Here and There

God it’s nice to take a break from politics, though the theme of abomination still applies.

The new $5 bills will roll out today. Here’s a sneak peak:

Yet another dollar got stuck in the soda machine here at work today. Someone now owes me either $3 or $4. I think I’ll be charging interest for the pain and distress involved.

To top it all off, I took my bills downstairs to Walgreens, where I was charged $1.02. Besides the outrageous pricing for a can of cola, the cashier wouldn’t give me the $0.02. Argh! Don’t get me started on pennies.

Awesome. They’re redesigning the penny. Can’t wait.*

* The above post is sarcastic. I can’t think of a bigger waste of time and resources than to redesign the most useless, reviled coin in the world. Well, maybe invading Iraq gives this a run for its money. So to speak. But you get my point.

New $5 bill design unveiled.

Well, the problem is in people investing in the damn things. They’re actually quite nice as far as postage is concerned. Slate Explainer weighs in.

I finally held a “golden” George Washington dollar in my hand the other day, and boy was I disappointed.

Yes, it’s slightly larger than a quarter. Yes, the edge-incused inscription is a nice extra touch. But the coin itself feels flimsy and candy dollar coin-ish.

Still, I’ll get one for myself, stash it away with the rest of my dorky coin and bill collection, and await the John Adams…

Today is dollar coin release day. Sure, it’ll be awhile before the non-collector nerds among us get to handle one, but in my mind, the wait will be worth it. It’s never too late to keep trying the same thing over and over and over … though there are those who still prefer stinky, wear-outable, easily-counterfeitable paper money.

We’ve been through this before. We tried, and failed. We tried again, and there are remnants still with us, reminding us every once in a while what could’ve been.

I’m talking of course about the relationship we all have with dollar coins. And of course they’re at it again, releasing the first of the Presidential Dollar Coins this week.

Hello George! Can’t wait to get my hands on you. You can bet I’ll be using you.

Now if we can convince them to stop minting all those goddam pennies.

I’ve been holding off commenting on the possible redesign of U.S. currency to make it more identifiable for blind people. It just didn’t necessarily strike me as a bad idea. In general, our paper money has needed some sprucing up for some time, despite recent efforts at just such an end.

So it struck me odd (if not surprising) to read that the Bush Administration is appealing the court ruling requiring the Treasury Department to construct bills easily ID-able by the blind. As I read the story in the Times, I kept wondering, What are administration lawyers going to argue pull out of their asses this time? Even after I came across this:

In the government’s appeal, Justice Department lawyers argued that visually impaired people are not denied ”meaningful access” to money by the way the nation’s currency is designed. They noted the existence of portable reading devices that the blind can use to determine the denomination of paper money. The government said the blind can also make use of credit cards rather than currency.

I’m still wondering what the objection is. After all, as the Times notes:

“In his ruling, the [District Court] judge said that of 180 countries issuing paper currency, only the United States prints bills that are identical in size and color in all their denominations.”

Not that color matters in this instance, but still.

Interestingly enough, this all comes about in the wake of the new Presidential Dollar Coins, slated to begin distribution in 2007.

I am finally the proud recipient of a Colorado state quarter. I’m happy with the design ─ basically some mountains and a ribbon running over their base reading “colorful colorado” (this on a monochromatic coin, remember).

That seriously took forever, longer (it seems) than any of the other 37 quarters issued so far.

Next up: North Dakota (issued two weeks ago), who celebrates its statehood November 2, 1889 (a time often refered to as “Grover Cleveland, Part One”).

Okay, I’ll stop. I’m happy. I got my Colorado.

I admit, I haven’t been the most vigilant coin-collector nerd lately. But it’s August 21, and I still haven’t seen a Colorado quarter. The damn thing was released in June!
I did return from Venezuela with a few paper bills and lots of coins. My favorite bill was the 20,000 bolivares, with its portrait of Simón Rodríguez (whom I found out just today was one of Bólivar’s teachers) with his spectacles resting on his forehead.

In researching U.S. presidents 1-10, I came across an interesting tidbit (Sorry, I usually prefer this term to the more popular “factoid”).

The fourth president, James Madison, primary author of the U.S. Constitution, co-founder of the party of Jefferson, whose name is synonymous with judicial review (much to his chagrin), is lucky enough to have his bust grace the $US 5,000 bill.

I know what you’re thinking: What will I ever do with a $5,000 bill? Be you rich or poor, of course, by the very equalizing nature of inflation, increasingly little.

But there’s also the trend of moving from paper currency to electronic, abstract money. And I applaud such an effort.

Still, I love me some currency.

So I was thrilled to find a page on Wikipedia devoted solely to “Large denominations of United States currency”.

Look at how gracefully “Tommy” Woodrow Wilson graces the humble $100,000. Or how sinisterly Salmon P. Chase (Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury, and later, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and namesake of Chase National Bank, precursor of the modern-day Chase Manhattan) looks down from atop the $10,000.

True, U.S. paper money still falls far short on decorativeness and overall allure. Even with the introduction of the new Hamilton $10s (the Treasury’s most colorful effort to date), something is lacking.

Discovering the large denominations changes everything. Now, if I could just get my hands on one of those Cleveland $1,000s…

I’m an amateur coin collector. I’ve never been to any convention or meeting, I don’t use those silly cardboard sheets with the round slots for coins, and my collection definitely isn’t worth anything.

Don’t ask me why, but I place “special” coins in a little tin Curious George wagon when I get them. “Special” includes such gems as state quarters, bicentennial quarters, wheat pennies, buffalo nickels, two-dollar bills (thus delegitimizing the name “coin” collection), and all foreign currency I end up with stateside.

I’ve also got a couple of spare U.S. Sacagawea dollars. These are the gold coins the government decided to mint a few years ago. They never caught on, just as every attempt to get America off the dollar bill has failed.

But that doesn’t mean they can’t try.

Congress is sending a bill to the president that would commit U.S. mints to start making new gold dollar-coins the same size as the Sacagawea coin. The difference: these new coins, to begin minting in 2007, would each have the face of one of 37 dead U.S. presidents. They’d come out in succession, much like the state quarters (whose popularity prompted this new plan), until all 38 coins are out collecting dust in Curious George tins around the country. If 38 seems like an odd number, you presidential trivia nerds out there will recognize the neccessity: they’re actually issuing two coins for “Uncle Jumbo,” a.k.a., Grover Cleveland, one for each of his two nonconsecutive terms.

Just as the state quarters provided a history lesson (however shallow it may have been), president dollars can make presidential history dorks out of all of us.

I, of course, think it’s a really cool idea, coin- and president-nerd that I am. Too bad my opinion doesn’t translate into action in the real world.

But I’m going to try to rise above my cynicism and plug the new coins.

True, the only places I see the Sacagawea dollar exchanges now are in San Francisco’s MUNI stations and the post office. And true, it’s annoying as crap (for you and everyone around you) to have all that change dangling in your pocket.

But dammit, it’s time to put an end to fussy dollars that won’t go into the dollar slot of the automated whatever machine. Let’s ween ourselves off bills by switching to dollar coins. Let’s eliminate change, except the quarter (the only one with any real meaning any more), and become a society free of Coin Star machines.

I don’t know exactly why Americans are so repulsed by dollar coins. Maybe arcades of the past are to blame, first the penny then the quarter variety. Maybe we’re an uptight, exact-change-happy bunch, always eager to get it right down to the last penny. Maybe unfolding the creased corners of bills satisfies some primitive desire stored away in our brains.

Whatever it is, we’ve gone too long with our sad, fading bills. Anyone who’s travelled abroad has seen how well other countries get along with their coin lineups (and they still have paper bills). Coins have gravitas. They’re permanent. You can’t rip a coin in half (though I do love those tourist machines that flatten and stamp pennies).

So be on the lookout in a couple of years. The dead presidents are coming to a dusty shelf near you.