Turning the page - a love letter.

Four and a half years ago, I moved to Alaska.

Since then, I have had the adventures of a lifetime.

I've felt the stillness of a snow-shrouded day, the only sound the hiss of snow under my runners and the loping of dogs in front of me. I've looked down from the window of a tiny plane alone in the sky, and saw wave after wave of mountains receding beneath us - most of them even now without a name or a human footprint.

  

I've stood in awe of moose towering over me, and laughed with otters dancing in the bay. I've read outside in the midnight sun, and gotten entirely too intimate with our state bird. I've cherished hot coffee in the dim dusk of a winter afternoon, and been hypnotized by the glowing white haze of a foggy winter night.

I know the knotted dread that comes with with seeing fireweed climb the stalk, the long peaceful calm of winter, and the giddy delight that comes from splashing in the year's first wet puddle.


This is a land without equal.

More than that - here I have met some of the best friends of my life.

Some have gone before me, others remain behind - but one and all they were Alaskan.

I love this land more than any place I have ever lived.
I love these people and this culture more than words can tell.

But I've found something - someone - I love more.
And so I'm leaving my home.



I think then that it's best to end this record here.

Time permitting (as way leads on to way...) I'll come back and fill in some missing details here or there, replace those images lost with my old domain a couple years back - maybe even wrap up a couple of those "to be continued" multi-part threads I've left hanging.

But this chapter of life is over.
Call to Wings is done.


Thank you all for coming along on this journey with me.

And don't worry y'all.
The next chapter will pick up at a new location along about the middle of January.
You don't get rid of me that easy!

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

PS... this is gonna be AWESOME. 

Blessed Day!

Whether this day finds you well or ill, whether you are with family loving and infuriating, or alone and feeling dark in the brightness of celebration - whether you are home, called to work, or looking towards your loved ones from a distant desert -

You are loved.
You are remembered.
You are treasured.

Merry Christmas!

Glória in excélsis Deo...

Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will toward men



Merry Christmas, y'all. 
*sniff* 

Gresham's purse.(II of II)

... so why did that little packing incident come to mind?

It was a result of the book I've been picking at since my last stay in TJICistan - Adrian Goldsworthy's How Rome Fell. 

The whole Roman history thing is slowly starting to come together in my head, after a year or two of books, podcasts, and lecture series. I won't say I feel comfortable with it yet, but at least the broad sweep of the narrative is starting to feel familiar.

Anyhow, I just got to this section on Emperor Diocletion's price controls. Once upon a time, a denarius was a silver coin about the size of a nickel. By the time of Diocletion the coin itself is out of use, though it remains a unit of account.

Now "a law some months earlier had set the value of a silver coin at 100 denarii and the silver-washed copper nummus at 25 and 4 denarri depending on its size."* Tracing back to Goldsworthy's source, it looks like even more importantly, "[Diocletian] continued to issue vast quantities of coper coins, particularly of the smaller denomination, where were not even plated with silver" (Jones, p.438)

For some reason, prices have started climbing. And so we get price controls. Mysteriously, people seem to be ignoring them:

The only literary source to mention the price edict derides it as an utter failure, ignored by merchants who knew that they could charge more for their goods. Papyri from Egypt do suggest that prices soon rose far beyond the supposed maximums established by the emperor. As far as we can tell it was abandoned fairly quickly, but at least one copy was maintained long enough for a few of the prices to be altered. In his long introduction to the edict, Diocletian reminded his audience of the stability and success his rule had brought, and claimed to be expressly concerned that his brave soldiers were being overcharged. There may also have been a desire to set rates at which the state would pay for goods and services regardless of the market price.

Diocletian's government lacked the machinery to enforce such a rigid pricing system on a day-to-day basis. Perhaps the most striking thing about the edict was its ambition - even if it was economically naive. Combined with the objective of profound change is the highly moral rhetoric. Talk of 'the peaceful state of the world' now that the 'seething ravages of barbarians peoples' have been restrained by great effort, is followed by outrage at a new evil attacking the soldiers. `There burns a raging greed, which hastens to its own growth and increase without respect for human kind.' A little later the emperor compared this greed to a religion. The tone is typical of the other legislative activity of the tetrarchs and of their recorded rescripts - replies issued to legal questions and appeals sent to the emperor. The sense of outrage was accompanied by savage and often inventively cruel punishments.

How Rome Fell
Adrian Goldsworthy
pp 170-171

Hunh....devalue the currency, print bushels of devalued money, then scream and yell that anyone who tries to keep up with your devaluation is greedy and mean spirited. Don't see that much anymore. ;)


Also?  I found a new piece of clutter memorobia I want for the history room:

A copy of denarius issued by Brutus. One hint - "EID MAR" refers to "The Ides of March." That's also an early Libery Cap there between the pugiones on the reverse. Cool, hunh?

As an aside, just like "favorite founding fathers," I'm starting to get "favorite Romans." So far I think Brutus the Younger is far and away leading the pack**. Torn between duty to his country and loyalty to his friend - to say nothing of the weight of his familial heritage and social pressure - the guy went through a firestorm and rode it to the end.

Anyhow - on with the packing!


======================
* Goldsworthy p.170, referencing p.438 of
The later Roman Empire, 284-602: a social economic and administrative survey by Arnold Hugh Martin Jones

** Though OKAY I admit it. I have lust in my heart for Purefoy's portrayal of Antony. Shut up. ;)

Interstitial - day of rest

Oh that was nice!

I had a fun afternoon in with History Friends. They were nicely set up with a stove and chicken coop, so they inherited my firewood stack and all the corn I had leftover from my parched corn endeavor of - gah! - last year already!

Anyhow, one of 'em's starting to get crazy into the longhunter thing, so we put on some parched corn in the woodstove -

The pot wasn't quite what I'd normally use - a deep pot instead of a spider or skillet, but it worked alright. And between the bacon grease and extra salt was soooo good.

I've been trying to learn Little Miss B on the Three Southern Food Groups - Hawg, and Cohn, and Weeds.

She especially liked the bacon.

Alright Miss B, I'm gonna teach you what my daddy taught me - repeat after me...

This hawg....
"this hog..."

"Na- this hawg...."
"this hog..."

*sigh*


"diyid not..."
"did not..."

"... dah in vayne."
"...die in vain"

Close enough! :)

A bit more hanging around, lots of talk of all sorts of things - then dinner and playing with the house chicken. Pretty good afternoon all told - hope yours was fine. Happy Sabbath, y'all.

Gresham's purse.(I of II)

Once upon a time, my Daddy handed me a quarter. He told me to look at the date.

"All the ones on or before 1964," he told me, "are silver. They're worth a lot more than 25 cents! If you see one of those, pick it out!"

For a few years with the avarice only a child can muster I checked the date of every quarter, dime, and the occasional 50 cent piece I came across. Needless to say, I never did see a single one of those precious magical super-special quarters in my change, and eventually stopped looking. The pony would have to wait.

Years later I find myself packing up my Alaskan cottage, and come across a homemade leather purse filled with four years of my pocket change. Obviously I'm not expecting silver, but since in the last couple years I've taken to collecting those smooshed pennies from the "here I am" tourist machines, I thought I'd spend a bit of time and pick out the pennies that were actually copper for the next time I was downtown. It would be nice to have an "Alaska" one since I've lived here so long.

Whoosh! went the purse to the bag, and I commenced to picking:

I did see one wheat penny, which was kinda cool. I also found one of the subway tokens the  mint is turning out now. In pictures there's not much difference - the new shiny almost looks attractive. In the hand, the super-light subway token feel of the newer penny is just incredibly offputting.

Once upon a time, I remember laughing when Tam read some PJ O'Roarke poke at the Europeans and their "comic book money."

... it ain't so funny anymore.

Anyhow - sometimes, I act utterly illogically in a fit of pique.
This was one of those times.

On my errands that day, I dumped that whole bag of now-sorted leftover token coinage into the machine at my bank, then on the way home stopped by the little coin shop in town.

Tra-la!

I'm not the coin expert my daddy is, and couldn't care a fig for rare date this or special mint that. But pocket change did use to be a lot prettier back when they made 'em out of real silver with nicely sculpted images.

Incidentally, see that head? The stylized image of Liberty in a Phrygian cap? That used to be the norm - almost all of our early coinage featured stylized images of Liberty in one pose or another. It wasn't until the first part of the 20th century that we actually started putting dead presidents on our money.

Now personally, I think once the images of real people start going on your coins, your republic is on thin ice. Once the images of real living people start showing up - it's time to turn out the lights and hang the Dear Leader posters - the Republic is done.

Evil Brown R...

New toy happy dance - I got a Brown Bess musket!

From poking around the Lexington and Concord area museums, this one looks a little early for what the British brought that day - most of those I've seen on display have much simpler lines to the wood and more businesslike furniture. Still, it strikes me as entirely plausible that some colonial might have been carrying something much like this old lady to the Concord fight - they were apparently quite the motley crew-

Via David Hackett Fischer's Paul Revere's Ride and the wonders of Google book search, here's a description of the colonials on that day -

"To a man they wore small clothes, coming down and fastening just below the knee, and long stockings, with cowhide shoes ornamented with large buckles, while not a pair of boots graced the whole company.

'The coats and waistcoats were loose and of large dimensions, with colors as various as the barks of oaks, sumach and other trees of our hills and swamps could make them, and their shirts were all made of flax, and like every other part of the dress were home made.

"On their heads was worn a large round-topped and broadbrimmed hat.

"Their arms were as various as their costumes. Here an old soldier carried a heavy Queens' arm with which he had done service at the Conquest of Canada twenty years before, while by his side walked a stripling boy, with a Spanish-fusee not half its weight or calibre, which his grandfather may have taken at Havana, while a few had old French pieces, that dated back to the reduction of Louisburg.

"Instead of the cartridge box, a large powder horn was slung under the arm, and occasionally a bayonet might be seen bristling in the rank.

"Some of the swords of the officers had been made by our own blacksmiths, perhaps from some farming utensils; they looked serviceable but heavy and uncouth."

Such was the appearance and equipment of the Continentals, to whom so often and finally, so completely, the well armed, disciplined and uniformed soldiers of "His Majesty" were compelled to surrender.

Colonial Amherst:
the early history, customs and homes; geography and geology, of Amherst...
by Warren Upham

At some point this coming year I intend to sew up an Appeal to Heaven flag to wrap it all up in for a wall decoration. Maybe frame that broadside to hang up with it to and make a nice Colonial Menotomy themed history corner. 

And oh yes, it's an Eeeevil Brown weapon - it even has a bayonet lug!

Now I just need me some redcoats. ;)