Blue painted vessels

Blue painted vessels. Manny reached for the tablet lying on the desk. He bumped his coffee cup. A dark wave surged over the rim. Beads of java drained down the side of the cup staining the tablet. In reflex, his head tilted back, eyes closed and jaw tightened.

Less than an hour to his speech at the county caucus. His remarks for the event were not flowing onto the tablet as he hoped. “I know this anyway,” he mused. “I’ve got the stomach to get up and do what needs to be done. Besides, Miller is backing me.” Still, Ginger was a formidable opponent: a school board member and retailer with a family name.

Manny had it mapped out. Except for schools, county and city government had been consolidated thirty years earlier. Republican voters in the surrounding ring of townships outnumbered Democrat voters in the old city limits. Each election cycle the margin narrowed. Manny was African American with religious right views. In the general election he would draw votes from both parties. He just had to get past the primary. Ginger stood in his way, in the moderate middle.

Slating allowed the party bosses to control the primary. Slated candidates had the backing of the party during the primary. Bucking the slate was disaster for a political career. Manny left his suite and walked toward the Sagamore Room at the Convention Center. His advance man joined him. Slating would give him the party brand. He would be a blue painted vessel.

Long ago in Egypt, Nile silt was hand rolled into coils, joined together with slurry and fashioned into pottery. Undecorated, siltware served every day purposes. Marl, a mixture of clay and lime found in Upper Egypt, had better qualities. Royalty valued marl ceramics. King Narmer used it to depict his parades. His pottery was a political poster. On it, Narmer holds a sceptre and the royal flagellum. He is followed by a Runner Forth bearing sandals and a pot. He is preceded by his high priest, the queen and four standard bearers. His battlefield pottery depicted the beheaded corpses of enemies laid out as if for inspection, their heads placed between their legs. These ceramics were distributed far and wide. King Narmer united Upper and Lower Egypt giving birth to Egypt and its pharaonic dynasties.

The New Kingdom was Egypt’s most prosperous time and marked the zenith of its power. The heavy cost of attaining Kingdom exhausted Egypt's treasury. Then, for twenty years, volcanic dust dimmed sunlight hindering agriculture. Egypt was beset by a series of droughts, below-normal flooding of the Nile, famine, civil unrest and official corruption. Food rationing favored Egypt's elite. Pharaohs’ deaths often led to endless bickering.

These plagues led to methods to keep trading markets open. Systems of trust were developed to manage trade. Reputations mattered.

During the New Kingdom, clay from Lower Egypt was fashioned into vessels with tokens sealed inside. The vessels were glazed with blue frit and then kiln fired. This pottery was mass produced. Sheep and goats were traded using this blue painted pottery. It was hard to know the health or number of sheep or goats until they arrived at their destination. The animals could be sick or already fleeced.

A seller's reputation for delivering healthy livestock could be backed by bankers. Bankers would take the risk of clearing the trade. Sealed blue painted vessels would be sent ahead to the buyer by the banker. The number of tokens inside could be verified by shaking the vessel or by breaking it. If broken, the number or terms written on the outside became subject to doubt. If the sheep or goats arrived as promised, then the blue painted vessels were returned to the banker. These vessels represented a promise to deliver. Over time, as trust was established, the need for the tokens inside disappeared. Eventually, contract terms were rendered on flat tablets. This branding of blue painted vessels was the first system of commodity accounting.

The political bosses packaged Manny to secure rights from government derived from the consent of the governed. He was positioned to gain an acceptably broad consensus by making promises to deliver. Ginger was a variation in the product. Bets were hedged at the caucus because of Ginger. A majority of the governed could be aligned with her on the first Tuesday in November.

Manny sent his advance man on ahead to distribute his campaign buttons. He arrived at the Sagamore Room. There was Ginger, straight ahead of him, at the entrance. Her arms extended out to him, palms upward. She beamed at him with her broad smile. He steeled his grin, opened wide his eyes and tilted into her in close embrace. In his caucus speech, Manny promised to deliver. His speech charted his vision of keeping government accountable. He spoke of how he would unite right and left. He received polite applause. Manny won the caucus.

Ginger bucked the slate. She won the primary. She lost the general election. Manny felt crushed. Two years later he would win the primary but lose the general election.