[edit on Saturday morning] It's today, so if you're in Madison, drop by!
Come get your LABOR DOLLARS in Madison this Saturday! It's FREE! It's LEGAL! It's GOLD!
My partner and I are getting the word out - labor's dollars are what make our local communities prosper.
We started this project last Saturday in Madison. We have a heat-transfer gold stamper, a Kingsley Hot Foil Stamping Machine, originally marketed to customize holiday cards, wedding invitations, greeting cards and the like as a small in-home business for women. We've set the text LABOR DOLLARS in lead type, and stamp it across the face of paper money.
This is what we did last week, and plan to do again tomorrow:
We had hoped to set up our "shop" in Ian's Pizza, but they anticipated large crowds, so had to turn us away. The did lend us a small table, so we went across the street and plugged into one of the street lamps on State Street to heat up our machine.
Here's our machine, doing its best to get up to the required 250 degrees on that freezing day. We'd never tried to stamp outdoors in the cold before, and weren't sure it was going to work.
The first bill goes in! We had to stamp our own money, since everyone looked at us suspiciously while we did a carnival barker's routine to bring in our customers. Once you start doing something, though, your potential customers start to gather.
Hot off the press! Be reassured, it is not illegal to stamp across money. As long as we don't obscure the value or try to change the value (or cut or mutilate the bill), we're good.
Golly, it was really cold. Here we are: I am in my fetching magenta doggie hat. It is as warm as it is silly-looking.
We stamped a few hundred bills that day. Quite a few people wanted them as souvenirs and were going to send them to friends or family who couldn't come to Madison themselves but felt solidarity for our cause. That's great, but we also want these bills in circulation.
We're setting up shop again tomorrow, after TractorCade, around 1 pm. We plan to be in the same spot - in front of Michaelangelo's coffee shop, across the street from Ian's Pizza. Drop by and get your money stamped! It's FREE! It's LEGAL! It's GOLD!