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Flapper Girl

“The new silver dollar will not stack!” charged an article in the Literary Digest January 28, 1922. This was the new 1921 Peace dollar with the head of Liberty on the front and a perched eagle clutching an olive branch on the back with “Peace” below it.

The article goes on at length quoting the Wall Street Journal panning every aspect of the design from the “‘flapper’ Liberty head” to the “so-called eagle” that is “presumably a compromise—a concession to the cuckoo, with adequate class representation for the buzzard and the English sparrow.” (Flappers were the hippies of the jazz age, with scandalous bobbed hair and short skirts — without corsets!)

The initial strike of the Peace dollar was high relief which presumably affected its stackability. But the New York Times disputed this, saying in a January 5, 1922 article “Reports that the new dollars would not ‘stack’…were proved untrue at the Federal Reserve Bank. Experienced cashiers at the institution ‘stacked’ several twenty dollar piles of the new dollars and said they line up as well as the old silver dollars.”

In World War I, Germany spread rumors that Britain didn’t have enough silver to back the pound. This triggered people in India, then a British colony, to redeem their notes for silver. The U.S. Came to the rescue with the 1918 Pittman Act which authorized the melting of silver dollars into bullion to be sold to Britain. Over 270 million were melted. These were Morgan dollars, first minted in 1878.

The Pittman Act also authorized the minting of replacement silver dollars with silver purchased from domestic mines. Initially 86,730,000 Morgan dollars were minted until the new Peace dollar commemorating the Great War was first struck in December, 1921. The dies for the Morgan dollar had been destroyed in 1910 after the silver reserves mandated for the purpose ran out in 1904 and Master engraver George Morgan, who designed the dollar, had to recreate them.

Anthony de Francisci, a 34 year old Sicilian immigrant, won the competition for the design of the coin. His initial design of the Peace dollar showed the eagle on the reverse clutching a broken sword. After protests that the design would be interpreted as defeat rather than peace, lacking time to start over with a new model, Morgan was able to skillfully modify the design in the steel master hub, from which the coin dies are made, removing the sword and extending the olive branch. This was done at the Philadelphia mint December 23, 1921 with de Francisci looking on.

The pressure of striking the high relief of the Peace dollar caused the dies to break and on January 10, 1922 after only 32,400 Peace dollars had been minted, production was halted. Attempts to solve the problem by striking with less pressure resulted in loss of detail. de Francisci had to redo the design from scratch with lower relief, sculpting a large plaster model that was then cast in metal and traced with a pantograph reducing lathe that cut the design into the hub. The new coins went into production a month later. Peace dollars were minted from 1921 to 1928, and again in 1934 and 1935 for a total production of 190,577,279.

A widely quoted excerpt from “a Philadelphia newspaper” says “Liberty is getting younger. Take it from the new Peace dollar, put in circulation yesterday. The young woman who has been adorning silver currency for many years never looked better than in the ‘cart wheel’ which the Philadelphia Mint has just started to turn out.”

“The young lady, moreover, has lost her Greek profile. Hellenic beauty seems to have been superseded by the newer ‘flapper’ type. Judging by the same profile, Liberty is growing more slender.”

de Francisci in a letter to The Numismatist, February, 1922, said he didn’t have enough time to search for a model but “I derived some help from the features of Mrs. de Francisci, but generally the Liberty head as it stands is a composite one.” Anthony de Francisci went on to design many other medals and medallions. He died October 20, 1964 at 77. Flapper girl Mary Teresa de Francisci died on the same date 26 years later in 1990 at 92.

Ms. Piggy

The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum presented the Sackler Center First Award, honoring women who are first in their fields, to Miss Piggy June 4, 2015.

Piggy joins Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and author Toni Morrison in feminist fame.

The award was presented by Elizabeth Sackler. In her acceptance speech, Piggy said “Starting today, moi IS a feminist!” and that she was a “proud porcine-American feminist.”

She then had a conversation with the original Ms., Gloria Steinem, in which she declared she would stay a Miss, saying she loves Ms. “But changing your name is just impossible, really…Actually, I would prefer it if people just called me ‘Your Highness’ or ‘Your Majesty’”. She then said that she never got an Oscar because the Academy has never recognized pigs or farm animals as eligible.

She wrote an essay for Time Magazine titled Why I am a Feminist Pig. As for questions of “whether moi deserves such an honor…some might say that moi is just a mere Hollywood celebrity who cares more about her appearance, her star billing, and most especially her percentage of the gross, than about women and women’s rights. To which I can only respond ‘Oh yeah!?!’ by which I mean that moi is now and has always been and ardent feminist and champion of women’s rights.”

Told in her youth on the farm that life would be “nothing but mud, sweat and tears”, she achieved her dreams and now lives in Hollywood, “where there is still a lot of mud, sweat and tears, but the hours and compensation are much more attractive.”

So how can a pig be a feminist when pig is associated with male chauvinists? Species-ism — all pigs are not chauvinists. There are male chauvinist pigs as well as humans “and, on very rare occasions and at their own peril, male chauvinist amphibians.”

Fortunately, The Sackler Center didn’t see the January, 2005 cover of Playboar magazine with Miss Piggy posed provocatively on a motorcycle with the caption Miss Piggy This Little Piggy Likes to Get Dirty.

Gangsta Rap

“They call Al Capone a bootlegger. Yes, it's bootlegging while it's on the trucks, but when your host at the club, in the locker room, or on the Gold Coast hands it to you on a silver tray, it's hospitality."

“Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class.”

— Al Capone

High relief 1921 Peace Dollar

Mary Teresa de Francisci

For the Serious Vampire

That’s how vampireteeth.com describes its “14K real gold fangs.” $649.99.

And “if your a real baller”, you can get them with a diamond set in each.. $1149.99.