The Penny

The other day I found a penny, or rather it found me.

It had been sitting in place for a few days. Many people had passed it by but none had thought it worth their time to scoop it up.

Maybe out of pity for the cast-off, which over the course of our lifetimes has lost almost all of its value, I picked it up.

The penny was marked with the date it was minted, 1971.

Every coin has its story; few of them get told.

***

1971 — What a year that was! I returned from the Peace Corps in Afghanistan, only later to quit my job as a pizza deliveryman for Cottage Inn Pizza in Ann Arbor and drive an old white Chevy van with "Ft. Myers, Fla." stenciled on the side all the way across America.

Exiting the freeway in San Francisco, we chugged up Fell Street, turned right onto Fillmore Street, and drove until just before Pine Street, arriving at our destination: the self-proclaimed world headquarters of Running Dog Inc., publisher of the forthcoming SunDance magazine.

The building was nestled into a space next to a blues club called Minnie’s Can-Do.

We were a very small start-up team and before we could publish this brand new magazine, we had to build out the office by sheet-rocking the walls, painting them, refinishing and shellacking the floor.

As a flourish of sorts, we sealed a penny into that newly shiny hardwood just before we finished preparing the space that would see an amazing menagerie of the famous (John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Jerry Rubin, etc.) and the crazy (too many to list) and the talented (everybody) walk through its front door over the next two years.

The experience of helping produce that magazine helped shape my career, leading directly to Rolling Stone, the Center for Investigative Reporting and all the rest.

***

Many years later, when SunDance was a distant memory, I happened to be back in what was by then known in real estate terms as the Upper Fillmore District. There were no blues clubs left in the area but plenty of fancy shops. After a brief search, I located the building at 1913 and stepped inside for the first time since our magazine dream had died there three decades earlier.

The space was by then a boutique. I feigned interest in the women's clothes on the racks. What I was actually seeking was pretty vague — some wisp or ghost of a memory, nothing more than that. The sheetrock had long since been dismantled, the walls had been repainted many times, and the track lighting overhead was a major upgrade from our day. All the evidence of our time there seemed to have vanished.

But then, near the rear of the store, I spotted something that stopped me dead in my tracks. There was the penny we’d imbedded in the hardwood floor, still frozen in time with its date: 1971.

Every coin has a story; few of them get told.

This one’s did.

(From 2023.)

HEADLINES:

• Joe Biden's cancer diagnosis and when illness strikes just as you finally retire (USA Today)

• Rep. LaMonica McIver charged by DOJ over incident with ICE agents (ABC)

• Supreme Court allows Trump to revoke protected status for thousands of Venezuelans (NBC)

• Trump’s Threats to Defy Courts Suddenly Get More Dangerous (TNR)

• America’s College Towns Go From Boom to Bust (WSJ)

• FBI director Kash Patel weighed in on the conspiracy theory that undercover FBI agents "egged people on" during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. "That answer is coming," he said. [HuffPost]

• Police secretly monitored New Orleans with facial recognition cameras (WP)

• Russia Unleashes One of Its Largest Drone Barrages of the Ukraine War (NYT)

• After Putin call, Trump says Russia and Ukraine to start 'immediate' talks on ceasefire (Reuters)

• Putin just showed Trump how little he needs him (CNN)

• Nobody in Ukraine Thinks the War Will End Soon (Atlantic)

• The European Union and Britain reached a tentative agreement on defense and security, fisheries and youth mobility ahead of a EU-UK summit, paving the way for British firms to participate in large EU defence contracts. (Reuters)

• Israel lets aid into Gaza after 11-week blockade but UN calls it 'drop in ocean' (BBC

• Iran says nuclear talks will fail if US pushes for zero enrichment (Reuters)

• Judge strikes down DOGE takeover of the U.S. Institute of Peace (NBC)

• RFK Jr.'s next target: A common weedkiller (Axios)

• RFK Jr. pledged not to upend US vaccine system, but big changes are underway (AP)

• Bluesky Is Plotting a Total Takeover of the Social Internet (Wired)

• I have seen the future of AI. It’s in Western Pennsylvania. (WP)

• GOP Maintains Solid Hold On Youth That Already Look Like Old Men (The Onion)