I got home from the Pittsburgh ANA on Sunday evening, in time to finish up last week's E-Sylum. Monday was a day of catch-up, plowing through chores of unpacking, paying bills, scanning and recording new acquisitions, and cleaning up one pile of crap after another off my desk. But Monday night, my desk was pretty clean again.

Wednesday night I went for a walk and took another sunset photo. Standing in the right place in Ashburn Virginia, you can get a photo that makes the town look like a bleak data center hellscape. But there's more to the town than that, and the neighborhoods are quite nice.

Tuesday morning I got to work training for a 5K run later in September, running a couple laps around our neighborhood - 1.7 miles, about half of a 5K. I also got back into my normal morning routine of stretching, sit-ups, pushups and jumping jacks. Wednesday evening I went for a walk but decided to run without bothering to go back for my running shoes. I got in 2 miles. Thursday I met with my new trainer, learning some different exercises to hopefully help me age more gracefully.

September is birthday month for my wife and sister. At the local Hallmark store I bought a couple birthday cards and paid in cash. The itemized receipt included a three-cent "penny rounding adjustment", although I'm puzzled about the "Senior Citizen" notation. That may be for other discounts. Or a way to say, "Keep your stupid pennies, boomer!"

This week it was reported that Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce (Mr. Taylor Swift) bought an historic estate in the Bratenahl residential community about 10 minutes east of downtown Cleveland. Wondering if the property was the one owned by the coin-collecting Ambassador R. Henry Norweb and his wife, Emery May Holden Norweb, I made some web searches (which are basically all AI queries these days). I was told that Kelce purchased the Moyenage estate, an eight-bedroom mansion originally built in 1895. The Norweb home was Breezy Bluff (also known as the Pickands/Cushing Mansion), a separate historic estate located nearby on Lake Shore Boulevard in Bratenahl. So no direct numismatic connection. But neighbors of sorts.

The ANA needed a portrait photo for their profile article of me. Not having one handy, I cropped a recent photo my wife took when we were out having dinner for our 29th wedding anniversary. I'd ordered carrot cake for dessert, having no idea how big the thing would be. We took it home and got 3 or 4 servings out of it. The cropped portrait is a pretty good likeness, so this week I finally got around to installing it as my E-Sylum profit photo.

The profile article mentions my numismatic mentors at the Western Pennsylvania Numismatic Society. I found this photo of my skinny 20-something self with some of them and another massive dessert - I believe this may be from the society's 125th anniversary celebration in 2003. Larry and I are still around and so is the club, which will turn 150 in 2028. See the society's website for the history I wrote on its early days: https://www.wpns1878.org/history.html .

Interesting Sunday morning interlude - cleaning up after a red fox marked as its territory a piece of furniture on our back deck, pooping and peeing while my screaming wife watched through the kitchen window.

Seen online:

• Just found out I'm colorblind. This news came out of the purple.

Here are some interesting non-numismatic articles I came across this week.

The 218-Year-Old Metal Bolt in Central Park: Its Significance and Its Secrecy (https://www.westsiderag.com/2026/07/29/the-218-year-old-metal-bolt-in-central-park-its-significance-and-its-secrecy)

The "mechanical miracle" that ruined Mark Twain's life (https://resobscura.substack.com/p/the-mechanical-miracle-that-ruined)

The Oddest Things Found in Historical Wills (https://historyfacts.com/world-history/article/oddest-things-historical-wills/)

How two sisters monopolized the identical-twins business (https://thehustle.co/how-two-sisters-monopolized-the-identical-twins-business)

A Nearly 200-Year-Old Museum Known for Its T. Rex Faces Extinction (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/01/us/science-museum-drexel-philadelphia-closing.html)

The first-ever ‘selfie' happened right here in Philadelphia (https://billypenn.com/2026/08/19/first-selfie-philadelphia-firstival-robert-cornelius-daguerreotype-firstival/)

Over A Century of Scooping Ice Cream the Sincere Way (https://opensince.substack.com/p/over-a-century-of-scooping-ice-cream)

Why English Words Have So Many Silent Letters (https://wordsmarts.com/most-silent-letters/)

-Editor