Mid-Daily Items: Ticket to Hide

May 13, 2008 10:10 am

— Police in Calumet, a community in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, had most likely forgotten about the $1 parking ticket written on Sept. 1, 1976.
But the woman who had found it on her windshield hadn't.
The ticket, a $20 bill and a note arrived at police headquarters last month in a plain white envelope with no return address.
The note read: "I always had good intentions of paying it. I put it aside and every once in a while I would come across it and said 'someday I'm going to pay it.' Now I think it's time."
The fine for an unpaid meter violation increased to $5 after 72 hours, said Police Chief David Outinen, but it hadn't increased beyond that. He couldn't remember someone making good on an unpaid ticket after so much time.
The woman apparently hopes her payment finally closes the matter after nearly 32 years. "Please don't try and track me down. I am a respectable lady," she wrote.

- Who says a penny is worthless?
You won’t be able to convince 10-year-old Andrew Niemi of Carleton, Mich.
He has reached his goal of collecting 1 million pennies for his school.
Andrew last week presented a check for $10,000 to St. Patrick Catholic School, where he is a fourth-grader. He began gathering pennies on Dec. 26, 2006 and collected his last one on March 17, coincidentally, St. Patrick's Day.
His mother, Connie Niemi, said the money will go toward equipment including audiovisual hardware, two large classroom maps; Michigan curriculum materials for grades 3 and 4, religious materials and a concrete bench for the peace garden.

- And finally, a follow-up to a Mid-Daily Item several weeks ago about an unusual photo shoot planned at a soccer stadium in Austria.
The man behind the camera had three requests for his subjects: no sunglasses, no smiling, and no underwear.
The latest work by New York photographer Spencer Tunick gathered 1,840 people, baring it all in Austria's Happel Stadium on Sunday.
"Stay very still. Don't move," the Austria Press Agency quoted Tunick as telling the crowd as he went to work.
Much of the hours-long photo shoot had little to do with soccer, with naked volunteers assuming different poses at the behest of the artist. But at least one of the photos had them with the ball, men first and then the women.
The stadium will host seven of the Euro 2008 soccer championship matches being staged by Austria and Switzerland, including the June 29 final.
Tunick has made a name for himself with his works featuring hundreds of naked people at unusual venues. He described Sunday's shooting on his Web site as combining "the spirit of sports, the grand sweeping waves of stadium architecture and the abstract relation of the human form to modern structures."