I Confess. I Love the New Ten Dollar Bill.

While I normally reserve my hyperbolous affection for things like Atlanta sports teams, Georgetown basketball, or my wife, I have a new, guilty crush.

I am in love with the new $10 bill. Take a minute to look at it.



It is a gorgeous specimen (and I'm not simply referring to President Hamilton, who is a handsome guy in his own right).

I don't know if it's the colors, the increase in the number of symbols, or its departure from the norm of U.S. currency, but whenever I get one of these bills as change, it makes me happy.

Too long the ten dollar bill has toiled in obscurity behind the popular "Benjamins," the ubiquotous one-dollar bill, the overly common $20s, and even the stately Lincoln $5 bill. When you got change for a $20, you really needed the $5 and five $1s. You didn't care about the $10 bill... it was an afterthought, a filler. But those days are gone... gone for good.

I hope you will join me in celebrating this wonderful bill and, as such, I am offering a contest:

Whoever writes the best sonnet to the new $10 bill will win one. The poem must conform to the conventions of a Shakespearean sonnet.

Good luck and thank you, U.S. Mint!