Italian 50 Lira, 1951

Posted on January 29, 2020 by admin

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

Posted on January 28, 2020 by admin

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.

1917

Posted on January 21, 2020 by admin

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.

Divers Southern Indiana Courthouses &c

Posted on January 12, 2020 by admin

Bloomington is the county seat of Monroe County, Indiana, and sports an impressive downtown courthouse, a 1908 Beaux Arts design by Hoosier architects Wing & Mahurin.

The building was closed for the weekend, but I took a look at the exterior just before dusk. While I stood there, strings of lights lit up.
What’s a county courthouse without some allegories?
Or a war memorial? At first glance, it looks like a Civil War memorial only, but it specifically honors veterans of the war with Mexico, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War and World War I.
While in Nashville, Indiana, I took a quick look at the more modest, but also handsome Brown County Courthouse, a structure from the 1870s.
Nashville has some other interesting buildings as well, such as the Nashville United Methodist Church.

This looks to be a former Masonic building, though I’ve only looked into the matter enough to know that the Nashville, Indiana, Masonic Lodge #135 isn’t in that building, but a newer-looking one. But the older building does say LODGE on the front facade in large letters, along with Masonic symbols on either side.

Nashville isn’t a very large town, but there are streets away from the main tourist drag, Van Buren St. On just such a street we happened across a tree-carving studio.
Besides Elvis and a bear, you can also find Willie Nelson in wood there.
And one of the popular ideas of a space alien.
One more courthouse: a good-looking structure in Paoli, Indiana, county seat of Orange County. We passed through town on the way to West Baden Springs, but didn’t stop in the intense rain. Even so, the courthouse caught our attention.

West Baden Springs Hotel

Posted on January 9, 2020 by admin

Tibetan-style structures and T.C. Steele’s property and all the other places we saw in southern Indiana near the end of December were worth seeing, but none were the main reason we went down that way.

That would be the West Baden Springs Hotel, one of the grand old hotels of the nation, revived in our time to an astonishing degree. Magnificent as the Hotel del Coronado or the Waldorf-Astoria, historic as the Fordyce at Hot Springs National Park or the Boca Raton Resort & Club.

We drove south from Bloomington in intermittent rain on the morning of December 29 to the town of West Baden, in Orange County, Indiana, an otherwise rural place with a county population of a shade less than 20,000. The hotel was impossible to miss driving into town. Even at some distance, it cuts an impressive figure.

More so closer in.

There’s been a hotel on the site since 1855, at first called the Mile Lick Inn. Why in this obscure part of Indiana? The waters, of course. Indians knew about the springs and so did Frenchmen, who lent their national name to the nearby French Lick Springs Hotel, about a mile from the West Baden Springs Hotel.

Eventually a branding impulse kicked in, and Mile Lick became West Baden Springs, to capture some of the Victorian cachet of Baden-Baden in Germany, where the Euro-elite took the waters. I learned pretty quickly, by the way, that the Hoosier way to say the name is West BAY-den, not BAA-den.

The original West Baden Springs burned down just after the turn of the 20th century. The owner, Lee W. Sinclair, wanted something even grander replace it — something to best the rival French Lick Springs Hotel — and so he built the current hotel.

“Sinclair… envisioned a circular building topped with the world’s largest dome, decorated like the grandest spas of Europe,” notes the hotel web site. “Architect Harrison Albright of West Virginia [who designed the U.S. Grant Hotel in San Diego, too] accepted Sinclair’s commission and agreed to complete the project within a year. The new hotel, complete with a 200-foot diameter atrium and fireplace that burned 14-foot logs, opened for business in June of 1902.”

Later, Sinclair’s daughter and son-in-law redesigned the hotel a new level of opulence in the ’20s that characterized West Baden Springs Hotel until the Depression crushed its business model. The rest of the 20th century was unkind to the property, especially the last years of the century.

“In January 1991, a buildup of ice and water on the roof and in drainpipes caused the collapse of a portion of the exterior wall,” the web site says. “In 1992, Indiana Landmarks spent $140,000 to stabilize the hotel, matching a $70,000 contribution from an anonymous donor. In May 1994 the hotel was sold to Minnesota Investment Partners (MIP) for $500,000. Grand Casinos Inc., an investor in the purchase, optioned the hotel from MIP. The Cook Group Inc., a global medical device manufacturing company headquartered nearby in Bloomington, stepped in to preserve both the French Lick and West Baden Springs Hotels.”

That is to say, the Cook family — medical-device billionaires — took an interest in the place. Eventually they oversaw the renovation of West Baden Springs, as well as French Lick Springs, at great expense. But not without what I imagine must be a healthy return, now that a major new Cook-owned casino (next to French Lick Springs) is open for business. All of the properties (West Baden Springs, French Lick Springs and the new casino) are part of the French Lick Resort Casino, an operation licensed by the state of Indiana in 2006.

I’ve read variously that the West Baden Springs Hotel dome was the nation’s largest freestanding structure of its kind until the completion of the Charlotte Coliseum in 1955 or the Astrodome in 1965. Whatever the case, the thing to do in our time is wander into the hotel atrium, stand under the dome, and be amazed. Ordinary photos can’t convey the sweep of the place or the its grand scope, but never mind.

Other parts of the hotel have their own flourishes, such as the stained-glass windows near the front entrance, added by Jesuits when they owned the property in the mid-century. Quite a story.

We rode a trolley over to French Lick Springs for a look. Posh, certainly, and also a historic hotel — that’s where Pluto Water used to come from, and walls are covered with glossy pics of famous guests — but it’s only worth seeing, not worth going to see, like West Baden Springs is.

T.C. Steele State Historic Site

Posted on January 8, 2020 by admin

Back in March 2002, we visited Columbus, Indiana, and took a foray west from there to visit Nashville (Indiana), Brown County State Park and the T.C. Steel State Historic Site. That last one was still closed for the winter.

These days, the site is open year-round. So around noon on December 28, we drove east from Bloomington, less than 30 minutes out of town, into hilly, rural Brown County and on to the state historic site.
In the early 20th century, Theodore Clement Steele and his second wife Selma acquired acreage — played-out farmland — in Brown County and set about building a hilltop house. After various modifications and additions, including a few other buildings, the place became their full-time residence and his main studio space. Even as a museum, the place is homey, full of furniture and other items the Steeles owned, with little roped off from visitors.
The view from downhill.
T.C. Steele is best remembered now for landscapes, but also did a lot of portraits, since that’s where the money was. Numerous examples of both hang in the main house, as well as the larger building nearby (“Big Studio”), well lit by an enormous window.
No doubt about it, Steele had a gift for landscapes. One I especially liked was “Selma in the Garden,” which is hanging in Big Studio. Other examples of his work are here. While T.C. painted, Selma gardened, as nicely depicted by the above-mentioned painting. The land might not have been great for farming, but Selma apparently had the knack for making her gardens flourish.

Gardening isn’t so much in evidence in winter. Still, the grounds are inviting.
We spent time tramping around the woods near the house. Since this was previously farm land, the trees are mostly second growth, some of which the Steeles planted.
Thick with leaves. At that moment, the ground was too warm for snow cover.
T.C. Steele State Historic Site In a poetic touch, the Steeles named their place The House of the Singing Winds. Our visit wasn’t on a windy day, so that isn’t what we heard out on the hillside. Rather, the crunching of leaves underfoot. Without the sound of traffic coming from all directions, and with birds and insects quiet or gone for the season, that was about all we heard. That by itself was a good reason to get out of town.

Southern Indiana at the End of the 2010s

Posted on January 5, 2020 by admin

A new decade is underway, and don’t let nitpickers tell you otherwise. At midnight as 2020 began — the beginning of the 2020s — I stepped outside for a listen, as I do most years. Pop-pop-pop went the fireworks in the freezing air.

If you know where to look in southern Indiana, about 50 miles southwest of Indianapolis, you’ll find yourself standing near a Tibetan stupa. I did that myself ahead of the New Year.
We wanted to take a trip between Christmas and New Year’s, but nowhere too far or expensive. In that case, weather is the main variable. A blizzard, or even heavy snow or subzero temps, would have kept us home. But post-Christmas forecasts called for mild temps until December 30 throughout our part of the Midwest.

So on December 27, we drove to southern Indiana by way of Lafayette and Indianapolis, stopping in the former but not the latter. We arrived in Lafayette just in time to visit the Haan Mansion Museum of Indiana Art, and take a look at the sculpture garden and nature walk behind it.

That evening we arrived in Bloomington, Indiana, where we spent the next three nights. Bloomington is home of the largest branch of Indiana University, one boasting nearly 50,000 students and the Kinsey Institute besides. But just after Christmas, the place is practically deserted. A ghost university.

On December 28, we spent much of the morning at the Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center, which is out on the edge of Bloomington. We saw the stupas and the prayer wheels and flags and the Kumbum Chamtse Ling Monastery. We also happened to be there in time to see a fire puja ceremony.

We spent most of the afternoon that day in rural Brown County at the T.C. Steele State Historic Site, hilltop home and studio of the landscape painter of that name in the early 20th century. We also popped over to Nashville, Indiana, where we’d been in 2002. Instead of artwork, we bought lunch there this time.

The day was good for walking around outside — nearly 60 degrees F. and cloudy, but no rain. About as pleasant as you’re going to get in late December. The next day was nearly as warm, but rain fell on and off all day, sometimes heavily.

A good day for indoor sites. On the morning of the 29th, we headed south, deep into the rolling hills of southern Indiana, to visit the striking West Baden Springs Hotel, a grand hotel of the past revived only in recent years, along with its former rival and current sister property, the French Lick Springs Hotel, one-time home of Pluto Water.

After a lunch stop in Paoli, Indiana, we went to Marengo Cave, a limestone show cave under the small town of Marengo, and spent more than an hour among the stalagmites and -tites and flowstone. Near the cave’s entrance, a bonus site: a 19th-century Hoosier cemetery, whose weather-beaten stores were picturesquely wet with the most recent weather.

The 30th proved to be cold, though not quite cold enough for snow or ice. We drove home in the morning, stopping only for gas and rest stops. Strong winds blew. Sometimes strong enough to push the car slightly to the side. I white-knuckled the steering wheel a few times as a result.

The wind gusts also captured flags and pulled them straight. Here is Indiana’s flag at a rest stop. Better than those with a state seal slapped on: a golden torch and 19 stars, to symbolize Hoosier enlightenment and the state’s place as 19th to join the union.

Put a Light in Every Country Window

Posted on December 10, 2019 by admin

Winter temps have kicked in, but at least Monday’s drizzle and mist didn’t become ice. Now we have dry subfreezing conditions. Tolerable.

Meandering around online recently — often the best way to find anything interesting — I came across “Put a Light in Every Country Window.” A song about rural electrification in Australia. Can’t say I’ve ever heard one of those before.

Put a light in every country window,
High-speed pumps where now the windmills stand.
Get in and lay the cable so that one day we’ll be able
To have electricity all over this wide land.

Catchy tune. Wasn’t long before I found the liner notes of Folk Songs & Ballads of Australia, recorded in 1964 by Gary Shearston, a star of the Australian folk revival (another thing I didn’t know about).

“A song from the pen of Don Henderson, one of Australia’s best and most prolific contemporary songwriters, who has travelled and written throughout the Eastern States,” the notes say. “This song was written three years ago after a journey through the area of the giant Snowy Hydro-Electric Scheme.”

Of course it isn’t the only song about rural electrification. Surely Woody Gutherie’s “Roll on Columbia” counts as one, and maybe “Grand Coulee Dam” does indirectly. Considering how many songs Gutherie wrote, there are probably others too.

There’s also this recent oddity about Rural Electric Cooperatives, to the tune of “The Battle of New Orleans.” It’s interesting, but a little hard to listen to.

Apollo 12 & Artemis 3 & Europa Clipper

Posted on November 14, 2019 by admin

Just today I thought, it’s almost the 50th anniversary of Apollo 12, isn’t it? So I checked. Yes. The launch, best known for lightning striking the Saturn V seconds into the flight, was 50 years ago today. It was fitting to celebrate Apollo 11 this year, but the other missions deserve a mention (and yet, I forgot Apollo 10).

It was a Saturday morning, so instead of cartoons — which is what I usually watched — I watched the launch. I didn’t think it was any less great simply for being the second try at a manned landing on the Moon. This video is roughly what I would have seen — minus any color at all — on our black-and-white TV, though it’s the raw feed to London. T-minus zero is at nearly 22 minutes into the video.

I remember the primitive animation that kicked in during all of the launches when the rocket was high enough. In the case of Apollo 12, that was after the rocket disappeared into the clouds, which was pretty soon. I also remember thinking about the fate of the cameras positioned right under the rocket during the launch. Were they completely destroyed, as you’d think, or shielded in some clever way?

Now I know: “The challenge of placing cameras under the F-1 engines was a team effort,” Space News says about the Apollo 8 launch, but the cameras — 37 and 39 — were there for each later launch.

“It included special help from Corning Glass to produce a port that would survive conditions worse than being on the sun. A thick cylinder of steel bolted into the Pad A concrete reinforcement was also built to hold the cameras.

“The project was accomplished successfully in a few weeks with only one problem: the ports had to be replaced for every launch. The black ceramic on the adjacent flame deflector vaporized and coated the surface – after they had done their job of providing a view like no other.”

Apollo 12 was eventful besides being hit by lightning — for the flawless LM landing on the Moon, the examination of Surveyor 3 by the moonwalkers, the reported camaraderie of the crew (as ably dramatized in From the Earth to the Moon) and the long-lasting package of experiments left behind.

A short video history of the flight by NASA.

Naturally, all this reading about space led me to recent news about the Artemis program. I hadn’t heard that NASA actually has a year in mind for a manned — make that woman- and manned — Artemis 3 landing near the south pole of the Moon, namely 2024.

Oh, really? The excited eight-year-old that watched the Apollo 12 launch wants it to be so. The late middle-aged man I am now is a little more skeptical. Has full funding for such a venture even been appropriated?

Besides, as I understand it, two missions on an as-yet unflown giant rocket — the dully named Space Launch System — have to go perfectly before a Moon landing: one without a crew, one with a crew, but not to the surface of the Moon. Well, maybe, is all I can say.

Except I can also say that Artemis is a good solid name for it. Sister of Apollo. None of this focus-group-style naming, which produces namby-pamby names like New Horizons or InSight. Orion is likewise a good choice for the capsule, since he hunted with Artemis — both were hunters — in Crete.

More likely to launch in the mid-2020s is Europa Clipper. That’s a good name, too. It has a very specific mission: find out more about the watery world of Europa.

“Scientists are almost certain that hidden beneath the icy surface of Europa is a saltwater ocean thought to contain about twice as much water as Earth’s global ocean,” NASA says. “It may be the most promising place in our solar system to find present-day environments suitable for some form of life beyond Earth.

“Slightly smaller than Earth’s Moon, Europa’s water-ice surface is crisscrossed by long, linear fractures, cracks, ridges and bands. The moon’s ice shell is probably 10 to 15 miles (15 to 25 kilometers) thick, beneath which the ocean is estimated to be 40 to 100 miles (60 to 150 kilometers) deep. Like Earth, Europa is thought to also contain a rocky mantle and iron core.”

The Ocean of Europa. Sounds like the title of story in a SF pulp from a bygone period. The 21st-century reality of exploring Europa is cooler by far.

The Witch of November 2019

Posted on November 13, 2019 by admin

It hasn’t just been cold for November since Monday, temps have been reaching into the realm of damn cold, briefly dropping below zero Fahrenheit early this morning, or maybe into imaginary numbers. Later in the day, it reached a balmy 25 degrees or so. Bah.

It’s a major early winter weather event, now gripping much of the nation. Guess that means I’m a part of something larger than myself. They say that’s important for self-esteem, or happiness, or something, but I don’t think weather events count toward that sense of belonging.

Also, northern Illinois got about three inches of snow on Monday. Not the first time I’ve seen Veterans Day-Armistice Day snow, but more fell than in 2013. At least we didn’t get hit with something along the lines of the Armistice Day blizzard of 1940 or the Big Blow of 1913, both of which showed the power of the Witch of November.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: History