Blogger's block

Let's shake hands..

It couldn't stay away - I experience a blogger's block, which means I can only talk about trivial things such as Spring, the wheather, how I spent the day, how etc. No in-depth analyses, I'm just a bit tired I think. On the other hand, I enjoy my new camera very much and experience how photography works. I have decided not to install photoshop, but mostly I have to use Windows Picture Manager, fur simple adjustments. As we say in Holland: "puur natuur" (no translation needed I think). Many Photos are like pieces of art, gradually elaborated in the computer, only started by the shot itself. Beautiful results, but for the time being let me experiment with my simple 150 Euro camera.

Today I wrestled with my electronic tax report 2006, to be submitted before 1 April. Earlier this year we got the message that we should use a code number which we should receive by regular mail, after a request by electronic form. So I had requested one, and received my code. I had everything ready to fill in my tax data to submit to the tax bureau, and then the program said it was too late: my code number was expired. I read the letter again and yes, it said that I had to confirm and activate my code number within 20 days, if not please request a new one, and within 5 days I would receive another code number, of course immediately to be activated. On top of that, I should also remember (register!) a user name and a password.

I was outrageous, I would trespass the deadline of 1 April, but I decided to be (too) late. They would never be able to handle all 9 million tax forms in one day so they wouldn't notice my lateness. I got quiet again.

Yesterday evening I watched a typical Dutch problem in a talkshow on TV: in Utrecht lives an Moroccan imam. Half a year ago, he refused to shake hands with a female Minister (member of government, not a vicar) which caused a lot of rumor in the media. Other sins were: he ordered an audience to separate men and women (women of course behind the men) during his speech, and he encouraged people not to pay their taxes, in order to bring damage to the Dutch state. In the TV studio he ordered the two or three glasses of wine to be removed from the table, otherwise he wouldn't participate in the program. A new fact was brought to light: he had brought his son with him because he could hardly speak a few words of Dutch (although he lives a couple of years in the Netherlands and has Dutch nationality next to his Moroccan), and this son was engaged to a muslim lady who had been in conflict with her employer, a high school, because she refused to shake hands with men. Now she has been dismissed. I know that shaking hands in the U.S. is not a big deal, but here we always shake hands at a first meeting with someone, at the start of a meeting, an appointment etc. Refusing a hand is a serious insult, it is a symbol of serious controversy or contempt. Anyway, for me it's not a big deal if an unimportant imam or school teacher shows these misbehaviours, but it gets so much attention! Press, TV, the government, etc. everybody feels urged to give an opinion. I hope these people now think that it's easy to draw attention: simply don't shake hands, make a fuzz about it and lots of attention will be the reward. I think we should ignore it, and only get alert when there are signs of real threats and conspiracies. Let them keep their hands with them and keep the wine out of sight, if they want to, what's the big deal? I think a smile and a nod can have lots of erotic connotation more than a handshake, because that's the reason: keeping clean of erotic arousals.

another school day

The photos from top to bottom:

Prof. Paul Kirschner explaining learning behaviour in evolution perspective

Forsythia and CHN: blue and yellow, the colors of Leeuwarden

Sunset at the small lake near our house (look up Hardegarijp on GoogleEarth and see the lake, it's about 7 miles East of Leeuwarden)

Today I went to school by bike, for the weather was sunny: no single cloud. The wind was less strong (I estimate 2-3 Beaufort), and I chose the route along Tytjerk and partly through the park "De Kleine Wielen". 45 minutes biking. At school there were some dissertations to grade, I like Word with its special "reading lay out" and the editing toolbar very much for its facilitates quick and easy annotating in assignments sent to me by e-mail. We also discussed the conference (see previous post), and my colleague discovered that one of the slogans wasn't valid, namely, that students put "studying" at the third place of their activity scheduling, and that this had to be moved to the 2nd or 1st place. My colleague wrote a letter for the school magazine in which he convincingly demonstrated that this was valid for the whole of the working population: personal care (including shopping, showering, sleeping etc.) was always nr. 1, and leisure was always nr. 2 for most of the people in the Netherlands: don't forget the many holidays, and the Satur- and Sundays! That's why leisure industry is the biggest industry in Western world nowadays. I also had a chat with the editor of the school magazine because of our article about the conference, and he gave me a photo of the conference. (See above). When the magazine is published, I 'll give you a link to it (Adobe-file) to read about it if you can read Dutch (The CHN is more than "only" the internationally-oriented Hotel Management School).

I was a bit disappointed about the dissertations. They have to be written in English, but the language was poor and sometimes "talking language". These students are not researchers or writers, they are "do-ers" and "organizers". Anyway, my colleague and I decided to make room in the curriculum for next year for a course "academic writing skills".

I stole some time from my boss to go outside and make a nice picture of the yellow blossoming forsythia (that's how we call the plant in Dutch), with a part of the school building at the background.

On my way back I couldn't help making some photos in the park (you 'll see them in due time on my photoblog, see sidebar). Once at home, I got "surrounded" by my little son who could talk and think of nothing else than the "kermis" ("carnival" in American-English), and I promised to go there for an hour directly after dinner. Luckily we had "patat" (those McDonalds potato chips) so he finished dinner in record time. I showed him my shooting skills and he got very proud of his father (I used to win prizes with it when I was in the army some 40 years ago), also we drove in the bumping cars. There he found a lost coin which he brought back to the manager, who let him keep it because he was so honest to bring it back, and he could drive a second time. His day was made, and we hurried back home because of the approaching beautiful sunset which everybody must have photographed once in his/her life. Here the result, there are more photos which I'll put on my special photoblog in due time.

the new student: be funny or I zap

(illustration-replacing link) The Dutch educational world has to cope with “a new type of student” entering the gates of knowledge-acquisition. This was the theme of a one-day conference organised for the educational staff by their school CHN. The conference morning was very un-orthodox, the afternoon very orthodox (workshops plus general conclusions). We entered the conference room, which was the auditorium, offering place to 280 people, it was fully occupied, but fortunately outside in the hall people could also follow the proceedings on big TV screens. As I said, we entered the room and were immediately surprised. At two screens we could follow how two students (hidden behind a curtain) played a computer-game called “the Call of Duty”, a horrible game with soldiers killing each other in an almost destroyed French city. A presenter of the type “funny talk show” was supposed to exhort the audience to be enthusiastic and motivated to think and discuss. But we hardly got the opportunity, because the morning was an experiment in “multi-tasking”.

Multi-tasking, so the presenter brought forward while the war-game continued on two giant screens on the floor, is doing a number of tasks simultaneously. E.g. watching TV, doing a computer-game and reading a study book. And, when you are baby-sitting, also feeding a baby in a baby-chair. It is said that the “new student” is very competent in multi-tasking while we, old-fashioned schoolmasters, only could spend our attention to one task at a time. Furthermore, continued the speaker, the new student was accustomed to master all kinds of ICT tools such as ipods, computer-games, mobilephones, Internet, chatting, etc. and the question was how could we as teachers use these abilities in an attractive curriculum. Because, the new student-slogan was: “be entertaining or I zap”.

Well, to test our multi-tasking abilities during the morning hours we had to do the following tasks, which were also a demonstration of the possibilities and opportunities of modern ICT communication and application:

- (very old-fashioned): listen attentively to three guest lecturers (because we are only beginning multi-taskers, we weren’t demanded to listen to all three simultaneously);
- Sending SMS messages about the discussed topic immediately displayed on a big screen at the left side of the floor;
- Reading messages and opinions about the topic sent to us live from our sites in South Africa and Bangkok, Thailand, on a screen of the same size at the right side of the floor;
- Doing a knowledge-test at primary school level (spelling, calculation, and stuff) because in the newspapers it was said that students lacked too much that kind of knowledge, and now they would see how teachers would achieve on this point;

We as a school feel that students (and their future employers) would be more attracted by learning methods that use teamwork and personality growth more than individually studying textbooks and writing assignments, we embrace a so-called “constructivist” approach to learning. So this could be a fifth feature of the “new student”, it wasn’t brought forward as conference issue, but one of the guest lecturers discussed it.

Anyway, despite the chaotic, but well-directed morning session we simply ignored the screens for a great deal and focused our attention to the guest speakers. The most challenging of the three I found Dr. Paul Kirschner who rejected the notion of multi-tasking except for “tasks” such as “chewing gum during biking”, and who also disagreed with translating the theoretical vision of “constructivism” into a concrete learning curriculum. Especially this second statement did boil the adrenaline of some of my colleagues who spent years to this work. But a long discussion would be boring too much (think of the zapping student!), so there was no time to discuss.
The morning was closed by a free lunch, offered by the school, and the afternoon was spent in the usual workshops (one could choose one at a maximum). The outcome was a bit disappointing, namely that we would do our best even more than we already did, to integrate modern e-methods and visions in our learning curriculum, but that was not the main point. The main point was that we had an unforgettable day with many experiences and, as Dr. Paul Kirschner stated, the real learning only takes place by doing (experiencing) something with what you have heard or read. All participants whom I spoke about the conference, agreed that they learned something and that they were more focused on differences of the student of today and the student of fifteen years ago (we had to explain to them what a computer was, now it’s often the reverse).

A sad piece of history

Recently in the newspaper it was announced that possibly money would be available for the restoration and preservation of the mortuary of the old city cemetery of Leeuwarden. Since I knew the place as a remarkable and beautiful park-like piece of history, I decided to take some photos. Maybe the whole place, except its entrance and the (maybe) restored mortuary wouldn’t exist anymore in a couple of years. It isn’t far from my working place, at the corner of the street. This is the short history of the place, as described on a glass-covered plate at the entrance:

The entrance, the mortuary-ruin, and an old drawing posted near the entrance, with my shadow on it

The Old City Cemetery was built between 1830 and 1833. It’s located where around A.D. 50 the mound called “Fiswerd” was being heaped. Fiswerd was mentioned for the first time around 1460, at the foundation of St. Ann’s Monastery on this place. But soon thereafter the sisters moved to inside the city walls (the cemetery is outside the city walls of that time). Then the buildings were used for housing the leprous In the 18th century only a farm’s barn remained named Fiswert. When in 1829 the Leeuwarden municipality purchased this land to build another cemetery on it, still outside the city, no existing building was reported.

Lucas Peter Roodbaard (1782-1851), a famous national landscape architect (he also designed gardens and parks for the Royal Family) designed the cemetery. He drew an amply planned cemetery with four grave yards, distributed over five sections. The first section was intended for the very rich and the nobility. The last section was intended for the very poor whose funeral costs were paid by the municipality. Next to it, a separate part was reserved for the Jewish.

On the 3d of July, 1833 the first funeral took place. From that day on the funerals were daily functions, considering the almost 50,000 who found their last resting place here until around 1960. After 1919 no new graves were issued anymore. Since then, the number of funerals gradually decreased. On 31 December, 1969 the cemetery was closed after the last funeral in the summer of that year. Since 1967 the cemetery is a State Monument. Because of threatening decay two foundations have been trying to restore and preserve it for the city and posterity. However, it appeared to be impossible to stop further decay.

I find it so sad, that no money can be found to restore the place. It is a State Monument, which means that no changes are allowed in the cemetery-park nor the buildings on it, except restoration. But no government money is provided to preserve the place, so the local municipality can either pay the preservations by themselves, or private initiatives can make this possible by fund raising. These attempts have been made, but without success. The pictures show the maintenance state. On the one hand they illustrate the atmosphere: The majority of the dead who lie buried here, are people who almost nobody can remember anymore as being alive. It seems as if the place is for people who are “really, totally” passed away. Compare it to a modern cemetery still in use, and you will agree that on this new cemetery the dead seem “less dead” than on a place like this. Who wants to spend money to such a place? Would the dead care? Would their families care? On the other hand, the photos illustrate the shame of negligence. The stones, the iron work, the far greater part of it is at least 70 years old, and especially the Jewish section would deserve attention considering the fact that almost all Jews of Leeuwarden have been murdered by the Nazis, like in all Dutch cities, some Jewish buildings are still reminding their former presence elsewhere in the city.

appetizing photos

When you lack appetite, and want to be stimulated by virtual menu items then I have good news: my brother Peter started a culinary photoblog. Don't think of sophisticated, fine-tuned luxury photographs intended to show off, but of really appetizing pictures that let your stomach demand for getting filled. I like these more than the Michelin-star pictures you see on top class restaurant websites, these ones really go into the depths of delicacy and origins of food.
If you can't stand these origins well, then some of his pictures you shouldn't look at: they are maybe too honest.
My brother got enthousiastic because of my photoblog, and I got the idea from Evie. Thanks Evie, on my brother's behalf.
His photoblog site is: http://peerspics.aminus3.com. (See also side bar).

trashcan education II

About the trashcans: Magritte really made a point. He showed that, at least in our Western languages, we don't have a proper word for "represents", because the picture on the billboards is not really a trashcan, but represents one. We are too used to using the word "is" for representations, thus mixing up fact and fabrication. When we, let's say, would have the verb "to rep" (I rep, you rep, he reps, it reps, etc.) there would no longer be any misunderstandings. So when you are watching holiday pictures together with your family, you wouldn't shout: "look, there is mom" when she appears on a picture, but: "there reps mom". See also my post "the meaning of meaning". It seems to be a trivial subject, but this mixing up of real things of subjects with their representations permeats our whole language and culture. Introduction of "to rep" could even restore world peace.
Now, without the word "to rep", if the posters would say: "This represents a trashcan" instead of "this is a trashcan" it would cause confusion, because the students and staff would wonder if the real trashcan next to it, would really be a genuine trashcan, or another, threedimensional representation of it, and throw their wastepaper on the floor to be sure.

trashcan education

Since a fourtnight or so my attention (and not only mine) was attracted to a series of signs in our school, spoiling the intern architecture by their irritating places along the artistically decorated walls. The signs tried to transfer an unequivocal message: this is a trashcan, and this isn't. I asked a manager if the signs perhaps were intended to prepare students to a visual arts course or lecture about the Dada movement, or make them familiar with the famous painting of Magritte: "This is not a pipe" (Ceci n'est pas une pipe) (don't see above).

It appeared that the signs were intended to stimulate a more frequent use of trashcans. There was so much litter around on the floors, and they thought this would be a good idea.

Remarkable Swiss facade texts

In 2005 we were in Switzerland, in Unter-Engadin (or, in the language of the region: Engiadina Bassa), near the Swiss part of the Inn valley. It is not only a very beautiful area because of its mountains, but also very interesting because of its culture. The language is not the usual German, French or Italian, but the fourth official language in Switzerland, the “Reto-Roman”, or, as the speakers call it, “Ladina”, only spoken by a minority of the Swiss. In this language many traditional texts are painted on the walls of the picturesque village houses. It appears that “water” plays an important role in these paintings, expressed in symbols such as waves, water nymphs, fish, etc., stemming from pre-Christian (Celtic) times. I drew one of them in the village of Ftan (see picture) in charcoal and ink.

Tü char chantun prüva
Sün spuonda sulagliva
Per hoz sun qua da chà
E mi’orma viva.
Cur Dieu am clamarà
Part jent ad otra riva.

You lovely, faithful corner here
Located on a sunny slope,
I feel safe when I’m with you,
And my soul can live,
But when God will call me,
I will gladly leave to the other side.

For those who can read German (or Ladina, for it's in both languages) Ulrich Vital has made an extensive study of these symbols and writings on houses in South-East Switzerland, which he published in a book with many illustrations, vividly written (also for lay people): Volkstümliche Symbole und ihr Geheimnis. I purchased it when I was there.

March photo challenge

The March photo challenge theme is "Spring". Well, I already posted some pictures on the Spring theme, but that was before Evie challenged us. So I went out to look for something especially for this challenge purpose. It is very windy today so it's difficult to find a plant part not moving. But I'm proud of the result. During my walk (of course, with the dog) I was thinking about whose product a photo is. I make the end product, that's true, and I select the subject, but to make this possible hundreds of people contributed to this product: engineers, designers, marketers, transport company people, ICT experts, etc. I realized that the more complex a society is, the more people are connected half unwittingly to each other, to enable each other to produce, obtain, achieve something. This is mutual: in our photo-example, most of the contributors to the product have also the opportunity to make photos. In our living room we have a painting by Pieter Torensma, a spiritual artist who uses tempera and not oil paint. In this painting you see a network, (he called it Indra's Web) representing the sort of network I mean when I try to describe the co-operation network enabling as many people as possible to both contribute to something desirable, and achieve this desirability. This is multi-dimensional when you realize that this doesn't only hold for photos but for many desirabilities.

"Indra's Web" by Pieter Torensma

Busy with anything except blogging

Last week was quite busy. At work of course, but also at home and in the evenings. My Freemason's lodge required two evenings. One evening there was a so-called "Open Lodge". When I just had joined Freemasonry, I found this a strange name because all Open Lodges are closed for non-Freemasons, not even invités. It's called "open" because after opening it is a really functioning Lodge, mostly a ritual is performed, somebody is initiated, etc. So to let the Lodge function, it first has to be opened, just as you open your car before you can drive (I won't compare Freemasonry with a car, though).

Furthermore a new column in our school magazine had been published. It was slightly satirical towards the school board and colleagues. I got a number of positive reactions, and one negative. Well, I think a sound organisation must be resistent against slight satire, not offending or blasphemic etc.

Every working day (all working days of the week except Thursday, then it's my weekly day off) I bike to and fro my work because Janine's workplace is farther away than mine so she has the car, and I find two cars a waste of money. On top of that I feel fitter, paradoxically the bike trips give energy instead of taking it. And then, the foto opportunities. The only thing is that when spring comes, also the breaking-ups of the roads arrive. Last year a bridge was under re-construction, this year another bridge, so I have to make détours.

Today, Saturday I was busy all day with household work and Menno. Menno had been (very) naughty and had home-arrest all day. After dinner he said he didn't find it unpleasant, not really a punishment. He always finds something to do and never says "I'm so bored, I don't know what to do", not even when he is not allowed to play computergames or watch TV. I played a boardgame with him, and "four-on-a-row" between the ironing ant the cooking.

In-between I am re-reading "Escher, Gödel, Bach" and discovered that I had forgotten most of its content since I read (parts of) it some twenty years ago. On the bike from work I was immediately giving free reins to my fantasy about his main theme "Remarkable Loops". The universe, so has recently been discovered, is expanding at a faster and faster rate. Before this discovery, some scholars held it for possible that the expanding rate would slow down and ultimately would reverse into a falling back of matter, until a "big crunch" (opposite of "big bang") would result. Maybe, I fantasied, a Remarkable Loop would cause the expanding force to meet itself somewhere in the universe. This is possible because the universe has no boundaries according to Euclidian geometry, but it has according to cosmological mathematics which hold it possible that an object or particle after an almost endless travel across the universe, arrives at the same place where it started. Well, when the Remarkable Loop would have caused a meeting event of the expanding force, this would be such an enormous catastrophe, that a new big bang would occur.

Maybe this reasoning of mine will inspire some ingenious cosmologist to transform it into a mathematical hypothesis, to be tested not by experiment, but by mathematics. (S)he has to take care not to be lured into a remarkable loop. But I'm afraid I will take this idea with me into my grave.

Just opened my photoblog

With my new camera I make nice photos. Thank you Evie, for the idea to use a photoblog. The photos can be assessed on http://erikspictures.aminus3.com. See also first link in the right sidebar of this page.

New blog

Today I opened a new blog for my Dutch poems. Every now and then I also try a poem in English. For the Dutch among you: you can read the poems on http://intenebrislux.blogspot.com. The poems, as the URL already suggests, deal with light and darkness. There is a link from this page, the first link in the right sidebar.

The devil and the dove

The devil, on his daily raid
Looking for new souls to lure,
Saw on the roof of a white arcade,
A dove, against the bright azure.

"It's so difficult to love
As there is so much to hate",
Said the devil to the dove
Trying her to persuade.

But the dove said from above:
“Devil's plight is it to hate,
And my plight is it to love,
So why should we communicate?

You hate me, but I ignore you
Flatter me, I won't adore you,
For I know that you admire
All that is your unfulfilled desire.

It's so difficult to hate,
As there is so much to love,
And how hard it is to tolerate
Intolerance", so said the dove.

Erik Tjallinks, March 2007

the value of gold

In one of my recently published blogs (“bread and gold”) I assumed that gold didn’t have the symbolic, culturally-determined value it used to have until the end of the 19th century.
But having read the extensive information on “gold as an investment” I start to doubt. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_as_an_investment). The article told me that gold doesn’t have an absolute value, it’s not something definitively valuable like wheat or rice, or potatoes. Almost every paragraph in the article starts with the words: “some people think”, “many people believe”, etc. The value of gold is heavily dependent on what people think or believe about gold as an investment. If most people believe it’s a good investment, then the price will rise (as it does the last couple of years), if they don’t think so then it will decline.
At the end of the day this also holds for money and other assets. The matter becomes now more interesting because of the American debts to investors in non-allied countries such as China. This morning I read about the mortgage market in the U.S., an increasing number of people are not able anymore to pay their mortgage terms. I read about the “subprime mortgage market” and that investment-advisors recommend not to put money in the construction-, car- and retail-industries. Will gold become an informal (and eventually maybe formal) support of money capital? Will it affect the value of money, maybe be an alternative to it in some cases?
According to the OESO, it will not, because the OESO says in their forecasts today that the American economy will continue to grow, and that this recession in the mortgage market is only very temporary.

And I think: of course they forecast that, because if they would forecast otherwise, they would evoke a devastating self-fulfilling prophecy in which “the rich countries” would be pulled downwards together with the U.S. whose debts they support. So it’s better to evoke a self-fulfilling prophecy into the other direction: everything OK guys, you can buy “your” house!

I think it would even become more desastrous if gold would become a serious competitor of money. Its value would be launched, it wouldn't be for sale anymore, but only exchanged for other goods and services, becoming money itself. That would be the real free market, and let's pray it will never happen.

International

The previous post was about my way back home from work, this one is about one day with strong wind. Then I prefer the train. Many pupils from Hurdegaryp and other villages surrounding Leeuwarden go to their Secondary Schools in Leeuwarden by train, and park their bikes at the train station. The PR department of our school has taken notice of this very well, and posted big and intriguing posters for the open day, emphasizing the international character of the school. I couldn't help thinking of the burka, the long and all-covering veil women in Afghanistan wear, only showing the eyes of the woman wearing it. International, indeed :-)

I want to ride my bicycle

Today, the 12th of March, could well have been a sunny day at the end of April. It's about 8 miles from my home to the school where I work, and with this kind of weather I take the bike. Biking back home at about 5.30 AM the sun stood quite low, and made a great foto-atmosphere. I had wind and sun in my back so I could look around at my ease. At first, there is the "Groene Ster" (the Green Star), a large park East of Leeuwarden which I crossed.

Here the yellow cornel greeted the eyes, next to her red sister (which I didn't picture, next time maybe).

Then I had luck: the insignia of The Hague building its nest on the usual pool.

You find these pools scattered over the landscape nowadays, up to until 20 years ago the stork avoided our country, preferring Northern Germany and Poland to breed. This is really an early spring, these birds normally arrive in April from Africa.

After my stork surprise I biked along a fishing pond, where the scaffoldings badly needed maintenance.

Risking a cold bath I went on one of them, taking a foto of the signs of time and nature on the planks, and, more closely, of cladonia fimbriata (in Dutch: bekertjesmos, in English: I couldn't find the translation) embedded in other small peculiarities.

Then the next surprise: three does, at a considerable distance, but anyway. You see a glimpse of one of them, just like I did, without a binocular or tele-lens. An indication that they get used to human environments, for normally you see these animals in open places in woods only early in the morning or in the evening dusk, now they appear at around 6 on the golflinks already. They must have come from the vast swamps and peat fields covered with alder groves at the other side of the road Leeuwarden-Groningen. I intend to go there to take some interesting pictures.

Then I am almost in Hurdegaryp, driving my bycicle over the road between Tytsjerk and Hurdegaryp, (that's not me on the picture)

where I pictured the cliché of spring: the little lambs. Delicious, with a good amount of garlic and rosemary (at least I think that's the name of this seasoning) :-).

Perpetuum mobile

The perpetuum mobile (eternal movement) has kept the minds of scholars busy for centuries. Now we think we know that every movement takes energy to be maintained and with the loss of energy the movement will slow down and eventually stop.

But we humans think that anything that can be thought, also can exist in "reality" (whatever that might be) so an innocent, ignorant human watching this picture can believe that it moves. He watches closer and keeps watching, and the more he watches, the more his idea is confirmed: it moves, and keeps moving!

I got this moving picture, that needs no video, from a colleague who couldn't remember from what website it has been taken.

Menno's talents

Menno is curious about my blogging. I explained that it is a kind of diary on which you put little stories and fotos about things you are interested in, and that other people who also blog can put remarks with. He asked to put something on my blog and here it is: a nice drawing of somebody who is very angry and shouts to his little friend (?) to go away (ga weg!). He already gave him a blow on his chest that has been bandaged. His friend (?) wonders why the other is so angry, he doesn't know and doesn't respond to it with anger, which makes his friend (?) the more furious. I don't know what deep psychological motions made Menno draw these two puppets, it must be something that has to do with his life stage (9 years): many new things to get angry about, but you don't know why. Thank you, Menno for this blog contribution.

Arrival of Spring

White spots, a glimpse of hope,
Postponed on grey thorns of almost-despair,
In darkness for life and light you grope,
Of always returning surprise well aware.

Done with Intelligent Design?

After some discussions with colleagues, consultation of Google and blogs, and having read something by Stephen Jay Gould (and especially his NOMA principle) I now think I understand a bit about evolution theory. Gould makes it clear for me that the evolution of species and the "random" mutation of genes follows paths that are determined by on the one hand the innate tendency to survive in combination with genes mutation, and on the other hand the possibilities and opportunities given by the natural environment to the organism, giving advantage to certain mutations over others. This process doesn't follow a complete random process, but is influenced by the state of the organism, its fitness so to say at a particular moment in time, after many mutations and adaptations, and the state of the environment, determining what next mutation will win the battle to better survive. In a computer it is possible to imitate this process, of course on a very limited scale. Gould states that this has nothing to do with religious convictions. I'm not that far yet. But anyway I'm glad I don't have to be an atheist in order to believe that this is the case.

I also read that this scholar who allows me to accept (in scientific terms: "not to reject") evolution theory and keep my faith at the same time, has received much criticism from scholars who believe that he didn't understand, or, gave a misrepresentation of the "true and only" evolution theory. I think I have to do some further reading. I had a quick glance at Wikipedia's description of one of his fiercest critics, John Maynard Smith, where I read something about game theory, but I wasn't able to see any contradiction with Gould's work. I think I don't know enough about the material, and/or his critics were jealous because he was selling so well.

Enough so far.

Bread and gold

This week I attended a reading in which the symbolic value of bread and gold was discussed. I connected it almost immediately to the discussion with my co-blogger Robert (see comments to my second hospitality posting, starting with the etching by Rembrandt). Genuine hospitality is the hospitality appraised in so many tales and poems, in which:
- poor people offer the little they have, to strangers
- rich people humiliate themselves in helping poor and unimportant people
Poverty, need and soberness go together with bread, wealth, importance and luck with gold.
In these tales (see e.g. the Lady of Stavoren) respect for soberness and the value of bread is the real, genuine gold, whereas respect for “only” wealth and the value of gold is strongly disapproved. So you can compare the sober reception of guests in a monastery or poor people’s home with the value of “bread”, and the awe and impression experienced when treated as a VIP in a 5-star hotel with the value of “gold”.

The story of the Exodus in the Bible is fascinating because of the symbolic clues it gives to the values of bread and gold. Bread is what God’s people really need: it is given to them by the Lord, it only serves to feed, it is tasty and enjoyable, but perishable and not storable. Gold is what they, the ungrateful people, give to a fake god, the golden calf. After the manna, the heavenly bread, that God gave to His people, the golden calf was destroyed and Moses ordered that the people should drink its ashes, strewn over water (punishment and compensation) – please don’t bother about the question how gold can turn into ash after burning it - . God demanded that 3,000 of His people were killed because of this idolatry. After so much infidelity, He demanded a contract between Him and His people, and a precious arch was built for Him as His residence. Apparently they took much gold with them at their flight from Egypt, because enough gold could be collected to build a worthy arch, with the two famous golden angels on top of it.

Here we see how gold is something that is, contrary to bread, not perishable, not to be eaten, and to be given to those who are worth it, as an indication of dignity. Of course, if anybody deserves it, it’s God Himself.

Why are bread and gold so often linked together in poetry and tales? And not only in poetry and tales, but also in economy and warfare? Machiavelli said: “Men, steel, money, and bread are the sinews of war, but of these four, the first two are more important, because men and steel find gold and bread, but bread and gold do not find men and steel.” And the 18-century, also Italian, economist Ferndinando Galiani was also aware of the law of diminishing marginal utility. When somebody stated that a living calf is both nobler and cheaper than a golden calf, and that a pound of bread is more useful than a pound of gold, Galiani replied that "useful" and "less useful" are relative concepts, and depend on individual circumstances. For someone who is in need of both gold and bread, bread is more useful. Choosing gold over bread in this case would lead to starvation. But once the individual has eaten his fill of bread, gold would be chosen over more bread. (cited from here).

This makes clear that gold is something, once you tasted it, you never can have enough of. It is something very desirable, after you filled your stomach with bread.

In Roman Catholic celebrations of Christs’ sacrifice Christs’body Itself is transformed not into gold, but into bread, as the gift of God to the people. Bread is something given by God, gold is something that must be given to God, if we want to give Him something concrete and tangible.

Bread, wheat and gold are also very similar in colour. Gold raises the emotion of observing something beautiful and enduring. It is a “noble” metal, which never allies itself to other elements, no other element is worth to “marry” to it, one of the reasons it is used for wedding-rings. Grain and bread are also considered noble. My parents, who survived the famine winter, got furious when they noticed that I had thrown away a sandwich. I felt if it were a potato or a fruit, their anger wouldn’t be that big. Now that I write this, the comparison emerges in my mind between the loaves falling from the air after World War 2 on Holland, dropped by American planes, and the manna snowed from the air for the Israelites.

Maybe, from a psychological view, we can consider the relationship between bread and gold symbolising the relationship between man and God. Both precious, both having each other's appearance (as God created man according to His own image), but gold eternal and shining, and bread perishable and rude. Men who strive for gold, despising bread, although having plenty of it, will be punished, if not worse.

The problem is that we humans in cannot get satisfied with gold, and that for modern people gold is becoming more and more something that you need to acquire bread, instead of the other way around. Gold is devaluating more and more, even the supplies in Fort Knox are devaluating, and one can ask how much they are worth above the mere market value of gold, I think they lost all symbolic value gold has had in the past.

Economics study in a rational way human behaviour in exchange- situations. It doesn’t assess moral conduct, it simply observes how “gold” (“money”) is strived for as something we all want to have, more, far more, than we need, just (and this is becoming more and more the case) to ensure that as many people as possible will have bread. Apparently everybody wants to be a little god, showing his importance to everybody who can notice it. Success in life is measured in the possession of gold. As I read a long time ago (but I still remember it, but forgot place and author):

- yes, I think I do something useful in my life, I feel I contribute something;
- but why aren’t you rich, then?

Greed is the simple engine of a people’s wellbeing, it seems. I hope I’m wrong, and I am at least partially wrong. Because we use gold, as said, as a gift to what we find worthwhile. Like Machiavelli said: men and steel find gold and bread, but bread and gold do not find men and steel. Look at what rich people do in our societies, and you’ll know what I mean.

See also:

a song by Gemini;

a song by Walter Giardino

Gold, Money and the U.S. Constitution

Gold and bread with the Ancient Egyptians

The story of Caliph Ali

Jan Mankes exhibition

This weekend we paid a visit to the Assen Museum, where we enjoyed an exhibition of a number of paintings and drawings of Jan Mankes. This painter belonged to no school whatsoever (although his work reminds sometimes of the young Mondriaan) but was both in techniques and style his own master. At 30 he died of TBC. He must have done nothing else but painting and drawing because he left a big collection of paintings, drawings, etches etc. Especially portraits, landscapes, animals and flowers in vases were his favorite subjects. He is fascinating because of the Vermeer-like atmosphere in many of his paintings: serene, meditating, almost religious. He was married to the first female theologian in the Netherlands, Maria Zernike, both agreed in their religious viewpoints.

An unforgettable artist! (I hesitate to put the exclamation mark, which he certainly would have disapproved).

The Assen museum:

stabyhoun

For Robert I photographed this beautiful and vivid bronze statue of a "stabyhoun", the Frisian dog race, of which I am so lucky to own one. I will inquire about who made it.

Lack of time...

I got a number of comments, and I still have to answer them. I appreciate these comments very much as responses from over the oceans and borders to what I write down between these four little walls in my living room, from people whom I could have met in Leeuwarden or even in Hurdegaryp.
I want to open a new blog, containing my poems (in Dutch, halas!) that I first inserted between Goethes' translated poems in my Goethe-blog.
But, as the title says, I have little time, especially during the week I just closed off: it was a holiday week, and my spare hours that I use to blog during normal weeks had to be spent to other nice activities with my family. So please have patience for one or two days and I will respond to the appreciated commenters. In the meantime those who are interested, can read my second contribution to the depths of hospitality within hte hospitality industry (and comment on it of course).
I will post also fotos regularly. The digital camera makes fotolife really easy!

Rembrandt's "Good Samaritan": The hospitable Samaritan delivers the robbed man to the inn, paying the landlord well for his services. The dog probably symbolizes Rembrandt's opinion about the payment for hospitality. (Luke 10: 25-37)

Hospitality as interaction

How is it possible that a concept such as “hospitality”, which, as we have seen above, bears so many moral connotations, is so widely used as a characteristic of a service produced by one of the biggest commercial industries in the world? Indeed, raising the question of compatibility of “hospitality” and “profit making” often seems to be a waste of time in the eyes of many qualified and motivated hotel managers (Slattery, 2002). Nevertheless, problems may arise from ignoring the balance between making profit and offering genuine hospitality. These problems occur in hospitality companies on a daily basis, and have to do with stressing the buying aspect of the service. Some examples:
- checking liability of the guest before the check-in will take place at all;
- “impolite” guest behaviour (not belonging to generally accepted guest behaviour according to social norms), justified by the guest “because I pay for it”;
- Serving staff who see their job as a sequence of actions outside the interest of the guest, i.e. they focus on the operations, not on the way the guest perceives the service;
- Managers and supervisors who constantly emphasize the “profits” results of the employees’ work, and see hospitable behaviour as subordinate to “profitable” activities;
- Marketing staff and consultants who advise ways and methods to keep poor spenders out of the door and to attract big spenders.

These problems are often experienced as pure business problems, without any relation to a hospitality frame of reference. (references) In many instances the credo is that hospitality is needed to earn profit, thus turning it into a means for profit, which is exactly the opposite of the traditional hospitality concept which prohibits profit objectives (references). This attitude of upholding a hospitality image but practising a business culture can result in morally and socially undesired situations such as:
- causing guests to expect a genuine hospitable environment because it is promised by promotions, but giving them a buy-and-sell situation;
- causing disappointment of staff, asked to do overtime work and to pay other extra efforts, but feeling humiliated by guests who see them as mere paid servants, not as hosts;
- granting extra service to guests who spend big amounts, at the cost of service granted to less-spending guests, or at the cost of extra unpaid work by staff.

In order to clarify these seemingly contrary attitudes, often unconsciously united in one person’s mind, we may consider hospitality as a form of social interaction. In interaction people follow rules prescribing their roles, under certain conditions, one could consider interaction as a role play. If found convenient and both parties agree, sharing a norm allowing them to play a different “ritual” than one would expect outside these conditions, both guest and host will play a harmonious service production interaction which they are allowed to give the name of “hospitality”.

Let’s have a closer look at interaction. Man as a social being attaches meaning to interactions. Without these meanings the actions by means of which responding actions are elicited, will not result in interaction as intended by the actor, because the initiating actions are not recognized as interaction starters. These actions often take the form of symbolic actions, gestures, words etc. and can be responded by other symbolic actions, gestures, words etc. to indicate that the other wants to continue, close or change the interaction. This way social rituals develop as more or less prescribed sequences of interaction for specific situations. The sociological school of Symbolic Interactionism (Berger and Luckmann 1966, Blumer 1969, Goffman 1958) uses this perspective to explain social behaviour. Man lives, according to the symbolic-interactionists, in a perceived reality that he has to cope with. A part of this reality is social reality which the individual needs for acquiring knowledge about the reality he lives in. This knowledge is acquired and passed by through interaction. The interaction is steered by the actors’ self-concepts and the adjustments the inter-actors make to adapt to the roles they have to play. The symbolic-interactionists use the terms “role” and “ritual” not to use the theatre as a metaphor for social behaviour, but to demonstrate that human interaction exists for a great deal in genuine rituals or ritual-like sequences of exchange of meaningful activities: there is a scenario (the way norms and values prescribe certain actions in a certain sequence, recognized and acknowledged by the inter-actors) and there are roles (the set of expectations of each other held by the inter-actors).

For interaction to take place, at least two inter-actors are needed who recognize the meaning of each other’s behaviour because they share a minimum of norms and values connected to their interaction. We pre-postulate, that no interaction takes place without any intention, purpose or goal of at least one of the inter-actors. Even informal chats serve a purpose of at least one of the participants, the purposes or goals need not be rational or effective. In general any interaction purpose is intended to be self-directed, other-directed or directed towards the interest of society, group or organization, or contain a mixture of two or even three of these directions.

The intention with which an interaction is started, can also be negative, i.e. against or even damaging the other’s or the common interest. We call these interactions “hostile” interactions and most of them are against community norms and values, except those which are intended for law enforcement purposes.

This way, theoretically speaking, a vast number of possible interactions can take place. We can plot them in a two-axis diagram in which the axis represent the intentions of one inter-actor. In a harmonious situation the other inter-actor responds by positively “playing the game” in such a way that the interaction will lead to some outcome which is satisfying or at least meaningful to both inter-actors[1].
To illustrate the different intentions with which interaction can take place, we consider the intention “benefit for the other” and the intention “own’s benefit” as axes in a diagram in which types of interaction (according to their intention) can be plotted. We assume that the intention “benefit for the other” represents the community view on social reality, whereas “own’s benefit” represents the exchange view on social reality. We come back to these views later on.

Of course, interactions intentionally directed towards own’s and other’s damage will seldom occur and so the left down square will be filled with aberrant behavior. The left upper square is filled with altruistic interactions in which the inter-actor more or less tries to sacrifice himself for the other’s benefit. Hospitality interactions sometimes take this form, which are taken as examples of maximum hospitality (e.g. the good Samaritan, Luke 10: 25-37), or citizens in World War II who offered secret shelter to Jews, thus endangering their own lives. Usually hospitality interactions can be found in the right upper square of the diagram, together with business transactions. The typical business interaction is to be plotted close to the horizontal axis, indicating less attention for the other’s benefit (that’s his business, isn’t it?) and hospitality is plotted more in the middle or closer to the vertical axis. This is an indication that, looking at the intention, hospitality and selling/buying could belong to a same “family” of interactions. The diagram also intends to indicate that hospitality interactions differ in “degree of hospitality” in which the own-interest and the other-interest components have varying proportions. Mixtures of hospitality and business interactions might well be possible, but, as we will see in the next paragraph, are vulnerable for confusion when one inter-actor interprets the interaction as “business-directed” while the other inter-actor rather interprets it as more “hospitality-directed”, depending on views and situations.

In the rationale of this paper we noticed that managers and workers in hospitality industry might be motivated by “care for guests without concern for remuneration”, by simply pampering the stranger, as a fundamental attitude or personality trait, to pay efforts and hard work just for achieving the guest’s satisfaction as a reward. If that is the case, then they can manage to separate more or less the felt need for salary and profit on the one hand, and the felt need for recognition by the guest as a good host, on the other hand. In this view, slogans such as “the guest is paying our salary” might not be a good means to motivate hospitality workers. Concluding: we assume that in hospitality business the care for the guest is preferably not primarily linked to profit making or salary earning, if one wants to raise or maintain the quality of the service.. This is in line not only with our hypothesized inclination to hospitable behaviour as a personality trait of hospitality workers and managers, but also with some motivation theories, the clearest of which is the classical theory of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation by Frederick Herzberg (Herzberg, 1959).

[1] Therapists and behavioral trainers often use the method of “transactional analysis” which is based on harmony and possible differences in role perception of two inter-actors of themselves and of the other. In the host-guest encounter in the hospitality industry these differences often occur. (Berne, 1964): Games People Play. Grove Press, Inc., New York, 1964. Berne focuses on differences in attitudes people have in their interaction towards each other (Berne prefers the term “transaction”), we are focusing on intentions people have in their interaction. Both are relevant in constituting a meaningful inter- or transaction.

Consulted literature:

Berger, P.L. and Th. Luckmann (1966): The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books)

Herzberg, F., Mausner, B., & Snyderman, B.B. (1959). The Motivation to Work (2nd ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Pinker, S. (2002).: The Blank Slate, Penguin Books, pp. 283-286.

Slattery, P. (2002): “Finding the hospitality Industry”, Journal of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism Education, vol. 1, no. 1: 19-28.

Challenge in red

Yesterday I bought a new camera, yes!! A "simple" HP-Photosmart M425, but far better than the mobilephone. That evening I read the blog of Evie Sears and was challenged because she did an appeal to post photos with the theme "red", in connection to her "February Photo Challenge". So this morning I was glad that there was some sun, and I could make my forst photo with my new camera: two wooden shoes ("klompen")that once were used by my son but are too small now, fortunately they were red. Then (we have a "study week" which means that no lectures etc. are given at school) I made a walk with my dog, hoping to come across something red. But in February only cars, commercial signs and traffic signs are red; there were also some red berries but they remind too much to Christmas.



I came across an orginal traffic sign in our neighborhood, forbidding to leave dog shit on the grass, painted by a little girl. When, with some feeling of disappointment I entered my house I saw a calabash that my wife had put next to the front door, cutely arranged with some other, non-red species in a little vegetable case, just for decoration. (Men wouldn't get the idea, but appreciate it when women take those initiatives). Then I first tried indoors with some books that really mean something for me, then in the garden. It was rather dark with steady rain so the light wasn't very ideal, but my little camera had no problem with it.



So in my enthousiasm I post not one single photo but a couple of them, please excuse me when I'm too eager.

About the books: you see the Bible, illustrated with Rembrandt paintings and etches (I'm a big Rembrandt-fan) that Janine got from het father when she left her parental home. Then you see a book of Goethe, the edition in Dutch that I translated from German (Dichtung und Wahrheit, or Fabrication and Truth or, more literal but less meaningful: Poetry and Truth), then two hermetic books with Christian wisdom from pre-Christian times (roughly said), Corpus Hermeticum and Asclepius, then a book with Frisian folk stories (Hûndert pûn klûnsjes), and a book describing in novel-form the history of philosophy.

By the way, I also looked for a red duck, but couldn't find one. Afer consultation of my guide "European Birds" I learnt that red ducks don't exist in our part of the world :-).