Change since the Dakota quarters.

My sister forwarded me an email, the gist of which was that the new dollar coins are "godless". I sent her back an email explaining that they had moved the motto containing GOD to the edge of the coin. I took this picture of a Washington dollar to prove it. Then I figured the rumor is out there, so I put this here for you to see, just in case you missed it.

I took that picture in the background on August 21st, 1998. At the time digital photography was new to me. I got a chance to take a better picture of a buffalo, but my battery died before that time. I was on a tourist trip to Catalina Island, the only place in Southern California where you can take pictures of "wild" buffalo. Christina and I took the tourist bus trip, and somewhere in that trip the guild explained that if you wanted to drive a car on Catalina Island, first you had to get your name on a list in City Hall and wait a decade for it to bubble to the point where you're next in line for a license. He said the book with the list in it looks like a bible. As I type this, anybody that got their name on the list in that general time frame has probably taken home a car, if they still wanted one after going without for a decade.

When I showed an Idaho quarter to Jean Marie Rosenmeier, she suggested that "ESTO PERPETUA" can be boiled down to "sustainability". Me, I think it translates more as "into perpetuity" and is closer to "future focus".

As far as alphabetical order is concerned, Wyoming is the last State in the USA. I remember reading an article in the New York Times that called Wyoming "a small town with long streets." Driving through it on I-80, I saw dramatic vistas without many people.

The spot where they finished the first transcontinental railroad by driving the golden spike into it is near the upper end of the lake, where the red square is. That event truly made Utah the "CROSSROADS OF THE WEST", as the slogan on their quarter claims. I have gone through Utah many times, usually on the way to somewhere else on I-80. I got that pin at the Greyhound Station in Salt Lake City during one of those trips.

I was working the crowd at a trade show back in '05, and I came across this New Mexico table. I think it was their Chamber of Commerce or something like that. They were trying to lure business away from Silicon Valley. They were giving out spicy salsa and NM pins like this one. I told the guy I'd take a picture of his pin with his quarter when they came out. That was then. This is now. I remembered my promise.

In case you were wondering, I came in 4th, making me one of the seven that got elected. The last time I'd won an election was 16 years earlier, when I beat none of the above in the 5th CD Green Party Primary.

Growing up, many times I heard my father say "Palo Duro Canyon is the second largest canyon in the USA, but nobody's heard of it. Everybody has heard of Arizona's Grand Canyon." Seeing the Grand Canyon on the Arizona quarter reminded me of that. The green blob on the Arizona map for Grand Canyon State Park is huge compared to a quarter. The pieces of Texas's Palo Duro Canyon I've seen weren't that dramatic. I have no idea how many other places there are that think they have the second largest canyon in the USA. Wouldn't surprise me much if one of them was right after all. I still haven't heard about it though. Until then I'll guess my Dad was probably right about it. Either way, he grew up on the above map, which means something to me.