Today, the United States minted its last penny, at least for the foreseeable future.

This should probably have been done decades ago, given rising production costs and inflation. But then, what would we use to buy gumballs, or to flatten-and-stamp into souvenirs, or to toss into fountains and wishing wells? Nickels? Please.

I doubt anyone outside of numismatists and coin collectors would have noticed, except for the announcements. Pennies will still circulate for a good long while, and some cash places will round up, or round down, or keep pennies near the register for convenience’s sake.

You’ll still see prices and bills ending in $.01, or $.02, and so on, just like we have gasoline and property taxes priced to the mill– a thousandth of a dollar– despite not having a mill coin since… ever.

Of course, you’ll also occasionally run into cashiers or vendors claiming that since physical pennies aren’t being minted anymore, abstract pennies somehow don’t exist anymore, so we have to round everything up. And then you’ll point out that they could just as easily round everything down. And then you’ll remind them of gasoline and property taxes, and they’ll act confused– or maybe they’ll actually be confused. New rounding schemes and new rounding scams will emerge, and… we’ll get used to them.

Anyhow. It disturbs me to think that the penny is rolling faster down the way of the dodo. I suspect that’s a little bit of worry about inflation, and a whole lot of shaking my fist at the clouds. To think that the obverse of the 1943 steel penny once served as favicon and graced the background of this august journal.

…

I am reminded of an open letter I wrote many years ago to then-President-elect Obama, in hopes of winning a patronage job:

7. Announce that pennies now count as nickels, and then slowly take them out of circulation, replacing them with real nickels. Put Lincoln on new dollar coins the size of the old Ike dollars. Also, start printing $500 bills again. I am not a crackpot.

–Me, “Advice as promised.”

Inflationary? Yes. As inflationary as anything else the feds have done in the meantime? No. Self-serving, given the countless rolls of pennies I’ve stashed in caches and safehouses all over the country? Possibly.

Today marks twenty years since I started blogging. I bought viscariello.com in May of 2005 with the intention of making it a bit easier to keep in touch with friends and family after I moved to Chicago. In September, I decided to play around with the WordPress blogging software that came with a StartLogic site. Sitting at a small writing desk in my three-flat apartment in Wheaton, I tapped away on an old laptop, and produced the following:

Testing. Testing. This is my first attempt at a “web log,” or “blog,” as it were. Blog blog blog. Blog blog.

–Me, “First post,” September 1, 2005.

I look back on these last two decades of blogging– which was really ten years of blogging and ten years of occasionally remembering that I have a blog– and think:

…I forgot that “blog” was short for “web log.”

…it was so much trickier to run the website and blog back then. I would repeatedly accidentally erase everything by somehow screwing up the WordPress updates. I’d panic for a few hours, finally figure out how to restore it, make an ugly mess of the whole thing, add a “Part II” or “Part III” to the end of the blog title to indicate a restart before abandoning the practice because it technically didn’t make sense because it wasn’t an nth volume because all— not some— of my posts were still present, curse StartLogic and WordPress for not making the whole thing much easier, realize a few days later that they had, in fact, made it easier and I just hadn’t read the instructions closely enough, and then carry on writing. Then I just switched everything over to WordPress hosting and everything got much easier.

…I don’t write often enough to justify calling it a “journal,” which suggests something written daily, or at least more regularly than “whenever I feel like it.” Maybe a fifth or sixth name change is in order. Or maybe I should write more.

…the blog was a new and different way to connect with people. That way was quickly eclipsed by social media, messenger apps and groups, and real monetizable subscription platforms. Ah well.

…it once rekindled the embers of a long-lost love, but there’s been some upside, too. It opened dialogue with distant relatives the world over. It helped me get and keep in touch with old friends, colleagues, students, and so forth. And if Akismet and Jetpack are to be believed, I make hundreds, sometimes thousands of new bot-friends every day. They’ll come in handy post-singularity.

…it revealed, and reminds me, that what I find amusing is not the same as what others do, and that I don’t care.

…it is nothing profound, but it is fun.

Former student “M” writes:

My dad is Palestinian and my mom is Syrian and the more I learn about US foreign policy, the more upset and disillusioned I become with the government. It’s strange to think that I exist because of American imperialism and that I am a part of the system that had driven my parents away from their homelands. It makes me feel like, at any moment, my own government might do me harm and it would be okay because they’d label me as a threat to society, especially with the current administration.

I’d like to hear your thoughts as to whether we can change how we conduct foreign policy and why we choose to continue these policies. I guess I wish I could listen to one of your lectures again. You should do YouTube.

…

First, thank you for your kind words, and I apologize for taking so long to answer. I’ve spent the last two months consulting with my advisors, editors, sponsors, and lawyers, and we think we have a draft response. Here goes:

It has been a while. Hopefully, you remember me.

I do. 

I was wondering if you had written anything about the Israel-Palestine conflict in one of your blogs.

Not really. A quick search for “Palestine” yields two results, both for passing references.

We covered a lot of topics during my time in your class, but I don’t remember whether we covered it in-depth or not. It definitely would have been one of the classes I would be awake for haha.

We did not, and suuure you would have been awake. Just like the grads who insist they should have been taught “valuable life skills” would have definitely paid attention to those lessons.

My dad is Palestinian and my mom is Syrian and the more I learn about US foreign policy, the more upset and disillusioned I become with the government. It’s strange to think that I exist because of American imperialism and that I am a part of the system that had driven my parents away from their homelands.

I don’t know all the ins and outs of your family history, but I would neither blame nor credit American imperialism for your existence. Allow that possibility to remain “strange to think about,” same as all the rest of history that led up to your existence. You’ll drive yourself nuts otherwise. You exist because two people– you see, when a man and a woman– ask your parents.

Also, disillusionment with the government is a perfectly normal and healthy response to reality.

It makes me feel like, at any moment, my own government might do me harm and it would be okay because they’d label me as a threat to society, especially with the current administration.

I won’t say you have absolutely no reason to believe this, but you have way less reason to believe this than you think.

If you aren’t trespassing, illegally occupying buildings, breaking windows, burning things, throwing punches, etc., and you’re not planning to do so, and you’re not inciting others to do so, then your government probably won’t come after you.

If you express an opinion without doing anything else illegal, then your government probably won’t come after you.

Those “probablies” aren’t going to make anyone feel better, but 99.99% isn’t 100%, so I can’t say “definitely.”

The legions of lawyers and constitutional scholars who read this blog religiously are salivating at my naivete– which is fair. After all, how many times in American history were people arrested for literal mere non-violent expression?

And yet, this isn’t 1968. Or 1917. Or 1890. Or… you get the idea.

Expression is generally more protected today than before. So is demographic identity, for that matter. If it doesn’t feel that way, then read more history. It might not make you feel better about now, but it’ll make you feel worse about way back when, and hopefully see the progress.

Or, again, maybe I’m naive.

I’d like to hear your thoughts as to whether we can change how we conduct foreign policy and why we choose to continue these policies.

We can change how we conduct foreign policy, we do it all the time, and we do it every 4 to 8 years. If we didn’t, then candidates for office would almost never talk about foreign policy during campaigns, and foreign individuals, companies, and governments wouldn’t try to influence our elections one way or another.

How can we change them? Vote. Run for office. Speak. Write. March. I’m not making suggestions or hoping to inspire any actual action here, I’m just listing what I think are obvious answers. Just remember this, even if you ignore the rest of my blather:

A lot of your political opponents want you to feel powerless so you’ll give up hope and quit.

But a lot of your political comrades also want you to feel powerless so you’ll become desperate and easier to manipulate.

I guess I wish I could listen to one of your lectures again.

Thanks! I appreciate the sentiment.

You should do YouTube.

That sounds like work, so… no.

Today would have been my grandmother’s 115th birthday, so it’s time for this year’s edition of her digital birthday card. Here she is, waving from the back of a train in 1933:

Happy birthday!