Monday 12 July 2010

Money makes the world go around - or does it?!

Today Anders, Dexter and I drove to Inverness and back. Going there we took one scenic route which is via Loch Ness (I will show photos of that under a separate blog entry). We stopped off along the trail at a little coffee shop, and on the walls were various maps, with monies from all over the world pinned to it.

The symbolism for doing so in some cases were to show that a visitor had connected to this shop, town, country themselves as an individual or group. Perhaps it was also them stamping their nations approval and connection with this place. What was clear was a worldwide connection taking part with this corner of Scotland which lay on the banks of Loch Ness.

When you look at the notes, it is interesting to see some of them are discontinued (Europe now has Euro and some notes had shelf lives). One stuck out loud and clear as it could almost be a US Dollar. Look closer and you will see that it was from Liberia! What was the connection here with copying a currency and yet clearly marking it as Liberian?


And then look at the value of this denomination - one is for 100 Dollars and below it
5 Hundred MILLION Dollars!!!
Both currencies from Zimbabwe - what connection were they trying to establish, or communication were they trying to convey.


Then there is the Middle East, here are some monies left from various countries located there. What communications are taking place between these countries today?!


The monies are literally from every country in the world, each currency telling a tale and conveying values of one form or another.

Whatever your views of money - love it or hate it, every country has some form of it and it can stir up all forms of emotions. This is not my intention, I just noticed that it clearly connected people together, and not necessarily the way we normally think of it (i.e. here it is pinned up in a small cafe in Loch Ness for all to see/share/enjoy/ponder).

How you chose to use it, and connect with it and others, well that is entirely up to you and I am not here to judge.

The Sunday Creative word was Connect.

The Sunday Creative

3 comments:

  1. This is a very interesting post. I loved seeing all the different currencies...very cool!

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  2. So cool - I'd love to see that map. I'm fascinated by the differences in currency around the world. Why some is multicolored, different sizes, etc

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  3. I love that map. Good idea tying it to the connect challenge. I love it.

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