The Greedy State of Wisconsin and other states have been collecting sales tax on postage for several years now. I can understand that when paying for the shipment of a purchased item by mail the handling fees like any other service would be taxable but not the actual postage charged by the United States Post Office which is still part of the Federal Government. No state has the legal right to tax the Federal Government. If you think I am wrong in this view, ask yourself why is it that when you go to the post office and ship a parcel or buy some stamps the post office does not charge sales tax on these transactions. Granted it is easier to charge the sales tax on the entire amount rather than to separate the taxable handling charges from the actual postage but it still is wrong to do so. Since the amount of money per transaction or per individual is too small to justify a privately funded law suit no one has yet challenged this illegal taxation. Maybe it is time to consider a class action suit? Any lawyers out there? If so please feel free to chime in.

What’s better than a lot of broken glass and spilled champagne? As a military medal collector I would say adding another medal to my collection. It is traditional when launching a ship to smash a bottle of bubbly against it’s hull. Fortunately it is also a tradition to issue souvenir medals on such occasions. I don’t know much about this category of medals other than they seem to be rare. I’m also not sure if the terms “Launching” and “Christening” mean the same thing when it comes to ships. In any event I will illustrate the only two such medals I have come across in my years of medal collecting. The first one is for the launch of the USS Tennessee in 1919. The Tenn. earned 10 battle stars during WWII and was sold for scrap 1959, the same year that construction was started on the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk which in turn will be decommissioned in 2008.

Here we have three different medals that are very different and yet also the same. After years of collecting I have come across about half a dozen of this type of military medal but will only use three in the scan. The medals are all very different at first glance from the basic radiant eagle design to the very unique and beautiful designs of the other two. All are different shapes. The medal on the ribbon is what I call a classic design of the First World War era. The second is a locally inspired design featuring a church which was a local landmark somewhere unknown to me. The third is a generic design found on many obverses of locally issued service medals from the First and Second World Wars.

Some similarities of the three medals are that all are bronze and intended to be worn suspended from a ribbon. All three were made circa 1919 and all three have blank reverses with only the makers identification on them. Most local service medal types have reverses with die struck designs and inscriptions stating the issuer and reason for the issue along with a space where the recipient’s name could be engraved. Few medals would have been issued with the intention of engraving the reverse locally. So why are these all the same? I believe that they are salesman’s samples. After WWI an army of salesmen canvassed the country trying to sell the idea of locally issued service medals and since there was no Federal WWI service medal until 1921 these salesmen were very successful. Thousands of different local types exist which is why most collectors limit their collections to only a few states and no one knows for sure how many medals would make up a complete set.

 George Rogers Clark Medal

Starting at the beginning George Rogers Clark (1752-1818) was born in Charlottesville, Virginia Nov. 19, 1752.He was the older brother of William Clark who was the Clark in the famous Lewis and Clark expedition. His military service began as a scout in Lord Dunmore’s war of 1774. Clark then settled in Kentucky and organized the militia defense against the hostile Indian allies of the British during the revolutionary war. About this time Clark was promoted to Lt.-Colonel and made Commander of the Kentucky frontier militia. In 1778 Clark led a 175 man expedition down the Ohio and into Illinois where on July 4 they captured Kaskaskia and then Cahokia and Vincennes in August of the same year. Vincennes had to be recaptured Feb. 25, 1779. Now as a Brigadier General Clark led a successful expedition against the Shawnee and repelled a British and Indian attack on the then Spanish settlement of St. Louis in 1780. In Jan. of 1781 he assisted in repelling attacks led by Benedict Arnold. From 1783-1786 Clark was the US Indian Commissioner and led an expedition against the Wabash tribes. During the 1790’s Clark was involved in several failed French and Spanish colonization schemes trying to better himself financially and then retired to Louisville, Kentucky until his death Feb. 13, 1818.

The medal, 20 x 34.4mm is bronze and in the shape of a stone arrow head with Clark's portrait on the obverse facing to the left. The inscription “KY GEORGE ROGERS CLARK TRACE” is above and below the portrait. (What is meant by the word “Trace” is unknown to me.) The reverse is blank except for the makers name “Medal Arts Co. Roch. N. Y. " The ribbon is faded and discolored but the original colors were probably blue and white. My guess is that this medal was made in the 1920's and is rarely seen on that large internet auction site.

Nature abhors a vacuum and so does human nature. After the First World War a defeated Germany found itself in a vacuum. The imperial and royal governments had fallen. The weak Weimar Republican government had so completely disavowed war and the military that it refused to issue any medals for WWI service. Millions of veterans who served honorably and suffered so many hardships (as did the veterans on all sides) came home to a government that wanted to forget the last 4 ¼ years. To fill this medallic void numerous German veteran and patriotic groups issued a flood of WWI service awards. Even some former allied countries like Austria, Bulgaria and Hungary issued medals. The medals were sold to anyone who felt that they were entitled to wear a particular medal. As a result medal groups can be found with many interesting combinations of medals which often are totally unverifiable. The field is vast and not yet completely cataloged. One could spend a life time just collecting these unofficial awards. Illustrated below are just four of the better looking examples, one from each of the former kingdoms of the Germany Empire: Bavaria, Prussia, Saxony and Wuerttemberg. Take a close look and see if you can figure out which is which.

Couple of weeks ago we checked out the local Goodwill store on the way home. Over the years I have found some good books and music cd's there.  This being 2007 the memory of the 9-11-01 terrorist attacks  are starting to fade from the public mind and we now have kids in grade school that were born after that date of infamy. In the small book section laying on top of the shelved books was a large white book, 9x11 inches and 568 pages, titled "PORTRAIT 9/11/01 The Collected "Portraits of Grief" From The New York Times" published in 2002,  already in it's tenth printing and I had never heard of it! It is a very moving book featuring photos and short written descriptions of the lives of the nearly 3000 innocent  victims murdered that day. So if you ever find yourself wondering why the US military is stumbling around in Iraq and Afghanistan like a wounded elephant trampling the natives get a copy of this book.

We all know that the Silver Star is one of the United States’ highest awards for valor. Actually the third highest combat only award. To earn one of these a soldier in combat has to be very brave and very lucky. The brave part is understood but one must also be lucky enough to have a witness to the act of bravery who also survives the battle and is able to report the act of valor in such a way that the act is recognized and rewarded with the Silver Star. Silver Stars are very popular with collectors because all the awarded ones are named on the back and therefore researchable. Illustrated below is a very sad example of an early WWII issue Silver Star that has had the original owner’s name filed off! I have seen this sort of thing on British medals but rarely on American medals. Why was this done? I can only guess that the original owner fell on hard times after he left the service and had to sell his medals. He probably filed off his own name out of a sense of shame for having had to sell his precious medals or maybe he feared that some pretender could assume his identity. It is sad that one of our nations heroes had to sell his medals. It is tragic that he destroyed the only historical monument to his own heroism and that now we will never know who he was or what he did to earn this Silver Star.