Bye, Bye Miss American Spy

I'd like to take the opportunity offered by the apparent determination of the Trump treasury department not to elevate the heroic abolitionist Harriet Tubman to our currency (I don't suppose it would make any difference to our military-loving president were he to be informed that Tubman provided invaluable intelligence to the United States Army fighting the rebellion -- if John le Carré were to write her story he might call it "Slave, Nurse, Scout, Spy") to renew my appeal on behalf of Helen Keller who -- struck totally deaf and blind by childhood illness at 19 months, before she'd learned to speak -- overcame the adversity of being unable hear or see to become one of the 20th century's leading humanitarians, an international champion for the disabled, a feminist, a Socialist, a co-founder of the ACLU, a teacher and lecturer, a journalist, and the first deaf-blind person to earn a BA.

On the twenty dollar specie, though, not the ten. Thanks to Broadway, Alexander Hamilton now has a lobby. It is Andrew Jackson, the populist president and, alas, slave holder and genocidist, who needs to go.

Here's the original post: Helen Keller on the $10 by John Gabree (Impractical Proposals).

It is not that the estimable Harriet Tubman doesn't deserve to be honored for her courageous activism, it's just that being, you know, black, she may not be a favorite of this administration.

Alexander Hamilton Will Share His Space on the Ten-Spot -- U.S. Treasury

This is only the beginning of changes to our currency, according to the Treasury Department.

In 2020, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Sojourner Truth will appear together on the back of the $10 bill, and Marian Anderson, Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King will be honored in a group portrait with Abe Lincoln on the $5.

Rumors are unconfirmed that the $2 bill will feature all the people on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Helen Keller on the $10

Part of the reason for redesigning our paper currency is to make it accessible to people with difficulty seeing (also, to make it harder to counterfeit). We are one of only two nations whose bills are the same size no matter what the denomination; most countries also vary the colors to make bills more detectable to people who are sight-impaired but not totally blind.

The next bill due for a redo is the $10, and the Treasury has announced that it intends to replace the current occupant, Alexander Hamilton, with a woman.

That being the case, although the women on the front page of today's New York Times -- Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, Eleanor Roosevelt and Rosa Parks -- are all admirable, it seems to me that there is one stand-out candidate: Helen Keller (1880–1968).

Struck totally deaf and blind by a childhood illness when she was 19 months old, before she'd learned to speak, she overcame the adversity of being unable hear or see anything to become one of the 20th century's leading humanitarians, an international champion for the disabled, a feminist, a socialist, a teacher and lecturer, a journalist, the first deaf-blind person to earn a BA, and a co-founder of the ACLU.

Parenthetically, it's not too late to erase autocratic, slave-trading, Indian-relocating, populist Andrew Jackson from our currency, instead of Hamilton who, as founder of the nation's financial system (not to mention a far better human being), has a more direct connection to our currency.

The rest of the story:
A Woman on the $10 Bill, and Everyone Has 2 Cents to Put In by Jackie Calmes (New York Times).

Reading list:
What Helen Keller Saw: The making of a writer by Cynthia Ozick (The New Yorker).

Three Days to See by Hellen Keller (1933; The Atlantic Monthly).

The Story of My Life by Helen Keller (Amazon).

Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow (Amazon).

Extra credit:
The Water Scene and the Breakfast Scene from The Miracle Worker (Anne Bancroft, Patty Duke; directed by Arthur Penn; written by William Gibson)(YouTube).
Buy The Miracle Worker (Amazon).

Helen Keller Speaks Out (YouTube)

Hamilton - Original Broadway Cast Recording: book, music and lyrics by Tony and Grammy Award-winning composer Lin Manuel Miranda, who also plays the title role; directed by Thomas Kail; choreography by Andy Blankenbuehler; music direction and orchestrations by Alex Lacamoire. The show was inspired by Chernow's biography (Amazon).

Small Change: Does U.S. currency have to be boring?

Our paper money has been homely for so long, you almost think it has to be that way. And maybe it does; getting this dull, deeply conservative country to change anything is nearly impossible. I once suggested that the government is missing revenue opportunities by not selling ad space on U.S. currency. The mail response was hilarious: you would have thought I'd advocated dressing the Mall with billboards for strip clubs that took advantage of the profile of the Washington Monument; except for a few anti-tax types who immediately recognized a worthwhile proposal when they heard one, most people reacted with horror to the idea of "defiling a sacred institution."

Anyway, in response to the The Dollar ReDe$ign Project, artist and designer Michael Tyznik created this lovely and relevant series of U.S. paper basing his design on the premise that our dough is "aesthetically lacking." American banknotes, he explains,

are in dire need of a redesign. Even though the green color of money is deeply interwoven into the nation's culture, the need for color differentiation between denominations has forced the inclusion of color. The recent redesign of banknotes by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing is poorly executed and aesthetically lacking. Because the coloring of the current notes is so subtle, it is still hard to differentiate between denominations by that method alone.

My proposed redesign keeps the culturally important green color of money, but introduces a brightly colored holographic strip into each denomination, making them easy to tell apart. This strip includes embossed dots for the sight-impaired as well, making currency far more accessible.

Although these elegant bills are a big improvement graphically beyond what's in your pocket, the artist's best innovation is on the reverse side:

One of the most important things about America is our Bill of Rights. It is possibly the most important information any citizen can have. The design of our money currently contains semi-religious (the eye in the pyramid) and overtly religious (“In God We Trust”) symbols and text that go against the incredibly important separation of church and state implicit in the first amendment. In my redesign, these are replaced with the text of the Bill of Rights. It has been proposed that these ten amendments are in order of importance, so it is fitting that the most important rights are included on the most common banknotes.

You'll note that Tyznik also wants to recalibrate our money: The $1 bill, he says,

lasts only 21 months before it needs to be replaced. For this reason, I propose that the $1 banknote be eliminated in favor of the current $1 coin and a new $2 coin. For this reason, Washington is depicted on the $5. I also propose the discontinuation of the penny, because it currently costs more to produce one than it is worth. This is precedented by the elimination of the half-penny in 1857, after which the smallest unit of currency, the penny, had more buying power than today's quarter does.

I think it's a measure of how seriously we need a redesign that Snopes had to go out of its way to deny that Treasury commissioned the project or planned to use it as a replacement for our current forms of U.S. legal tender.