Think of it as 25 quarter horses in race
LINCOLN - A design featuring a dancing crane, a stalk of corn, Chimney Rock and the outline of Nebraska received the first vote Friday in an Internet election for the state quarter design.
The Secretary of State's Office went live with 25 proposed designs for the coin about 9:05 a.m. Friday. By 4:50 p.m., the quarters had received 4,611 votes.
Nebraskans have until 11:59 p.m. Sept. 1 to vote in the nonbinding election.
Secretary of State John Gale was staying mum on which designs led in the early returns.
He said he would allow a few days of voting to get a broad cross-section of participants before identifying the leading designs. Final results won't be announced until Sept. 2, when the Nebraska State Quarter Design Committee next meets.
"This is not a competition in terms of winners and losers," Gale said. I want this to be a positive learning experience for children and their families - to refresh themselves on Nebraska history and to recognize the icons of the state."
He said the 25 designs were chosen to represent the broad categories of themes featured in more than 6,500 proposals submitted by the public in a design contest.
Although the election is nonbinding, the committee will use the results to guide its decision as it picks five finalists to send to the U.S. Mint by the end of September. Gov. Mike Johanns has the final decision on the quarter, which will be released in 2006.
I thought that the Nebraska Quarter should represent events or qualities that make Nebraska a special state. Arbor Day is something special, but not 'monumental' or life changing. City skylines are a dime a dozen. To represent a state with its buildings is an insult to our citizens. My second choice was Design #16 - the Pony Express and Union Pacific - now if they could have included telegraph lines it would have completed the image of Nebraska as being the beginning of the West and from this juncture the nation was united. My favorite - which will probably never make it past round one - is Design #3 "Equality before the Law" for it was here in 1879 that A. J. Poppleton, an attorney for Union Pacific, took on the U.S. Courts and defended Chief Standing Bear forcing the courts to recognize Native Americans as Human Beings and therefore have the basic rights.
As Standing Bear testified, "That hand is not the color of yours, but if I pierce it, I shall feel pain. If you pierce your hand, you also feel pain. The blood that will flow from mine will be the same color as yours. I am a man. God made us both." And upon his release: "You and I are here. Our skins are of different color but God made us both. A little while ago when I was young I was wild. I knew nothing of the ways of the white people. I see you have a nice house here. I look at these beautiful rooms, I would like to have a house too, and it may be after a while that I can get one, but not so good a house as this. That is what I want to do. For a great many years, a hundred years or more, the white men have been driving us about. They are shrewd, sharp and know how to cheat. But since I have been here I have found them different. They have all treated me different. They have all treated me very kindly. I am very thankful for it. Hitherto when we have been wronged we went to war. To assert our rights and avenge our wrongs we took the tomahawk. We had no law to punish those who did wrong, so we took our tomahawks and went to kill... But you have found a better way. You have gone into court for us and I find our wrongs can be righted there. Now I have no more use for the tomahawk. I want to lay it down forever. (Here he stooped down, laid the tomahawk on the floor, and then stood erect and folded his arms and said:) I lay it down, I have no more use for it. I have found a better way."
Now that, my friends, is something to celebrate, to be proud of, to remember that here, in Nebraska (Omaha) an unwarranted prejudice was conquered, human liberties were upheld and the respect for the lives of all of humanity found its home on the prairie.
I picked #4 with the Indian, Chimney rock, and Capitol. It had the most stuff that people would recognize and it wasn't at all agricultural related.
. By sheer proportions it HAS to be the Woodmen. There's no other tall, slender, boxy skyscraper like that in Nebraska. Even the US Bank building in Lincoln (cited earlier) is too fat and stubby to be the building on the plate. It looks so obvious to me.
Of course I know the Woodmen is taller than the capitol - I meant it would not trump the capitol in size on the LICENSE PLATES considering the capitol is the premier landmark representing the state.
