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Penny from Heaven?
Dear Concord Magazine:
I came across your page while I was looking for information about pennies and gravestones. I was interested in your penny theory, but it wasn't what I expected to find.
In 2004, my son Nick, husband Al and myself visited the Bourne Cemetary on Cape Cod, MA to find my father's gravestone.
My father lived on the east coast most all of my life...my mother and he had divorced when i was only five. I tried to keep/have a relationship w/ him. I loved him dearly...but he never had enough money to visit us and we could not visit him. The last time I saw him in person was in 1986 when my brother married. My father and I had a great visit then, but communication was always not enough. Even when I had open heart surgery in 1995, he was a voice on the other end of the phone..,but he was my father...and i was happy he called.
Now, to get to the point (sorry)...when we found my father's gravestone I fell to my knees crying and wishing I had brought flowers or something. It was sunset...beautiful. Nick suddenly took a penny from his pocket and put it on my father's gravestone, and told me a story of its meaning. For the life of me, I cannot remember what he told me!! As we looked around though, I saw other pennies on others' graves.
My Nick suddenly and unexpectedly died on August 15th. I found him myself as my husband was out of town on business. It took five months to find get results from the coroner -- his heart simply stopped.
A couple of months ago, I suddenly remembered the penny on the gravestone, but since Nick was cremated we have no stone. We lived in Lake Tahoe, NV for 32 yrs -- Nick born and raised there (27 yrs old). Anyway, as we were driving past the place where we held his "Celebration of Life" service, I took a shiney penny from my purse and threw it out the window for it to stay forever wherever it landed. I shouted out to Nick, "My boy, this is for you. I love you!"
We were in the process of moving from Lake Tahoe when Nick died in our home. A couple of weeks ago in our new home, as I was cleaning my bedroom floor of clutter, a small shiney object caught my eye. WOW! It was so shiney!! As O bent down to pick it up, I saw it was a penny...the shiniest penny I've ever seen!! Not copper...it's not the weight of a real penny. It is gold in color. As i looked closer, it has my son's year of birth on it!!! WOW WOW WOW....an amazing gift!!
I went and showed my husband. We think it doesn't even FEEL like a penny. It has the feeling of such smoothness...some sort of coating? We compared it with the shiniest penny we had and they do not match in color or texture.
I truly believe -- and so does my husband and daughter and the rest of our family -- this penny is a gift from Nick, and perhaps even my father.
I just had to share...I so wish I could remember the story my son told me that day at my father's gravestone...and I wonder how he knew!
Take care -- Carol, Wadsworth NV (east of Reno NV) on an Indian Reservation on the Truckee River. It's peaceful and spiritual here...
PS: All my relatives, including myself, were born in MA or NH. Me, Cambridge MA.
Thoreau Pencils Making New Friends
Dear Concord Magazine:
I have used your article for many years (Concord's Sharp Pencil-Makers Write Themselves into History). I teach at Millburn High School, so I was interested to see that the link on your site was to Millburn! I have challenged my American Literature students, over the years, to find a Thoreau pencil-so far, no success!
Thanks for a clever and very useful article! I used to live in MA - Reading-and visited Concord often!
Sincerely -- Ellen
Photos: courtesy of Art Today
Backgrounds: Word of Mouth Web Design.
Maybe There IS Something French About French Drains
In buying a house that has some water drainage problems, I sought help from your article on French drains, which I found very informative. I would like to restore a little balance, however.
The city of Lyons was suffering from storm drainage problems, and a man named Henri Darcy proposed a novel design, perforated pipe laid in gravel. The city's fathers balked when they discovered that no one could tell them just how much trenching and gravel would be required, so no estimate of the job cost could be given. That winter Mssr. Darcy did a series of experiments with different gravels to determine the water passage through them for a given slope. He then published his findings late in the summer, just as the first trenches were being dug in Lyons, but in a general form that could be fitted (using calculus) to any engineering situation whatsoever. Today, Darcy's Law is still a mainstay of civil and petroleum engineering. He made his proposal in 1858, and he published his law in 1859, the same year Henry French published his own book.
Which leads to the question, who influenced whom, or were they both perhaps inspired by the same source?
Erik Rike --
formerly from the very French city of New Orleans,
left homeless by city-wide drainage problems
