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Cynthia Coxeter and the Highland Diner Nickel Drive

I want to tell you about Cynthia Coxeter (I know, I know, it’s unfortunate). I went to college with Cynthia, who might just be the cleverest person in the world.

You know that kid who turned a paperclip into a house a few months ago by making a series of trades for increasingly more valuable items until someone traded him a house? Well, Cynthia had us playing that game twenty years ago. And she always won. We’d each start with a penny, and we’d have a week to see what we could trade up to. Most of us came back with pencils, or string, or kittens. Cynthia came back with bikes and jewelry. Once she trumped us all with an authentic South American blowgun.

Anyway, she came up with a lot of cool ideas. My favorite, though, was the Highland Diner Nickel Drive. The Highland Diner was where we all went to study (and smoke, which was totally forbidden at our school along with playing cards and “attending the theater as a way of life"). Cynthia wanted to take her boyfriend, Adrian, there. But she was poor. That’s when she came up with the Nickel Drive. She figured college students needed quarters for doing laundry and dimes for making phone calls home. (This was in the days when we didn’t have cell phones, or fire.) Pennies, as everyone knew even then, were useless.

But nickels, nickels were a different thing altogether. Too valuable to just throw away, yet not valuable enough to be of real use, they tended to sit in drawers and car ashtrays. No one thought much about them. Cynthia, though, she knew their collective power. So she asked everyone to donate their nickels to the Highland Diner Nickel Drive. She set a huge jar in the school’s main lobby (stealing was also forbidden, so there were no worries) and waited. Within days, the jar was half-filled with nickels. Within a week, it was overflowing. And that Saturday, Cynthia and Adrian went to the Highland Diner and feasted on, well, whatever they feasted on. Probably avgolemono soup, fries, and scary diner cake, which is what we mostly subsisted on during those years.

Cynthia later got into a lot of trouble for convincing a majority of the school that, due to a problem with the water, they would be bussed to another local college to take showers. When a group of 175 anxious freshmen showed up the next morning, towels in hand, the administration was not amused. I often wonder what she’s doing now. Probably running some small Central American country.

So what does Cynthia Coxeter have to do with dollaraword? Read on.

Now that we’re at 10000, the next goal is 20000. That also happens to be the first donation level, at which time $10,000 will be given to the first of the arts-based organizations we’re going to be sponsoring through the dollaraword project.

When I began this project oh so long ago (okay, two weeks ago), I thought the sponsorships would come mostly from businesses intrigued by the idea of reaching a new audience. Well, I was wrong. We do have a number of businesses who have supported the site, but by far the most enthusiastic support has come from individuals who believe in supporting art and who think we’re doing something interesting here.  Perhaps businesses will follow later, as is often the case, and we’ll welcome their support. Right now, though, the real thanks goes to the people who have taken the time to sponsor some words.

Guess what? These folks haven’t sponsored 250 words. Most of them haven’t sponsored 100 words. The majority of site sponsorships are in the $10 to $50 range. Several folks have even sponsored their favorite number of words, including 3 and 17. But because of them, we’re at 10000 words already.

Now we have to get to 20000. To get those 10000 new words, we need 200 people to sponsor 50 words, or 400 people to sponsor 25 words, or 2000 people to sponsor 5 words.

That’s why I’m declaring July 19 Send Dollaraword A Latte Day.

This is a variation on Cynthia’s Highland Diner Nickel Drive. Most of us wouldn’t think twice about putting out $5 for a grande decaf vanilla latte or two, right? Well, on July 19 (which is sure to become a national holiday), I ask you to give up some small thing you would otherwise spend $5 on and use that $5 to sponsor 5 words. I also ask that you get 4 of your friends to do the same. That’s 25 words. If 400 of you get 4 friends to join you in sponsoring 5 words apiece, we’ll be at the 20000 word mark and will make some nonprofit group very happy with a $10,000 donation.

Surely there are 400 intrepid souls out there who have 4 friends who can be asked/blackmailed/threatened into giving up something for art. Start making your lists. Do it for art. Do it for Cynthia and Adrian. They need pie.

Posted by on 07/02 at 06:54 AM
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