On November 12, 2025, the U.S. Mint made its very last penny.
(I so wanted to title this post “Stop Making Cents” but even I have my pun limits. Associated Press, ABC News, The Wall Street Journal, and others do not.)
Penny for your thoughts.
How many thoughts will I ever have now if there are no more pennies to pay for them?
Which brings me to …
I bet you have a friend who only shows up when things are getting rough. They need your shoulder to lean on, your compassionate ear, your thoughtful, “It’s ok, things are going to be ok,” half-truth.
It’s me. Hi.
I seem to write more when baseball has gone sour. When “stinky” only scratches the surface of how maddeningly awful the Baltimore Orioles have been playing.
How awful? Let Mookie Wilson-Betts explain:
Just awful.
(The Orioles are not the worst in baseball. Rockies fans, here, come sit with me.)
Anyway, I have some thoughts. All random. Not all baseball. Not a single one is worth rounding up to a nickel.
Penny Thoughts.
God, “Stop Making Cents” is so good.
This weird visionary folk art of Talking Heads hangs on our wall.
Will women named Penny have to change their names? Will all the Penelopes now have to be nicknamed Lopes?
(Editor/Husband suggests the Penelopes are being short-changed. His pun. Not mine.)
Penelope was among the top 25 baby names last year. That’s a lotta little Lopes running around.
I’m sure we’ll get used to it.
Do people still tape pennies to their record player’s tonearm? Maybe we’ll at least put a stop to that vinyl carnage.
2017. Photo: Gage Skidmore via Creative Commons
In the 1970s, Harrison Ford, more carpenter than actor at that point, built the deck at Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne’s Malibu home.
That’s a name-dropping mouthful, isn’t it?
Mentioning people you read about in a book is an introvert’s way of name-dropping.
Hi. Me again.
(The deck may have never been finished. It’s a little unclear.)
“Writer’s block is a non-medical condition, primarily associated with writing.” – Wikipedia.
Sure that looks awkward, but also a little Hemingway’esque, don’t you think?
Enheduanna
The New York Times noted recently that the Sumerian priestess Enheduanna, who lived more than 4,000 years ago, was one of the first named writers and wrote about a form of writer’s block.
The poet Arthur Rimbaud, who inspired Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, and maybe you, too, hit his writer’s block at about age 20. Well, maybe he just ran out of words, which is, dear reader, not the same thing.
Enheduanna, Rimbaud, and me. That sounds like a weird folk cover band that people would totally pretend to like. (“ooh, I heard Gram Parsons discovered them!”)
It would be so good – so very, very good – if Enheduanna was Sumerian for “penny.”
Thanks for nothing, Sumerians.
I need to mention the Seattle Mariners here. (Not just because this is a baseball page. And not just because my friend Bill lives in Seattle. He’s written a book! Me, name dropping again.)
It’s not their first time, but on July 21, the Mariners will hold another “Take Meow to the Ballgame” day to celebrate cats.
(“Take Meow to the Ballgame”? Ooh, “Stop Making Cents” has competition.)
Mookie Wilson-Betts. Mildly interested.
No cats allowed.
I think if you’re going to celebrate cats, then let ‘em in. Watch 2,000 cats freak and scatter through the ballpark as though someone just turned vacuum cleaners on in every section of the place.
I’m just saying. If you’re going to celebrate cats, shouldn’t cats be invited?
Mookie Wilson-Betts. A little disappointed.
Tomorrow, May 24, Bob Dylan turns 85.
1963. Public Domain
I know several people who are going to parties, tribute shows, tribute-party shows, party-tribute shows, at least one “that Timothée Chalamet movie” watch party, and one invite to a party-tribute-party-party that promises at least 65 Dylan songs will be sung. (At least!)
Introverts love talking about the places they won’t be.
But me and my turntable will definitely be taking a spin.
Happy Birthday, Bob.
“Not a shirt on my back. Not a penny on my name. Well, I can’t go home thisaway.”
I Was Young When I Left Home – Bob Dylan (1961)
The Baseball Bloggess 
I feel your Os pain. In a recent article, I saw stats about teams that have started this bad and still made the playoffs. In 2019, the Nats started 19-31 and won the World Series. Don’t panic yet, or as Dylan might say about the 2026 season, its not dark yet, but its gettin there.
On a 4-month trip at the beginning of this year, we got the chance to visit the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa Oklahoma and I highly recommend it if anyone is ever that way.
Can I take a little credit for Colton Cowser this weekend? It seems like whenever I get all whiney on here about the O’s they shape up for a bit. You’re right … it’s not dark yet … but … at least we have glimmers of joy now and then.
And I’m so jealous you got to the Bob Dylan Center. Did you get to the Woody Guthrie Center, too?
Yes we did, they are side by side! We also visited the Church Museum, an old church that Leon Russell bought and converted into a recording studio (Shelter Records), a really cool place where they also have live music and a bar (gotta have a bar).
Cowser – Ain’t the Milk Cold!?? Cowser, Wowser!
Oh! I didn’t know about the Church Museum. That’s the Leon Russell place where Tom Petty/Mudcrutch recorded, right? (Fun fact, I am wearing a Mudcrutch tee-shirt as I type this.) I definitely have to get to Tulsa. In the meantime, go O’s!
I’ll be at the Warwick (NY) Valley Winery tomorrow for day 2 of their 3-day DylanFest.
I hope DylanFest was good! (Sorry about the Mets this season, Ken. I feel your pain.)
Sorry is precisely the right word to use for the Mets.
“Writer’s block is a non-medical condition, primarily associated with writing.” … as opposed to … blocking?
Yeh, I don’t think of “writer’s block” as a catchall term. I want to know if someone refers to having writer’s block if they’re unable to, oh, say, field a perfectly catchable pop fly. What’s a shortstop going to say, “I guess I just had a little writer’s block out there”?
god i miss your writing, miss you.
Steve, My writer’s block has been so bad I can’t even bring myself to read your words, because I have felt so empty. And, I miss your words because they inspire me when I sit down to think and write. (But I will. Writer’s block will not win.) This post was a throwaway, but it contained enough nouns and verbs, one serial comma, three photos of a cat, and one rogue mention of Rimbaud. So, there’s life in me.
i go back and forth between god and praying and never thinking about it. crop rotation makes sense to me and i know nothing about soil and seeds but i did learn today from this GOOD NEWS blog or newsletter that i read that seeds sense when rain is coming and they actually move a little which i would think is like animals sensing a storm and climbing to the highest point and why am i telling you this? i don’t remember…oh yeh, crop rotation…yeh, it makes sense like four season climates do, for me anyway. i mean people in florida and california get pissed off like we do in the northeast and midwest. maybe i should try a one season climate? that might be interesting to record it in diaries. i always keep a diary. i never date anything. it’s just notes from every day and when one notebook ends i just start another. i find that physically writing has some cave painting effect on us. i take my time and enjoy the making the curves like rediscovering writing all over again. i guess it’s like my new walking technique. i go super super slow, like it’s hard to tell i’m even moving and it’s great because i see so much more and sometimes i get into the mindset of breathing and being alive feeling….fleeting, but powerful.
Crop rotation … I grew up on a farm in North Dakota, I know crop rotation! You are my sensei, Steve. I think maybe I’m just rotating my crops a bit. I’ve been playing guitar every day again during this writing lull, maybe that’s the refuge while I pound away at the block. And, I love your no-fuss notebook writing. I have something similar but even that has withered. I’ll work on that. And seeds move when they sense rain coming? You wrote that last night and I can’t stop thinking about how cool seeds are.
i stopped writing for a few days and it felt so liberating….to be away from the computer. to wake up and read an actual paper with coffee and then getting into a book and curling the corners of pages i knew i wanted to revisit and rereading books too. i hate sounding like an old curmudgeon but i am because i grew up with radios and TVs and kids today don’t know about old typewriters and milk in glass bottles that were delivered to the door, to a milk chute as part of the kitchen. guitar playing must be fun. i’ve sometimes thought about playing the xylophone. hits like a pleasant sound. my mom had a Cal Tjader record when i was a kid and i liked that xylophone sound or else how cool would it be to be a stadium organist? did you ever listen to the Denny mclain album on you tube. he played the hammond b. it’s actually pretty good, to me anyway…maybe because it gives off an old stadium vibe.
and oh yeh, i forgot to mention that i’m going to the brewers game with my dad tomorrow and i’ve lost all interest n today’s baseball so it will be like being a drunk and high anthropologist because i’m gonna be drunk and high and no longer feeling the baseball groove but this is how it starts….certain that i’m no longer a fan and then i get sucked in. to be continued.
I sometimes wonder if I become a bigger Orioles fan when they’re doing horribly. That makes no sense and yet. The baseball groove you’re not feeling? That groove never goes away, I think. It just waits. There is no pitch clock with the baseball groove. It is patient.
i like bad teams too, like the brewers when they are bad. what the hell is there to talk about when a team is winning all the time? it’s like that doestoyovsky (spelling?) quote about fucked up families being more interesting than families not so fucked up, but it seems to me that every family has an interesting story, just in need of someone to write it.
i’m a big fan of the erly 90’s Pharcyde and fat lip’s solo album after that…..i go back to this piece often and i thought about you this morning when it came up on my mixed library. i love it. no commercials, but here’s the youtube link which might have commercials. sorry about that.
Absolutely brilliant! Thank you, Sensei Steve … you’re going to get me out of this blocky mess yet.
he is really or was a really unique rapper in that he was so much laughing at himself.
“Thanks a lot, Sumerians” about took me out. Sorry about your Os (again). Have I told you that one of my side hustles is as a brand ambassador outside American Family Field? I may not get to a lot of ball games, but I do get as close as a person can. Never a bad day at the ballpark!