Fluxus Bucks the Next Currency?

In the last two days there has been a recurrent theme in conversations with friends “the value of money”. First of all, money does not have intrinsic worth. Up until the 1933, the dollar was backed by the price of gold. For instance, with gold at the price of $100 an ounce, one dollar would be worth 1/100 of an ounce of gold. For most of humanity money was tied to some kind of barter item: gold, silver, grains…

Today the Federal Reserve controls the supply of money by raising and lowering interest rates and printing money or contracting the supply of money. Using this process the Federal Reserve has pumped in a trillion dollars? (at this point I have stopped counting) to shore up the economy. This is a very simplified account of economic policy, which is way beyond my capabilities to completely understand.

Many countries use the printing of money, without intrinsic worth, to prop up their countries. For instance, my friend was talking about her parents in Greece, during WWII, using a wheelbarrow of money to buy a loaf of bread. In Germany, in the 1920’s, money was used as wallpaper. If you are a Gone With the Wind fan, you might remember Scarlet O’Hara trying to sell her mothers jewelry to eat because the Confederate dollar had no value.

What happens when money returns to its ancient purpose? Bartering You get Flux Bucks. The “art” of money. Fluxus Bucks come from a movement called “mail art”. Mail art is “art” which uses the postal system as a medium. The term mail art can refer to an individual message, the medium through which it is sent, or an artistic genre. Mail artists typically exchange ephemera in the form of illustrated letters, zines, rubberstamped, decorated or illustrated envelopes, artist trading cards, postcards, artistampes, faux postage, mail-interview, naked mail, friendship books, docs, and three-dimensional objects.

In the 90’s Julie Paquette “ex posto facto” started the fluxus buck movement. Fluxus Bucks are amazing, unique creations using stamps of “dollar bills” as a background for art. Fluxus Bucks are traded around the world. In two interviews with Ruud Janssen, Julie talks about the Fluxus Buck movement. See below for the links. Fluxus bucks are shared in the mail and traded on the street. Fluxus Bucks can never be printed in vast quantities like dollars so they never lose their value.

If only I could be paid in Fluxus Bucks!

Ruud Janssen Interviewing Julie Paquette
http://mailinterviews.blogspot.com/2006/10/mail-interview-with-julie-paquette-
http://mailinterviews.blogspot.com/2006/10/mail-interview-with-julie-paquette-ex_01.html

Love is in the Air

Yesterday, I was talking to the FedEx man and my favorite UPS deliveryman, Phil. It seems as if love is still in the air even with the economy on the rocks. The FedEx man was crazed with flower deliveries—roses, roses, and roses. Roses to uncles, nieces, friends, and lovers. Roses delivered to businesses, homes, and apartments.
Love goes on even with FedEx laying off 950 workers.

What exactly do roses mean symbolically. I have always thought of Valentines roses as an expensive waste of money. Valentines Day roses are cold—they don’t smell and their perfection is stiff and unnatural. But to my surprise there is a rich history behind roses!

According to the site World Leaders in Classics Roses, “The famous nursery rhyme ‘A ring a ring of roses’ is actually reference to the great plague of London in the sixteen hundreds, the ‘black death’. The roses actually describe the red blotches that were a symptom of the disease. A ‘pocket full of posies’ refers to the bunches of herbs and flowers, possibly containing roses, that were carried to ward off the disease.” The Christian symbolism of a rose is, “There are other heraldic roses and the plant has indeed made it’s way through religious history also. Most religions believe in rose symbolism in some form or other, in Christianity the rose is associated with Mary. White roses are attributed to the Virgin martyrs and to the Virgin Mary herself and red roses represent the blood of Christ spilt on the cross and his love for mankind.”

The blood of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the black plague. Does the rose represent the cycle of life? Even the fluxus movement has been fascinated with the rose.

Gertrude Stein and the Sixties in Denmark – fluxus and performance
By Tania Ørum
In 1965, Danish writer and critic Hans-Jørgen Nielsen (at det at, to/that it to/that 1965) has a motto by “miss stein/part of poetry a part of poetry part from poetry partly with poetry ... partly poetry part poetry a part poetry”, and that several of the poems in the volume eccho her preference for the most insignificant word categories: adverbs, articles and conjunctions. Nor is it a coincidence that Nielsen’s programmatic book of essays Nielsen og den hvide verden (1968) contains an analysis of Stein’s poem “a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose”. Nielslen’s friend the Danish avant-garde composer Henning Christiansen, who belonged to the early Fluxus movement, has composed a piece based on Stein’s rose-poem and orchestrated for 28 string instruments, whose notes are determined by the form of the letters, played one by one, “like an electric newspaper”, the composer says. And a painter from the same experimental circles, John Davidsen, spent the entire year 1969-1970 on a series centrered on roses, with reference to Gertrude Stein – ranging from posters of roses /to exhibitions of living roses in varying stages of freshness and fading/ to the marketing of rose jelly.

For those of you have think that I have strayed to far from the discussion of money I would like to pose a question. Is the $787 billion dollar bailout the gift of a rose from our government on Valentines Day? Will that rose revitalize us and save us from disease or will it just hide the sink of death. To find out what the “Rose” is go to the Wall Street Journal, and read Getting to $787 Billion and find out what each petal of the rose means to you.

Is Love in the Air?

Getting to $787 Billion

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123458384689487271.html

She’s real fine my Subaru Outback

She’s real fine my Subaru Outback
She’s real fine my Subaru Outback
My Subaru

Well I saved my pennies and I saved my dimes.

“My Subaru Outback” does not have the ring of “409”. The “409” bringing back memories of sun, sand, bikinis and surf—and of course freedom. My Subaru was freedom and I lost that freedom last Tuesday when I got in a wreck. One split second decision cost me my $500 deductible and $200 in rental car fees. The cost to fix the damage on my car $2700. What I thought was minor turned into major and for the next couple weeks I will not have a car.

Well I saved my pennies and I saved my dimes.

All of us spend a lot of money on cars. Every year, I spend over $2,000 in gas, auto insurance, car repairs, license fee that’s roughly $40 a week. I’ve owned my own car for 27 years that’s give or take $54,000 dollars just in upkeep. These days’s the average car costs around $20,000 dollars. What happened to “pennies and dimes”?

Maybe “pennies and dimes” is what we all think when we get our first driver’s license. All you can think about is driving your friends to school. The first all day outing with your friends. I can still remember driving to Half Moon Bay, with the sound of Journeys “Lights in the City” playing in the background. The fear of screwing up the clutch on my parents 1968 Volvo station wagon

“Pennies and dimes” turns into Porsches, Corvettes and Jaguars. “Pennies and dimes” becomes power and status. People are willing to turn their houses into piggy banks to lease a BMW. “Pennies and dimes” become Mercedes ‘Unlike any other”; Honda “The Power of Dreams”; Acura “The True definition of luxury. Yours. Acura. Precision crafted performance; Alfa Romeo, Beauty is not enough. Power for your control.

“Pennies and dimes” this year has become Hyundai, “Buy our car and if you lose your job you can return it.” General Motors and Ford are being bailed out by the government. Car dealerships are failing. People are keeping their cars and repairing them—instead of turning them at the first hint of trouble. On the TV its “$5,000 off”, employee deals, and on and on.

“Pennies and dimes” For the next couple weeks it will be “$1.75 and a $1.75” that’s what it will take to ride the bus. What will it be like to join people who do not have cars? People who may not have the money to own a car?

She’s real fine my Subaru Outback

Stunned

It's been awhile since I made my last post. Septembers' crises seems just like a joke! Like something that happened in another lifetime. This gives me hope that the the daily news of bank failures, automotive industry possible failure, layoffs, $900 billion bailout plan will soon fade into a memory--a painful memory. Or at least the horrors of each day will have less impact. But in the sum total, people who have lived through this time will never forget it. Unfortunately, future generations will live to make the same mistakes. We never learn. Okay very pessimistic. We are very tough and what "won't kill us" will heal us.

On a personal note the recession is taking toll on people. Car accidents are up. I had my first accident! The first and hopefully the last. I just can't seem to focus. My thoughts are on keeping my job, saving money....on and on.

What have you been thinking about when you drive?