I got this cup one very cold day in the late fall of 1995. I was out
for a walk and I came across a large number of people leaving a big hotel
in Reston carrying identical cups. I decided to swim upstream looking for
the source, and I found a ballroom with large stacks of them on the table.
The attitude was "take as many as you want." I took one.
That evening on the national news there was a segment about how the
internet is connected to everything. I vividly remember a sound bite by one
of those talking heads that is the perfect stereotype of a Silicon Valley
Wizard, complete with long unbrushed hair and peculiar mannerisms saying
"I now believe that the internet touches every aspect of life." When they
cut to the commercial, I pulled out this cup and gave it to my parents. I
explained that it made sense to me that these things happened on the same
day.
I got my mom to give me the thing last fall when I visited her for
Thanksgiving. I put it here because I wanted to find a way to compare visitors
to my home with visitors to my website. So far, two of my friends have drunk
from it. One of them, an esthetically oriented Green balked at the idea.
I pointed out that the One was clearly inside a green circle, and he pointed
out that there were names and logos for large, evil, corporations on it.
I pointed out that they were in a gray area, and the Governor of California
was Gray Davis. Then he drank from it. If you have a strong reaction to it, I would like to know what it
is.
US Africa Airways was the most obscure airline that my mother worked
for. My sister found a pile of these mousepads in her stuff, and she parceled
them out so we each got one. When I was going through the papers in my moms
study, I found a letter her boss had written her when that carrier went out
of business. The thing started "This is the hardest letter I have ever had
to write," and then explained that the company wasn't going to make it. The
only free flight my mom got out of working there was a trip to South Africa
where she got together with her cousins in Pochestrom for a Bar-B-Que. I
wish I had some pictures from that to share with you.
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I reset the counter on Mothers Day, 2024. Before that the count got up to 2272.
The cup broke many years ago. Maybe half a dozen people used it at one time or another.