Severe winter weather in the form of two blizzards within a week managed to shut down Washington, D.C., for four straight days, but not Springfield, Illinois.
The latter is important as the 2010 Lincoln Shield Cent Launch Ceremony will be held on Thursday morning, as scheduled, in the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum located in Springfield -- Abraham Lincoln's home for most of his adult life.
No weather-related cancellation, guaranteed. DC-based Mint officials managed to get to Springfield despite road closings, flight cancellations and other storm related obstacles in the nation's capital. (See CoinNews article: 2010 Lincoln Cent Ceremony Continues.)
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management announced that Federal agencies would again be closed, with the following message posted on its home page:
Federal agencies in the Washington, DC, area are CLOSED.
- Federal agencies in the Washington, DC, area are closed. Nonemergency employees (including employees on pre-approved leave) will be granted excused absence for the number of hours they were scheduled to work. This does not apply to employees on leave without pay, leave without pay for military duty, workers' compensation, suspension, or in another nonpay status.
- Telework employees may be expected to work from their telework sites, as specified in their telework agreements.
- Emergency employees are expected to report for work on time.
- Employees on alternative work schedules are not entitled to another AWS day off in lieu of the workday on which the agency is closed.
With that, Lincoln one-cent coin exchanges at the Union Station and the U.S. Senate's credit union in DC will not be possible. Only those attending the Springfield launch ceremony will now have the option to swap their paper money for fresh new penny rolls, and then have them canceled by the Post Office as proof they were purchased on the day the coins were released.
The new Lincoln "Preservation of the Union" cent is emblematic of President Lincoln's preservation of the United States of America as a single and united country. The 2010 reverse features a union shield with a scroll draped across it bearing the inscription E PLURIBUS UNUM.
The 13 vertical stripes of the shield represent the states joined in one compact union to support the Federal government, represented by the horizontal bar above. The design will appear on one-cent coins from this year forward. The obverse, or heads side of the coin, has not changed.
For additional information on the new coin check out this site's page: 2010 Lincoln Shield Cent.
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