Cruise 2013 Part Two

Once on board, typical of these cruises, we were  thrust into a virtual melting pot of humans yearning for the drink of the day. From bib overall wearing farm folk (no...seriously) to the brightly attired Hindus trailing what seemed like hoards of unrestrained little Hindus (some wearing  leashes...really) or packs of giggling adolescent young women clutching their cellphones to instantly respond to text messages from the girl right next to them.

Most cruisers would agree that Carnival is kind of the "poor mans" cruise line. Don't get me wrong, they have a pretty good all around cruise experience but, probably because of their competitive pricing, kind of attract a certain segment of the cruising public. More beer drinking than wine drinking going on if you know what I mean.

On this particular cruise, there seemed to be a lot of groups of "plus size" women aboard sans men. There's something a little unnerving about watching very overweight 40 somethings dancing on the Lido Deck in two piece bathing suits my daughter might look cute in, with big old rolls testing out Newton’s "action-reaction" principle. Yeah, I know I'm going to be getting some cards and emails but I just don't know if I should admire them for their courage or laugh at their lack of fashion sense.

Of course, game day came on the first sea-day and once everyone was in place to watch the Jumbo-tron on the Lido Deck....... it rained. A cloud burst washed over the ship as we headed south to our first stop in Progreso, Mexico.  Just as quickly as it began it was over and the chicken wings and beer flowed throughout the rest of the night (and ensuing blackout) only to see the 49'ers make an amazing come-back and throw it all away in the final moments of the game.

The rest of the time, the Jumbo-tron is used as a subliminal device to transmit the hypnotic Carnival message to go downstairs and order up another cruise. The viewing area is a large bowl of seating all pointed at the screen. Except for the occasional Miami NBC affiliate television programs and movies, there is a continuous loop showing Carnival ships gliding through placid Caribbean waters silhouetted against beautiful sunsets and equally beautiful, scantily clad people prancing around majestic white sand beaches having the time of their lives. You can see the post-hypnotic suggestion taking hold as one after another make their way below to the Carnival kiosk to sign on the dotted line.

First stop is the port of Progreso. It's a neat place but, interestingly, more a major fishing town and import/export center than cruise line tourist trap. We seemed to be the exception than the rule for the towns folk who primarily service the fishing industry and serve as a vacation destination for the locals from the three states of  Yucatán, Campeche, and Quintana Roo. There isn't even a shopping tour of Progreso. Progreso is one of the gateways to the Mayan Temple of Chichen Itza.    Mérida is the capitol of Yucatán, among the 12th of the most populous Mexican metropolitan areas and has the bulk of the shopping and histrionics.

Of course, personally Mayan Templed out from other cruises, we opted to do something physical because that's how we roll.....well, yeah maybe not. We decided to try something new. Last time it was Segways, this year it is kayaking. Yes, Dianna and I power stroking our way through a nature preserve wetland in a place called Laguna Rosada.

It all sounded good on paper but once off the ship, things took (as is typical of our vacations) an odd turn. Herded onto our classic third-world non-air conditioned bus with our non-English speaking bus driver Gilberto and our very perky guide Graciela.

Graciela is typical of the many tour guides we have come across. Very knowledgeable and energetic but having to make do with a non-event venue and trying really hard to make it fun (sorry, no pictures for fear our phones and the Rocks in my Sandals camera might get wet...as it turned out both a wise and prophetic precaution). The "wetland" was little more than a tideland that, as it turns out, runs out of water during low tide. Guess when we arrived.

Joined by safety man Rueben, we were given a quick safety brief, novice paddling instructions and the mandatory life vests which turned out to be completely unnecessary. Once loaded and launched off into the unforgiving wind and tide, we almost immediately beached on a sand bar. Try as we might, Dianna and I could not get off that sucker only digging the equivalent of a Panama Canal in the silt below us. Guide Graciela happily came by to inform us there may be times one of us (well, me) would  have to exit the craft to pull on the convenient handle at the bow and, like Hugh Jackman in the opening scene of Les Miserables, pull the kayak to deeper waters (she actually said to me with a well practiced twinkle in her eye in her clipped Latin accent, "Remember..we're on an adventure, no?"), get in without tossing your partner into the brine (would not have heard the end of that one) and continue the tour while Rueben and Graciela paddled happily about in their single passenger kayaks. A well-disciplined squadron of naval ships we were not. The untrained eye might not even conclude we were together. Hey..we were all over the place and a hazard to navigation if there had been anybody else out there.

As Graciela and Rueben herded us around the preserve in between squishing slimy silt between my toes and me pulling us off the latest sand bar (seriously..... as we sloughed around, we passed fisherman standing in the middle of these "ponds" in ankle-deep water), we got to see exotic sea birds and a couple of flying fish hurtling about. One in particular was the Cormorant which the Chinese capture and train to catch fish. The fisherman launch the birds from their boats and once caught, the birds disgorge them into their owners hands and go back for more. The birds are restrained from swallowing their catch by a band around their necks but they dutifully retrieve fish after fish until called off.

NOT us

A word about two-person kayaking. I am now convinced it is a "sport" secretly designed by the Devil himself (or herself.....hey, I have an open mind) to test or undermine what seem to be solid married and committed couples, to the brink of divorce and break up. We almost immediately ran into troubled waters when we couldn't get our (well....my) paddling coordinated. Things got out of hand quickly with Dianna finally deciding to stop paddling altogether as we rolled left and right seemingly incapable of holding a straight course leaving me to my own devices. I thought this might make a great "reality" show on Fox.

But we had something the others didn't have (we were the oldest couple there). Bringing forth those couples communication 101 skills we had been so diligently honing all of our 38 years of dating. That's right, I did exactly whatever Dianna told me to do and we successfully navigated our way around and got back to the starting point without a hitch. Well, until I debarked to help Dianna out of the front seat.

See.... for all the lack of water everywhere else in the park, in my haste, I found the only spot at the landing that had a huge drop-off much deeper than I anticipated and I went in right up to my sunglasses. Of course I was the only one cavalier enough not to allow Rueben to retrieve my loved one. So I had the honor of being the only one dripping wet for the trip back to the port.  Oh yeah......you guessed it, I didn't listen to Dianna in bringing that all important change of clothes suggested by the tour description in the pamphlet either. After having huffed and puffed through two hours of kayaking (or pulling off sand bars) we were ready to depart for the ship but not before having two shots of Tequila first to toast our accomplishment.

Re-boarding our venerable bus (I was looking for the DOT number...couldn't find it), Gilberto began the long and arduous ride back to the port and ship. Turns out the harbor (like the tidelands), is very shallow so they had to dredge out the shipping lane at the deepest point but several miles from the nearest strip of land. So the Mexican government (I'm sure involving some misguided stimulus program) decided to build this really long causeway to the pier. This thing goes on for several miles. And the speed limit is 25 miles per hour so if you have say....a full bladder from slamming down water and Tequila, you can imagine my relief (literally) when we got back to the tourist trap entrance to the pier.  Yeah....I didn't listen to Dianna (or Tonia's voice in my head for that matter) telling me to go at the conveniently located bathroom at the kayak landing.

As some of you may know, cruise lines are institutions ruled by the clock. They have very specific rules about being on-time to insure they get from place-to-place in the requisite time alloted. So there is always a warning from the cruise staff that, if you're not on board by the last sound of the horn, you will be rewarded by the best photo-op, a shot of the ship pulling away from the dock. It's up to you to make other arrangements to meet the ship at it's next stop.

Hmmmm, "Keep off Propellers" has there been
a rash of people standing on the ship's propellers?

So it was, that at the appointed hour of 4 p.m. and several pulls of the ship's horn, we still hadn't slacked the lines for departure. Minutes ticked by and we could easily see harbor and ship staff huddled together at the gangway gesturing at the causeway and at each other and a lot of radio chatter from the handheld radios everyone had.

Finally, the subject of all the ruckus, a lone off-white Mexican cab, came careening up onto the pier and slid to a stop at the bottom of the gangway. The back door was flung open and a young couple, with beach and shopping bags in hand, stepped out onto the quay to the jeering and applause of all the passengers leaning over the port rails.

Not to be outdone, the young woman, like a rock star, stepped out of the car, did her best Miley Cyrus two-handed wave back at the crowd. Then, almost on cue, tripped on her flip flop mounting the gangway as they returned to the safety of the ship. Lucky Bastards, I say.

Stay tuned for Part 3....

Mexico Cruise 2013 Part 1

On to Galveston for another cruise to Mexico to reflect on life,  our relationship and drink whatever copious amounts of alcohol that our host Carnival can provide.

Note to reader: Normally, being the type A that I am (yeah...right) I would have immediately put pen to paper to enlighten and hopefully entertain you about our recent cruise. But, when we got home, we learned that the Carnival Triumph follow-on cruise was capturing the world's attention as it floated, powerless, off the coast of its first stop (and ours) Progresso, Mexico. So I held off writing this until the ordeal concluded, thankfully successfully, in the port of Mobile, Alabama. Interestingly, a cruise terminal Carnival had once used extensively and abandoned in an earlier downsizing by the company in October 2011.

After five days at sea first at the mercy of the currents and wind then towed several hundred miles back to Mobile and safety. I'm sure you'll see news stories to describe the experiences of the guests as well as the crew and there will, no doubt, be a plethora of investigations to determine the cause and effects of the on-board fire that struck the great ship impotent. I can only imagine the stories the couple who got married on-board will be telling around campfires and anniversaries to come.

Driving south from Dallas or any major metropolitan area of Texas takes you from bustling metropolis to instant rural backwater. It's not a gradual passing. One minute you're amongst tall buildings bristling with cell towers and the next it's pastures, cows and horses standing at the fences watching the cars and trucks whizzing by.

You drive about five hours and the cows and horses become fewer and farther between then the suburbs of Houston approach and you're back to urban sprawl. A little farther south you pass the Johnson Space Center then skirt the Texas City oil refinery complex where 40% of all the gasoline  in America gets produced, hit the causeway and cross over to the sleepy island of Galveston.

The trip to Galveston was also our chance to see how they've recovered since hurricane Ike, the big storm of 2008. The last time we were there, for a cruise to the western Caribbean, was three months before that terrible storm. The change was stunning. The whole seawall district has been remade. Where once torn and twisted piers stood, are new pilings holding up a new entertainment venue called Pleasure Pier (I know, it had a different connotation when I first heard of the place). Kind of looks like the Island of Lost Boys in Pinocchio.

Of course being neither sports fanatics or crazy party-goers with a penchant for wearing brightly colored beads or flashing people (....well, I can't speak for Dianna), we unknowingly timed it just right (sarcasm just doesn't come across in print) that it was both Mardi Gras and Superbowl weekend in Galveston. Yes....we need to get out more.

We did our usual drive-about of the island and discovered a treasure trove of new beach houses (ah, didn't they get the memo about the hurricanes?), now on really tall stilts. We had seen houses on stilts before but these babies were double the height of the older homes we saw. Somebody must have updated the building code.

Just looking out of our hotel window we discovered an old cemetery right next door (Ok...a little creepy). Rosewood Cemetery was set aside in 1911 as a resting place for the African-American residents of the island. Back in the day, cemeteries were segregated like bathrooms and eating places so the city acquired the land for that purpose. As the years went by and cemeteries became integrated, the lot fell into disrepair and developers began annexing the land for commercial use. the original 8 acres has been paired down to what is now a single acre and has a handful of visible headstones. Makes you wonder where all the others went to not to mention the adjoining lots with other hotels on them, ahhh like the one we were in.

With the increased number of tourists comes an increase in traffic and drunks. To avoid collisions we stopped at our favorite watering hole, Captain Jack's, in front of the Holiday Inn Sun-Spree (weird name) hotel overlooking the sea wall. A favorite of the natives, it affords a thatched roof shelter enabling us to consume the $5 Margaritas at Happy Hour as we people-watch those walking or jogging the seawall. Hey, why do they call it "Happy Hour" when it lasts from 4 to 7? Shouldn't it be "Happy Hours"? The whole thing becomes moot after the second plastic cup of manna rushes down your throat like that first drop at Pirates of the Caribbean.

I asked the bartender how they made out with the last hurricane. She said the bar had been completely wiped away. The bar is on a raised concrete platform right across from the seawall about four feet above the sidewalk. It was pretty much wiped clean and completely rebuilt. As a tribute, the statue of Captain Morgan was returned to his rightful spot  at the entrance but was not repainted as a reminder of the devastation. The Captain stands in his classic pose greeting all who come to repose.

The day of sailing was briefly marred by an urgent email we received stating our ship, the Carnival Triumph, was delayed returning to port because of a mechanical problem (ooohhh...queue the spooky music) delaying its arrival and our subsequent boarding. No biggy...it gave us (me) more time to check out the 1900 Hurricane Museum and Elissa tall ship exhibit at Pier 21.

We discovered the Pier and Museum had suffered major damage in the hurricane. Pier 21 is on the northern side and overlooks the Port of Galveston. Although the hurricane had its effects on most of the island, the port had a double whammy of wind and the storm surge that came up through the shipping channel and arced into the port driving the waterline much higher than  the docks and structures.The pier, museum and restaurants are slightly higher than street level but the museum folks said the surge came up over the pier and brought in around six inches of water into the museum. The Historical Society was able to get some FEMA money to rebuild the pier and the maintenance workshop for the Elissa iron Barque (pronounced Bark) tied up at the pier. If you've been to the Island, you know they have a wonderful theater where they show a great documentary about the 1900 hurricane. They are still working on getting it operational.  

As I mentioned, there is the wonderful iron Barque Elissa alongside the museum. The ship has an interesting tale to tell much of which has to do with its refitting and return to Galveston.

Elissa was built in Aberdeen, Scotland as a three masted merchant vessel in a time when steamships were overtaking sailing ships. She was originally launched on October 27, 1877. Elissa is named for the Queen of Carthage, Elissa (more commonly called Dido), Aeneas' tragic lover in the epic poem The Aeneid.

Elissa has sailed under many names and flags. In 1918, she was converted into a two-masted brigantine and an engine was installed. She was sold to Finland in 1930 and reconverted into a schooner. In 1959, she was sold to Greece, and successively sailed under the names Christophoros, in 1967 as Achaeos, and in 1969 as Pioneer.

In 1970, she was rescued from destruction in Piraeus after being purchased for the San Francisco Maritime Museum. However, she languished in a salvage yard in Piraeus until she was purchased for $40,000, in 1975, by the Galveston Historical Foundation, her current owners. In 1979, after a year in Greece having repairs done to her hull, Elissa was first towed to Gibraltar. The restoration process involved removing all the post-refurbished stuff returning Elissa to her original three masts and sails and continued until she was ready for tow on June 7, 1979 where she was brought to Galveston for completion and display.

Elissa made her first voyage as a restored sailing ship in 1985, traveling to Corpus Christi, Texas. A year later, she sailed to New York City to take part in the Statue of Liberty's centennial celebrations. She was the oldest ship to sail in the tall ship sailing cruise.

Ok…..piece of sailing trivia. What's the fuzzy thing on the line above the yard arm? Well of course.... it's Baggy Wrinkle, Dana. It stops the line from rubbing against and abrading the sail. It's made from many individual short lines tied together and their ends frayed to create a big furry muffler-like bumper for the line.

Because we had some time before boarding, we decided to take an hour tour of the harbor. The port has always been a lifeline port since the Spanish occupied it back in 1816. The Spanish gave way to pirates that helped Mexico rebel against Spain. The pirate Jean Lafitte organized Galveston into a pirate "kingdom" he called "Campeche", anointing himself the island's "head of government". Lafitte remained in Galveston until 1821 when he and his raiders were run off by the fledgling US Navy.The Port was established in 1825 and, after the Texas Revolution, became the new country’s capitol in 1836. By 1839, the city was by then a burgeoning port and attracted many new residents among the flood of German immigrants to Texas in the 1840s and later, including Jewish merchants.

Porpoise Pod in the bay

Because of it's importance, its played a major role in the building of America.  Because of that, Galveston became one of the most advanced and wealthiest cities in America in the late 1800s. First all-electrical city and playground to the rich and famous. Galveston was considered  an important financial center in it's hay days some say equal to New York or San Francisco. Just as important as New Orleans in the exporting of cotton, beef and importing of manufactured goods, it was a strategic holding for the South in the TWONA and came under blockade by the Northern Navy to stop the flow of goods supporting the Southern economy.

Although still an important port today, it really lost it's edge when the great storm of 1900 came through.  Because of the devastation, shipping moved north into the Houston/Texas City river channel and never really came back to pre-1900 levels. It is still an important port servicing the vast number of off-shore oil and gas derricks in the Gulf.

Galveston suffered a huge loss of life and many of those who survived decided not to rebuild and moved elsewhere.  But because of that storm we forever changed the way we predict and report the weather world-wide probably saving thousands.

Added bonus, with your tour ticket, you get a discount at the Pier 21 restaurant, Willie G’s right next to the museum. It was such a nice day, we were able to sit under the canopy at a table on the pier. Lunch was a Salmon salad for me and Dianna had the fish and chips. Vacations for us tend to result in excessive alcohol consumption so we added two Marti Gras special drinks as well. Hey....we had to get the cool collector cups and "free" neck beads....well worth the extra cost.

Back to reality, as with all cruise endeavors, we were once more run through the human grinder that is the check-in and boarding  process.  Serpentine chicanes turning left and right leading inexorably to a bored clerk swiping passports and asking us if we had the flu or didn't feel well. When this medical expert was satisfied we were not contagious, we were allowed to walk the gangway to our floating buffet palace. Next installment....the road to Progresso or how not to row a kayak.

Dallas Arboretum Chihuly Exhibit

It was a cold and blustery day in late December when we decided to visit the Dallas Arboretum. The clock was ticking down to the close of the Chilhuly glass exhibit. The show had been going on since May but yours truly was his usual slow-on-the-uptake self and didn't get the word until I heard the exhibit was being extended to the end of December.

Of course glass sculpture lends itself quite well to viewing at night with strategically placed lighting but....Oh, Nick didn't get the word until late in the game after all the nightime tickets had long been sold out. Well we got the daytime show and were not disappointed.

The exhibit is also part of the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Society’s big revenue and membership drive. The Chihuly exhibit was expected to draw in about half a million visitors and $4.5 million bucks in ticket and gift sales.

During the Spring and Summer, the Arboretum puts on a pretty good spread of indigenous and exotic plants and flowers. During the winter, they pretty much blanket the place with Pansies and ornamental Kale which can survive quite well in the freezing temperatures we see in November through February. So after paying our way in, with exhibit map in hand, we made our way around the rambling grounds. The Dallas Arboretum is a 66 acre garden that is made up of both the former DeGolyer and the Alex Camp Estates.

A real rags to riches story, Everette Lee DeGolyer was born in a sod house on October 9, 1886 in Greensburg, Kansas. DeGolyer attended the University of Oklahoma studying geology beginning in the fall of 1905. After doing some time as a field assistant with the US Geological Survey finding oil, he headed south in 1909 to Mexico where he was instrumental in developing the oil boom there. He then completed his studies at University of Oklahoma in 1911. Known in the oil industry as "the father of American geophysics," and was a legendary collector of rare books.

DeGolyer opened a petroleum geology consultancy in 1914 moving to New York City in 1916. There he helped negotiate some pretty lucrative oil company mergers with Royal Dutch Shell. He moved to Texas where, using the science of geophysics, completed surveys which helped in discovering oil at Spindletop.

In 1925 DeGolyer established the Geophysical Research Corporation which helped develop reflection seismology techniques. Reflection seismology is similar to sonar and echolocation. You make a big bang on the surface and the returning sound waves give you a map of what’s underneath. The discovery of oil really took off and made Mr. DeGolyer a bunch of money. For his work in Mexico, he was often paid in gold.  A spin-off subsidiary of GRC was a little known company called Texas Instruments. In 1932, he moved his family to Dallas where he built his dream home on 44 acres in a place called White Rock Lake.

 

The home of Everett and Nell DeGolyer was designed to look one hundred years old when it was built in 1939. The home is a Latin Colonial Revival style rambling one-story 21,000 square-foot structure, evocative of a Mexican hacienda. It has thirteen rooms, seven baths, five fireplaces, seven chimneys. The library has seventeen hundred and fifty square feet. The home was called “Rancho Encinal” because of the many live oak trees on the property. The property had been a 44  acre dairy farm when purchased by the DeGolyers. The house had central air conditioning and heating when it was built. Quite unique at the time.

The architects were Denman Scott and Burton Schutt. The DeGolyer Home is on the National Register of Historic Places as well as the Texas Register of Historic Places. The house has recently been renovated to re-create the look of the 1940s when it was first built. When Mrs. DeGolyer (Nell) died at the age of 85 in 1972, the estate was given to Southern Methodist University (Laura Bush's Alma Mater). Mr. DeGolyers extensive library was split between SMU, University of Oklahoma and University of Texas at Austin. Later, SMU sold the house and grounds to the City of Dallas.

In the early 1930's, Everette DeGolyer chaired a committee to find a landsite for an arboretum for Dallas. Sixty years later, the concept for a botanical preserve became a reality on the very land he once owned. In 1977, the City of Dallas designated the DeGolyers property a park managed by the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Society.

Next door, on another 22 acres, is the Alex Camp House a 8,500 square-foot home atop a gently sloping hill with a stunning view of White Rock Lake. It was designed and built by well known architect John Staub and completed in 1938. It is a fully furnished, white brick, two-story home with outdoor terraces facing the lake with an art deco décor.

Alex Camp and Roberta Coke Camp were from prominent Dallas families. Roberta Coke Camp (she must have been a hit at parties) was a generous philanthropist, who supported local civic and charitable organizations including the symphony, art museum, ballet, and her church. The house is a combination of Latin Colonial, English Regency, and Art Deco styles. It is one room deep throughout, with all living and bedrooms having three exposures. In 1980, the Camp and DeGolyer properties were combined increasing the Arboretum to 66 acres.
 

Dale Chihuly was born in Tacoma, Washington  University of Washington in Seattle, where in 1965 he received a bachelor of arts degree in interior design. In 1967, he received a Master of Science in sculpture from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In 1968, he studied glass in Venice on a Fulbright Fellowship and received a Master of Fine Arts at the Rhode Island School of Design. In 1971, Chihuly founded the Pilchuck Glass School near Stanwood, Washington.

In 1976, while Chihuly was in England, he was involved in a head-on car accident during which he flew through the windshield. His face was severely cut by glass and he was blinded in his left eye, thus the eye patch.

After recovering, he continued to blow glass until he dislocated his right shoulder in a 1979 bodysurfing accident. No longer able to hold the glass blowing pipe, he hired others to do the work. Chihuly explained the change in a 2006 interview, saying "Once I stepped back, I liked the view". Chihuly describes his role as "more choreographer than dancer, more supervisor than participant, more director than actor." Oh, brother…..enjoy the show.
 

 

Chilhuly has samples of his work all over the world, some of you, who visit Las Vegas, might be familiar with his glass hanging from ceiling in the lobby of the Bellagio Hotel and Casino.

 

As many of you know, Texas weather can be very unpredictable. I wondered what the response would be to hail. Back in June, we had a rain and hail event which was somewhere between golf ball-sized and softball-sized hail fall at the Arboretum, but out of the two dozen sculptures in the outdoor exhibit, only a few pieces around the Persian Pond  were damaged. The pieces were replaced. No one’s talking about the cost, but the Arboretum did say the exhibit was insured for $22 million. Wow.

Fort Worth Western Currency Facility

After a very quiet Thanksgiving, it was time to get out on the road and get some museum time in. For some time we had been kicking around the idea of checking out the Bureau of Engraving and Printing Office (BEP) in Fort Worth. Also known as the Western Currency Facility, it is the place where the U.S. Treasury makes paper money for the states west of the Mississipi. There are only two facilities that produce paper money, Washington, D.C. and Fort Worth, Texas. As it turned out, the BEP is celebrating 150 years of printing money for the Feds.

The Western Currency Facility was completed in 1991. It’s BIG! 104,000 square feet of production area (12 acres) sitting on a 100 acre plot donated by the City of Fort Worth. A Visitor Center was added in 2004. This baby has some serious security surrounding the grounds and within the facility itself. Double fences greet you with a “no man’s land” between the wire with lots of lasers running in between to catch movement. There motto is "The Buck Starts Here"....very catchy.

When you exit your car, you hear a greeting message on the PA telling you not to bring any electronic devices into the facility. No cell phones, cameras, pagers, guns, knives, bombs, lions, tiger and bears (Oh, My!). So, sorry, no photos from the high-tech, cutting-edge Rocks in my Sandals camera on this trip. These guys don’t fool around. While we were there, a pizza delivery guy brought several boxes of pizza in. They were taken by one of the armed Treasury cops, inspected and run through the x-ray machine. Wow. I suppose you can form C-4 into anything I guess. Really good tip….go view the video in the theatre before you start your walking tour. It will answer a lot of questions along the way.

Since 1861, Congress has tasked the BEP in the making of financial instruments and legal tender for the United States. It has its origins in legislation enacted to help fund the Civil War. Prior to that, just about any other bank or financial institution could print its own money or securities making the money supply unstable and full of counterfeit cash. By 1862, BEP was producing currency, revenue stamps, government obligations, and other security documents. In 1877, the BEP became the sole producer of all United States currency. BEP was also produced military “script” currency beginning in WWII. The last military currency was made for the Vietnam War. They’ve also produced some foreign currency as well.

Although the BEP has been producing all the printed-paper for the Federal agencies, in recent years, they have been the victims of outsourcing.  They no longer produce postage stamps, Savings Bonds or Treasury Securities (Securities are no longer on paper...they're all electronic now). They just make money and lots of it. And don’t use the word “dollars” when describing their product; you will be quickly corrected to use the word “notes”.

While we were there, they were producing 100-dollar bills. There is a push to do so because the old 100-dollar bills were being taken out of circulation to be replaced with the new generation of secure 100-dollar bills with all the enhanced security features we see on the newer 5s and 20s. The BEP has really put a lot of effort in securing the US money supply against counterfeiting. From watermarks, color-shifting inks, printing patterns, off-center portraits, security threads and a cool low-vision image of the currency value which helps seniors and the sight-challenged to identify the denomination better.

A common question is who picks the faces for our paper money. By law, the Secretary of the Treasury is responsible for the selection of the designs, including the portraits, which appear on paper currency.

The portraits currently appearing on the various denominations of paper currency were adopted in 1929 when the size of the notes was reduced. Prior to the adoption of this smaller sized currency, a special committee was appointed by the Secretary of the Treasury to study this aspect of the design. It was determined that portraits of Presidents of the United States have a more permanent familiarity in the minds of the public than any others. The traditional green color on the back of our money ("green back") was originally to thwart the black and white photography technology of the Civil War years to stop counterfeiting. There is primarily black ink on the front of the note.

This decision was somewhat altered by the Secretary of the Treasury to include Alexander Hamilton, who was the first Secretary of the Treasury; Salmon P. Chase, who was Secretary of the Treasury during the Civil War and is credited with promoting our National Banking System; and Benjamin Franklin, who was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. By law, only the portrait of a deceased individual may appear on U.S. currency and securities.

Interesting fact is that there is about $669 Billion in currency in circulation at any one time. The Western Currency Facility runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year and produces about 17 million notes a day or (depending on the value of the notes in the run) about $42 Million an hour for a total of about $1 Billion dollars. They produce on average 5 Billion notes or about $298 Billion a year. About 95% replaces old currency and about 5% is new money.

 

 

Each currency note printed here at the Fort Worth facility has small letters "FW" written on the right hand bottom or the top.

 

The largest note ever printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing was the $100,000.00 Gold Certificate,  Series 1934. These notes were printed from December 18, 1934, through January 9, 1935, and were issued by the Treasurer of the United States to Federal Reserve Banks only against an equal amount of gold bullion held by the Treasury. The notes were used for transactions between Federal Reserve Banks and were not circulated among the general public.

 

The printing process is called “Intaglio” (pronounced In-tal-ee-o). The BEP has a very talented staff of engravers who cut very fine marks into metal plates. If you look at your dollar note you will see the images are not straight continuous lines but a series of dots and dashes (the recessed grooves are only 2/1000 (0.002) of an inch deep). In the printing process, the plates are put into these very large automated printers where the plates are initially coated with ink; the excess ink is scraped off leaving only ink within the little dots and dashes. Then a sheet of paper is layed over the plate as a roller presses with the force of 20 tons. This infuses the ink to the paper leaving a slightly raised image on the paper you can feel with your fingers.

 

BEP uses an offset printing process. The paper is produced by the Crane Paper Company and has been the sole source to the BEP since 1879. It’s ordinary paper that consumers use throughout their everyday life such as newspapers, books, cereal boxes, etc, is primarily made of wood pulp. A sheet of paper holds 32 bills and comes already with the notes watermark and security thread imbedded in the paper. The paper is 75% cotton and 25% linen. The face is done first (front Intaglio). You wait three days to dry and then the back is done (back Intaglio). Each phase prints four features.

 

Three more days and then they go to the COPE-Pak presses. The acronym COPE-Pak stands for Currency Overprinting Processing Equipment and Packaging. This press takes the 32 sheet and reduces it to a 16-subject printed and examined sheet of currency. It adds the two serial numbers, the black universal Federal Reserve seal, the green Department of the Treasury seal, and the corresponding Federal Reserve identification numbers then cuts them to single notes. All along the way, there are computers digitizing each note to determine quality and automatically rejects note sheets that don’t make the grade. There are also master printers doing random checks as well.

In the Visitor Center, there was a cool demonstration of the Intaglio process on an original  “Spider Press” built back in 1901.

The COPE machine then stacks 4000 single notes into a “brick”, four “bricks” make a “cash pack” (16,000 notes). Forty packs (640,000 notes) make a “skid” and two “skids” make a completed pallet for shipping to a Federal Reserve Bank. So…if they were the $100 dollar bills we saw being produced, we’d be looking at $128,000,000 million per pallet. As we looked down from the elevated walkway, we could see a virtual sea of shrink-wrapped pallets ready for pickup at the back end of the warehouse for delivery to one of the  one of the 4 western Federal Reserve Banks.

Each Federal Reserve Bank makes an order for bank notes once a year at the beginning of the Federal Fiscal Year in October for the entire year. The BEP then produces that amount and delivers to all 12 banks. The Fort Worth facility primarily serves the Dallas, Kansas City and San Francisco Federal Reserve Banks.

So….you might ask yourself…self, how can they continuously make new notes 24/7 all year long. Well, while the BEP is cranking out notes, an equivalent number of notes are being destroyed everyday by the respective Federal Reserve Banks. They bring in, from their commercial bank customers old, damaged and outdated bills and destroy them. This allows a constant flow of new notes to be produced and keeps the money supply stable.

That begs the question as to when do the notes they produce actually become legal tender. Only after the Federal Reserve Bank releases the money from their bank does it officially become “monetized” and able to be spent. Who knew?

Fun time for me (the wife even took away something from she’s still traumatized from being unable to constantly update Facebook while on the tour) so now I’m itching to take the tour of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank.

6th Floor Museum

October and November were busy times at the Saraceni winter residence. We were fortunate enough to have some friends and family visit (for the first time since we arrived in 2006…..you all know who you are out there, except you Dana). Our long-time friend Dennis came in October, a former partner of mine Al and his wife Pam and my (much older) sister in November. It did give us a chance to do the touristy thing and show off our wonderful part of the state.

For many years, my wife and Dennis were major “Dallas” TV show fans so his request was a visit to South Fork Ranch to go through the museum and property. We had been to South Fork before and it always strikes me as a shrine built for our generation for a period in our lives when television began to be our escape from the reality and began to rule our lives.

The original series ran from 1978–1991 and captured the imagination of lots of folks. It has been credited with defining the future of nighttime dramas. Just about all the shows that came later used the same formula (or expanded it with the relaxation of censors) of conflict, wealth, sex, good guys and bad guys. After 357 episodes, the show departed but not for good. Two TV movies and now a new series on TNT with a younger cast mixed with original cast members continue the franchise.

The visit takes you through the glitzy museum with lots of memorabilia from the series and behind the scenes views of the cast and the making of the show. It is fun to see the photos of the young cast at the top of their game. It was mostly a trip down memory lane when I considered where or what I was doing during those times.

The tour moves to the tram ride around the ranch on the way to the house used in the exterior shots for the show. Little known fact was that the show was mostly filmed (yep…before video tape) in Hollywood. Only shots around the ranch, exteriors of the front yard, locations around Dallas, driveway and pool area were done here. Thus when you get to the house, it strikes you as being very small. This was done on purpose. Through a little photographic trickery, the house was made to look much bigger and grander. Today....it’s kind of a rundown 4700 sq ft home still in the 70’s when it was built.

After a brief lecture on the history of the house and series by a lovely young tour guide (who, by the way, was an infant when the show aired), you are allowed to wander around the interior which has a theme room dedicated to each one of the main characters. Let’s not forget…they never acted or filmed in any of these rooms….it’s just fluff to balance out the tour.

 

The best part of the visits for me was that all of them wanted to see the 6th Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas. The museum resides on floors six and seven of what was the Texas School Book Depository building. The building started out as the Southern Rock Island Plow Company. Built in 1903 it was used to build farm implements. Southern Rock sold the building and the new owner leased it to the Texas School Depository who converted it into a warehouse in 1963 with the iconic "Hertz" rental billboard on it's roof. The lower five floors make up the Dallas County Administration Center.

 

I’m not a conspiracy theorist or someone who relishes in the death of others but the JFK assassination was a pivotal moment for most Americans (like Oliver Stone) and, for me, a window into the politics and subsequent directions America took in the following years.

When we took my sister there, we really lucked out in that a couple of eye witnesses were there to give a talk in the “Meet the Museum” lecture series on the 7^th floor of the museum, which was opened in 2002. The museum is part of the Dallas County Historical Society and often has various guest lecturers speak on the events of that 22^nd day of November in 1963.

When there are no lectures, the southeast corner window is one floor above the window Oswald fired from and gives an excellent view of the roadway Oswald would have seen on the day of the shooting. You can plainly see the two white painted Xs in the center lane of Elm Street where the two shots struck the President. The sixth floor has a glass enclosure surrounding the sixth floor window and surrounding stacks of book boxes as it would have appeared on November 22^nd, 1963.

The lecture involved the observations of Bill and Gayle Newman. You all have seen Bill and Gayle. They are the subject of one of the most iconic photos of the assassination. That’s the 22 year olds Bill and Gayle shielding their children at the base of the grassy knoll as the shots rang out.

Here we are 49 years later and Bill and Gayle are (like us) older and wiser. They have been the subjects of documentaries and have traveled all over the world to meet or be interviewed by researchers producing books or movies about the assassination. Bill commented that he always knows what conspiracy theory the interviewer subscribes to because when they take Bill’s picture, if he has his back to the 6^th floor window they believe in the single shooter theory. If his back is to the grassy knoll or white picket fence, they believe in one of the multiple shooter theories.

 

Each gave a brief description of what they saw that day. They were, after all, probably the closest people to the shooting in Dealey Plaza that day. Gayle was a little quieter and gave few details but Bill was more practiced and gave a more graphic description. She did say, of all the movies and documentaries they have been involved in, Gayle said her favorite was working with Oliver Stone’s movie where she got to meet Kevin Costner (lots of eye rolling from Bill on that one).

They were just passed the freeway sign (which is no longer there) on the north curb line where the first round struck the President and then they were almost abreast of the limousine as the second shot hit the President in the head. As Bill spoke, you could see the event still affects him to this day. He had that 10,000-yard stare a person gets when they’re reliving a significant moment in time.

At one point, his voice cracked as he described seeing the back of the Presidents head explode into a red and white mist throwing the President into the lap of his terrified wife. Gayle recalled seeing Jackie climb out onto the rear deck retrieving a portion of the President’s skull as a Secret Service agent Clint Hill climbed up and pushed her back into her seat.

At that point, Bill called out to Gayle to get on the ground to shield their two boys. At that moment, Johnny Flynn of the Dallas Morning News took the shot. Also at that moment, several photographers ran up on them and also took photos. One reporter for WFAA (the ABC affiliate in Dallas) asked them what they saw. Realizing they were eyewitnesses to the shooting, he corralled the whole family and drove them to the studio and got them on the air to tell what they saw. They have been in great demand ever since.

One of the things that gave them notoriety in the conspiracy theory community was the fact that Bill made the comment that, initially, he stated he thought the shots come from behind him (the grassy knoll). Since then, Bill feels the results of all the credible researchers and the results of the two Federal investigations (the Warren Commission in 1963 and the Select Committee on Assassinations in 1979) are correct and there was only one shooter.

Interestingly, although they were interviewed several times by the FBI and investigators for both assassination investigations and participated in a couple of reenactments for those investigations they were never called to testify.

 

As we left the 7^th floor to return downstairs to the 6^th Floor Museum, we walked by two large images of John F. Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy hanging on a wall. As you walk by, you realize the portraits are actually made up of tiny images of each other. JFKs was pixilated, if you will, by images of Jackie and Jackie was made up of JFK portrait images by Alex Guofeng Cao. Pretty cool.

 



You can’t take photos of the 6^th Floor exhibits (oh…and according to a very angry docent I met, the lecture series on the 7^th floor either…oops) but many describe the lead up to and aftermath of the President’s visit to Dallas. The trip was to shore up support of conservative Southern Democrats who weren’t enamored by Kennedy’s liberal policies in anticipation of the 1964 elections. There’s where the conspiracy theories start. It ran the gamut from the Military-Industrial complex seeking more military involvement in Southeast Asia, eastern Europe, Central and South America, organized crime’s dislike of Robert Kennedy’s investigation of the mob, to Cuban revolutionaries. The list is endless.

 

Book Depository today

7th floor view of Elm St

 

But many of the displays inexorably capture, through videos and photographs, the events of November 22^nd . They even have a display of all the different types of movie and still cameras that were used that day to record the event. From an old Polaroid Land Camera belonging to Mary Moorman to the Bell and Howell Model 414 PD Zoomatic Director Series 8mm Camera Zapruder used.

A great place to relive history and get a little more of an unbiased (well unless you feel the Museum is a Government front to distribute misinformation to propagate the single shooter theory…) perspective of the assassination. Once outside, as you walk around the plaza, you can start matching up what you saw to the actual scene. If you seem lost, expect one of the many conspiracy theorists floating around the plaza to offer up their interpretation of the events for you. They have lots of company. In 2003 a Gallup poll found that three-quarters of Americans said they think more than one man was involved in Kennedy's assassination. Only 19% of Americans think it was the work of one individual. One thing was clear, time will not end the continuing controversy nor does it appear it will ever be explained or resolved.

The Newseum

After being bowled over by the grandeur of the National Cathedral, we got into the rental and made our way across town to Pennsylvania Ave. and the Newseum. We had to scurry over because; little known fact, just about every Federal Building and museum closes at 5 p.m. It was already a little before two when we got in the area and pulled into a public parking garage on 7^th and E streets.

Unfortunately, neither my colleague Tonia nor I had eaten since our breakfast at the Mark Center Hilton. It may be a Texas thing, but Tonia has neither a passion for or interest in eating Mexican or bar-b-que. As we walked from the car garage those seemed to be the only offerings within view. We turned up 7^th toward F Street. On the east side, we caught a sign for Carmines Italian Family Style  dining.

With the lunch hour long gone, we had the place to ourselves as we were seated (when I Googled the place, I found a photo of President Obama preparing to dine in the same section we were at). We turned to the menu, which had a great selection of traditional Italian fare ala Buca De Beppo. Problem was, like Buca, it was large portion family style. We were mobile and didn’t have any place to put the doggie bags but our server reported we were within the last 15 minutes of the lunch menu and could get anything they had in lunch portions. We both decided to get the spaghetti and meatballs for two.

After deciding to go to the National Cathedral, that was the second best decision we had made that day. The platter that came out had a more than ample supply of spaghetti with a sweet and rich tomato sauce topped with the densest meatballs I’ve had in a long time. The meatballs were a combination of beef, lamb and pork. I assured Tonia this would not be a “Lady and the Tramp” moment and we would most likely be sharing that third meatball. Wow!

 

Ridiculously full (no we did not do dessert); with time passing us by, we quickly walked the three blocks to the Newseum right on Pennsylvania Avenue. Just down the street from the Capitol Dome and next door to the Canadian Embassy, the Newseum is a depository of the history of newsgathering from the earliest days of our country.

The Newseum is sponsored by most of the major news outlets; ABC, Cox, News Corp, Hearst and Bloomberg are founding members and big time contributors. The Newseum’s mission is to educate the public about the value of a free press in a free society and telling the stories of the world's important events in unique and engaging ways.

We had less than two hours to rush through the six floors of the museum so the thoughtful folks at the Newseum put together a two-hour “highlight”  tour to hit the high points if you’re short on time. But, you miss out on the four theatre experiences on media bias, the press and Hollywood, the First Amendment, the press and the civil rights movement.

The Newseum takes pride in the ever-changing exhibits and displays (like the industry and history). What was very surprising to me was the amount of physical items on display from major world events specifically the events of 9/11. There were personal stories of many of the big name and not so big name reporters relating their experiences and especially photos of that time. There is even the mangled piece of antenna mast that stood atop the North Tower of the World Trade Center alongside huge copies of 127 newspaper headlines taken from the following day.

There is an eight-piece section of the Berlin Wall you can walk up to and touch. There was a section dedicated to the press and the FBI where they have some artifacts from the Hoover days and parts of two jet engines that were recovered from the World Trade Center dig. The shoes the Richard Reid, the Shoe Bomber, tried to set off onboard that Christmas 2001 Northwest flight. One of the 300 guns recovered from the Branch Dividian Compund in Waco. They even have the cabin where Unabomber Ted Kaczynski lived and was captured in rural Montana.

 

 

While on the sixth floor, you can walk out onto the outdoor terrace for a grand view of the Capitol Building and most of Pennsylvania Ave where the Inaugural Parade happens when the Presidents walk (or drive) their way back to the White House every four years.

 

 

I have to say, beside the 9/11 displays, my favorite part was the section which had examples of all the Pulitzer Prize journalistic photos and an exhibit of Presidential photographers.



There was a section dedicated to President Obama’s official photographer, Pete Souza. There was a particularly moving behind-the-scenes shot of the President in a not so private moment with his wife back stage at the Inaugural Ball in 2009. The First Lady stands in front of the President wearing his coat with her formal gown tucked, in warding off the cold.

 

 

Although we ran through the place, I came away with a deep appreciation for how the news industry does their job. They are the people we love to hate and rarely are glad to see because their presence usually means bad things are happening. But, if you believe in Democracy and all that entails, you must appreciate that a true Democracy cannot survive without a free press to give meaning to the word “transparency” and hold everyone, especially governments; accountable to the people they affect every day.