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VOCABULARY WORD: QUASQUIBIDUODECENTENNIAL
Last week I couldn't resist commenting on the "149th Anniversary of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address". Here's what Ron Abler has to say.
-Editor
You have no idea how much older it makes me feel to have a young pup like you refer to yourself as an old geezer. Where does that leave me? Just because I collect Sesquicentennial medals (yes, I obey Abler’s Fourth Law of Collecting, and I do collect more than one thing) and therefore know the meaning of Sesquicentennial does not make me, let alone you, an old geezer! Doesn’t everyone commemorate quasquibiduodecentennial anniversaries?
Quasquicentennial = 125th year
Maybe knowing the meaning of "sesquicentennial" doesn't necessarily make me a geezer, but talking to my kids sure does. I feel compelled to remind them that I was born (1958), there were still only 48 states in the union, and only a couple satellites (other than the moon) orbiting the Earth. A guy delivered milk to our front door. We had one phone in the house, with a rotary dial. There were fire call boxes on the streetcorners. And quarters were made of REAL SILVER, dammit. I wouldn't go back to those days mind you, but it would be nice to visit (and have money to spend at a coin auction)!
Ron and I continued the thread in subsequent emails (see below). -Editor Ron: "I’d like to go back with a complete list of winning lottery numbers (then I’d start going to coin auctions)! Can you spell Croesus?" Me: "State lotteries weren't quite invented yet, either. Betting on horse races and ballgames would work, but win too many times and the mob'll put you in cement overshoes before you could buy too many coins..." Ron: "Spoil sport! Okay, one result sheet from a prior day at the track will work well enough. One big win would finance one big coin auction, assuming that the time machine lets me bring back a briefcase full of coins."
While we're joking I thought I'd insert some things I read in Good, Clean Funnies this week: "I lost twenty pounds. Unfortunately, I was in England at the time.", and "Regular naps prevent old age, especially if you take them while driving.".
That last one's a joke that will stop being funny someday. We already have cow-milking robots and accident-free driverless cars. One of these days people may well be able to take naps safely in the car, even as the kids ask, "What's a driver's seat?". -Editor
To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
NEW BOOK: ABRAHAM LINCOLN: BEYOND THE AMERICAN ICON
(www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v15n43a05.html)
The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org. To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum All Rights Reserved. NBS Home Page Contact the NBS webmaster 
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