The Problem with Family Trees

My wife and I went out to a seafood restaurant last night to celebrate my birthday. The sign above the entrance read "Crabs Shrimp Lobster". We decided to order the Steamer Bake for Two - a mix of shrimp, mussels, lobster, vegetables and perhaps some other things I can't remember. When I asked the waitress what the "market price" was, she said "Sixty dollars ... but we're out of shrimp and lobster." Really? How can you run a seafood restaurant without shrimp and lobster? The restaurant wasn't particularly busy, and there was a Safeway grocery store right around the corner. I'm not sure if they have lobster at Safeway, but I know they have shrimp. I guess this restaurant wasn't overly concerned with pleasing it's customers.

We ordered some other dishes that were still "in stock", and the waitress headed off to the kitchen. My wife picked up the menu and said, "Do you remember what my dad would do when that happened? He would tear the item out of the menu and hand it to the waitress. Then he would say something like, 'There seems to be a mistake in your menu'." I saw him do that more than once, but I had completely forgotten. My wife would have done the same thing, but the menu was laminated in such heavy plastic that she would have needed a scalpel for the procedure.

I didn't know my father-in-law very well. I'm not sure of the psychology involved here, but I guess it's not easy to make friends with the guy who takes your daughter away. And that is the problem with family trees: It's nice to know when someone was born, and who they married, the names of their children, and when they died; but that thing about the menu spoke to the quality of his character, and it's something I'd like to remember.

Pennies from China

In 1982, the U. S. Mint changed the composition of pennies to remove most of the copper. They had to do something because it took more than a penny's worth of copper to make a penny. Now pennies are made mostly of zinc, but they have a nice copper coating so they still look like pennies. Canada made the change a few years later. Fast forward thirty years and now it takes more than a penny's worth of zinc to make a penny. Canada has announced it is cancelling production of the Canadian Penny because of the cost. Can the U. S. be far behind? With a targeted rate of inflation, our Government has a stated policy which will lead to cancellation of the penny ... and then the nickel. It all started when we gave up the gold standard. Call me old fashioned, but I like pennies. So I'd like to make a suggestion: Instead of cancelling the penny, let's just make them cheaper. Let's move production of pennies to China. I bet the Chinese could find a way to make pennies for one cent each. Hell, let's just move the minting and printing of all our coins and currency to China. I bet no one could make our money cheaper faster than they can.