Art is 80

I start with an obvious admission. I only know what I know about this subject, only what I see in or on media. Having said that……

I understand the difficulty even a rational Congress would have with the administration’s latest request for another $67.1 billion for the war in Iraq (the money presumably is to carry out the war going forward, and to replenish some of the military weaponry and equipment used so far). If you add this to the money contained in previously approved funding for the Department of Defense (a/k/a Department of War), some, or much, of which is unspent apparently, and add all of that to the money being requested for the upcoming fiscal year, you are talking about real money.

On the other hand, we are engaged in active fighting with Iran, we have troops and equipment and bases all over the Middle East, and we have used up (or have had destroyed) materiel that we need for our defense. We need to protect what we have, and we need to get what we need.

Here is part of what I don’t know. Is there someone on some Congressional staff who is really studying the requests of the administration and who can look at the requested $67.1 billion supplemental, and say: we need this, but not this, and that but not so much of that, and so forth? Or is it simply going to be an up or down vote? Is there anyone in the employ of any Congressional committee whose job it is to examine the overall budgeting and expenditures of the DOD/DOW and make ongoing recommendations to the elected officials? I don’t know, but there should be.

Of course, in order for this to be accomplished (and a big task it is or would be), you need to have the cooperation of the administration, and this administration is not at all big on cooperation, and it gets even more complicated when you get to matters of secrecy, necessary for our defense. And you compound this even further when one or another side can not be trusted, when amounts budgeted or set aside for certain items are not spent or our used in different ways that intended. And finally, as we all know (or think we know), the DOD/DOW has never been audited (and maybe for some of the reasons set forth above) can not be.

So it may be that the money being requested will simply be given to “protect our troops”, although how each dollar would protect any single troop may be hard to detect.

With all this being said, I have to add that, as I watched Secretary Hegseth be queried by the Senate Appropriation Committee Democrats yesterday, I was disappointed at most of the questioning (as usual). There were exceptions: Senators Ossoff, van Holland, and Peters. But by and large, the questions did not probe sufficiently the issues.

For instance, I don’t think anyone asked about the effect of these requests on the national debt. I don’t think anyone concentrated on whether these additional defense expenditures would result in an decrease in other expenditures in order to keep the national debt from climbing more than it has to.

There were some questions as to what would happen if the supplemental funds were not approved. The answers were that there would be other ways to support the most important things, but other matters necessary for our defense would be shortchanged or ignored. This requires more probing, of course, and I saw no sign that anyone was going to follow up and ask for details.

The other issue related to how the war was going to end. Obviously, no one can predict the future and, as one of those testifying said, “the enemy has a vote”, but what is clear is that the definition of what would constitute a victory is missing, and that this makes everything very difficult.

At first, there was regime change, and making it impossible for the Iranian military to “engage in combat” and keeping Iran from developing a nuclear bomb at any time in the future. Now regime change is off the table, and while the administration claims that Iran no longer has any military capacity, Iran certainly acts like it does and, although Hegseth may think this is no more than flies or gnats flying around, they cause real harm and there is no sense yet of this ending. And, then of course, President Trump himself has said that it would be expected that Iran would be able to keep some missile capacity, although Hegseth, like most Trump officials, says, in effect, that “Trump, who always means what he says never means what he says.”

But what does it mean that we will fight until Iran can no longer ever ever ever have a nuclear weapon, or maybe any sort of nuclear program? When can we possibly say that this goal (according to Hegseth, the most important and most consistent goal) has been met?

And then, of course, there is the question of the Strait of Hormuz, about which enough has been said.

Trump himself has no idea of what to do, except “keep ’em guessing” as to our next steps, and bully them into……into what? Today, he tried a trick from old cowboy movies, or Netflix thrillers: Until you do what I want, I am going to kill one of you every ten minutes!

For Trump, the president with a disturbed adolescent mind, it was: Every time you attack a commercial ship, Iran, I am going to blow up a bridge or an urban power plant!! So there!! “Thank you for paying attention.” Statements like this must drive the military, who rely on set goals, which enable them to make the best strategic and tactical choices, crazy. Here their tactical choices are being made for the, the concept of strategy is being ignored or overridden, and of course the goals have never really been set, or have not been set in way that are, in any event, achievable.

Meanwhile, China bides its time with infinite patience and worldwide success, chuckling to each other as they discuss the United States: “Gee, they really are living in interesting times.”

I was tired enough yesterday and I had a number of post-vacation things to do, so I did not leave the house. But I did have a chance to do something I rarely do. A copy of the latest edition of the Yale Law Report was in our mailbox and I decided, during a period when I felt incapable of doing anything else, to scroll through it and see what’s going on at the law school I graduated from almost 60 years ago and which, except for its architecture, is hard for me to recognize, it is so much busier than it was then.

The first 30 pages of the journal were devoted to events at the school, activities of various student clinics, and activities of the faculty. Remarkable stories about advances in working on potential legal framework changes for palliative health care, about how to regain adherence to the rule of law, on potential settlement terms of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the relationship between law and technology (including AI), how to advance various forms of environmental protection, how to slow down use of the Supreme Court’s “Emergency Docket”, how to cope with federal actions that threaten local public safety, programs to introduce Yale students to foreign legal systems and to introduce foreign legal students to the American legal system, how to analyze the effects of tariffs, how to increase laws internationally to protect women from violence, issues regarding drug patents, protection of immigrants, denial of benefits for certain Agent Orange survivors, and so on.

Virtually every one of these activities seem to me to be directed to the public good; there are very, very few that I would possibly question. The issue also discussed 18 books written by faculty or others close to the school, and had a number of feature articles, in addition the usual class notes and condolences.

I assume that the magazines published by many or most other law schools could have an equal number of activities that should be applauded. As do all of the medical schools, and other professional schools serving the various interests of mankind.

My question is a simple one. With all of this good work going on, hard and good work, why is the world in such miserable condition? And I don’t mean this as a silly or facetious question. It’s a serious one. With all of this work going through the efforts of clearly very bright people……why is everything so screwed up?

I am now reading a book titled The Remaking of Italy, written under the pseudonym of “Pentad”, and published in 1941 with Mussolini in control, and World War II flaring. It is a remarkable book in that it tells the story of the Italan peninsula from pre-Roman times until the then present, and the political changes are constant. Some for the better, more for the worse, but throughout all of this political uproar, life, for those able to keep alive, keeps going. Books are written, art is created, science makes discoveries, and so on.

So, today is not any different. Errant political leaders suppress progress for many, but the world goes on. People do what people do.

Under Mussolini (the strongman who could not resist the stronger man from the Third Reich), and in a war where Italians knew they would be a loser even if their side won, it was probably hard to glimpse a better future. As “Pentad” said:

“It seems that, against the growing and irrepressible aspirations towards solidarity, liberty, and justice, there frequently arise resisting forces which try to paralyze those aspirations,and often succeed in so doing. When this happens, the idea of Lex succombs to that of Rex and the individual loses every guarantee.”

We are not living in Mussolini’s Italy and World War II is long over. But we are living in Trump’s America, and we all (should) see the leadership parallels. “Pentad” makes it clear that this too will pass. But “Pentad” also makes it clear that it may not pass tomorrow, and that it may not pass in time for the current generation to see it pass. “Pentad” also makes it clear that it will not disappear on its own, and not by external forces, but by internal actions when the time is ripe. Mussolini will die, the war will end one way or another, but the “remaking” of Italy will be up to the Italians. A lesson to remember.

By the way, you may wonder who “Pentad” was. First, as you may know, a “pentad” is a group of five somethings. In this case, it was a collaboration of five authors, Italian and British who felt the necessity of hiding their identities. From what I see, today in 2026, no one can yet identify them.

We got home yesterday at about 3:30. Our trip is over. Back to the real world for a month or so, and then it is off to Maine to wrap up the summer. Hopefully, today will be quiet here. A recovery day, after our unexpectedly extended return.

When I go downstairs this morning, I should find two newspapers. On our 16 day trip, I only saw one newspaper. None on the boat at all, and none on land. If I wanted to read a newspaper, I guess I could have found one at CVS. Certainly not in any of the hotels.

So you can imagine my shock when yesterday, on the plane from Chicago, the man sitting next to me in seat 11D, began reading the New York Times page by page, line by line. I glanced at his newspaper and, although it was Sunday, he was reading the Times from Thursday. At first, I had no explanation, but then I realized why. It probably took him three days to find the Thursday edition.

Over the course of the last week, I did turn on MS NOW or CNN a few times. But not on the boat. Neither channel was available on Holland America’s Eurodam. There were only BBC and CNN International as news channels. That was another surprise.

There were few signs of politics anywhere. And we saw no signs of the upcoming midterm elections. I had expected to see evidence of the big Senate election in Alaska, where former Democratic Congresswoman Mary Peltola is looking to flip the seat currently held by her Republican opponent Dan Sullivan. But……nothing. At least, yet.

Another thing about the places we visited is that the minority populations are truly minorities. Yes, we were on Indian reservations, and the indigenous populations are “honored” everywhere, but the overall numbers of native Americans is quite small. And while Seattle’s population is about 8% Black (its metro population only about 6%), while the metro DC population is 24%, the Black population elsewhere is hard to count. Even Spokane, the only other sizeable city we visited, is less than 2% Black. And the Hispanic population is also relatively small. Only the Asian population in Seattle is by percentage larger than in DC. As for Hispanics, the DC population by percentage is three times larger.

I was impressed by most of the cities we visited, although in Alaska, I must say that Ketchikan and Sitka were more appealing than Juneau. Seattle always impresses and, as I said earlier, Spokane seemed just plain weird (” i after e, except after w”). Wenatchee and Kalispell were delightful, but physically Missoula was surprisingly unimpressive. This included the hodgepodge campus of the University of Montana. Let me  put it this way. If I were interested in becoming an architect, and if Montana had an architecture school, I would not apply.

Do I have more to say about the trip? Sure. Will I say it? Not today.

There would be advantages living in a place like Missoula. For one thing, when you turn in your rental car, you simply park it and give your key to a fellow inside the terminal. When you check in for your flight, there is no line and agent is willing to do everything for you. At TSA, there is no line and a friendly TSAgent. You look on the schedule board and you see there are about 8 flights leaving in the morning, and only eight gates. From your waiting chair, you watch other take offs.

I will abbreviate the rest. Our 12:34 flight left Missoula at approximately 5:40. First, there was a 2 hour delay because “all flights were grounded at O’Hare”, then another 2 hours because our crew was timed out and they had to get another crew into Missoula, and another 45 minutes because we missed our window to take off.

That meant we missed our connection to DC obviously and we weren’t going to get into O’Hare until after 9 and the only available dc flights would have got us to Dulles around midnight, so they automatically booked us on a 6 a.m. flight, which, with Michelle’s help from home (it was chaos trying to change anything in Missoula), we rebooked at 11:15. So we should be home at about 2:30 p.m. at National.

Of course, our bags are at O’Hare and we are pretty barebones here. We hope our bags are put on the 11:15 and not the 6 a.m., but we will find out when it is too late to do anything about that.

We are at the O’Hare Super 8 because we didn’t want to pay $400-$500, apparently a normal airport last minute rate, but the O’Hare Super 8 turns out to be 8 miles from the airport. United did not give anyone hotel vouchers because “the delay was  weather related”, but our taxi driver said there was no ground stop and the weather was fine.

More to come, I am sure.

P.S. Edie told me there were even more typos than usual. I am sure you understand. But I just corrected (most of) them.

We have wrapped up our last day in Montana. We fly home on Saturday.

We started the day at the Smokejumper Visitor Center, near the Missoula airport. Smokejumpers are federal employees whose job is to parachute near active forest fires to control spread of otherwise uncontrollable fires. Missoula has the largest smokejumper training school in the country, and the Center maintains both a museum and  gives tours of smokejumper equipment.

Smokejumpers are trained in fighting and control of forest fires, must be able to parachute into wild country, and carry 100+ pound packs for miles. And you can’t just decide to become a smokejumper. You must already have years of firefighting experience. With all of this, two facts struck me as remarkable. First, 20% of smokejumpers are female. Second, in over 85 years of smokejumping, there have been only three parachuting deaths.

From there, we drove an hour from Missoula to visit Garnet, which was, in the 1890s, a town of 1000, but has been empty for more than 100 years. It is about 40 miles from Missoula, and about ten miles off a highway on a largely unpaved road.

The road to Garnet had no restaurants, and it was after 1 p.m. so we decided to head about 15 minutes in another direction and go to a Mexican restaurant with a 4.8 rating on  Google. Disappointment, although another beautiful lake side drive. It was just ordinary. But our friend Frida was hanging around.

We then went to  two museums, the Missoula Museum of Art downtown and the Montana Museum of Culture on the University of Montana campus.

Here is part of what we saw in the art museum which has exhibits focusing on indigenous art.

And on the University campus

Our last vacation dinner was at a wonderful informal Italian restaurant, Ciao Mambo. Everything was delicious, and the portions were unbelievably large. I ate half of mine. Here is what sadly will be thrown out.

Now….fill up and then turn in the car, get on a plane, and hopefully get home on time.

Oh. And the Nats scored 23 runs last night

We don’t fly home until tomorrow (Saturday), but yesterday (Thursday) was our last travel day. We had a good-bye dinner with Josh and Michelle last night because they are flying home tomorrow, while we have one more day to explore Missoula, the home of the University of Montana and the only city in Montana which supports Democratic candidates 2 to 1.

Our meal was at Plonk, a downtown restaurant. We were all happy with our meals.

But the day itself was complex. We started in Kalispell, and headed north about halfway to Glacier Park to visit Hungry Horse Dam, one of the tallest in the country. It turned out that the visitor’s center was closed, and we could only see the dam from the security entrance to the dam grounds.

No problem, though, because the ride was so nice.

We then stopped at a roadside store where you could by a $600 hat made of skunk fur, and did a drive-by by another roadside store, this one sporting two Confederate flags (in Montana).

The road from Hungry Horse to Missoula led back through Kalispell, but I decided to detour through Whitefish for no real reason.

Maybe everyone knows it but us, but Whitefish is nothing like the other Montana towns we have traveled through. It was like being transported to another planet, where the stores are too expensive, but the tourists look like long term members of the billionaire class. I felt like we were outclassed by far, and I don’t know that I had that feeling ever before.

We went into a western themed women’s clothing store where some dresses were more than $5000, and where they were having a designer trunk show (presumably for female billionaires under 30) and which had a fancy back room bar.

Other stores had $60 t-shirts, and $100 short sleeve shirts.

Whitefish also has a railroad station designed to mirror a Glacier Park lodge with a city history museum inside. The museum has a bust of an Indian, whose face looks like it could start talking to you at any minute.

We had lunch just outside Whitefish, and took off for Missoula, thinking we would get here by 4 or so. We drove by Flathead Lake, 30 miles long, and filled with roadside cherry orchards, entered the Flathead Indian Reservation and then saw a sign to a bison range, which looked like something we shouldn’t skip. We did not realize that visiting this extraordinary facility would take over an hour. We saw bison, both at a far distance and up closer.

And we saw this fellow, a wild pronghorn.

The bison range is run by the Reservation and is an ecological triumph. The views are also magnificent.

For our last day here? 40% chance of rain. No agenda. We will see.

Yesterday morning we drove from Kalispell to the western entrance of Glacier National Park, about 45 minutes away. We were expecting massive crowds and bumper to bumper traffic on the Going to the Sun Road, a 50 mile drive that runs between the east and west gateways to the park, climbing to over 6500 feet at the Logan Pass at the Continental Divide. But to our surprise, although there were large crowds everywhere, the road itself was never affected.

I published a group of landscape photos yesterday afternoon. In addition to enjoying the mountains and valleys, we stopped at one of the lodges, built in 1914.  Here is the lodge (outside and in), the lake behind the lodge, the deer who wandered into the lake, and one of the rehabbed 1936 shuttles that can guide you through the park.

When we reached the east exit from Glacier, we drove for about 30 minutes where it seemed we were still in a park. Beautiful mountains, lakes and rivers and no sign of human development.

When we finally left this wild landscape, we found ourselves in the town of Browning, on the western edge of the Blackfoot Indian Reservation. Driving into Browning was driving into the 1950s. The only restsurants were a Johnny Taco and a Subway (we chose Subway,). Everything was dilapilated, the small houses, the businesses and the streets. Wikipedia says that almost 50% of those who live on the reservation live below the poverty line.

But the reservation does have a museum. It isn’t theirs but is a federal museum.

And it contains contemporary art by tribe members, and an absolutely fascinating collection of Indians clothing, tools, weapons, and so forth, mainly from the 19th and early 20th century. For some reason, photography is not allowed. Because the collection was so interesting, I broke that rule with one photo.

All real, original costumes. And this is just a small part of this museum that has been in Browning since 1941.

The museum and, yes, the neighboring casino seem to have no effect on the rest of the town. Sad, sad, sad.

After our Subway lunch, we had dinner in Kalispell at Moose’s Tavern, which had been recommended by our chef in Spokane. It was jammed with customers, it has virtually no illumination, you order your pizza at a window and your drinks at the bar, you have to find a table and clean it off, there is sawdust on the floor, and boy is it noisy. And I didn’t like the pizza.

And you can get your hair cut next door.

That’s it. Tomorrow, off to Missoula. Our last stop..

Glacier National Park, in northwest Montana, on the Canadian border is such a special place. Here you go. No narrative. Only pictures from today.

Add some wild flowers

These are some of mine. Edie’s were, as usual, better. Maybe tomorrow.

I said yesterday that we found Spokane surprisingly weird. Also that the chef last night at our hotel’s Dona Margarita , a Spokane native, agreed that it was a bit weird, and said it was paranoid and had an inferiority complex.  Today, I would add one more thing. I think that Spokane is less than the sum of its parts.

Today, we visted its arboretum, its main park, and its downtown river park (home of a series of waterfalls on the Spokane River), each of which would be welcome in any city.  We visited Bing Crosby’s boyhood home, now on the campus of Gonzaga University. We looked at neighborhoods of attractive homes built more than 100 years ago, include some which are very elegant.

We saw the sculpture of energetic runners downtown.

We had breakfast at First Street Coffee, ultra modern, very large, right downtown, with maany ways to enjoy  coffee, and a limited selection of home baked pastries.

The shop had an interesti g sign posted on its door.

But the city is filled with people who appear to be homeless, and buildings poorly maintained. It just appears……well, weird.

Perhaps we should just laugh at it.

Leaving Spokane, the scenery is pleasant and before you know it, you are in Idaho, and a neighborhood that seems pretty uninteresting. But as you go north, there are large lakes, and pretty soon you are in the clearly prosperous resort city of Sandpoint.

We had a delicious lunch at Bixby’s (I had a bowl with pulled bbq chicken, corn, tomatoes, couscous, and something else), but passed a number of troubling signs, including

And after we headed east from Sandpoint, we saw

as well as

and more.

After we entered Montana, the scenery improved. Hills, mountains, lakes. And then we were at the Kalispell Hampton Inn, and had a delicious dinner at its neighbor, the very highly rated Himolayan Kitchen, where the four of us had tanduri chicken, samosa chat, vegetable korma, saag aloo, and garlic naan.

Tomorrow we go to Glacier National Park.

From Seattle, you start out at Puget Sound, pass through an exciting big city and its attractive suburbs, and before you can say Holland America, you are in the tall, craggy, rough edged Cascade Mountains where it always rains, and then all of a sudden you are in fairly barren hill country where it hardly ever rains, and then you are in beautiful farming country where it must rain just the right amount, and then you are in canyon country where you find Grand Coulee Dam where you don’t care if it  rains because you have dammed up more water than you need, and then you are back into farming country, and then you are in Spokane where (in the metro area) 500,000 people live and, as you look around downtown finding your hotel, you are not impressed.

I am telling you this because I was behind the wheel most of the day and did not take pictures of the scenery, like I was able to do before. If I had been able to take pictures of the farmland, they would look like this

And the Coulee Corridor, like this

Of course, I took a few. Like the roof of EZ’s in Wenatchee.

EZ’s, by the way, seems to be in trouble. A sign says you should write the mayor. But we are not sure why.

And then there is the Wilbur WA Visitor Center.

Maybe we should write that mayor, too. Unless Wilbur is the mayor.

We are staying at the Hotel Indigo downtown, which is a trendy redo of an old hotel. There are several like that in Spokane. Ours is railroad based and our room, like all (?) is railroad themed. Here is a view from the bed.

Spokane is, I believe, a bit weird. Our chef last night said it was just paranoid and had an inferiority complex.

This post is weird, too. Totally out of sequence. Like we did go to Grand Coulee Dam. It was a big part of the day. But it was hours ago, and I haven’t really mentioned it yet. Here it is.

And the guy who made it possible.

By the way, do you know they only give tours on the weekends? And that the Visitor Center is weird. And that it abuts a very large Indian reservation “where tribal law applies”. And that one of it closest neighbors is a casino?

The restaurant in our hotel gets poor reviews. We ate here anyway and our reviews are very good. Plus nice conversations with the chef and bartender. I had Oregon rockfish, served with anise infused rice and slices of blood oranges and radish slices and a little spinach, and I ended with shared huckleberry ice cream.

Lunch was at Dollie’s Diner in Wilbur. You order at the counter. Edie wanted her sandwich on whole wheat. The young guy at the counter told me the choices were white wheat and sourdough. I said “you don’t have whole wheat?” He said they had white wheat and sourdough

Michelle told me that she did not think he said “white wheat and sourdough”, but thought he said “white, wheat and sourdough”. I thought she may be right, so I said “is your wheat “whole wheat””, to which he said “I don’t know”. So I said that if the wheat was whole wheat, she would want that and if not, sourdough would be good. When it came, it was on white.

And, oh, yes, because this is Washington and not West Virginia, even in small towns, you see….

Last night, for the firstvl time, two things happened. First, I had two drinks at dinner. Second, I slept poorly. Ya think there might be a connection?

I feel so lucky to be on vacation and not have to report on either Lindsey Graham or the Nationals.

We spent last night in Wenatchee WA, and started the morning at the Pybus Public Market, a former steel processing plant near the Columbia River.

We had breakfast and visited various artisans and shops, including a nice woodworker of a certain age who made cheeseboards and serving trays, including some with three dimensional Eshel-like surfaces (sorry, no pictures), and a very nice and surprisingly large gourmet food market which, among other things, sold flavored balsamic vinegars and olive oils. This is just about half of their vinegars:

You could taste them and I was tempted to buy a couple of bottles, but the shipping costs were high.

We then walked a (very) short part of their 10 mile loop trail along the Columbia River  enjoying the weather, the art and the views.

And then we headed west through the same terrain we had crossed the day before and tried to go to Pinnacle Park until we saw what it involved. Can you see the Pinnacle hikers?

So we looked at more scenery.

And we drove on through beautiful fruit orchards (mile after mile) to Leavenworth, that touristy fake Bavarian village that seems to draw more tourists than it should.

I had a bratwurst at the München House, and delicious strudel at a bakery down the street.

Thrn it was another 15 miles or so to Lake Wenatchee, a beautiful, large lake with a park on one side, and many summer (?) houses on the other.

Tonight, fish and chips at the Railroad Ale House, and home to our home away from home.

And no, I don’t know why the lake was moved to the bottom of this post. WordPress sometimes has a mind of its own.

The boat pulled into Seattle before 7 this morning. We had a final breakfast in the main dining room and left the boat a little after 9, going through U.S. Customs, and then taking an Uber to Budget Rentals downtown where we picked up the Lincoln Navigator which we will have at an exhorbitant rate for a week as we drive to Montana.

The Navigator is Escalade size, which is not a problem, but its screens seem to be. Whatever you want to do, you need to do on the screen, and you probably need to take a 3 or 4 credit class in order too understand how to do the most basic things. But if you don’t mind any of that, you can push Drive, press the accelerator and go.

And we did, driving first to Bellvue to have brunch, our second meal of the day, with Edie’s first cousin once removed Cindy and her husband Danny Weiner. A nice brunch, conversation about family and Isrsel, and we were off again. Here we were:

Then, all of us but Hannah left heading east. Hannah stayed at Cindy’s until the rest of her family came back from camping in Olympic National Park.

We drove north through some fascinating Seattle suburbs to US 2, where we headed east through the Cascades on a beautiful road. I was driving, so I could take no pictures, but the mountains are tall and ragged, some are covered with trees and some not, and there are lakes and remarkably clear rivers.

We stopped in an interesting older town at the west end of our trip and had our third meal of the day, a late lunch at the Tijuana Restaurant, a highly rated, and small, Mexican restaurant run by the same couple for 32 years. If you are ever in Monroe, try to eat there.

After we drove through Stevens Pass, where the rivers started flowing east, not west, we came a large and very touristy Bavarian village surprisingly called Leavenworth, and passed a state park called Pinnacle, both of which we plan to visit tomorrow. And then we got to Wenatchee, where we will stay two nights.

In Wenatchee, we had our fourth meal, at McGlinns Pub. I had a delicious lamb burger with feta, and a glass of Oregon stout, brand name Cavaticus. I looked up the name, thinking it might be Indian, and discovered it was, in fact, not. Cavaticus is Charlotte’s last name in E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web. Who knew? Not the waitress.

Wenatchee is east of the Cascades, and its hills are basically treeless, and more like buttes. Maybe they are buttes. I don’t know.

Wanatchee is on the Columbia River, and the opposite side of the river is East Wanatchee, which contains some beautiful neighborhoods, set high on the buttes. Hard to get good pictures, but the houses climb in bands, and have yards or decks with beautiful views. Like this (from about half way up):

We are now back at the hotel.

Oh! One more thing. I didn’t mention another small town we passed, Sultan. They were having the Sultan Shindig, with vendor tents on closed city streets. I bought a button:

The waitress at McGlinn’s liked it.

Holland America’s Eurodam from Seattle to Juneau and back with four intermediate stops. Large ship with 2100 passengers and 850 crew members.

1. The logistics of taking a boat this size on a one week trip are amazingly complex (see my immediately preceding post) and appear to have been carried out without a hiccup.
2. Traveling with 2000 strangers for a week is weird.
3. Only 15% were over 75, but I was surprised at how many came with walkers or wheelchairs and looked to be ill or fragile.
4. The food was much better than I thought it would be was both good news and bad, in that it was impossible not to eat much too much.
5. Especially on a cold weather cruise, exercise is hard to come by.
6. The housekeeping and wait staff are largely Indonesian. They are excellent, but they say good morning and thank you and smile too much and it gets annoying.
7. There are a lot of activities, but few I had any interest in.
8. Several private companies run on board promotions that I found annoying.
9. The bed was very comfortable, as were the bathroom and shower facilities. The staterooms were fine.
10. Everything was remarkably clean.
11. 50% of the crowd on this cruise were on an Evangelical trip with bible studies, etc. This made the trip, I assume, quieter than usual.
12. Perhaps because of the size of the ship, getting from place to place can be very confusing.
13. The prices in the ship store are surptisingly reasonable.

I probably have more thoughts that will come to mind. It was a good trip and an interesting experience. Do I like cruising? That may be the question, but I don’t have an answer. If you want to see coastal Alaska, you really need to go by boat. But this is a very big boat. I don’t know how it compares with a smaller boat where you may get to know more fellow travelers, or a warm weather cruise, or a river cruise. I have no better idea how I would like those than before I got on the Eurodam. But I may one day find out.

As I write, it is 4:30 p.m. on Friday. We are moving south, heading for a brief stop several hours from now at Victoria, on Vancouver Island, before a final stop in Seattle at 7 a.m. and a scheduled 9 a.m. disembarkation. We then will head to downtown Seattle where our confirmed rental car will hopefully be waiting, and we will drive to our cousin Cindy’s house in Bellevue, where we will enjoy lunch and meet up with Hannah’s husband Andrew and son Izzy, who have been visiting Andrew’s cousins and camping in Olympia National Park. More about all of that tomorrow.

We have been on the ship all day, starting with their last day Alaskan brunch instead of breakfast at 9. Even though it was early, I opted for the Alaska cod benny with creamed cabbage, Yukon potatoes, and an egg, along with some fresh berries. Now, cod benny is supposed to be a variation on eggs benedict (I looked that up), but this really wasn’t. The cabbage was delicious, as was the egg, and I  guess the fish was as well, but it was just too early for a big piece of baked cod. My sushi lunch was lighter and simpler, and it was topped off at the cake buffet that only happens once per cruise.

I had a piece of red velvet cake and didn’t finish it, but some people came away with three or four pieces.

This morning we went to a 45 minute program on how a ship like this operates, from its construction in Italy, near Venice, onward. I found  extraordinarily interesting how to run a ship with over 3000 passengers and crew members on board. How its many diesel engines generate power. How the ship is propelled and controlled, both from the engine room and the control room, with its many screens, alarms (5000 alarms), gauges, buttons and other devices. How the ship is provisioned with food and drink, how they rarely run out of anything and use up 90% or more of what comes aboard. How they vary how much and what type of food and drink comes on ship dependent on the characteristics of the passenger load. How the food is prepared by the ship’s 140 chefs. How all baked goods are baked on the ship at night (using one ton of flour each day) so that it is ready to be sent to the various restaurants by 5 a.m. How 180  tons of food is cooked on a one week trip, and how the waste is handled. How the water saving toilets work and what happens to the urine and feces. How the ship desalinates all the water it uses from the sea for all purposes and how it returns water to the sea. How the laundry operates, and the tailor shop. How the internet works on board the ship.

They covered a lot, but not  security. They did not talk about how they handle fires, or criminal activity. They also did not discuss medical facilities or personel, or if they have an on board morgue, which I assume they do. They didn’t talk about the shops, the promotions, the entertainment and athletic facilities, the children’s programs, or really even how the remarkable housekeeping works.

But it is all quite mindboggling when you think about it.

There are various promotions on board and today Michelle and I went to the art auction, presented by a Southfield MI gallery and its fast talking spokesman. We did not trust anything about it.

Edie and I then instead went to see the 2027 film Murder on the Orient Express, which was shown in one of the lounges. Watching that film was the worst experience of the trip for me by far. I thought we were going to watch the 1974 Albert Finney version, which I remember liking.

Tonight, our final dinner.

I am posting this earlier than usual because I am planning on a different post early in the morning with general thoughts about this, our first cruise.

Ketchikan, located 230 miles south of Juneau and 700 miles north of Seattle, is very cute. Very, very cute. Where Juneau has little personality, and Sitka is an attractive small town, Ketchikan is cute. Probably cuter than my few pictures make it appear.

It is not the capital of the state, it does not have a 10,000 year Tlinget or 200+ year Russian history. It is a town built in the early 20th century to process the salmon that run up the river through town (there were 13 canneries), and its second biggest industry a century ago seems to have been the thirty prostitution houses built to support the single men who came to work in the canneries.

Today, tourism is the biggest industry and the buildings which used to serve as brothels now serve as gift shops and restaurants. The population is about the same as Sitka’s but it has a different vibe.

A couple of stories.

1. There is a cafe called the New York Cafe, which was (maybe still is) owned by a Japenese-American family. At one time, Ketchikan was residentially segregated (Whites on one side, Native Americans on the other), and the Japanese-Americans were forced to live with their indigenous neighbors. I think that was changed and they were allowed to live elsewhere. Until World War II came, and they were moved to an internment camp.

2. We talked with a young woman who works at (owns?) an upscale shop called Ketchikan Dry Goods. She has lived here all of her 36 years and we were talking about life in the city (she rates it A+++), and then we got to her 14 year old son, and then to her 32 year old brother who came back from 10 years in the military with pretty severe PTSD, and then — whoa! — to her parents….both of whom died in a house fire only two months ago. Whoa!

Digression. Hannah broke away from the rest of us this morning to have breakfast with a graduate school friend who lives here and teaches in the middle school. She got a full island tour. End of digression.

Digression #2. Edie and Michelle met a bear while walking up a street right in the middle of town.

He was friendly and agreed to pose for the picture without asking for anything in return.

Other Ketchikan tidbits. Senator Lisa Murkowski’s home town. And the place where Ben Loman had an appointment in Death of a Salesman.

The food on the ship has been excellent (to my surprise) and last night we went to the Tamarind, the Asian specialty restaurant, and splurged on a premium dinner. I started with a Thai lemongrass soup with wontons, and then had two Mongolian lamb chops, bok choy, Thai fried rice, and Asian eggplant. Dessert was a trio of three sorbets – lychee, lemon-basil, and yuzu.

At 9:30 was the “Chocolate Surprise”. About 30 Indonesian servers walked through Deck 3 carrying trays of chocolate squares, white chocolate squares, chocolate cupcakes, chocolate macarons, and (the best of them all) chocolate covered cheerios.

Today (Friday) will be our last full day at sea. Saturday morning we dockk back in Seattle and then our week on land begins.

We pulled into Sitka at about 9 and were told that we would spend the rest of our lives there if we weren’t on the boat by 3:30. Sitka, which has fewer than 9000 year round residents is the largest city in the United States by area. It is also one of the oldest American cities, with evidence of Tlingit habitation 10,000 years ago. Sitka was the largest city when Russia claimed Alaska, and served as the first American capital of the Alaska Territory until the capital was moved to Juneau.

Sitka is located on Baranof island, there are only 14 miles of road, the weather is milder than anywhere else in the state. Baranof has about 10,000 humans and 3000 bears.

A catastophic fire ravaged much of downtown Sitka about 50 years ago. The Russian Orthodox Cathedral, originally built in the 1840s by Finnish workmen, has been fully restored.

Services are held 5 days a week. They last more than two hours. Unless you are elderly or disabled, you stand up the entire time.

Little is left of Russian Sitka. Two other buildings. One, the Russian Bishop’s House (which you can tour, but we didn’t) and the other, a downtown building where you can see some original 18th century logs, but the rest was rebuilt in the 19th century.

In addition, we visited the Fortress of the Bear, several miles from downtown, a bear rescue operation, basically helping cubs who have lost their mothers and would be helpless alone in the wild. The bears, which are trained to respond to the keepers, are well fed and cared for, it appears. They clearly do not mind humans.

The bears are in an enclosed area surrounded by forest and the forest is home to several bald eagles.

We also went to the historical museum, dedicated to Tlingit life. I could see some of the berry varieties I had been hearing about. And totems.

Then back to the ship where, it being Holland America, it was Orange Night.

But I will do it!

We spent the first part of today at Glacier Bay National Park in the boat. A naturalist and a park ranger spoke. I didn’t listen. I just took pictures.

Then, we went to Icy Strait Point. A guide spoke. I didn’t listen. I just took pictures.

We were told we were here on a very good, and somewhat rare, weather day. We were also told that everything in Alaska was not peaches and cream.

Bears and poisonous plants. It’s nature’s way of keeping down its human population.

I better start listening.

I have to say that the day promised to be a disaster. We were to pull into Juneau a little after noon and be able to disembark by 12:30. We did not have to be back on the boat until 9:30. Nine hours to see the town. What could be so bad?

What could be so bad? The weather. The forecast was for a high of 45 and for 100% rain. There was also a wind alert, talking of gusts up to 45 mph.

After a leisurely breakfast, we went to the top deck (the Crows Nest) to watch our entry into the city with windows in three directions, and to listen to the boat’s naturalist talk about what we were seeing. The weather outside seemed as expected. The views were beautiful, but not as they would have been on a nicer day. A few pictures tell the story.

But by some miracle, when we left the boat, the rain had pretty much stopped and remained only a drizzle the rest of the day. The high winds never materialized.

Juneau, the state capital, has a population of about 30,000. It is isolated in that there is no access by land (the only “highway” peters out 7 miles north of town and about 45 miles south), only by air (there is an airport served by Air Alaska and Delta)), or you can come by single engine sea planes), or water. There were five large tour boats moored in town today, which is pretty amazing when you think about it. That may add 10,000, or 33% to the population of the city. But Juneau is used to this and the closest blocks to the ship were loaded with souvenir and jewelry shops.

Juneau is in a valley, cut by water and surrounded by mountains.  There are a few residences, not fancy, behind the tourist shops. I liked the color contrasts at one address and was flabbergasted at the steps at another (I started counting the steps, got to 80, and lost count).

We had scheduled an excursion to see the Glacier Botanical Gardens, a privately owned tract of land that rises 600 feet and includes a very small part of the Tongass National Forest (the entire forest is the size of West Virginia).

(I could have taken many more pictures, but I didn’t. And I could tell you the unusual story of the garden, and of its upside down trees – see above –  but I won’t). We  were then scheduled to visit a salmon hatchery, but Colleen (our guide and bus driver) mixed up the order of our visits, and by the time we finished the garden, the hatchery was closed for the day. The hatchery, as I understand it, is a place where salmon are conceived through some form of artificial, or human engineered, insemination, and then freed into the salt water where they live the life of Riley for two to five years, but then return to their place of birth, as salmon do, where they become dinner.

Filled with disappointment, we (all 18 of us), under Colleen’s confused guidance, decided to substitute the Mendenhall Glacier, twelve miles south of Juneau. We would get there at 5:30, 30 minutes before the visitor center closed, and have an opportunity to glimpse the glacier itself, which we were told stayed at the same place 24/7. (In fact, this not entirely true. Since John Muir visited the glacier in 1880 or so, the Mendenhall has receded 6 miles, or so they say.)

Digression. Juneau and Mendenhall and a lot of other place names up here were the names of late 19th century men. It reminds me of something that I heard years ago in South Dakota where, at about the same time, a visiting businessman from New York named Rushmore pointed and said, “what’s the name of that mountain?” His host responded, “Why, that’s Mt. Rushmore! Hahaha.” End of digression.

The Mendenhall is one of many glaciers surrounding Juneau, all of which border Canada, and is the only one accessible by road. Here are a few photos from the entrance to the area. The surroundings are beautiful.

And here is Thomas Mendenhall himself, a meteorologist who helped set the Canada-Alaska border. Look up his bio. Very impressive.

We were back at the boat for dinner. I ordered lingcod. No, I never heard of it, either. It’s a fish. White. Flaky. But not for me. But my fried chicken, cole slaw, and zucchini lunch was just right.

Next on the agenda? Glacier Bay National Park from the water and Icy Strait from the land. Stay tuned.

July 5, 2026 was spent on board the ship moving north. No stops. Because our first stop is Juneau, about 900 miles north of Seattle, the sailing time is about 47 hours, certainly the longest time I have ever been on a ship.

I learned two things today (without really trying). First, I had assumed that when I get to Juneau, I will be further north than ever before. But, no! Both Helsinki and St. Petersburg lie north of Juneau.

I also assumed, since the Alaska coast is pretty much due north of Seattle, that the Alaska coast would be on Pacific Daylight Time. But, again, no. Alaska (most of it) is on Alaska Daylight Time, one hour behind PDT, four hours behind Eastern.

Today was chilly and cloudy, but there was no rain. The temperature was in the mid-50s, but there was a wickedly cold wind, which made outside activities difficult. If you walk three times around the periphery of the ship, you have walked a mile, which seemed like the thing to do, until you

did it. After one go-round, I called it quits. There were a few intrepid walkers, but just a few.

The decks were pretty empty. And probably no one else at 83 did even the one lap that I did. Which reminds me. I heard some demographic facts about our cruise, and one surprised me. I thought that the majority of those on board were elderly. But it turns out that only about one in 7 is 75 or older.

Holland America is a Dutch company, and Indonesia was formerly the Dutch East Indies, so it isn’t surprising, perhaps, that many crew members are Indonesian. In fact, 50% of the crew, I was told, come from Indonesia. That would be about 450 Indonesian crew members on board. The other 450 or so crew members come from 40 different countries.

So the day was quiet, including reading much of Evelyn Waugh’s travel writing from the early 1930s, watching The Da Vinci Code on our room TV, and eating three meals.

The executive chef is not from Indonesia, but from India. I did not catch his name, but he was introduced at the Captain’s Toast tonight, and got a big round of deserved applause.

The food has been very good. Tonight, I had a salad, pan fried sole with potatoes au gratin, spinach, carrots and asparagus, with strawberries Romanoff for dessert. My breakfast this morning was scrambled eggs, baked beans and Indian potatoes. Lunch, vegetarian tacos.

About half of the passengers are part of an Evangelical group, but I have seen no MAGA hats yet. But I wonder if this is a Trump crowd. It certainly does not contain anyone who, on first glance, looks like they would be a great friend. There are many younger people, although certainly not a wild crowd. The Evangelicals are wearing name tags, and the teenage daughter of one couple seems to have a great name, Symphony Knight. Another seems not have learned how to follow instructions for dying your hair green.

At the Captain’s Toast, they were giving out champagne.

The Toast preceded a show by illusionist James Cielen, who, talented as he is, left me bored.

Monday morning, we head to Juneau. Rain, rain, rain. Wind, wind, wind. Cold, cold, cold. Where is baked Alaska when you need it?

I have never written a blog post on a boat before, but here we are on the Eurodam, a Holland American boat with about 1000 staterooms, 2000 passengers and 1000 members of the crew. We left Seattle promptly at 2:30 on Saturday afternoon and our first stop will be Juneau on Monday at noon. It will be 47 strait hours at sea.

This is the Eurodam and, as I hope seems obvious, I did not take this picture.

But I did take others, such as the one I posted earlier on Facebook as we left Seattle.

I also took this one from the boat as we started our journey. It’s Mt. Ranier, as those of you who have visited Seattle know.

Leaving Seattle, we go north and then turn west with the Olympic peninsula on our left and Vancouver Island to the right. As we sail through the night, we will be parallel to that island all night.

We haven’t seen many others on the water. I have only seen a few small sailboats like this one.

And I did get out on our balcony to catch the sunset.

It was a beautiful day today. Our other days at sea look like we will be cloudy and rainy.

But not yet. This morning looks okay.

Or does it? Looked better in real life than in the photo.

We are on board, moving at 25 mph or so all day and tonight and get into Juneau noon tomorrow.

I think being on this boat is like living in an isolated retirement community. You have a small, but comfortable, apartment. When you go out, you are surrounded by people you don’t know and see no reason to know. You don’t drive, so you can’t leave even if you want to. They give you food when you are hungry. The staff is nice. And if you get bored? There is always bingo.

So far, so good.

We flew to Seattle sitting on the south side of the plane as we headed west, and we came into the area with Mt. Ranier to the north of us, so we did not see it. But, when we got to Pike Market, at least we saw more Ranier cherries for sale than anywhere else on earth. Good Ranier cherries are one of the best tasting foods in the world, as everyone knows.

We didn’t buy anything at Pike Market, although we spent time walking around and looking at much of it. The top level is basically the level with foods, flowers and crowds, while the lower levels have fewer people and fascinating specialty shops.

Not to knock the top floor. The foods all look delicious and the flowers are beautiful.

Speaking of flowers, we just had supper at an outdoor beer garden, Citizen Collective, very comfortable in good weather, and with surprisingly good food (not fancy, but good). On one side, the garden is bordered by a block long passion fruit vine, whose flowers are unique and (to use that word again) very beautiful. Why don’t we cultivate passion fruit in D.C.?

As trips to the West Coast tend to be, the first day of this one was very difficult on food normalcy. I started off the day with an inedible apple danish at Dulles, which I trashed after 2 bites, and a cup of coffee, which for some reason I didn’t finish. To eat on the 5 hour plane ride, I bought a Greek salad with chicken from Cava. I ate about half of it (if that) at about 12:30 EDT, and threw the rest out. We stopped at Mr. D’s at Pike Market at about 2 p.m. PDT  and I got a piece of spanokopita and a strawberry lemonade, which I pretty much ate and drank, and I bought a red bean cookie at a Chinese bakery, but could only manage one bite. At the end of the afternoon, we stopped at The Crumpet House and I bought a lemon curd crumpet, which I didn’t like or eat and a cup of High Mountain Green Tea, which not surprisingly was delicious. Why was I not surprised? This was hanging on the wall:

So…a strange food day. One where I never had a full meal and never really liked what I had, until I got to Citizen for a light dinner. Boy, do they know how to make a BLT.

Seattle looks like an important place

and is a very busy place, filled with tourists from Toronto here for a Blue Jay – Mariners series, and from all over for the 4th of July and the USA-Belgium World Cup game Monday.

But for us, it’s a stopover. Tomorrow, at 11:30 a.m., we leave for Pier 91 and Alaska.

And oh, yes, basically a full day in Seattle and no coffee.

As you read this, we are either on a plane to Seattle, at Dulles Airport waiting to board the plane, or on our way to Dulles in our 6:50 a.m. Uber. After a night in Seattle, we (and two daughters, one son-in-law and our son-in-law’s mother) will board a Holland America ship and head north to Alaska. It hit 102 in Washington today, and Juneau’s high was 48. Quite a difference.

I had to go to the bank yesterday, and the young, earnest and friendly bank employee asked me, “So what do you plan to do this weekend to get out of the heat”. You can imagine his reaction when I casually said, “Actually, I am going to Alaska”. He then asked me what I liked better, the hot or the cold. I was honest with him, telling him that when it’s hot, I love the cold, and when it’s cold, I wish it were hot.

After our week in Alaska, we are planning another week, driving through the upper northwest, where the temperatures will probably be in the 80s. Our suitcases are filled with t-shirts, shorts, and winter coats.

We board the ship Saturday mid-day, and we don’t have any idea (since it is the 4th of July) whether or not we are going to treated to any celebratory events, on board, or visibly on shore. The sun does not set in Seattle until after 9 p.m. and my guess is the ship will be at sea before that. So we will see what we will see.

I do like fireworks, although I generally don’t go out of my way to see them, as I often did when younger. We used to go down to the Mall every year, with the kids after we had kids, for the concert on the Capitol lawn and then the fireworks. It was a great tradition. Crowds with kids and great-grandparents, everyone in a good mood, good music and and a beautiful display to end the evening with the 1812 Overture and The Stars and Stripes Forever.

But along with destroying so much else in federal Washington, the president is also destroying the traditions that Washingtonians followed for many decades on the 4th of July. For one thing, the 4th of July concert is being held on the 3rd of July, devoid of fireworks. For another, even though it is being held on the 3rd, it is still being called a Capitol Fourth, and my guess is that those who watch it on PBS as it is shown again and again will not realize that on July 4, the west lawn of the Capitol was silent. Thirdly, if you go to the concert, you will not see any fireworks, but if you watch it on TV, you will see fireworks, but the fireworks won’t be from their usual place just off the National Mall, but will be telecast live from Mt. Vernon. You can’t see fireworks at Mt. Vernon from the Capitol; they are over 35 miles apart.

There will of course be fireworks Saturday night on the Mall, but instead of starting at about 9 p.m. as is usually the case, they will be starting at 10:45 or 11 p.m. and last not for 20 minutes or so, but for about 40. And of course, the National Symphony will not be playing before the fireworks display, since they will have played the night before, but those who come to see the fireworks will have the oportunity to sit through a speech by President Trump, which promises to be 45 minutes (or longer). So, kids, when your parents tell you they won’t bring to down to the mall to see fireworks this year, I hope you will understand why.

Trump keeps talking about how beautiful he has made Washington DC, and it should be beautiful on the 250th birthday of the country, but remember, we have the White House grounds torn apart by the now possibly halted for the time being construction of the Ballroom, the south lawn destroyed by the savage UFC fighting exhibition, the ellipse destroyed by the crowds who came to the fight, the Kennedy Center looking semi-abandoned and in financial distress, the Reflecting Pool is destroyed and off-limits to the public, at least one of DC’s public golf courses destroyed, Dupont Circle and certain other parks are secured by metal fencing, the mall placed out of bounds by the failing Trump Freedom Fair, and streets near and far closed for the festivities. Yes, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

As we cruise north from Seattle, we soon leave the country and enter the territorial boundaries of Canada, which never celebrates on the 4th of July, and this year certainly won’t, and it will be after July 4 by the time we are back into United States waters and Alaska. None of this bothers me. I am not celebrating the 250th. I see no reason to. If the Dems gain control of Congress next January, some celebrating may be in order. If they take control of the presidency in January 2029, the celebrations will be gargantuan.

We are in countdown phase here, 24 hours from when we fly to Seattle to catch the Holland-America Eurodam to cruise to Alaska. If you keep your eyes on this blog, I am sure you will be able to see what we are doing as we travel. It will be first time in Alaska, and first  time on a cruise, not only for the blog, but for us.

Tonight has been quiet. We watched a few hours of MS NOW, mainly focused on Trump’s corruption, and Milot Kiros, the Democratic Socialist winner of a Congressional primary race in Denver. I then turned on the World Cup match between the U.S. and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and saw the score was tied 0-0 45 minutes into the game. As I have said before, soccer does not excite me, and when the U.S. scored its first goal, I said to myself, ” Who cares?” I realized that I didn’t care if we won or we lost. That’s patriotism for you.

So I turned back to going through my things, as I have been doing much of this week. Tonight was “paper money” night. I have a shoe box containing old paper money from 33 countries, each country’s money being in a separate envelope. This is separate from a sizeable wad I found elsewhere that is comprised of money which I have found left in pockets after international travel.

I can’t tell you where I got most of this currency or when, and the value of most (not all) of it is modest. But it is interesting just to look at it.

For example, we worry when inflation exceeds 2%. In post-World War 1 Germany’s Weimar Republic, inflation hit numbers unimaginable. In 1918, notes like this 2 Mark bill were circulating.

By 1923, bills like this were being printed.

You know how many Marks are in a Milliarde? 1,000,000,000. One billion. You read that right.

Closer to home, here is an 1898 U.S. dollar bill, redeemable in silver. It is about 50% larger than American paper money today.

We Americans don’t have billion dollar bills yet, right? But wait. . maybe we can actually beat those Germans. Yes, there we have it. One TRILLION dollars. Honest Abe, can I spend it in one place?

The oldest paper money I have is French, dating from the years of the French Revolution, the late 18th century. And yes, these are authentic.

My favorites include currency from czarist Russia (I have 10 examples) and the early days of the Soviet Union.

I do have some from further flung places like Japan

And Cambodia

But I can tell you are getting bored.

So I will end as I began, but not quite. Here is a piece of paper money printed by the Germans, but not for the Germans.

When the Germans set up their model prison camp for the benefit of the cameras accompanying the Red Cross, for one day paper money circulated at Theriesenstadt (Terezin). I will show you an example of this fake money, which I bought at an antique store in Prague.

Of course, things don’t turn out exactly as planned. Of all the money that I have in this shoe box, it is the fake money which today has the most value.