, inter-galactic travel and other futuristic stuff, the characters still took photographs with a camera that used film, which they had to drop off at a lab to be developed.  Cameras nowadays don't need film, of course, but Asimov never saw that one coming.

Apparently, neither did Kodak.  They're in Chapter 11.

And so is Hostess.  That one is not my fault.  It's true that I haven't bought a Kodak camera since 1972, and I haven't bought Kodak film since going digital in 2001, but I still buy Hostess Cupcakes.  I love them, even though they are embarrassing to eat.  You know the ones I mean -- the chocolate ones with the creamy center and the white squiggle on top, the ones you don't dare eat in front of anybody because when you finish one you can't help smiling a big grin because you are so happy, and then everybody can see you have chocolate all over your teeth.  Yeah, those.  (It's a good idea to make sure there are no cameras around if you're going to eat one.)

Timid is as timid does

I once worked with a young woman who was the shyest person I ever met.  This was back in the mid-60's when I was in my early twenties, and so was she.  She was tall and slim, dark and rather pretty, but she was painfully shy.  She spoke to no one unless spoken to first.  When she did talk, she was so quiet you could hardly hear her, and she never made eye contact.

One day she came up to my desk and just stood there looking at the top of it.  I asked her if I could help her, and after a great deal of hesitation and stammering, she finally managed to convey to me that she was wondering if the two of us could go out to lunch some time.  I said that would be delightful, and we made a date for the very next day.

When the time came and we were walking out into the parking lot, I asked whose car we should take, and she pointed hers out, which was nearby.  I don't remember the make or model of her car at all, but it was a large sedan that was probably four or five years old.  I opened the passenger door and noticed that the interior door panel was missing.  When I got in, I saw that all the door panels were missing and that the car had no dashboard.  It also had no back seat.

"What happened to your car?" I asked in alarm.

"I took everything out to make it lighter," she said.  "I race it at US-30 Drag Strip on weekends."

Not quite as shy as I thought, I guess.