What Are Belgians Doing In The Amargosa Desert?

                                                     There's something eerie about ghost towns
 

We did country reports for a few years in school, and mine for 6th grade was about Belgium.  I figured because it is a small country, it could be covered fairly well without leaving too much un-reported on.  The cover sported a hand painted national flag in shiny enamel and the title carefully lettered in white (it was only seven letters; glad I didn't pick Turkmenistan!).  Inside were postage stamps, a Belgian coin or two, and a recipe for brioche along with as much entertaining data as would fit -- my first multimedia production, considering the limited resources available at the time.

So it was quite a thrill for a much older former 6th grader to visit this jewel of a country a few years ago; the absolute highlight being a few days in the small medieval city of Bruges where the people were as mannerly, helpful and obviously intelligent as one could hope for.   We would gladly just have stayed and not come back at all.  However, Charles Albert Szukalski, a sculptor, did leave this green and delightful nation to go to what seems the unlikeliest place possible: the ghost town of Rhyolite in the vast Nevada desert (the town was named after an igneous rock, but a 1904 gold discovery was its reason for being out there). And Charles Albert's reason to be there?

In 1984, he installed "The Last Supper," a group of white, ghostly figures made of plaster, fabric and fiberglass arranged as in the daVinci fresco.  Szukalski purchased almost eight acres of land to establish the Goldwell Open Air Museum and then  recruited three other Belgian sculptors to add their inspirations.  As he created two more works, the spooky bicyclist "Ghost Rider" and "Desert Flower" (made of car parts), they contributed:

"Lady Desert" - Hugo Heyrman

"Icara" - Andre Peeters

"Tribute to Shorty Harris" - Fred Beruoets. (Shorty was the prospector who made the gold discovery)

"Sit Here!" by Solie Siegmann was moved from a Las Vegas museum to join the quirky outdoor gallery.

   

In 2000, after the founder's passing, an artists' work space, gallery and visitors' center was established in a new red barn-like building. 

 After watching "Breaking Bad" or the movie "Casino," we always say, "Nothing good happens in the desert!"  But sometimes, something good does.  

  

Headroom

 

                                        Our old friend Max

A few years ago, an organization called TreeVitalize planted trees along one side of 10th Street in the next town to the north, and it was quite an improvement for that light industrial/retail strip which before did not have much to brag about aesthetically.  But...they were planted on the side with the power lines.  They have since grown, as one would expect them to, right up through the telephone cables on their way up to the electrical ones at the top.  In a few more years, the trimming trucks and crews will be at work chopping them down to size (that is, mutilating them).  Trees need headroom, as do people and even businesses

Businesses usually have to grow and evolve to survive, sometimes becoming very different in the process -- Toyota began with making looms! Harley Davidson just introduced a line of electric bicycles, seeing a growing market where their traditional one is shrinking.  The railroads, faced with a major change in freight movement with the advent of the Interstate system, forgot they were in the transport, not just rail, business for a while but eventually learned to move cargo containers and even the trailers from semi trucks on their flat cars.   Others just can't adapt. The formerly premier auto brand Packard sold a few of their last model in 1956 then sadly left the stage.  They did have new product ideas, but not soon enough, and lacked the capital to implement them in any case.   No headroom, like the trees. 

Humans can start life with opportunities or make them for themselves. They can be limited to little growth by their economic or social situation, the latter often being a matter of religious or political restraints throughout their environment wherein everything is prepackaged; further exploration or thinking not being encouraged or even tolerated.  A few, regardless of where they came from, like daVinci, Alexander the Great, Michael Jordan or even entrepreneurs Musk and Branson, are phenomena, seemingly never running out of headroom.  Wildly successful artists like Picasso, the Beatles or Zane Grey (90 still-popular books to his credit) sought out new experiences, forms of expression and life experiences in order to keep growing and remain vital, brushing limitations aside.  All of them had a rough beginning in poverty and/or rejection, but saw the blue sky above them, and not a ceiling.

 

 

The Tontine

I found, a few years ago, a life insurance certificate showing a $1000 policy taken out on my mother by hers in the early 1930s.  The practice back then was for an agent to stop weekly and collect 25 cents or so.  I guess it was allowed to lapse, because the successor company had no record of it (the result I expected).  The certificate was fancy enough to keep, it seems.

We might think of personal security plans such as retirement funds, life insurance and annuities as rather modern, but various forms have been developed over hundreds of years.  Benevolent societies have provided security in the form of burial insurance and old-age homes before Social Security, and those of more substantial means have had access to trusts, inheritances and such devices as the Tontine.

What?  That word sounds like it refers to a local church officer, like a beadle or sexton.  It is, however, a strange stew of lottery, insurance and annuity, and has been around since before Lorenzo Tonti (now we get the name) proposed it to the royal government of France in 1653 as a fund raising idea (Louis XIV spent huge sums on continental wars and was always in search of cash)  It was officially offered to the public in the Netherlands in 1670 and in France in 1689, unfortunately for Lorenzo, after he had died.

The idea is that subscribers contribute an amount to build the fund and the government paid out regular interest as with the Treasury bonds we are familiar with.  Due to growth of investments, the annuity increases as participants pass away and are paid no more.  The macabre end of the scheme is that the last surviving subscriber takes everything remaining.  That this process might induce some to bump others off before them was actually the storyline of a 1996 Simpsons episode, in which Mr. Burns attempts to do exactly that to Grandpa Abe.

Tontines were quite popular for a century and a half, but as people learned how to game the system they fell out of favor.  The plan is still legal and in use today, and there is talk of broadly reviving it.  It was also widely used later on to fund building projects such as hotels and the Tontine Coffee House on New York City's Wall Street (1792) -- the first home of the NYSE, believe it or not.

                                             

                              Original home of the NY Stock Exchange

Some people are grasshoppers, living day to day, and some are ants, always planning ahead.  It's generally better for you the more the ant type you are, but as they say, people plan and the gods just laugh.