A River Flowing Away

Get ready for a bidding farewell weekend with Colectivo Panamera and Georgina.

 

Making money in Argentina

I'm sorry if you're an aspiring entrepreneur hoping to get tips on some wackadoodle South American get rich quick scheme. This post isn't that. Rather it is a look at the innerworkings of the Argentinian mint as it produces pesos. The video doesn't really make it clear what the steps of producing the notes are, but it is very nicely filmed.

 

Paintings of 4th of July celebrations

Click any image to enlarge

It is 4th of July weekend, so here are some paintings of 4th of July celebrations. Enjoy.

Happy 250th

Below is a post I frequently put up on the 4th of July. I think Americans forget just how radical the Declaration of Independence is. "All men are created equal..." is very influential, and very destructive of the old order.   

The normal state of human affairs is for societies to divide into hierarchies, with the favored elites on the top, and the rest of us strung out below. Today you can see that old order still striving to exert itself. With our credentialed elites jetting off to Bali while they would like nothing less than to cram the rest of us into apartments where they could, for our own good of course, regulate, surveil and dictate terms to us.

The struggle continues and yet, for now at least, "all men are created equal... " is the fulcrum the world balances on.

Above is the song Dimonkransa sung by Myra Andrade of the Cape Verde Islands. Cape Verde received their independence from Portugal on July 5th, 1975. The liberation movement was led by the socialist African Party of Independence of Cape Verde (PAICV). Andrade's father was a member of it, and in fact she was born in Cuba.

Upon independence Cape Verde was a single party government, but in 1990 at a party congress the PAICV approved the introduction of multiparty democracy. In the election that followed the opposition fared well, and Cape Verde has evolved into a stable multi-party democracy.

However, this is not a post about her politics, nor the sort of third world socialism that bubbles through the undeveloped world. It seems to me there is a deeper strata, a bedrock so to speak, which lies under the languid melancholy of her lyrics.

It was said that democracy,
Lopsided democracy,
It was said that democracy
Was like a hidden treasure,
But now that it has been found.
We have all opened our eyes
And each one, relying on his judgment,
Confidently declared that what was round was in fact square,
And went to work, with a great many theories,
To prove that he was right.

(lyrics from the version she sung on her first album Navega)

Andrade is ill at ease with democracy, but for social rather than political reasons. Early in the song she calls it 'lopsided democracy' and as its lyrics unfold her complaint is that each person, not matter how foolish they are (and she clearly thinks many if not most of them are fools), now express a cacophony of opinions and arguments that bury the truth. 

She ends the song singing of English businessman and listing names from Cape Verde's past, some who have been elevated and some who she fears are being forgotten and expresses distress at this reordering of authority. 

Stripped to its bone, the song is about a lost elite. Andrade is expressing nostalgia for a short-lived one-party rule and for an escape from European domination. Of course, it is her party that should rule and she now makes her home in Paris. Perhaps it is she that is lopsided, rather than all of the happy fools she mocks?

The time will come when old Náxu’s opinions
Will not be held in higher esteem than those of a babe in arms.
People will come together and cry: enough!    

Americans forget how revolutionary we are. Jefferson's "all men are created equal..." is both intoxicating and destructive. It is a hell of a thing not to have to step into the gutter to clear the sidewalk for a swaggering aristocrat. Andrade is intimidated by and dismissive of people who have opened their eyes, and each one, relied on their own judgment, but a free man knows better.

As for coming together and crying "enough"? That is exactly what our 4th of July celebrates. Happy 4th of July to you all.

America the Beautiful

Get ready for a flag waving weekend with Lina Frances.

 

The last battle of the American Revolutionary War

Naval battle of Gondelour, June 20, 1783 by Auguste Jugelet
(click image to enlarge)

If asked, most Americans would think that Yorktown was the last battle of the Revolutionary War. However, in the years before Yorktown, what had been an English civil war expended to a global war as France, Spain and the Netherlands took advantage of England's problems to declare war on therm. 

That war continued well after Yorktown and even after peace negotiations had begun. As pointed out in the article India: The Last Battle of the American Revolutionary War:  

A preliminary treaty finally came on November 30, 1782, a year after Yorktown… but there was still no formal treaty. Washington remembered what Ben Franklin had said, “The British Nation seems… unable to carry on the War and too proud to make peace.” The politicians were all still talking in Paris. Washington instinctively didn’t trust the British and knew it could be a mistake to lower his guard of them, even while talks were going on. As late as January 1783, from Newburgh, New York, he wrote to Maj. John Armstrong that he suspected Parliament would still “provide vigorously for the prosecution of the war.”

But in the meantime, between Yorktown and the preliminary peace treaty, there were at least forty-four more documented world-wide battles, sieges, actions, incidents, and skirmishes of the American Revolutionary War.

The last Revolutionary War battle, the Naval Battle of Cuddalore, took place off the coast of India. It occurred after the treaty ending the war had been signed, but before news of it could reach the distant combatants.

The French were occupying the city of Cuddalore and the British were besieging it. English naval forces were bombarding the city in support of the siege, so the French sent a naval squadron to intervene. For a few days light and variable winds kept the two forces apart, but on June 20th the French closed with the English ships for combat. 

The battle that followed was rather desultory, with little damage on either side. The battle lasted 3 hours and the British withdrew. There was still a bit of back and forth with the siege, but that naval battle counts as the last battle fought in the American Revolutionary War.  

 

Winslow Homer

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With our 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence nearly upon us, I thought I would feature an American artist. Winslow Homer (1836-1910) is arguably America's finest painter. Although he spent some time in Paris and England, he was primarily based out of New England. He started as a magazine illustrator but moved on to oils and watercolors. He grew increasingly more reclusive as he aged.

Winslow Homer