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angelicyoung-19 · 8 years

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Prompt A: How has our conception of “the city” changed throughout history?

There is so much about the modern city that has changed. When we look at how our cities have changed in the last 50 years, we cannot escape the conclusion that our physical surroundings must have had a part to play in this decline. Post-war buildings and planning are the product of the failed modernist ideal that transformed most aspects of twentieth-century life, from politics to painting, and that gave rise to our urban social ills and to urban ugliness. In architecture, modernism—the cult of abstract rationality and change for its own sake—has given us sterility and inhumanity instead of its promised progress and liberation. Utopian ambitions and professional arrogance have left our cities with decay and dereliction, the perfect breeding ground for the alienation and brutality that have undermined community life.

Some of us look to the cities we admire from the past for a solution. In traditional cities like Siena in Italy or Bath in England we can see something that is not only beautiful but alive and humane, the very qualities that modernism seems to have destroyed. One can't help feeling we could make our cities more life-enhancing if we were to build them like these traditional cities. Out of this impulse, a revival of traditional architecture and city planning has grown up; it is flourishing from Portland, Oregon, to Paternoster Square in London, from Brussels in Belgium to Seaside, Florida.

We call the places that have inspired this movement traditional, but, other than the simple fact of being old, how do we define a traditional city? I must confess that I do not know.

But the question is do any of us know really know? We talk about tradition and cities as if we all knew what these things were, and we make comparisons with the past on the assumption that we really can do something similar today. But what hope do we have if we are not even talking the same language?

The word "city" is derived from the Latin for citizen and originally meant a community of citizens. It does not mean that now. Any comparison we make with classical antiquity must also acknowledge huge differences in size. The average population of a pre-Hellenic Greek city would be a little over 5,000. A large provincial Roman city would have a population of 10,000 to 20,000. Not much changed in terms of size until the Industrial Revolution. Most medieval cities had fewer than 10,000 inhabitants. Even major Italian Renaissance cities rarely exceeded 50.000. Today, London counts 8 million inhabitants, Chicago contains nearly 3 million people, Paris 2.5 million, and even a small Italian city such as Perugia has a population of 120,000.

These differences in size make for very different dynamics of city life. So, too, do differences in social and political organization. Democracy in Greek city-states or Italian communes was unlike modern democracy and was a fragile flower easily and often crushed. Throughout the history of the city, it was much more common to be subject to oligarchic or tyrannical rule.

Equally crucial to an understanding of the city is its economic base. Very early cities were fortified villages where people engaged in agriculture outside the walls. This did not last for long. Since antiquity, the city has been a consumer of goods produced in the countryside. It supported itself on trade or conquest. A city was a place where wealth free from the pressures of sufficiency could be enjoyed. Outside the city there was brute existence, the wilderness, the struggle for survival and danger; inside the city there was order, safety, wealth, and the leisure to pursue the finer things of life. This urban ideal may have been the lot only of some citizens, but it embodies the essential ideas that made the city a civilized place.

This ideal of civilization, however, is at odds with the modern concept of the city. The modern city is the wilderness, the urban jungle. The inner city is a dangerous place where brute existence is dominated by the struggle for survival. Anyone with sufficient wealth leaves the public city for a private place where there is safety, order, and the enjoyment of leisure.

In so many ways, the modern city is not the city of the pre-industrial past. The population, the social structure, the political organization, the economy, access to and from the city, and even the concept of the city is quite different. Above all, the citizen is a radically different creature. Modern aspirations and the understanding of citizenship have little similarity with any period in the past.

If all this does not define what a traditional city is, it certainly defines what a modern city is not. It is not an ancient Greek, medieval, or Renaissance city. We may wish to make it more like one of these, like part of one of these, or an amalgam of these types of cities, but to do that we must understand who will live in it and how they will live.

What has happened to all these people who no longer live in our city centers? They live in the suburbs.

As with the word "city," we have to be careful with the word "suburb," which originally referred to the place "suburbs"—below, under the power of, or just outside the city. As the population of cities has exploded in the last two centuries, and ever more people have spilled out into suburbs, "suburb" has come to mean a quite separate environment with its own way of life.

In fact, it can mean different things in different countries. In southern Europe, where denser patterns of living are acceptable, suburbs tend to be recently built, unregulated areas, no less dense than city centers. Often it is the suburb that is undesirable and dangerous and the city center that is desirable.

In northern Europe—and particularly in Britain—and in the United States, Canada, and other countries sharing an Anglo-Saxon inheritance, suburbs are quite specifically low-density areas of individual dwellings, each with its own lot. They cover large areas and sometimes, but not always, are a dormitory area for a city. In the Anglo-Saxon and

American world, unlike parts of southern Europe, it is the suburb that is usually desirable and safe and the city center that is undesirable and unsafe.

In southern Europe, suburbs often have arisen solely through population pressure. In the Anglo-Saxon world, they developed with the spread of railway travel and then of the motorcar, and were enthusiastically adopted.

The Anglo-Saxon suburb grew out of a very clear set of ideals. It began in England, where the social pattern of urban life is unlike that of most other European countries. The ruling aristocracy never really took to city living, and as a consequence English culture to this day is defined more by the country than by the town. The idea that to have your own house in the country is the best of all worlds is the Anglo-Saxon suburb's founding principle. Improved transport, the uncontrolled migration of rural workers into city slums in the Industrial Revolution (which affected Britain long before anywhere else), and the rapid increases in population and wealth that went with it, drew more and more people into the Industrial Age's version of the countryside—the suburb.

In the United States, the founding fathers (Hamilton excepted) inherited the English view of the countryside. When this ideal was added to the New World enthusiasm for the wilderness, the tradition of pioneering isolation, and the cult of the individual—and as the population grew unfettered by loyalty to historic towns-living in a suburban way seemed irresistible. In Britain and the United States, whole towns—Muncie, Indiana, for example, or Letchworth in Herefordshire—now conform to the suburbian model.

In one sense, both the Anglo-Saxon and the American suburbs have been a great success. Each household has its own lot where the individual or family can reign supreme, untroubled by the antisocial acts of others. The suburb answers one of the great social imperatives of the last two centuries—the increasing demand for privacy.

This demand for privacy can be traced through individual house design, mass housing design, and law. It extends from the detached house to the individual child's bedroom and to the proliferation of bathrooms. It has been enhanced by the private motor vehicle, the telephone, the television, and now the personal computer. In Britain it is being extended into laws on domestic noise and garden fires, and in California (always ahead) to smoking and even personal fragrance.

If we are to build cities today in the United States or in Britain, and if it is to be more than a minority exercise, we will have to design for the citizen who is now suburban or at least yearns for suburban amenities—for the citizen who will demand a level of privacy and will possess the technological means of isolation unknown to any citizen in history. We can no longer build on the classical ideal of the subordination of the citizen to the community. Suburban values are middle-class values, where the family and the individual take priority.

So building traditional cities, traditional modern cities, we have an interesting dilemma. We would not do this unless we thought it was a good thing. We must think that the city can be a desirable place, and yet the popular Anglo-Saxon and American concept of the city contains much that is undesirable. We can only think that the city is desirable because we have an ideal that differs from 112 the way that modern cities have developed. If the ideal is traditional and so necessarily historical, we know that in many respects it will not fit with present realities.

If it is our desire to reconcile the ideal of the traditional or historical city with the realities of modern life, we must realize that we will not be re-creating the past but creating something new. In doing so, we must first look beyond any superficial resemblance to the essential and desirable characteristics of the historical city that are missing from the modern city and then seek a mechanism for their introduction into a modern context.

Source: The Social Order, Tradition and The Modern City. Robert Adam 1995

Furthermore Many cities grew in a process called urbanization which is the process of making an area more urban. Many people have left the life they had of poverty and economic vagary in the countryside and moved to “the city” for the promises of jobs and more opportunities. However, the cities were not prepared for the sudden arrivals of many new people which means that were overcrowding housing in addition to primitive sanitation, which cause the city to be the sites of major public health epidemics. the 1793 yellow fever outbreak killed 5,000 people in Philadelphia. In 1849, St. Louis lost 1/10 of its population to cholera. Four years later, yellow fever killed 11,000 in New Orleans.

One concept that Americans had 50 to 60 years ago about the city does still somewhat stand to this day and that’s the city is still better in many way. Most people tend to move out to the city such as New York City in search of better jobs, more opportunities, more freedom etc, especially if they tend to come from a small town.

1/17/2017

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trinhhungthin · 4 years

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goldeagleprice · 6 years

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Favorite Buffaloes for coin buyers

By Mike Thorne, Ph.D.

For historians, 1913 produced a number of momentous events. On the political front, Woodrow Wilson became the 28th president of the United States, and Richard Nixon was born. For U.S. citizens, the 16th amendment introduced the Federal income tax. For psychologists, Sigmund Freud published Totem and Taboo.

For the numismatist, the year brought a change to the design of the nickel: Charles Barber’s Liberty Head (or V) nickel gave way to the Indian Head, or Buffalo, nickel. Designed by James Earle Fraser, Buffalo nickels were produced between 1913 and 1938, with three years of them not being produced (1922, 1932, and 1933).

When I started collecting coins in the 1950s, Buffalo nickels were still relatively common in circulation. And they nearly all had full dates. Think about it: the last Buffaloes were minted in 1938, which was only 20 years in the past in 1958. Check out a roll or two of nickels today, and I can almost guarantee that you’ll find a few that are 20 or more years old.

In the summer of 1960, I went through sacks of either cents or nickels daily. In addition to such keepers as 1939-D and 1950-D Jeffersons, I found a lot of interesting Buffalo nickels and kept large numbers of 1938-Ds and 1937-Ss because I liked the dates.

I also found an XF 1914-D with a large rim dent below the date, a couple of AU 1916-Ds, and some low-grade 1926-Ss, among other interesting coins. Dateless Buffs were only occasionally encountered.

With that experience and my efforts to assemble a complete set, I found that I liked some Buffalo dates better than others. In this article, I’m going to tell you about my ten favorite Buffalo nickels.

(Photo courtesy of Heritage)

#1. 1913-S Type 1 (buffalo on the mound). As often happens with a new coin design, unforeseen problems crop up during the first year of issue. Think of such coins as the 1909 VDB cent, on which the designer’s initials appeared too prominent and were quickly removed. The 1883 Liberty Head (or V) nickel is particularly instructive, as the word CENTS was not included on the reverse, resulting in some trickery when the coins were gold plated and passed as $5 gold pieces of a new design. The missing word was quickly added, creating another design type.

In the case of the Buffalo nickel, the problem was of a similar nature to the V-nickel. The denomination appeared on a raised mound, where it could quickly wear away. Thus, a change was made, placing the denomination into a recessed area and changing the mound to a plain. Unfortunately, no change was made to the date, and it suffered the same fate as the first style of the Standing Liberty quarter, which was to wear away quickly.

At any rate, the first year of issue of the Buffalo nickel experienced two different reverse designs, the buffalo (actually a bison, according to David Bowers in A Guide Book of Buffalo and Jefferson Nickels) on a mound (Type 1) and then, later, on a plain (Type 2). In my opinion, the first design was much more attractive.

As an example of the Type 1 Buffalo nickel, the 1913-(P), the 1913-D, or the 1913-S would do, and most collectors would probably choose the Philadelphia version because of its huge mintage (nearly 31 million) and subsequent low value. I think the 1913-S is a better choice, as the mintage is much lower (2.1 million), but the value is not prohibitive. Numismatic News’ “Coin Market” says it’s worth $50 in F12, $75 in XF40, and $200 in MS63.

About the date, Bowers wrote, “It is also the [Type 1] least likely to be found sharply struck. Although examples are hardly rare in Mint State, finding a truly nice one, from a fresh die pair, will take some looking.” But it’ll be a little treasure if you find one.

(Photo courtesy of Stack’s Bowers)

#2. 1913-S Type 2 (buffalo on the plain). With just 1.2 million minted, this is the big key to the series and one of my all-time favorites. Bowers wrote, “To many collectors, including myself, this is a favorite among the Buffalo nickel series. Striking can be a problem, though, more so than with any other 1913 Buffalo nickel.”

I fully agree with that comment. I currently own one of this date that PCGS graded XF45. It doesn’t have a full horn, which would seem to be a requirement for a coin at this grade.

When I had a mail-order business many years ago, I bought some 1913-S Type 2 coins from an old-time dealer in Oregon. He was a very conservative grader and believed that a coin had to have a full date in order to be in Good condition. Because the coins he was selling had weakness on the first two digits of the date, he called them AG and priced them accordingly. I resold them as Goods with a weak date, and the buyers were well pleased. Incidentally, the coins had at least half a horn.

Coin Market says that this date is worth $300 in F12, $550 in XF40, and $1,330 in MS63. If you want to buy one, be sure it’s certified by one of the major services (ANACS, NGC, PCGS).

#3. 1914-D. This is considered one of the semi keys to the series. With a mintage of 3.91 million, David Lange (The Complete Guide to Buffalo Nickels) wrote, “Examples are quite difficult to locate in circulated grades, and problem-free coins are scarce.” The XF piece that I found was not problem-free by any stretch of the imagination. I eventually decided that I could make the coin look better by pushing down the rim nick, but all I succeeded in doing was making it look worse. Fortunately, I have forgotten what happened to the piece.

Similarly, Bowers stated, “Higher level circulated specimens of this and other branch mint issues of the era are scarce because by the time such coins were widely sought, in the 1930s, most of the early dates had sustained extensive wear.”

Coin Market values are $150 in F12, $300 in XF40, and $550 in MS63. Be sure to buy certified examples of any better-date Buffaloes, as some very creative fakes have been discovered over the years.

#4. 1915-S. This is one of my favorite Buffaloes for a couple of reasons. For one thing, its mintage of 1.5 million places it 5th out of 64 different date/mintmark combinations. As such, its Coin Market values are relatively high, but perhaps not as high as they should be. Its values are $130 in F12, $375 in XF40, and $1,260 in MS63.

In 2004, I paid $350 for a PCGS-graded AU55, with CAC sticker. As the current Coin Market value in AU50 is $525, I feel like I got a pretty good deal on mine. But this is not the best deal I ever got on a 1915-S. In a small coin shop near Rice University in Houston, I found one in Fine priced at $1!

#5. 1916-D. In the part of the country where I grew up, coins minted in Denver were much easier to find than those struck in San Francisco. For example, although I found several 1932-D quarters, I had to buy my first 1932-S. Similarly, 1931-D Lincolns were more frequently encountered than 1926-Ss, even though the two coins had quite similar mintages.

By the same token, 1916-D Buffaloes were more likely to be found than 1916-Ss. As I mentioned above, I found more than one high-grade, circulated 1916-D. With a mintage of 13.3 million, Lange commented about the date, “1916-D is not particularly scarce in all grades short of gem. The latter are rare.” Bowers noted, “Finding an MS-65 coin will be easy; finding one with Full Details will not be!”

Coin Market values are $43 in F12, $80 in XF40, and $285 in MS63. The AU nickels I found are worth about $105 today. When I found them, my 1961 Red Book (A Guide Book of United States Coins) tells me they were worth somewhere between $9 (XF) and $27.50 (uncirculated).

#6. 1921-S. With a mintage slightly below 1.6 million, which gives it a ranking of 6/64, the 1921-S has always been one of the semi key dates. Lange wrote, “1921-S is one of the scarcest Buffaloes in all grades, and its rarity in problem-free condition is compounded by the flaws described below [e.g., laminations, toning streaks, multiple die cracks].”

According to Lange, the date is also hard to grade because of “. . . weak strikes and worn dies. Although better struck than most S-Mint nickels of the 1920s, many coins of this date offered as VF-AU may be lacking a complete horn.” I currently own one 1921-S, which PCGS certified as being in F15 condition. Mine has a strong obverse but less than half a horn on the reverse. Coin Market says its value is $210 (F12). Other values for the date are $900 in XF40 and $2,600 in MS63.

#7. 1924-S. This is another low-mintage date that often has weakness on the reverse, and coins have been certified in recent years as VF and XF that lack a complete horn. According to Bowers, “Striking is usually light in some areas, so Full Details coins are few. (Although some may exist, I have never seen one.)” This comes from a man with more than 60 years of numismatic experience!

About the 1924-S, Lange commented: “Caution should be exercised when purchasing one of the many examples that are offered as Very Fine or even Extremely Fine but that lack the full length of the bison’s horn. . . . Determining the value of hornless VF-XF-AU nickels is a guessing game.” Coin Market guesses that the 1924-S is worth $280 in F12, $310 in VF20, and $875 in XF40.

#8. 1926-D. I’m including this date as one of my favorites because of my experience at the coin shop in Houston that I mentioned earlier. In addition to selling me a 1915-S for a ridiculously low price, the proprietor took me into a back room to show me a full roll of Brilliant Uncirculated 1926-D Buffalo nickels. We’re talking about coins with full mint luster and no hint of any wear on them. If graded by the extent of the horn, however, these coins would have been hard pressed to receive a grade of VG!

The mintage of this date was a little more than 5.6 million pieces, so the 1926-D is not a rare nickel by any means. However, as Lange put it, “Although not particularly scarce in most grades, the majority are so poorly struck as to render them undesirable to collectors.” Coin Market values it at $35 in F12, $210 in XF40, and $650 in MS63. I wonder what the ones I saw in Houston would be worth today. Also, I wonder what grade they would receive from one of the major services.

#9. 1926-S. With just 970,000 coins produced, this is the only regularly-issued Buffalo with a mintage below a million, which gives it the rank of 1st out of 64 date/mintmark combinations. In addition to its relatively small mintage, poor strikes are the norm. As Bowers put it, “The striking is unremarkable; the result of inaccurate die spacing and, perhaps, keeping dies in the press too long. The result is that neither I, nor any contributor to this work, have seen a Full Details coin.”

This is another Buffalo that’s often graded VF or better without a full horn on the buffalo. Lange wrote, “Weakness in the bison’s head is common enough that many examples offered as VF and XF do not meet the criteria for these grades and have been assigned them simply on the basis of overall wear.” If you find one graded VF or XF with a full horn, it’s a keeper if you can afford it.

Coin Market values are $175 in F12, $350 in VF20, and $825 in XF40. In higher grades, the 1926-S reveals why it’s considered a conditional rarity, relatively common in low grades but decidedly uncommon in higher grades. In MS65, Coin Market assigns it a value of $90,000!

I once tried to find a VF 1926-S with a full horn but eventually gave up and purchased an NGC-graded VF25 without a complete horn. I paid $253 for it in 2010. As you can see from the Coin Market value in VF20, if I can sell it as a true VF25, I can probably make money on it. But that’s a big “if.”

#10. 1931-S. Like the 1926-S Buffalo, this is another nickel with a low mintage. With only 1.2 million produced, it ranks 2nd out of 64. However, like the 1931-S Lincoln cent, its low mintage was recognized at the time, and many were saved in Mint State condition. Thus, it’s not nearly as valuable as you might expect.

Coin Market values are $21 in VF20, $40 in XF40, and just $150 in MS63. If you want a really nice coin, the Coin Market value for an MS65 is only $375. Lange noted, “1931-S is to the Buffalo Nickel series what 1950-D is to the Jefferson Nickels. It seems to be at least as common in mint state as it is in lesser grades, possibly more so. As a low mintage date, speculators were attracted to it from the outset.”

I currently own a 1931-S graded MS65 by PCGS that I purchased for $223.50 in 2003. I wish I had bought more at the time.

* * *

Putting an end to the Buffalo nickel in 1938 was a political decision by the Roosevelt administration, which wanted Thomas Jefferson on the denomination. (Photo courtesy of Heritage)

Well, that’s my list of my ten favorite Buffalo nickels. The coin has an iconic design featuring a genuine Native American on the obverse and a buffalo/bison on the reverse. If you like the series as much as I do, write down your ten-best list and buy the coins if you don’t already own them. I think you’ll be glad you did.

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realestate63141 · 8 years

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Why Half of the Country Will Never Be Satisfied With the President

Why do millions of white working class and middle class people believe that Donald Trump cares about them? originally appeared on Quora - the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.. Answer by Curtis Lindsay, musician, on Quora:

Why do millions of white working class and middle class people believe that Donald Trump cares about them? On the surface of it, it really is mystifying.

I was a kid in the 1980s and 1990s, and I remember well how most middle-American adults in my life thought and spoke of Donald Trump at that time. He was a Manhattanite billionaire playboy who couldn't stay off talk shows and tabloids. His name and image were synonymous with obscene wealth and a decadent lifestyle. He treated women badly, it was known. Small business people, farmers, and factory workers rolled their eyes at Donald Trump. His values could not have had less to do with theirs. Many probably hated him and everything he stood for.

There's always talk of how those politicians who are career attorneys with Ivy League pedigrees, hail from upper-crust families, and maybe vacation in the Hamptons or the French Riviera are maybe a bit out of touch with common people.

But here we have a real estate tycoon for whom the Reagan years were one long limousine ride, an unapologetic egomaniac who delighted in throwing his name up in lights, and a guy who made a television career out of firing people on camera: one would think such a person would represent a whole higher echelon of "out of touch."

So, yeah -- how did this man transform himself into the populist savior of the working class?

Maybe a good place to start is by summarizing the viewpoints of two different people on the state of America: mine, and my father's, which I feel I can represent with a reasonable degree of accuracy, though far from perfectly.

I am a professional classical musician and arts administrator in my mid-thirties. I had some childhood training in conservatories, and I have a college degree in music and philosophy. I make it a point to travel outside the U.S., though not that often.

When I go down to the local taqueria, I place my orders and make small talk in poor but earnest Spanish. It's natural for me be to curious about other cultures, enthusiastic about diversity.

As a boy, I ran around the neighborhood with black kids from families less affluent than mine. My friends throughout grade school included kids from India, Vietnam, Germany, the works. My friends and colleagues in adult life are a diverse bunch, too. Many of my closest friends are gay or trans, and my sexuality has been pretty fluid for most of my life.

My earnings place me in the lower middle class; I work a full-time job plus somewhere between one and three part-time jobs at any given time, as musicians often do. I am unmarried with no children, and plan to stay that way. I love kids, but am not interested in offspring.

I don't align strongly with either of the nation's major political parties.

My view is that the U.S. is run almost entirely in the interests of its very wealthiest citizens, some of whom exert undue influence on the government at every level and hamper its operations much as a cancer hinders the operations of tissues and organs in the body.

I am extremely sympathetic to the ideals of democratic socialism. I think that poverty is most often, though not always, the result of inadequate opportunity and socioeconomic disenfranchisement, and that extreme wealth is most often, though not always, the result of privilege rather than the natural reward for genuine hard work in a spirit of convivial cooperation.

It seems self-evident to me that the neo-feudal influence of increasingly powerful and cannibalistic corporations is directly responsible for the engagement of the United States in aggressive geopolitical posturing and resource wars, which are represented to the public as patriotic endeavors; for the failure of the U.S. to divert any portion of a truly corpulent defense budget to the better care of its citizens and its health and education infrastructures; for the extreme reliance of the American populace on credit; and for the refusal of the U.S. to regulate its economy with the imperfect but at least vaguely functional common sense exercised by comparable industrial nations.

The U.S. isn't run by sinister moguls in a smoky backroom enclave. Rather, plutocracy and oligarchy are predictable outcomes of the kind of socioeconomic principles on which the nation was founded to begin with. I can't see that capitalism and democracy are compatible without an awful lot of intercession, is the gist of it. I think that the market is chaotic and unreliable as a governing force, because the market is made in the image of a chaotic and unreliable population. Try as we might, we don't always know what is in our best interests, since our "needs" are now often manufactured by marketers.

I believe that the electoral system in our republic is such that it guarantees a near-total lack of diversity in viewpoints and approaches, and strongly encourages politicians to say and do whatever it takes to win over the necessary constituent base -- without then providing meaningful incentive for them to commit to genuine matters of policy with any degree of integrity.

I believe that the mass media in our country specialize not so much in informing the populace impartially as in creating and nurturing two opposing camps and then allowing each to bathe perpetually in whatever it is that they want to hear, ensuring the division of the nation into factions which are ideologically hostile toward one another and do not communicate with one another. It makes for great ratings. This is evidenced most acutely in questions of civil liberty and tolerance, which allow candidates to make great hay from simple hot-buttons, but indeed manifests in various ways throughout virtually every aspect of American life.

My father's view, as best I am able to represent it, is quite different.

He is a small business owner with no college degree, a father of five children by two marriages, and an extremely intelligent and down-to-earth individual whose ceaseless, gritty hard work and carefully managed business decisions have, even in the face of dire adversity at times, enabled his children to pursue their dreams in a way that he, to a great extent, could not.

His earnings place him in the upper middle class. He believes that he could have done even better for himself and his family, had politicians not been continually trying to steal his money.

Dad was always completely financially supportive of me, well above and beyond the call. But he never took much interest in me personally, and feels fundamentally that he and I have nothing in common. For my part, I have sadly done very little in life to disabuse him of that notion. We bonded over certain things when I was very young, and those are some of my most treasured memories; by the time I graduated high school, we were living on different planets. I was a rebellious hellion.

He loves his grandchildren and spoils them ridiculously. It's wonderful to watch.

He has never traveled outside the United States, and his daily life has, for pretty much all of my memory, been divided almost expressly between work and sleep.

Dad grew up on family farms, and his best friends were his cousins. In that place and time, white people and black people did not readily socialize on equitable terms. That's how he was taught to experience the world. He identifies strongly with George Wallace's stand against racial integration -- or did at one point, at least -- and believes, in a very general sense, that black people somehow want for free what white people have somehow achieved through hard work and sacrifice.

I should add that Wallace did not resonate with Dad because he detests black people. He does not. Dad liked Wallce because he believes that the federal government is essentially evil, and that nearly every imaginable issue ought to be handled by the states.

For Dad, integration was not the inexorable march of justice. It was the federal government telling him and his peers how to live, and turning Alabama into Ohio.

He believes that wealth is usually, but not always, the result of acumen and discipline, and that poverty is usually, but not always, the result of laziness and a sense of entitlement.

He judges the U.S. government to be corrupt and incompetent by nature, and that its officers make a living by sucking their subjects dry, the pursuit of which is their sole guiding interest. Environmentalism is, in his mind, only the latest and hottest money-making scheme in Washington.

He believes that the electoral system in the country exists to protect middle-class common sense and hard work from the self-congratulatory solipsism of the Hollywood and New York liberals, most of whom are criminals unaccountable to the law.

He'd tell you that the mass media exists solely to express the viewpoints of wackos who live in an alternate universe and are his ideological enemies.

Dad says that the United States is being overrun by Muslims and other foreign minorities. He'd say that most of the war activity of the United States in the past couple of generations has been carried out solely for the just purpose of crushing those who wish his country doom; now, that Great Other is in his neighborhood, waiting to take everything he has from him.

I'd guess that, in his view, homosexual and trans people are weak and psychologically flawed persons with an addiction to the attention of others -- they are not so much immoral as tragically afflicted, and he is okay with them as long as he doesn't have to think about them too much. Certainly he does not think they need to be "converted." He would say that such an approach is ridiculous, I bet.

Finally, he believes that the presidency of Barack Obama represented the ultimate ascendancy of anti-American traitors and their foreign hordes, and that a Clinton presidency would have maintained an identical agenda: enslaving white, middle-class Americans for the benefit of wealthy, crooked foreigners and their cohorts on the American coasts. He aligns with the Republican Party with perfect consistency, and has at least since I was born, at about the time of Reagan's first election.

You can probably see that I would never have voted for Donald Trump, and perhaps you can understand why I voted for Clinton only with great reluctance, primarily as a means of attempting to stop Trump from creating a billionaire theme park out of his drained swamp.

I am actually willing to give Mr. Trump the benefit of the doubt on some of his economic positions, as shaky as I feel them to be on the whole; but I am sorely afraid for the future of civil liberties, cultural tolerance and integration, environmental health, and foreign policy under the strictly for-profit federal government that he is creating.

Likewise, you can probably surmise that my father was an enthusiastic Trump supporter. Quite beyond my ready comprehension, he esteems Donald Trump to be a selfless patriot who has recanting and given up his decadent billionaire lifestyle to serve the interests of the America That Time Forgot.

Dad is not a religious man, and he is probably elated to have been presented with a candidate who has built a platform mostly, if not entirely, devoid of religious sanctimoniousness, and otherwise using language which is almost perfectly aligned with his own worldview.

I've often felt that there are certain thinkers and movers in the American political spectrum whose views align reasonably closely with my own, but who are not really willing to go far enough to act upon them. I'm guessing that, until now, Dad has felt that pretty much no one in U.S. politics understands his frustrations.

That's all it takes. Donald Trump, however genuinely or disingenuously, has broadcast a clear message on the precise frequency to which my father and many people similar to him have long been listening in hopes of hearing something other than static. Under the right conditions, that's all you need to turn a delirious demagogue into the most powerful man on Earth.

Being blessed with two eyes, two ears, and a memory--and not hungering for a the "simpler times" that my father surely must--I see Trump for what he is: an opportunistic charlatan who cared only about November 8, 2016 and the ways in which the results of that day will benefit him personally. His only concern is winning, as he has written in print numerous times over the years.

True to form, most of the actions he has taken in his first few days in power have smacked of symbolic vindictiveness, a pouting child's revenge.

My opinion of Secretary Clinton is somewhat higher, but not a great deal higher, truth be told. I believe that she uses the insecurities and uncertainties of minorities and the poor to similar personal and political advantage, often quite superficially. I believe she is equally ruthless, in her own way.

If the progressive movement in the United States does not learn to engage and speak to the people that disagree with its tenets without making them feel like backwards simpletons, it will never move forward without then having to take two steps back.

If progressives do not learn to create fresh common ground and alliances with those whom they are told hate them and all they represent, then I think the future of the nation is a bleak one.

Electoral politics has unfortunately become a zero-sum sportsball game in our country. No more than half the nation's people feel, at any given time, that their interests are being represented. So greater inclusiveness and depth of relation are needed, I think, if genuine progress is to be made and sustained.

This is not an easy task. Ideological warfare has already taken its toll; the way forward is not clear. I think it will necessarily involve much original thought on the part of a people no longer as accustomed to such intricacies as perhaps they once were.

I've been sheltered from a number of the realities that my parents had to face in their lives. It's not difficult for me to appreciate them, but it is almost impossible for me to understand them. I am sure my parents can't fathom why it is that I want certain people and things in my life, and why I'm oblivious to certain matters that, for them, are nothing short of crucial.

I know many people my age, and younger, who feel themselves to be in similar generational disarray.

It is truly difficult for Dad and me to be in the same room when politics is in the air, and not for any lack of love. My journey through Trump's America begins with looking for a way to change that.

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goldeagleprice · 6 years

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Favorite Buffaloes for coin buyers

By Mike Thorne, Ph.D.

I also found an XF 1914-D with a large rim dent below the date, a couple of AU 1916-Ds, and some low-grade 1926-Ss, among other interesting coins. Dateless Buffs were only occasionally encountered.

(Photo courtesy of Heritage)

(Photo courtesy of Stack’s Bowers)

I fully agree with that comment. I currently own one of this date that PCGS graded XF45. It doesn’t have a full horn, which would seem to be a requirement for a coin at this grade.

Coin Market says that this date is worth $300 in F12, $550 in XF40, and $1,330 in MS63. If you want to buy one, be sure it’s certified by one of the major services (ANACS, NGC, PCGS).

Coin Market values are $150 in F12, $300 in XF40, and $550 in MS63. Be sure to buy certified examples of any better-date Buffaloes, as some very creative fakes have been discovered over the years.

I currently own a 1931-S graded MS65 by PCGS that I purchased for $223.50 in 2003. I wish I had bought more at the time.

* * *

Putting an end to the Buffalo nickel in 1938 was a political decision by the Roosevelt administration, which wanted Thomas Jefferson on the denomination. (Photo courtesy of Heritage)

This article was originally printed in Coins Magazine. >> Subscribe today.

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