​2½ Guilder Note, 1949

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I haven’t found figures on how many 2½ guilder banknotes dated 1949 that De Nederlandsche Bank produced, but it must have been a lot. I know that because, at least as of Sunday, one was for sale on eBay for $1.30, plus 50 cents shipping. A valuable collector’s item, it’s not. Suits me.

The one for sale looks roughly in the same slightly worn condition as the one I have, which is on permanent loan from my mother. It’s a smallish note, 4½ inches by 2⅜ inches. My parents picked it up during their time in Europe in the mid-1950s.

The one to have, at least according to valuations on eBay, is the 1939 Dutch East Indies 25 guilders with Javanese dancers. Someone wants $400 for one of those.

I like the fact that its denomination is ​2½ guilders, not a quantity you see often, though for a long time the United States issued ​2½ dollar gold coins, the Quarter Eagle. Twee en een halvee gulden is also fun to say, though I probably don’t sound Dutch when I do.

If I’ve done my research correctly, a guilder was worth about a U.S. quarter in the mid-50s, valuing this note at 62 cents or so. Not as trifling a sum then as now  — its purchasing power was probably over $5 in current money — but not that much either.

Also of note on the obverse: Uitgegeven krachtens k.b. van 4 Februari 1943 en van 18 Mei 1945. My stab at a translation: issued by virtue of royal decree, February 4, 1943 and May 18, 1945. The Dutch government was in exile in the UK on that first date, including the famously strong-willed Queen Wilhelmina. I know that, anticipating an Allied victory, new Dutch currency was produced starting in 1943. Made in the United States as it happens, as the designs more than hints at.

The 1949 reserve has a Spirographic sort of design.

Queen Juliana appears on the 1949 note, new to the job since her mother abdicated the year before. Juliana was still on some of the coins in circulation when I visited the Netherlands in 1983, though she had abdicated three years earlier in favor of Beatrix, who stayed on as queen until 2014, past the time when guilders ceased to be money. I wonder if the Dutch miss their guilders.

GTT 1990

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I’m pretty sure this is on the Texas side of the Texas-Louisiana border on I-20, not far west of Shreveport, in February 1990. As part of my long move to Japan, I moved my meager possessions from Chicago to Dallas that month, stopping along the way in Nashville and central Mississippi.

The site had the Six Flags Over Texas, a common enough display at Texas borders and elsewhere in various forms, and probably some kind of welcome center that’s probably been redeveloped since then. I haven’t been back that way since.

I can’t quite read it, but the road sign seems to say that the exit to Waskom, Texas, is nearby, which would definitely put it on the westbound side of I-20. (I’m fairly certain this earlier Texas border picture was taken along I-10). Not sure what inspired me to take a picture at that place and that time, but I did, and I’m glad of it. Not every moment documented by camera needs to be associated with some kind of peak experience, which are elusive anyway.

February 1st Miscellanea

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February, bah. A really cold week lies ahead, with some snow. The only good thing is that January is over.

We got a call one recent day at 7:41 a.m., not the best time, but I guess it couldn’t wait. Our machine recorded it, so I can transcribe it here, with a few details changed.

“Please stand by for an informational message from your community. There may be a short delay before the message begins.

(pause)

“This is an important message from the Schleswig-Holstein Police Department. Please be on the lookout for a missing juvenile named W—-. Male, white, five feet tall, approximately 90 pounds, brown hair, brown eyes. Last seen wearing a purple Washington Huskies sweatshirt, gray sweatpants, and black, white and red Nike Air Jordan sneakers. Please call the Schleswig-Holstein Police Department or 911 if you have any information. Thank you.”

At 8:44 a.m., there was another call.

“Please stand by for an informational message from your community. There may be a short delay before the message begins.

(pause)

“This is an important message from the Schleswig-Holstein Police Department. The missing juvenile referenced in the previous message has been located safely. Thank you for your assistance.”

That was a first. Maybe W—- wandered off without telling anyone. It was a relatively warm morning.

Something I happened across in my online wanderings, an incident in New Jersey: “A 16-year-old from Willingboro was arrested by West Windsor Police on Dec. 4 after attempting to steal a car. The theft was thwarted because the car had a stick shift, and the would-be thief only knew how to drive cars with an automatic transmission.”

You’d think the JD — there’s a term to bring back — would have backed away when he saw that the car had a stick, and before police got involved. Then again, JDs aren’t known for their brains.

This falls under the My, How Things Have Change File: Recently I got an email from a grocery store that has my address. The subject line said: ORDER YOUR SUPER BOWL SUSHI PLATTER FOR $29.99.

I’m not holding a Super Bowl party, or going to one, or watching the damn thing at all, but somehow I don’t associate it with sushi. Just me being old. I vaguely remember, about 30 years ago, Mike Royko (maybe) mocking in print the fact that sushi was being sold at some baseball game, probably in California. That seemed strange, I suppose.

Since then, though still associated with Japan, sushi has been fully assimilated into American eating habits. Probably not too many people younger than me would give sushi at a Super Bowl party a second thought.

The Strangest Stamp You’re Likely To See For a While, Maybe Ever

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Because I was so busy today, I naturally took time out to watch a couple of episodes of Vintage Space, a series I happened across a few months ago. It’s always interesting. One installment I watched today, “Only Three People Have Died in Space,” was about the ill-fated Soyuz 11 mission.

The three would be the unfortunate Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev, who died in space when their capsule depressurized suddenly just before re-entry. The spacecraft’s automated system then returned the dead crew to Earth.

I remember hearing about that. I was paying close attention to space news by 1971, even though I was 10. As usual with Soviet missions, and especially ones that didn’t go well, the information was a little vague at the time. I’ve read about it since, but it was good to hear host Amy Shira Teitel offer more detail about the accident.

Interesting to realize that for someone her age, just over 30, all of the early programs are purely history, without a memory component. I’m really glad I remember Apollo.

Toward the end of the segment, she discusses a set of stamps issued soon after the mission by Equatorial Guinea — certainly printed elsewhere for that nation — honoring Soyuz 11. That’s where things got strange.

One of the stamps, as seen above, gruesomely depicts the dead crew. “It is one of the strangest depictions of fallen heroes on a stamp that I have ever seen,” Teitel says. I’ll go further: it’s one of the strangest stamps I’ve ever seen.

Ann at 1111

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No store-bought birthday cake this year for Ann, at her request. Her mother made a cheesecake.

It was good cheesecake. We didn’t have a numeral 5 candle. You’d think we would, considering my age, but no. So the numeral 1 stood for a decade, the smaller candles for years. Ann was OK with that arrangement.

I thought of, but forgot to suggest, that the numbers be in base 2, which would be 1111. There’s no reason to use base 10 for birthday candles other than the dead hand of decimal tradition, after all.

This Has Never Happened in January

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According to Accuweather at least, the highs in my part of the suburbs on January 26 and 27, 2018, were 51 F and 50 F respectively. Maybe so, but on Saturday the 27th from about 11 am to 2 pm, the air felt warmer. On my deck it felt warmer, maybe because of its southern exposure.

It felt so warm I decided to cook some sausages on the grill, which usually spends its winters standing idly in the back yard. That’s probably not good for the long-term condition of the grill, but it’s a nuisance to find a spot for it into the garage. Anyway, just after noon on Saturday the grill was smokin’.

It only looks like a dry grass hazard. Because of recent snow meltage — earlier in the week — the ground was damp, even soggy in spots.

Even better, we sat on the deck and ate the sausages for lunch. An al fresco lunch in northern Illinois in January. I don’t even need one hand to count the number of times I’ve done that. I’m not sure I even need more than one finger.

Of course it didn’t last. By Sunday temps were back below freezing, with a dusting of snow. But brevity made the warmth all the more pleasant.

Circular Quay to Manly, 1992

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Australia Day has come and gone again — it was Friday — so what better time to post pictures of early ’90s Sydney Harbour? One of the things I did in January 1992 in Sydney was take the ferry from Circular Quay to Manly, which offered some fine views of the harbor.

Toward the center-left of the image is the 1,000-or-so-foot Sydney Tower, the narrow tower with the observation bulb on top, and one of the places I visited when I first got to town. A fine view.

The Opera House. I saw that during my first-day walkabout, as you’d expect. It was closed, so I didn’t see the inside. But it’s an impressively odd structure from the outside.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge. At one point during my visit I walked across it. The bridge is the same league as the Golden Gate Bridge or Brooklyn Bridge or the Seto Ohashi.

Finally, just a picture of people doing what I was doing, watching the harbor go by.

It was a windy summer day out there on the water.

Don’t Forget Dessert!

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We still get newspapers, and newspaper circulars, delivered to our house. For how much longer, I don’t know. I’ve called to cancel a few times over the years, but every time I do the newspaper lowers the cost of the subscription a lot.

The paper still has its interests. Even in the circulars.

Found this a while ago — it was at the bottom of a circular advertising a brand of fast food I never buy. Among all of the choices, it’s third or fourth string. The addition of fried Twinkies isn’t going to change that.

I had a fried Twinkie in its native setting a few years ago, at a street festival in the Midwest. Note to my non-existent hipster readers: that is an authentic experience. It costs more than in an inauthentic, fast-food setting, but you should expect to pay more for authenticity. I should add that it’s one of that class of experiences you can do exactly once and not regret never doing again.

What Happens When I Look for a Book

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Somewhere in this house I have a copy of The Religions of Man by Huston Smith. An older edition, because later it was retitled The World’s Religions. I read it in a comparative religion class once upon a time. A lot of people can say that.

I looked for it today but didn’t find it. Ann has started comparative religion in her Human Geography class, and I thought I’d at least make the book available to her. She’d get something out of it.

Curious, I looked up Huston Smith. He died only toward the end of 2016, well into his 90s. I’ll look for the book again tomorrow. It’s on one of my shelves.

I did happen across a few other books I’d forgotten I owned. One in particular caught my eye, considering my recent short bit of Bolshevik-themed tourism: Trotsky: Fate of a Revolutionary by Robert Wistrich (1979).

I bought it at a Davis-Kidd Booksellers remainder table. I know that because it still has the price tag on it, which tells me I paid $2.98. Davis-Kidd was a Nashville bookstore I visited often in the mid-80s. It’s gone. Of course it’s gone, though it limped on until 2010.

As for Robert Wistrich, he too is gone. Died 2015. Though he wrote other things, like the book about Trotsky, he’s known as a scholar of the history of antisemitism.

Finally, the publisher of Trotsky: Fate of a Revolutionary was Stein and Day. I’d like to report that it’s a going concern, but no. Closed in 1989. The company published a lot of titles in its time, and it lists a few on the back of Trotsky, which seem to have a theme.

Such as Stalin: An Appraisal of the Man and His Influence, by none other than Trotsky, Khruschev by Mark Frankland, Che Guevara, by Daniel James, The Complete Bolivian Diaries of Che Guevara, edited by Daniel James.

Also four books by Communist turned anti-Communist Bertram D. Wolfe, including The Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera and the amusingly titled Strange Communists I Have Known.

I never did get around to reading Trotsky. Maybe I should. Might be a slog. Leafing through it, the book seems heavy on the development of Trotsky’s ideas, light on the fun stuff, like his dalliance with Frida and his messy end.

Bayeux Tapestry Odds

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Faux spring no mo’. Woke up this morning to a light coat of snow. Not even enough to warrant shoveling, but snow all the same.

I check the Paddy Power web site now and then, not because I’m interesting in betting, but because its predictive powers seem pretty good. Usually. The Irish bookies got the 2016 election wrong, but they get a pass for that, since everyone else did too.

Last week Amazon winnowed its second headquarters site selection to 20 cities, something I’m following as a professional matter. I was a little surprised to see that the odds favor Boston right now, at 2/1, with Atlanta, Austin and Washington DC next.

All very interesting, but what really caught my attention on the site was, “Bayeux Tapestry Location Display.” What? It’s going to be displayed somewhere outside Bayeux?

Apparently so. At some point in the next few years, at someplace in the UK. Exactly where is the betting matter.

Paddy Power puts the British Museum as the clear favorite, at 1/2, which seems reasonable, but also possible are Canterbury and Westminster Abbey at 5/1. Less serious possibilities are at Paddy Power Tower or “Any Carpet Right store.”

I assume the tower is the company headquarters in Dublin. As for Carpet Right, which is actually styled Carpetright, that’s a carpet retailer with 426 stores in the UK and 138 in the Low Countries and Ireland. Just a spot of fun from the Paddy Power bookies.

The Internet, being what it is, allows me to find out about other things related to the Bayeux Tapestry with ridiculous ease. For example, if I wanted to spend $230, I could have my own Bayeux Tapestry tablecloth, 95 percent cotton and also made in France. Nice, but no thanks.