Monthly Archives: January 2020

Egyptian 25-Piastre Note

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Something I didn’t know until yesterday, but might have guessed: the modern Egyptian pound, which is every bit as fiat-y as any other currency now, owes its origin to the Maria Theresa thaler, a good example of sound money if there ever was one. The history of money, especially currency, continues to fascinate. People will miss it if it all ever becomes nothing but notions on some server farm.

I don’t have a one-pound Egyptian banknote. I do have a 25-piastre note, the smallest paper denomination that the Central Bank of Egypt issues, acquired a few years ago with a number of other world banknotes for a small sum.

These days, 1 Egyptian pound = about 6.3 U.S. cents, so my quarter-pound note is theoretically worth about 1.5 cents. No collector value, I’m sure. The note has been issued since the 1980s, and I’ll bet there are a lot of them.
I’m not actually sure that’s the obverse, though Wiki says it is. I suppose the Arabic text determines that; the Roman text is on the other side. In any case, this side depicts the Sayeda Aisha Mosque in Cairo.

The Egyptian Coat of Arms is on the other side.
Not just any eagle, either: the Eagle of Saladin. The 12th-century Sultan of Egypt and warrior against the Crusader states.

Interesting choice of crops to flank the Eagle of Saladin. Wheat, of course; Egypt was the breadbasket of ancient Rome, one reason a prefect ruled the province directly on behalf of the Emperor, rather than a governor appointed by the Senate. Also, cotton. Certainly — Egyptian cotton, known the world over.

Corn? As in, maize? That’s what it looks like. The FAO tells me that in Egypt, “Wheat is the major winter cereal grain crop and the third major crop in terms of area planted… Maize is the second most important crop… but at least 50 percent of its production is used for livestock and poultry feed.”

How about that. Another consequence of the Columbian exchange echoing down the centuries.

Italian 50 Lira, 1951

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If this banknote could talk, I’d imagine it would say, “We just lost a major war and can barely afford such luxuries as currency.”
Italy, 1951. Small in value — 50 lira, or the equivalent of about 8 U.S. cents, at least as of the mid-50s, which is when my parents picked it up in change. Must adjust for inflation, however, so theoretically in today’s money that many lira is the equivalent of a whopping 75 U.S. cents, or about 0.68 euros. Apparently this note and the 100-lira were replaced by coins not much later in the 1950s.

The Italian lira was a famously small currency. I checked the 1983 exchange rate not long ago, and found that the lira gradually lost ground to the dollar that year. In July, when I was in country, it was about 1,500 lira to the dollar.

I recorded a few prices in the diary I kept that summer, noting (for example) that the admission to the Forum was L 4,000, or about $2.60, which seemed reasonable (and would be about $6.70 now). I wondered how much the price has been jacked up since then. But I didn’t have to wonder long. I looked it up, and now it’s 12 euros, or about $13.20, though that includes admission to the Colosseum as well. I don’t remember whether I paid separately for that, or at all.

The note is also small in size. Interestingly, exactly four inches long and two-and-a-half inches tall. Odd, I would have thought that the sides measure evenly in centimeters rather than inches.

Lithuanian 10-Litų Note, 1993

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I have in my possession, as part of my collection of worthless or nearly worthless banknotes, 35 Lithuanian litai, one each of a five-, 10- and 20-litų note.

They are accidental souvenirs. The litas was pegged four to the U.S. dollar in 1994, so when we arrived in Poland from Lithuania that fall, I had a mind to exchange our $8.75 in litai for złoty. That was probably enough for a decent lunch for two in either Lithuania or Poland in those days.

But if it weren’t U.S. dollars or DM, the exchange office in Poland didn’t want to hear about it. I came to understand that at the time, the Poles considered Lithuanian currency as no more than scraps of dirty paper. Time flies, things change, and now my litų notes are just dirty paper even in Lithuania, since that nation joined the euro zone in 2015. Oh, well.

This is obverse of the 10-litų note, issued in 1993.
Who are these gentlemen who look so much alike, except the eyes of one are closer together than the other?

Darius and Girėnas, that’s who: Steponas Darius and Stasys Girėnas. Lithuanian aviators of renown in the early 20th century, except that both had immigrated to the United States in their youth. Even so, they count as Lithuanian heroes for a number of reasons, but mainly for their attempt to fly nonstop from New York to Kaunas in the summer of 1933. They made it across the Atlantic, but died in a crash in what was then Germany, about 400 miles short of their goal. Bad weather or engine trouble or both.

I was curious about the insignia on Darius’ cap (on the left). Further investigation didn’t disappoint. In fact, I came up with a connection to the Chicago area. Apparently a later version of the note, issued in 2001, made it clear that the insignia honors the Palwaukee Municipal Airport, in north suburban Wheeling, where Darius spent a lot of time. This article, originally published by the Michigan Coin Club, details that association and a lot more.

The reverse features their plane, Lituanica, a Bellanca CH-300 Pacemaker.

“The duo purchased a used Bellanca Pacemaker plane from the Chicago Daily News (which had purchased a newer model) in 1932, dubbed it the ‘Lituanica’ and modified it for their flight,” the coin club article says. “Money was raised from numerous Lithuanian clubs and organizations to finance their operation. In their publicity photographs, Darius was always seen wearing his Pal-Waukee Airport patch on his cap.”

A newspaper had its own airplane? And traded in for a newer model during the Depression? Damn, how the mighty have fallen.

One Mexican Peso, 1950

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I don’t remember where I got this Mexican one-peso note, dated 1950.

Maybe my great-uncle Ralph (d. 1971) picked it up during his time in Mexico, giving it at some point to his sister, my grandmother, and my mother got it after that. It possibly came to me because I was the only one in the family with much interest in non-U.S. banknotes.

What Ralph did in Mexico, or why he went, or even when it was, I don’t know, just that he went there from time to time — that much my mother told me. I would have thought that the 1950s would be a little late for south-of-the-border cowboy or oil field work such as he did, since Ralph turned 60 during that decade, but then again, he was a tough old cuss, and besides, 60 doesn’t seem like such an advanced age to me anymore.

Also, I have a set of four five-peso coins soldered together to make what looks like a coaster — a square shape, except made of disks — and I know Uncle Ralph did that, per information from my mother. Three of the coins are dated 1955, one 1956, so it seems a safe bet that he visited sometime during that decade. For all I know, lifelong bachelor Ralph had an out-of-wedlock child or two in Mexico that the rest of his family knew nothing about. Seems unlikely, but certainly not impossible.

All speculation. I don’t really remember where I got the note. It’s also possible I got it 30 years ago at a coin shop for a few dollars from a box of cheap foreign banknotes. Whatever the reason, I’m glad I have it. While not in mint condition, and not worth much as a collectible, I like the design.

Instead of a Mexican patriot of some sort, the Aztec Sun Stone is right there on the obverse, done in an incredibly intricate grayscale engraving, surrounded mostly by more dark inks, with hints of red and blue.

Nice work by the American Bank Note Company, former NYC-based manufacturer of banknotes to many nations, now a Connecticut-based maker of plastic cards and other transactional tech. That company, or a competitor, might have been behind the tech that enabled my bank to issue me a new debit card on the spot a couple of years ago, after the one I’d been using had worn out. I was astonished. I expected to have to wait a few days at least.

But, as the ABCorp web site says, “In the world of digital & mobile, here and now the thought of waiting 3-5 weeks for a new credit or replacement debit card is antiquated.” So are solid corporate names, like the American Bank Note Company; must have been sometime in the ’80s when it became a three-initial corporation.

Back to the Mexican banknote. I wonder whether anyone handling my one-peso note in the 1950s ever gave any thought to the fact that it wasn’t made in Mexico. That in fact it was made in the United States. I can imagine the idea irritating hard-core nationalists, but the simple truth is probably that most people didn’t notice that at all. Any more than people who handle U.S. currency give a thought to E Pluribus Unum, or on the $1 note, Novus ordo seclorum or Annuit coeptis. (Though of course a few crackpots overthink the dollar bill.)

The reverse of the 1950 one peso note is mainly red. Not as dramatic as the obverse, but for sheer symbolic drama, it’s hard to beat Aztecs anyway.

Rather, it speaks to more modern times in Mexico. Independence, at least, since the column depicted is the Monumento a la Independencia, less formally El Ángel, which is on a roundabout of Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City.

We weren’t far from there during the New Year’s Eve countdown going into 2018. A fine monument, but as a vertical shaft it doesn’t translate all that well to a horizontal banknote. A depiction of El Ángel by itself would have filled out the space better.

Australia Day, Bush Fire Edition

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Australia Day has come around again, but it doesn’t seem fitting to post pictures of me standing near wallabies in New South Wales or recalling how they call Rice Krispies Rice Bubbles in Oz or my Christmas Day walk around in Canberra in a T-shirt.

Seems like one damn thing after another for the Lucky Country this year. Some choice recent headlines:

“Australia’s Wild Weather: First Fires, Now Baseball-Size Hail” — New York Times, Jan. 20

“Australia Rains Bring Relief From Fires — and a Surge in Deadly Spiders” — Smithsonian, Jan. 24

“Coronavirus: first Australian case confirmed in Victoria as five people tested in NSW” — The Guardian, Jan. 24

“Record 81 days of bad air quality in Sydney” — Sydney Morning Herald, Jan. 24.

Curious, I took a look at the web site of NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System, which (as it says) “distributes Near Real-Time (NRT) active fire data within 3 hours of satellite observation from both the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS).”

Took a screenshot of the Fire Map of Australia on the site as it appeared on Friday. Fires in the previous 24 hours, it says.

I can see why the air is bad in Sydney and why parts of Canberra — which is a small city practically plopped down in the bush — have been evacuated.

Still, I’m not sure the map helps me grasp the magnitude of the bush fires. Maybe that’s not really possible. I wondered about that even more when I looked at Africa at the same time.
Looks like central Africa is burning to a crisp. But do the many points of fire denote blazes regardless of size? That way a lot of small fires — which could be entirely normal for central Africa right now — wouldn’t be a catastrophe on the order of a smaller number of much larger fires in Australia.

Another NASA page hints at an answer. First, it says, “The colors are based on a count of the number (not size) of fires observed within a 1,000-square-kilometer area.” Also: “Across Africa, a band of widespread agricultural burning sweeps north to south over the continent as the dry season progresses each year.”

I’ve changed my mind. I think I will post a picture of wallabies. In hopes that better times are ahead for Australia.

Pebbly Beach NSW Dec 1991

December 1991: We’re feeding wallabies at Pebbly Beach on the NSW coast, which was damaged by fire recently, according to local reports. The other fellow is Peter, a friend I stayed with for a while in Canberra. Lost touch with him long ago; hope he’s well.

The Comics Curmudgeon

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During my free moments recently, scant free moments on some days, I’ve been reading the Comics Curmudgeon. It’s a standard blog of long-standing. A fellow named Joshua Fruhlinger posts a selection of daily newspaper comics — to use the quaint old term — and adds commentary. Generally mocking commentary, but unlike so much writing in that vein, he writes well. Some of it is very funny, or at least highly amusing, and often enough thoughtful too.

The range of targeted comics is broad, including what could be called funnies, except they aren’t funny all that much, such as B.C., Beetle Bailey, Crankshaft, Family Circus, Hagar the Horrible, Lockhorns, Marvin, Pluggers, Shoe, Six Chix (one of the few I’d never heard of) and many others. But not, I see from the archives, Broom-Hilda. I guess some things are so bad, yet have so much inexplicable longevity, that mocking them is pointless.

Also lampooned are the few soap-opera or adventure comics that are still around, such as Mary Worth, Mark Trail, The Phantom and Rex Morgan M.D. From the blog I learned that Apartment 3-G expired a few years ago, an event that had completely escaped my notice. Say, whatever happened to Dondi?

Some samples:

Crock, Jan. 3, 2019, has one of the men talking to the fort’s cook: “Psst… the men are planning a coup for Crock.” As the soldier walks away in the second panel, the cook says, “Will they need any snacks or finger food?” (Shouldn’t that be a coup against Crock? Never mind.)

Comics Curmudgeon says: “Crock’s Foreign Legion detachment is based in an isolated fort surrounded by a hostile, barely subjugated colonial population, and so it probably relies on supplies from the metropole to avoid starvation. A violent overthrow of the fort’s commanding officer, no matter how cruel and incompetent he might be, will certainly be seen as an act of rebellion against the French Republic, and so our heroes are likely to be cut off from any outside support, at least until they can successfully negotiate an amnesty. Thus, the coup plotters need to ensure that the fort’s cook and his staff are on their side and prepared for the hardship to come! But they’re being kind of half-assed about it, in my opinion.”

Beetle Bailey, Oct. 10, 2016, has two panels. First, Sarge (in the lead) and Beetle are climbing a steep slope. “Keep going, Beetle! We’re almost to the top!” Sarge says. Beetle simply says, “Groan!”

Next, at a cliff’s edge, Sarge says, “Wow, Beetle! We made it! Congrats!” and slaps Beetle on the back. Beetle is shown flying off the cliff.

CC says: “Welp, looks like Sarge finally just straight-up murdered Beetle! I guess this strip is over now. Looking forward to seeing what new comic they replace it with, or maybe just enjoying the soothing blank space left over when they don’t bother!”

A single panel Heathcliff, July 15, 2013, shows the cat hitting a baseball, using a fish as a bat. The caption says, “He switched to a lighter flounder.”

CC says: “Today’s panel provides something more in line with the profound weirdness bubbling below the surface of this feature’s modern iteration. Cats like fish, and I suppose cats like “playing with their food,” when their food is alive, but instead here the tenuous conceptual cat-fish connection produced a scenario where Heathcliff has a collection of fish of varying densities that he uses as athletic equipment. How dead are these fish, anyway? Are they still floppy? Do they hit the ball with a meaty smack, or have they started to rot, with contact with any projectile producing a cloud of scattered fish-flesh?

On July 22, 2007, he astutely compared Shoe and Get Fuzzy on politics.

“… while usually I go on about just about everything at great length, the most important thing I can say here is that Get Fuzzy is funny, while Shoe isn’t. Shoe falls into the typical toothless trap of just saying “THE POLITICS AREN’T THEY ANNOYING?”, literally allowing the discussion to be replaced by meaningless placeholder syllables. Get Fuzzy works with established character traits — Bucky and Satchel’s party affiliations have been frequently noted, whereas I don’t believe Shoe and the Perfesser had political beliefs until they became necessary for this cartoon. Plus Get Fuzzy contains actual political jokes that are funny. I love the third-party punchline, but I love “Well, with the proper funding…” even more.

Watch the Reindeer Melt! Days of Fun

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Ann brought this to my attention earlier this month, at a crafts superstore I rarely go to, but from which she wanted something. On display was an item that seemed to be sold for Christmas, but which by January was at a deep discount.

One of the stranger holiday items I saw this season, or any holiday season, really. A reindeer figure. Build it! Watch it melt! Watch it melt? Watch it melt?

Walmart’s marketing text about the item is positively demented, which I guess is fitting: “Build the reindeer and watch it melt magically! Fun for days. Completely reusable. Keep building and watch it melt over and over! Perfect stocking stuffer! Miracle Melters! Reindeer! Build it and Watch it Melt!”

Sure enough, someone has made a video about this — toy. I can’t say that I watched all of it, skipping around some, but the point of the item still eludes me. Do reindeer melt in dark Sámi folktales?

1917

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A while ago I saw the trailer for 1917, before I knew anything about the movie, or even that such a movie was in the works. Often enough you can judge a movie by its trailer. You know full well that it would be a waste of time. The 1917 trailer didn’t inspire any confidence in me that I wanted to see it. Hell’s bells, World War I is getting the Pearl Harbor treatment, I thought. Lots of brainless CGI.

I was completely wrong. We saw the movie over the weekend and I was astonished by how good it was. Much has been made about how the action seems to happen in real time, in one movie-long shot (117 minutes), though of course the cuts are hidden. In that sense, the film is a technical tour de force, but it’s much more than that.

It’s an Iliad and an Odyssey, following two tommies from their own trenches, across no man’s land, into abandoned German trenches, and into places previously behind the lines, all the while facing the strong likelihood of injury or death. It’s one damn thing after another. It’s suspenseful, since there’s a clear objective whose resolution is always in doubt until the end.

It’s also a work of high verisimilitude, including the maze-like aspects of the trench systems, the danger and gore and misery of WWI battlefields, and the ruins of French villages, but also the pleasant springtime countryside beyond the immediate fighting. The cinematography of some of the scenes, especially the bombed out, smoldering ruins, dazzles the eye.

The back stories of the main characters aren’t fleshed out in much detail, though there is a brief but remarkable discussion of cherry trees as part of one soldier’s personal history — the symbolism of which I did not miss — and a few other intimations of a life outside the war zone. I understand that bothered some critics, but it doesn’t bother me.

This isn’t a Hallmark movie. I don’t want them to sit around discussing their feelings — as if two Great War soldiers on a harrowing mission through some hellish landscapes would do that. You don’t need their details. They’re Everymen, and they’re fully human without the exposition, focused as they are on their own situation. The lead actors conveyed all they needed to about their characters through some dialogue, but mostly their reactions to all that they encounter, not quite all of it the horrors of war.

So 1917 is a remarkable movie in many ways, but not without flaws. I wasn’t sure, for instance, that the central conceit of the mission was even plausible. The two tommies were sent to relay a vitally important order countermanding an attack by an out-of-communication British regiment that had followed the Germans after they had made a tactical retreat to the Hindenburg Line in the spring of the title year.

That two men and two men alone would have been sent on such an incredibly dangerous mission, if it were so important, seems a little strange. Some redundancy would have been called for, to help ensure the message got through. Besides — couldn’t the mission have been accomplished by delivering a message by airplane? Even if a plane couldn’t land in such a forward area, it certainly would have been able to communicate with the ground.

“These early aircraft were not fitted with radio sets, but messages about enemy troop movements needed to be communicated quickly,” the Imperial War Museum explains. “Pilots could either drop messages in weighted bags or use message streamers to drop messages to forces on the ground.”

Never mind. 1917 is an epic story, well worth watching on a big screen. Good work, Mr. Mendes.

Falun Dafa by USPS

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Winter hasn’t been very bitter so far. Yet. All of last week’s light snow has melted. But the polar vortex hammer could still drop. Hard.

Back to posting on January 21. I take holidays where I can get ’em, even in the stony bleak mid-winter.

The following is an example of a small item, a throw-away item — literally, though I’m going to put it in the blue recycle bin — with a long story trailing behind it. Today in the mail I received a high-quality pamphlet, 16 glossy pages, rich bright colors, advertising the Shen Yun dance show in the Chicago area this spring. It’s merely the latest example of advertising created by what must be a deep marketing budget for that show.

Mostly I’ve been ignoring the marketing. Maybe it’s the oversell. “A Life-Changing Experience,” the cover proclaims. Gee, I hope not. Inside: “A Gift from the Heavens,” “Watch 5,000 years unfold before your eyes,” “the Divine Origin of a Glorious Civilization.” Sure, whatever you say.

It’s probably a corker of a show, if you like that kind of spectacle, though I doubt — as the pamphlet implies visually — that any of the dancers can actually fly. Then again, I suppose a fantasy counterpart culture of imperial China has some appeal. Just not for me. Well, I might go if I didn’t have to pay.

More interesting to me is text box on the last page. It says, in bold letters: CANNOT BE SEEN IN COMMUNIST CHINA.

“Traditional Chinese culture — with its deep spiritual roots and profound worldview — was displaced by communism in China. While Shen Yun cannot perform in mainland China today, we are reviving this precious heritage and sharing it with the world.”

Hm. I looked a little further. The return address for the pamphlet, for it did come in the mail, cites the Mid-USA Falun Dafa Association as the sender.

Ah. Falun Dafa (Gong), whom the Chinese government hates so much. Seems like the show, then, is a way for the religion, persecuted as it is in China, to poke the Chinese government in the eye. That’s a sentiment we can all get behind, but I’m still not paying to see the show.

Richard III

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In our lifetime, only five years ago, Richard III got a spiffy tomb at Leicester Cathedral, after centuries in an anonymous grave not far away. That came to mind when Ann and I went into the city on Saturday to see a reading of Richard III at the Newberry Library.

It was the same setup as last year, when we saw Titus Andronicus: actors reading their parts, holding scripts, while moving around one of the library’s large rooms, in front of and to the side of the audience. Outside wind blew and rain fell, just above freezing, so that might account for the slightly smaller crowd than last year, but even so a lot of people came out for the tale of murder, intrigue, more murder, double-dealing and a violent denouement. Everything you need in an Elizabethan history play.

Very talented actors, so the lack of any set or costumes didn’t matter. Christopher Prentice, who played Richard, did the demented villain to just the right pitch, and moved himself in ways that didn’t exactly suggest a hunchback, but weren’t quite normal either, and strangely menacing.

One more thing. Here’s the mission statement of the Richard III Society, which was instrumental in finding the king’s bones in our time: “In the belief that many features of the traditional accounts of the character and career of Richard III are neither supported by sufficient evidence nor reasonably tenable, the Society aims to promote, in every possible way, research into the life and times of Richard III, and to secure a reassessment of the material relating to this period, and of the role of this monarch in English history.”

I’m all for historical inquiry, but even so — Richard III gets to be a villain. The literary Richard III is more robust than any historic portrait of him is ever likely to be.