ABC Wednesday Archives - Page 11 of 14

Q is for Quarters

It appears that I have become ~~obsessed~~ utterly fascinated with the United States 25-cent piece of late. I wrote here about collecting the 50 state quarters for 1999 to 2008. Now I understood MY coming to the hobby late, but why are three other people in my 17-person office starting to collect only in the last six months? Yet another colleague, who became a U.S. citizen in 2005, wants to create 12 sets.

I discovered that the quarter had had the same design of George Washington on the observe side -that’s “heads”- from 1932 to 1998. For most of that time, the reverse side was an American eagle. The only exception was in 1975 and 1976, when the obverse side read 1776-1976, and the reverse was a special US bicentennial design. There was no specific 1975 quarter.

But when the U.S. Mint decided to offer the state coins, George got a makeover. Among other things, he has suddenly gotten more hair. The specialty coins were extended to cover the non-state areas, such as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam in 2009. Starting in 2010, as a result of America’s Beautiful National Parks Quarter Dollar Coin Act of 2008, “the United States Mint will issue coins featuring national parks and other national sites with new quarter-dollars minted and issued…approximately every 10 weeks you will see a new design emblematic of a national site depicted on the reverse of the quarter.”

As I noted before, there are coins for common used minted at the mints in Philadelphia and Denver, which distribute coins for the eastern and western halves of the United states, and designated on the coins P and D, respectively. Then there is the San Francisco coins, designated S, which only appear in proof sets, which are not only uncirculated but of higher quality metal.

Here’s something I wonder about: how is the release quantities of the 50 state quarters determined? there seems to be no correlation with the part of the country and whether there are more P or D coins. The size of the state represented seems to have no bearing.

I had finished collecting a set of P quarters, and I’m one state away – Missouri – from completing a D set. So I started helping my colleagues finish their collections. I guess the altruism can go so far, though, for I have decided to collect a second D set. Understand that collecting a P set in my part of the country would have been far easier. This is not to say that I won’t ask my sister, who lives in San Diego, to slip a roll of quarters or two in her luggage for when we converge on my mother’s house next month. A bank roll from California is much more likely to have D coins than from New York State.

I’ve yet to see a Puerto Rico quarter of any variety,, and it should have been out in March. Still, I’ll collect those nation parks quarters as they come out starting next year, rather than having to rummage through the change jar in my house.
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Gary U.S. Bonds: Quarter To Three (1961)

ROG

P is for Photography

And now for something completely indulgent. Hey, it’s a blog; by definition it’s indulgent.

One of my sister sent my five -year-old daughter two one-use cameras, and I had no idea what she was photographing. The only instruction I gave her was to use the flash when she was inside. This is what she came up with, and I didn’t alter them in any way:

These first three items I believe are gifts she received for her birthday.

The ballerina costume – on the floor?

Most of her plushes have very unimaginative names. This is Unoicorn; I blame the TV shows Little Bear and Franklin, where most of the characters have likewise boring nomenclatures.

No Imelda Marcos here.

Not only did she take the picture, she laid out the blanket and arranged the subjects.

Difficult to tell here, but the piece on the right is a piece of her artwork; the item on the left is 1000 years of British monarchies.

Do all only children refer to their stuffed creatures as their sisters?

Chomper

I’m assuming this is the ABC-TV program Dancing with the Stars. I don’t watch it; the child watches it with the wife.

Deerie. (Not to be confused with the late Blossom Dearie.)

There are a whole bunch of self-portraits. Lot of them are just strange mixes of colors. She also took some headless photos of her mother, and one of my back.

I took this one: the photographer.
***
Ringo Starr – Photograph, written by George Harrison and Ringo Starr.

ROG

O is for Opportunities

OK, I am a sucker for good causes:
BlogCatalog and Heifer International are partnering to call for the end of world hunger and start of hope on April 29. All we ask is that you join thousands of other bloggers and write a post about world hunger on April 29.
You Can Make a Difference.

I am posting this a day early in case others want to join in.

* Right now, more than 500 million people are living in “absolute poverty” and more than 15 million children die of hunger every year.
* World Health Organization estimates that one-third of the population is underfed and another third is starving.
* Even in the United States, 46 percent of African-American children and 49 percent of Latino children are considered chronically hungry.

Organizations like Heifer International are the solution. Every day in April, Heifer International is lifting people out of poverty by providing communities with livestock and agricultural training to improve lives and inspire hope.
What can you do for Bloggers Unite For Hunger And Hope?

* Join this event by visiting Bloggers Unite and adding a badge to your blog before April 29.
* Visit Heifer International to learn more about Pass On The Gift.
*Make a small donation or take some other action to end world hunger.
*Blog about world hunger on April 29 with links to solutions all over the world.

I was stuck for an idea about what different perspective I could bring to the topic, until yesterday, when my American Institute of Philanthropy Charity Rating Guide and Watchdog Report showed up in the mail. Among other information, the website designates the top-rated charities in a variety of categories. For hunger, they include, with links:
Action Against Hunger – USA A+
Bread for the World B+
Bread for the World Institute A
Feeding America (formerly America’s Second Harvest) A
Food Bank for New York City (formerly Food for Survival) A–
Food for the Hungry B+
Freedom from Hunger A–
Global Hunger Project A
The grades are based on “rigorous analysis. Groups included on the Top-Rated list generally spend 75% or more of their budgets on programs, spend $25 or less to raise $100 in public support, do not hold excessive assets in reserve, and receive ‘open-book’ status for disclosure of basic financial information and documents to AIP.” Knowing this information is extremely helpful, for, in the words of the newsletter, “As the unemployment rate continues to rise and home foreclosures increase, it is more important than ever that those who are able lend a hand to their neighbors who need it.”

I am interested to hear from any of you , especially outside the Unites States, to find out if watchdog groups such as AIP exist elsewhere.
***
Also, here’s something I learned about watching Bill Moyers’ Journal on PBS, American public television:

Playing For Change — Songs Around The World CD/DVD in stores now

After 4 years of filming and recording musicians around the globe, we are finally releasing our album “Playing For Change: Songs around the World,” featuring a 10 song CD and 7 track DVD. This is a collection of songs and videos featuring over 100 musicians from around the world that have never met in person, but have been brought together through the power of music.

Today is our chance to show the world that independent projects designed to connect and inspire people can be successful.

The album demonstrates that regardless of our religion, race, gender, or political views we can unite through music. The time is now to unite as a human race and this global collaboration driven by your love and encouragement is designed to lead us in that direction.

The CD/DVD is available online or at that increasingly popular purveyor of music, Starbucks.

ROG

N is for Nature

I’m old enough to have participated in the very first Earth Day, April 22, 1970. For that occasion, I joined some of my fellow students in picking up the trash around my high school. For whatever reason – perhaps because my father was a smoker – I decided to concentrate on one of the smaller, but more annoying pieces of litter, the cigarette butt. I recall picking up 1300 of them before I lost count. And I thought I was really doing something.

Today, I recognize that saving the nature of our earth involves a lot more than picking up litter. Not that I’ve stopped; my daughter plays at the local elementary school playground, and I’ve picked up the trash three days in a row, knowing that the garbage I picked up on the third day was not there on the first.

I’m pretty much an obsessive on recycling. I’ve discovered that, e.g., another unit on my floor will have ordered a large deli plate. In these parts, the base is flat and black, while the top is clear and a hemisphere. Both parts are recyclable, with a 1 or 2 in a triangle. Yet someone has often thrown them in the trash. Well, not IN the trash; they are so large that they’ve been placed NEAR the trash. I pick them up, wash them off and take them home.

I often read newspapers on long trips or even taking the bus to work; instead of trashing that read paper, I’ll bring it back home.

Recently, we’ve acquired some large canvas shopping bags from our local public radio/television station, WMHT; unfortunately, we’ve lost one. However, I was carrying the other one around when shopping at the local CVS pharmacy. The clerk commended me, “I wish more people would do that.” On the same shopping trip, I stopped at the nearby Price Chopper supermarket, and the clerk there gave me three cents off my purchase; all the stuff fit in the same bag, BTW.

At my office in the past three years, we’ve sent out our research on links to PDFs rather than printing and mailing them. Not only have we saved whole forests of trees, we’ve saved a bunch of money on paper and postage. Generally speaking, we have – as most UAlbany e-mails suggest – think before we print.

The state of New York has recently passed a better bottle bill. Starting in about six weeks, it won’t be just cans and bottles of beer and soda that will have a redeemable five cent deposit, it’ll also be on water bottles. Knowing full well that this will be a pain for retailers and distributors, because neighboring states haven’t enacted a similar law, I think it’s on the whole a good thing. However, I expect an uptick in the number of bottle entrepreneurs rummaging through my recyclables bin on trash night looking for the returnables that I never put there but that other neighbors inexplicably do.

But all of this seems like small potatoes. We’ve recently got a better front door and better windows, but should we get a solar paneled roof? Can we AFFORD a solar paneled roof in the short term, even if it pays off the long run?

I get peevish about some neighborhoods’ behavior in limiting environmental consciousness. Some in the United States actually ban people from hanging clothes outside on a clothesline, saying that it will reduce property values, as though the current recession hasn’t already done that. Similar bans exist on the aforementioned solar panels for the same reason.

Here are some links that deal with some of the more substantial issues of Earth Day:
What to Do to Celebrate Earth Day?
How To Teach Your Preschooler to “Go Green”
My college’s current sustainability bulletin -PDF
My college is also participate in the ongoing IBM Smarter Planet University Jam, April 21-23: “Faculty and students from more than 170 academic institutions around the globe will be participating in the Jam. Beginning 12:00 AM EDT on April 21st and continuing for a 72-hour period, they will be coming together for an on-line conversation on
important topics such as the vulnerability of global supply chains for food and medicine, the environmental and geopolitical issues surrounding energy, how to adapt our education system to help students acquire the skills to compete in an interconnected, intelligent and instrumented world, and more.”
Green Tax Incentives in the US

Always have to have some music:

And for a little whimsy, Welcome Back: The longer the winter, the sweeter the spring, and this winter seemed very long indeed. And if spring brings such pleasure to us now, I can only imagine the joy and relief it must have brought to man in ancient times, when winters were not so much endured but survived. (If you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, watch it in six months.)
ROG

M is for Money

Happy U.S. Income Tax Day!

Every year in the United States, the Social Security Administration sends out Your Social Security Statement to help me plan for my “financial future”. It provides estimates of your Social Security benefits under current law.” But for me, it’s a personal history lesson.

The first year I worked, 1969, I made $529 at the Binghamton (NY) Public Library. I worked six months at IBM in 1971 and made the most I would make until 1978. $50 in 1976 – really? I can always tell when I went to college, or when I was unemployed or underemployed.

I also received my 401(k) statement this week. I started putting money in this account because we were all warned that Social Security wouldn’t be there. My employer and I each contributed about $1000 each this past quarter. I managed to lose that plus an additional $5800. So much for retiring.

Let’s talk about music instead. There are two great songs called Money that I own and that come to mind. The first was written Berry Gordy, founder of Motown Records, when challenged by someone who complained that all he wrote about was romance. “What else do you care about, Berry?” Well, there was money.

The original version of Money was recorded by future Songwriters’ Hall of Famer Barrett Strong, who later teamed with the late Norman Whitfield to write I Heard It Through the Grapevine (a hit for both Gladys Knight & the Pips and Marvin Gaye), War (Edwin Star’s hit), and a bunch of late 1960s/early 1970s classics for the Temptations, such as Too Busy Thinking About My Baby, Papa Was a Rolling Stone, Just My Imagination and Ball of Confusion.

Barrett Strong’s version of Money went to #2 on the Billboard R&B charts for six weeks, and to #23 on the pop charts early in 1960. It’s #288 on the Rolling Stone magazine’s list of greatest songs, and was covered by a Liverpudlian band of some note, the Beatles.

The other Money song is by the British band Pink Floyd, by that point consisting of David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Rick Wright and Nick Mason. It appeared on the 1973 album Dark Side of the Moon, and though it spent but one week at #1 in the U.S., it spent a total of 741 weeks on the U.S. album charts, selling more than 15 million copies.

For those unfamiliar, it has one potentially ‘naughty’ word.

I’m still collecting the state quarters. Right now, all I need is a Missouri quarter from the Denver mint; I even have both District of Columbia coins. But I haven’t seen the Puerto Rico quarter yet from either the Philadelphia or Denver mints and other territories will be released this year. (And yes, I know DC and Puerto Rico are not states, but their coins are a continuation of the same series.) Meanwhile, I’m still looking for Denver mint coins for two of my co-workers.

Certainly it was the juxtaposition of Marilyn Chambers as wholesome Ivory Snow mom with Marilyn Chambers as, er, an actress that helped fuel whatever commercial success she had. No, though my name is Green, I’ve never seen Behind the Green Door or any of her other work. She died this week.
***
And speaking of advertising, does Burger King REALLY think it’ll make money mixing SpongeBob Squarepants, Sir Mix-A-Lot, and “the TRUE (non-pirate) meaning of the word ‘booty'”, as my friend Fred put it in his April 13 post? And if the BK King is creepy in 30-second increments, he’s REALLY bizarre in the 2:30 segment Fred found.
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OK, so what other song about money am I thinking of? The clues are in this post.

ROG