Skip to main content

"Work makes free."

Vichy France, the short lived French State, printed its own money during the second world war.  I bought some (along with a few other French coins) when I was 13, though I had forgotten all about it by the time it fell out of a box of papers I was carrying to recycle.   I picked the coin up, took it out of its protective packaging, put it my jacket pocket, hurried off to work, and forgot about it again until a couple weeks ago.

Not much call for jackets in the summer, even in Seattle, but it was threatening to rain, so I found myself wearing this old leather number.  This time, when I fingered the coin, I noticed how oddly light it was.  Taking a look, I found myself holding an aluminum* two Franc piece from 1943.  On its face, there is a two headed ax towering above split wheat and the words 'Etat Francais'.  On the back, the bold number '2' stands between sets of leaves and beneath the slogan 'Travail, Famille, Patrie' (or 'work, family, fatherland').

When I tell people about this, they ask me if it's worth anything.  I reply, 'I don't know', but I do.  It is a rather common coin.  If I said so, they mightn't care about the motto which replaced, 'Liberty, equality, freedom'; they might give no thought to this telling contrast, nor to what it might say about men's values in general.  Leaving the one thing they do care about a mystery makes the coin, still in my pocket, of interest.


*The other metals being busy killing people.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Magical Unrealism

The same men who say global warming is a hoax, Obamacare has been failing for eight years, and abstinence-only sex-ed works are also convinced even basic gun control is an impossible and useless approach which would only make us less safe. These are also the dudes most likely to tell you black and brown folk have it too good, Obama is a secret Muslim born in Kenya, and Sharia law is being forced on American legal systems. I wonder if there's some sort of overarching thread or theme to all this.
2 comments
Read more

An introduction to a book that doesn't exist:

Prose and verse are generally accepted as distinct writing formats with their own rules, styles, and grammars.  Though their borders are somewhat vague, they have come to be seen as something of a dichotomy in the eyes of the general public.  There are, however, at least 3 other popular approaches to writing as exhibited in picture-books, comicbooks, and plays.  Though sometimes given short shrift, these styles are accepted as literature.  They are included in libraries, book stores, and academic study.  Most importantly, they are read. In the general case, there is clearly writing being done in the creation of any one of these.  But what of the wordless comic or silent play?  Should we consider scripts written, but fully realized plays, comics, and picture-books, to be performance, art, or some other kind of non-literature?  These worries of theory are kinks to be worked out, surely, but they are not of immediate practical concern to the writer...
12 comments
Read more

The summer's demi-apocalypse has to wind down at some point.

It's the end of summer, once again. I could not be any more ready for cool weather, rain, and a chance for the forests to recover from the flames. After travelling near fires in Colorado and Oregon's Columbia river gorge, I am back wondering about north Seattle, under a red sun and painterly clouds, not far enough from the source of the drifting smoke. It seems like the world is burning, but that can only last so long.
3 comments
Read more