We held the Green Party Nominating in Wisconsin, and the slogan on the T Shirt I got there was "FORWARD 2004!" Since then, every time I've seen "FORWARD" used in a slogan it gave me that "we are moving forward together" feeling.

The Spanish missions in Florida are something like a hundred years older than the ones in Califoria, which is one of the reasons many of ours are tourist attractions and most of theirs are gone. My cousin in Florida said "the spirit of Florida is a jumble of old and new". Looking at their quarter, with a sailing ship and the space shuttle, it captures that feeling.

I think the quote in the background is an excerpt from the last thing Douglas Adams wrote that was published before the heart attack that killed him. It's the last paragraph in the preface to the book "Digging Holes in Popular Culture", a collection of essays by archeologists about their studies of modern popular culture.

Of the quarters I've seen designs for that never came out, I consider this Nebraska design the most interesting. In the article that went with this picture, they explained that Cheif Standing Bear's case that went all the way to the Supreme Court set the precident that everybody is considered equal in the eyes of the law. I found out about the story because this was one of the five finalists for Nebraska quarter discussed in Coin World, but it wasn't the one they picked for the coin that will be coming out later this year.

These coins are both "from Massachusetts". I put quotes around the term because the MA quarter was really minted in Denver, CO or Philidelphia, PA. I'm not sure where the penny on the left was minted, but I'm sure it was minted before Massachusetts signed onto our Constitution. Whereas the copper coin has "Commonwealth of Massachusetts" on it, the comparable legand on the modern is "United States of America." I seem to remember it's the most expensive coin in my collection.

My sister found that magic token while she was working in her garden. If it had been an arrowhead she would have given it to my brother.

Traditionally, Mississippi and Alabama were considered the poorest states in the USA. On every list a state can get a higher spot on by spending more money they were always at the bottom. I've been told that when Alabama was at the bottom, people in Mississippi would say "thank God for Alabama." When Mississippi was at the bottom of the list being discussed, people in Alabama would say "thank God for Mississippi." However, in this brave new world of NAFTA and other forms of globalization, I wonder what they think about their neighbors to the south that have even less money in their lives.

I think this is the only quarter the US Government has put out identical copies of for two years. Usually they at least change the current year stamped on the coin, but they cellebrated the bicentennial by putting out this one for two years (1975 and 1976).  In the 90's they were the only thing spicing up the change, and you didn't tend to see one that often. I remember giving one to a coworker who had only been in the USA for a year or two at the time. She said "I didn't even know there were other quarters." Nowadays most people are at least vaguely aware that something is going on in the change.