the annual quarterly report
Dec. 2nd, 2007 08:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacEarly this year. Last year I didn't get them all until February. Utah came in the change from a distracted supermarket cashier last week.
Last year we left off with the Republicans cutting the Dakota territory in half in 1889 so that they could get four senators out of it instead of two. Within a couple weeks they continued their sweep of admitting the northern territories with Montana and Washington. Idaho and Wyoming followed the next year. And it worked: the twelve Republican senators from those states tipped the balance of power in the Senate in the 1891 Congress, and on several later occasions. Utah, not really much less Republican than the others even then, had to wait a few years until after a little problem involving polygamy could get straightened out. It was admitted under a Republican Congress and a Democratic President.
None of this year's designs are really very appealing.
Montana - Kansas put a buffalo on its quarter. North Dakota put two buffalo on its quarter. So what does Montana do? Montana puts a buffalo skull on its quarter. Other states may coddle their buffalo, but in Montana, we're tough. It looks like a design for Buffalo Halloween, or the flag for a buffalo pirate ship. Yo ho ho and a blade of grass.
Washington - Here we have the same bas relief scale problem as with Minnesota's giant loon. Washington has a giant fish, which looks as if it's just about ready to clear that mountain in the background. (It's supposed to be Mount Rainier but it looks wrong, because it isn't shrouded by clouds.) Either that, or the fish has decided that that succulent date "1889" looks mighty tasty. As S. Gross's bull said to the calf as they watched the cow jump over the Moon, "Son, your mother is a remarkable woman."
Idaho - At least this is a new and different scaling problem. In theory putting only part of the bird on the quarter makes it easier to see, but it's a mighty evil-looking bird, and the odd way in which the body is cut off makes it seem as if they just couldn't get the rest of it to fit. This impression that the bird is really enormous is only heightened by the tiny map of Idaho chucking it under the chin. The map looks as if it's been included for scale. By that measure, this bird is at least two thousand miles long. It's the Great Bird of the Galaxy. Could I find another galaxy, please?
Wyoming - It's distinctly unimaginative, to say the least, to put on your quarter the same featureless profile of a rider on a bucking horse that appears on your license plates. And the motto "The Equality State" - still priding themselves on their long-ago female enfranchisement. It's not a reference to any equality between the rider and the horse, that's for sure.
Utah - I can just imagine the Utah state commission, trying to decide what notable historical event not involving the Mormons that they could put on their quarter. John Wayne and company getting cancer from nuclear-test fallout while filming a movie about Genghis Khan? The first time that an advertiser airlifted a late-model car to the top of a butte to film a car commercial? Robert Redford founding the Sundance Festival? No, none of those: it's the Golden Spike, the joining of the transcontinental railroad at some isolated spot in northern Utah in 1869. Giant spike, itty bitty railroad cars.
Previous Annual Quarterly Reports:
2006
2005
2004
Last year we left off with the Republicans cutting the Dakota territory in half in 1889 so that they could get four senators out of it instead of two. Within a couple weeks they continued their sweep of admitting the northern territories with Montana and Washington. Idaho and Wyoming followed the next year. And it worked: the twelve Republican senators from those states tipped the balance of power in the Senate in the 1891 Congress, and on several later occasions. Utah, not really much less Republican than the others even then, had to wait a few years until after a little problem involving polygamy could get straightened out. It was admitted under a Republican Congress and a Democratic President.
None of this year's designs are really very appealing.
Montana - Kansas put a buffalo on its quarter. North Dakota put two buffalo on its quarter. So what does Montana do? Montana puts a buffalo skull on its quarter. Other states may coddle their buffalo, but in Montana, we're tough. It looks like a design for Buffalo Halloween, or the flag for a buffalo pirate ship. Yo ho ho and a blade of grass.
Washington - Here we have the same bas relief scale problem as with Minnesota's giant loon. Washington has a giant fish, which looks as if it's just about ready to clear that mountain in the background. (It's supposed to be Mount Rainier but it looks wrong, because it isn't shrouded by clouds.) Either that, or the fish has decided that that succulent date "1889" looks mighty tasty. As S. Gross's bull said to the calf as they watched the cow jump over the Moon, "Son, your mother is a remarkable woman."
Idaho - At least this is a new and different scaling problem. In theory putting only part of the bird on the quarter makes it easier to see, but it's a mighty evil-looking bird, and the odd way in which the body is cut off makes it seem as if they just couldn't get the rest of it to fit. This impression that the bird is really enormous is only heightened by the tiny map of Idaho chucking it under the chin. The map looks as if it's been included for scale. By that measure, this bird is at least two thousand miles long. It's the Great Bird of the Galaxy. Could I find another galaxy, please?
Wyoming - It's distinctly unimaginative, to say the least, to put on your quarter the same featureless profile of a rider on a bucking horse that appears on your license plates. And the motto "The Equality State" - still priding themselves on their long-ago female enfranchisement. It's not a reference to any equality between the rider and the horse, that's for sure.
Utah - I can just imagine the Utah state commission, trying to decide what notable historical event not involving the Mormons that they could put on their quarter. John Wayne and company getting cancer from nuclear-test fallout while filming a movie about Genghis Khan? The first time that an advertiser airlifted a late-model car to the top of a butte to film a car commercial? Robert Redford founding the Sundance Festival? No, none of those: it's the Golden Spike, the joining of the transcontinental railroad at some isolated spot in northern Utah in 1869. Giant spike, itty bitty railroad cars.
Previous Annual Quarterly Reports:
2006
2005
2004
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-12-02 05:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-02 05:49 pm (UTC)But I'm bummed, I haven't gotten any of those this year. Where are they hiding?
no subject
Date: 2007-12-02 06:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-02 11:19 pm (UTC)Quarterly report
Date: 2007-12-04 11:01 pm (UTC)