No More About the Presidency After This (For a While)

One more comment about the Tribune's coverage of the inauguration. Or rather, the advertisers that used the occasion to bolster their products, a few with full-page ads in the special inauguration section. Bet the ad sales staff wishes there were an inauguration every month or so.

"CHANGE for the nation & your home" says one; it's the Tile Shop, offering an "inauguration special, now through Jan. 25." In another ad, TIAA-CREF, the pension fund behemoth, refers indirectly to current events: "The only term we planned for was the long term." (Why is that in past tense?)

Best of all is the vodka ad, which offers the toast, "to celebrating history on January 20th." Makes sense. And if things don't change for the better, you can always get plastered.

Somewhere in my mother's house is a collection of political campaign buttons accumulated over the years. It's not a vast collection, nor probably very valuable, but has some interesting items. My favorite when I was younger was an aluminum disk with the name of a candidate for some local office in Texas some decades ago. His name was Silber. The disk was called a "Silber Dollar."

Many of the other buttons were presidential, maybe going back to 1964 (I seem to remember a Goldwater button in there somewhere). Here at my house, there are only two presidential campaign buttons. One I got in Wisconsin in October from another conference participant, who had enough buttons for everyone:

The other I bought some time ago, on a lark, for a quarter at an antique shop. I couldn't resist: