I got my wish, so I'm just going to be happy about an artist on the money, not argue about the particular artist chosen.
When I wrote in my sketchbook, I picked the name Dr. Seuss not only because he wrote accessible words and drew charming drawings, which is what St. Exupéry did. I picked it because I thought virtually all Americans could get behind the choice of Dr. Seuss. We all know him and have enjoyed his work. Who can't like him? But 18 years have passed, and... is Dr. Seuss cancelled? He's somewhere on the road to cancellation.
So I couldn't get my precise wish.
When you wish upon a Star-Bellied Sneetch/Makes no difference who you reach/Something like your heart desires/Will come to you....
So I got my wish imprecisely. I got Maya Angelou!
***
Like a songbird, her legs are invisible as she flies, arms outstretched/Darting into the slots of vending machines/Across America.
Posts
72 comments:
"Like a songbird, her legs are invisible"
Althouse: do you approve of like a songbird/her legs are?
Still, the choice of Angelou is fitting: it symbolizes America's descent into mediocrity.
Shoulda been Whitman: American, gay, and actually great.
An affirmative action choice, chosen for her race and sex - who wrote poetry nobody reads.
At least we avoided Whoopi Goldberg or Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
I am not qualified to judge Maya Angelou as an artist. However, I will offer the following observation:
Radio stations used to chronicle the top 50 or 100 songs of all time. These suffered from presentism-this year’s big song was seemingly always the in the top 5 while last year’s big song barely made the list.
The Sneetches is still the best book on race ever written. I love it because the book is quite clear that race is an idiotic concept and a stupid way to divide humanity. But what makes that book so remarkable is the character of Sylvester McMonkey McBean.
In the book, he calls himself the "Fix-It-Up Chappie." The idea is that you "solve the problem" without actually solving the problem. And in fact your "solution" is really just a money-making scheme.
Not only do these characters fail to solve the problem, they don't actually want to solve the problem. If they solve the problem, the whole business model falls apart. So part of the agenda is to create new problems, or even make the original problem worse.
So for modern day examples of Sylvester McMonkey McBean, I would suggest Robin DiAngelo. Or maybe Patrisse Khan-Cullors. Those are two that jump to mind.
In his Autobiography Brando - out of the blue - starts ranting about Elvis being honored by a stamp and grumps about the "decline of culture in America". Of course, Brando was just jealous, and hated Presley because he was a Southern White man. He never complained about Louie Armstrong or Miles Davis.
But, the rot has been going on for a long time. At least Angelou is a poet, as opposed to the fake made up Figure of Harriet Tuabman that Republicans worship.
As for who should go on the 25 cent piece. If you want a female artist: Mary Cassatt or Georgia O'keefe. If you want a female writer: Edith Wharton, Emily Dickinson, Laura Ingalls, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, or Wilma Cather.
I dunno. When I think of all of the artists from America that we could have celebrated, this one, more than any is a reflection of our 'experts' placing symbolism above substance.
She was/is, at best, meh. But...Obama loved her, so, hell...that should be enough, eh?
"Who should we put on the quarter? Walt Whitman? He was a great American poet, maybe the greatest. Quintessentially American.
"How about Maya Angelou? She was black."
"You win."
"Althouse: do you approve of like a songbird/her legs are?"
Yes, in that I was aware of the grammatical issue, considered the alternatives, and chose to do it anyway. One reason to do it anyway is that I was deliberately writing like an idiot!
My favorite Dr. Seuss book is "Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose." I could get behind putting Thidwick on a quarter.
I don't like how they made her body into a chess piece. I could write an essay about how that's gynophobic.
"Mediocrities everywhere, I absolve you." - Salieri in Amadeus
Is the Maya Angelou profile this based off some photograph, book cover, something like that? I did a cursory look in google images and can't find anything. Is there some backstory I'm missing.
Honestly it looks more like Megan Rapinoe.
Maya who?
"One reason to do it anyway is that I was deliberately writing like an idiot!"
Good. I figured. Still, it's reassuring.
"Wonder Twin powers, activate!"
"Shape of... an eagle!"
"Form of... water!"
Like a songbird, her legs are invisible as she flies, arms outstretched/Darting into the slots of vending machines/Across America.
LOL
Are we culturally poorer for not having artists, writers, poets, and architects on our money, or culturally richer, because we have so many of them and don't want to single any out? Are you slighting Proust, Gide, Sartre or Camus by putting Flyer Boy on your money? Do Berlioz and Delacroix and their fans resent having to step down and make way for Debussy and Cezanne?
I am at least glad that we don't rid of the higher denomination bills so that we are spared the indignity of Salmon P. Chase on the $10,000 bill. Also we don't have to cancel imperialist McKinley and racist Wilson because it's already been done. Also, I am especially glad that I never had to make change for a $5000 or a $100,000 when I was working a convenience store cash register.
There have always been artists n the coinage if you count the engravers. In this case, it appears that we have two; ESD & CAC. Has this happened before?
Now that the national park series is complete, I'm guessing that this the start of a new series. I'll reserve judgement about the choice of subject until I see a few more examples.
Oh, please give me a break!!! Of ALL the American “artists” the best we could do is Maya Angelou??? Hey, that rhymes…maybe I’m a poet too? Or did it HAVE to be a black woman? If so, I would have preferred Toni Morrison. Even among well-read Americans how many people have read poems by Maya Angelou vs. books by Toni Morrison? I’m sure the nominating committee did not even consider a white male for this tribute. A bunch of racists!!!
I am looking forward to the Franklin Pierce three dollar bill.
If you are going to pick an American female poet, why wouldn't you choose Dickinson? Seriously- I can think of at least 20 better female American poets than Angelou without having to think very hard.
My brother recently observed the proliferation of prosperous, healthy black families in suburban settings in television advertising. I said that we can only pray that that vision reflects black Americans’ lives in the 21st century. Those bourgeois folks have a lot to lose and little to gain from continued divisiveness on race issues.
Behold, Angelou's most famous poem, her inaugural poem for our first black president, Bill Clinton.
"A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon,
The dinosaur, who left dried tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.
But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no hiding place down here."
What the hell does any of that even mean?
And the dinosaur's dried tokens... is that excrement?
I realize poetry is subjective, but even when I first heard it, I thought it was dreck. And yet Angelou was praised to the skies. Just like that girl poet at Biden's inaugural.
The first person who stops clapping is a racist.
It’s fun that 3 of the first 5 in the American Women Quarters program are not well known to the general public. The 3rd quarter is Wilma Mankiller - what a delightful name. The 4th quarter says Vote for the Woman - in Spanish.
I've never given much thought to who or what is pictured on our money. I suppose if asked I would prefer animals to people. Still some people just prefer them dead Presidents
When will we put Dr. Seuss on anything? Never, I hope.
The dinosaur, who left dried tokens
Of their sojourn here
Dinosaur pies - sorta like Cow pies.
Lets give Angelou credit, at least people know her, and some read her. As opposed to Louise Glück - who must have friends in high places.
My god. No more overrated writer ever drew breath.
No birdcage?
Part of a distressing trend of numismatic diarrhœa. Garbage coins, badly designed.
When will we put Dr. Seuss on anything? Never, I hope.
Ah, a Grinch who doesn't like Dr. Seuss. Your heart is seven sizes too small my friend. Maybe you should visit Whoville. they have a big statue of Dr. Seuss.
The dinosaur, who left dried tokens / Of their sojourn here....
Yes, coprolites.
The 4th quarter says Vote for the Woman - in Spanish.
Seriously? US coinage contains a political message endorsing candidates based on sex? Would seem to violate laws against sex based discrimination in employment, perhaps the Hatch Act, etc.
A poet? I thought Maya Angelou was the Zoroastrian Dark Force.
"Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room."
One appreciates the sentiment. But oil wells? really?
American Popular Culture.
Its neither popular nor culture.
Discuss.
One of her best:
Noises down the hall
Life doesn't frighten me at all
Bad dogs barking loud
Big ghosts in a cloud
Life doesn't frighten me at all
Mean old Mother Goose
Lions on the loose
They don't frighten me at all
"Is the Maya Angelou profile this based off some photograph, book cover, something like that? I did a cursory look in google images and can't find anything. Is there some backstory I'm missing. Honestly it looks more like Megan Rapinoe."
It reminds me of how they made the Sacajawea coin.
It's as if they had no record of how she looked and just created an ideal.
Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss) was an advertising executive before he started to write children's books. (Actually his children's books have a lot of lessons for adults.)
And when the wokesters dig deep enough, they'll discover that Geisel was the author of the "Quick Henry The Flit" ad campaign for a spray insecticide. And the owner the the company that made the insecticide was Exxon (all this was back in the early 1930's.
I don't know which is worse in the progtard's eyes. Hustling an insect spray that killed insects---or working for Exxon. Either one is sufficient cause to cast him out of the progressive paradise.
Myself--I think he was a great guy.
What's with the hair? Seems to stylized for her persona.
Angelou is a hack. What a waste of metal.
We’ve never really had beloved artists. Norman Rockwell? I bet he was cancelled or something…
Perhaps we’re too diverse. Or maybe we’re just so fucking awesome we don’t have to rally around our grifter beatnik poets and finger painters the way Canada does. I dunno
I do not like you, rcocean,
I do not like your hand cream lotion.
I do not like you in a comment.
What you write can make me voment.
How could any artist be chosen ahead of Louis Armstrong.
And in my opinion Althouse’s sketch of Saint-Exupéry makes him resemble Heinrich Himmler.
Big Mike on his way to Nobel Prize. Or maybe the 50 cent piece.
It is sad that in order to get people to collect quarters, we should go from states, to national parks to famous(?) American women. What will they do next? I did collect the state quarters, and some of the presidential and Sacagawea dollars. But I stopped with the national park quarters because I grew tired of trying to find them all in circulation and I refuse to pay more that a quarter for a quarter in circulation. This shtic is getting old.
Here's how that 50 franc note actually looked.
John Ashbery should have read one of his poems at Clinton's inaugural. Then the whole country could agree that it was meaningless nonsense -- as it was intended to be -- and that it was therefore a triumph.
@rcocean, there is no Nobel Prize for mathematics, and I’m at least 45 years too old to win a Fields Medal.
(Some mathematicians believe that Alfred Nobel was retaliating for flunking calculus.)
RCOcean said
At least Angelou is a poet,
I've asked this before here: What is the big deal with poets? All my life I've heard people swooning because someone is a "Poet".
I don't consider that I read a lot of poetry but I probably have 30-40 books of poetry, both anthologies and single authors, on my shelves. And I've read a lot of them over the years.
It's nice enough but what makes a Poet more special than, say, a novelist, a historian, a technical writer or any other kind of writer?
Nothing against Angelou, if we have to put a poet on a dime, she is as good a choice as any.
john LGBTQBNY
RCOcean said
I don't get our criticism of Tubman. Unlike Angelou, Tubman actually accomplished stuff. Like, personally and at great risk, rescuing slaves and bringing them to freedom.
What did Angelou actually do in her lifetime besides writing?
In general I prefer doers over dreamers though I would not want to live in a world without both.
Tubman v Angelou reminds me of Princess Di vs Mother Theresa. Mother Theresa actually did stuff. People lived who otherwise would have died because of her. Many people's lives were improved because of her work.
Princess Di live a life of adoration as a fairy tale princess. Her funeral seems to continue to this day 25 years later.
Mother Theresa not so much. Even at the time of her death.
"In other news, Mother Theresa died. We now return to our 24/7 coverage of anything to do with Princess Di."
john LGBTQBNY
Underwear
By Lawrence Ferlinghetti
I didn’t get much sleep last night
thinking about underwear
Have you ever stopped to consider
underwear in the abstract
When you really dig into it
some shocking problems are raised
Underwear is something
we all have to deal with
Everyone wears
some kind of underwear
(Snip)
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42871/underwear
One American poet I am partial to is Lawrence Ferlinghetti. I hope they put him on a coin. It will have to be a dollar to get his name to fit.
John LGBTQBNY Henry
I've asked this before here: What is the big deal with poets? All my life I've heard people swooning because someone is a "Poet".
Poetry came before Novels, historicans, or technical writers. Homer is a poet in Greek. Poetry to music is song. Some people get a lot more enjoyment out of poetry than novels.
Way more people know who Dr. Seuss was than Maya Angelou. I thought we were a democracy. Who picked Maya? Was there a vote? Or was it a deep state bureaucrat?
Thought that was an Army medic who stepped on an IED.
A writer of doggerel . A poetaster. A hack. An dunce.
And if true, that "vote for women" bullshit will be challenged in court.
I suspect that, somewhat like Biden, whoever picked her started by deciding they needed a Black woman, and then just picked the best option left. She's a fine choice given those narrow constraints. If they didn't need a woman, just someone Black, I would guess it would have been Frederick Douglass, who, in my opinion, would have been a better and more consequential choice all around.
If it were great writers in general, without regard to political/civil rights impact, I think you would need to get past Poe and Twain before you hit Maya Angelou. Maybe Faulkner. Fitzgerald.
Booth Tarkington? (haha) For poetry, Poe and the late Donald Justice are the finest American poets in my opinion. T.S. Eliot, perhaps, depending on whether you count him as American (by his blood and birth) as opposed to English.
"A rock, a river, a tree."
If you are stuck for ideas, make a list! Reades love lists!
Dead Presidents hell, gimmee Salmon P Chase! (Or . . Ben Franklin?)
"I don't get our criticism of Tubman. Unlike Angelou, Tubman actually accomplished stuff. Like, personally and at great risk, rescuing slaves and bringing them to freedom."
Harriet Taubman's heroics are a myth. First a creation of Nothern Aboltionists after the Civil War and then recreated and expanded during the Civil Rights era. If you try to track back to documents what she supposedly did, you find zip. She's a "just so, story". The woman herself was illiterate.
I have no doubt she provided the Union forces with info. But thousands of slaves did that. Or that she was involved in leading a few slaves to freedom. But her contribution was minimal compared to all the MALE slaves who did the same thing or joined the Union army (200,000). But they didn't have female abolitionists writing books about them.
@John Henry, if you're going to get excited about underwear, then try Barry Louis Polisar. About thirty years or so ago I took my sons (now grown men) to a Barry Louis Polisar concert for the kids. He had just been banned from doing children's concerts at Montgomery County schools (I'll let you guess why). My boys loved it, and for obvious reasons.
Here is the song that they probably liked the best. (Listen to the end for the punch line.)
Italy had meat people on the Lira before Euro.
I am still holding out for Harriet Tubman with the revolver on the $20.
I nominate Emily Dickinson ( impressive poetry), Willa Cather, (poetic prose, numerous influential novels, impressive short stories),
Flannery O'Connor (provocative, challenging short stories and short novels), Zora Neale Hurston (influential novels and nonfiction,
"Their Eyes Were Watching God"). All four are far superior in quality to Maya Angelou.
I nominate Emily Dickinson ( impressive poetry), Willa Cather, (poetic prose, numerous influential novels, impressive short stories),
Flannery O'Connor (provocative, challenging short stories and short novels), and Zora Neale Hurston (influential novels and nonfiction, "Their Eyes Were Watching God"). All four are far superior in quality to Maya Angelou.
My guess is that the Maya Angelou quarter is the start of an ascending series of quarters. She had a catchy name though.
Do not get too excited. Maya Angelou was on a non-circulated silver coin specifically minted for collectors. While the United States tends to be a bit more picky about who gets put on the collector coins, generally the standards for getting on a collector coin are pretty low. Pretty much all you need to do to get the honor is to be sufficiently popular that they think they can sell enough of them to be profitable, or be useful as propaganda. You can get legal tender collector coins featuring Elvis Presley, the Marx Brothers, Bugs Bunny, Snoopy, PAC-MAN, Batman, Sonic the Hedgehog, Labrador Retrievers, Karl Marx, and Atilla the Hun, among others. Small British possessions seem to take turns pumping out these oddball collector coins, Niue currently be quite active in the market. And they are technically money as they have face value and could be spent for that amount, but it would be crazy to do so given the metal is a lot more valuable than the face value and it is worth even more as a coin.
rocean, it's a damn shame that a teacher didn't take you aside when you were in, say, the 8th grade, and tell you that in the adult world stringing together unsupported assertions and thinking you've made an "argument" is considered the mark of an ill-educated person.
(And the NERVE of Tubman to be....illiterate!! She deserves to be ignored, if only for that!!)
"It's nice enough but what makes a Poet more special than, say, a novelist, a historian, a technical writer...?"
A novelist says he got laid.
A historian remembers getting laid.
A technical writer knows how to get laid.
A poet needs to get laid.
The poetess of dinosaur poo.
She was a terrible, terrible poet. But still, respect the attractive elderly person. person. Why the impulse to slim her down and make her look like clip art of a generic tennis player? I suppose her body is meant to overshadow America in the usual dullard sense. Yet she's the one who disappears.
Her life was interesting: a man was taken out of prison and lynched for raping her as a small child; she travelled and was a reporter and an autobiographer. I'm not a fan but there seemed something mutually soul-crushing in having her read a stupid poem for that rapist Clinton's inauguration. The opposite of an honor.
Donald Justice a great poet? He taught some great poets. He was a great poetry teacher, I've heard. But you could fall asleep during his poems. Even the short ones. Which were pretty much all of them.
I wouldn't let Robert Bly in my front door without hosing him off first, but there was a poet. And so on. There are hundreds of better post-war poets.
Teaching poetry is fun when you're teaching children and amateurs. Not so much the neurotic narcissist gifted. So I guess he deserves credit for that.
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