Meeting our inner expectations

"enjoyable for free"

“The most important lesson of the Holocaust is not that bad people do bad things, but that modernity causes good people to get involved in horrific actions, no matter if they are urged or not.”

Reading these words in the Dutch magazine “Filosofie” of this month I got confirmed what I already suspected. They are from an interview with the 82-year old Zygmunt Bauman, one of the most productive philosophers and sociologists of our time (he writes a book every year). His central theme is: modernity. In his book “Sociology of Everyday Life” he introduced the concept of “liquid modernity”. Liquid, yes, that’s the word. In our day-to-day life we have to take hundreds of decisions, on a sea surrounded by choices, and for the first time in human existence we seem to be free in these decisions. We are floating on this sea and have no land in sight. But it doesn’t only hold for us, it also holds for the people who try to influence these decisions, or people who are “in charge”. A few examples:

* In the Netherlands we have a parliamentary democracy, based on the principle that we vote periodically for the parliament. More and more politicians address themselves directly to “the people”, especially via TV., ignoring the parliament. “The people” are becoming a governmental institution by themselves, but don’t bear any governmental responsibility. This is all made possible and stimulated by modern ICT, TV and newspapers. The media dictate more and more what’s important, what decisions we and the politicians should take. In defining what’s important the media follow what their readers like to read about. It’s a circle.

* When we go shopping we think we are free to choose. But we have only choice from the products made by producers who want to combine as much profit as possible, without any concern for sustainability. They simply have to. Also, they awake in us needs we wouldn’t have if the product wouldn’t be offered. Marketing makes use of refined psychological insights to reinforce this need-arousal, marketing has to, otherwise they lose the competition. It’s not usefulness, not beauty, durability, quality etc. that are production criteria by themselves, but profit and via profit, employment for millions of workers and managers. Marketing books dictate that “quality” is defined as “meeting the expectations of the customer”, not “meeting the requirements of sustainability” or “usefullness” etc.

* Privatization has caused a series of changes and complications in public transport, public health care, education, mail services etc. that provide the “customer”( the civilian) with a new, everlasting change circus with fancy brand names succeeding each other in mergers, take-overs and price wars, as if “the consumer” rationally stores all the needed info in his computerized head and chooses the best alternative. Nobody dares confess to colleagues or friends that he hasn’t chosen the most profitable mortgage or insurance or internet provider. No choice by choice-overflow.

* When China develops as a modern capitalist (!) nation (Mao Zedong and Marx would turn themselves in their graves), all Western industries form queues to enter this huge and profitable market. Belgium cancelled a visit of the Dalai Lama of Tibet to Belgium because it wouldn’t please China . Nobody has a choice: employment is the moral reason, profit the primary reason.

* Today's news: in Congo the war is ended; thanks to this "economy" can take its place: the government issued concessions to wood traders to rob almost half of its rainforests: a disaster for everybody. The wood is not really needed but cheaper than its alternatives.

Individuals are not in a position to change anything, but are constantly urged to make up their minds to choose from many alternatives, pushed not by what they think would be sensible or rational, but by commerce. Outside these commercially approved alternatives they have no choice: it isn’t available, it’s too expensive, they have to “sacrifice” too much such as a job, half an income etc. Bauman notes that social belongingness for lifetime, lifetime commitment to a religion, a social group, a family, etc. has been exchanged for “power on/off” and “download/delete” relationships. Mr. Bauman is very pessimistic in the sentence I quoted as the first line of this column. Following his reasoning, we are committed to many, many evil deeds and situations unwillingly because it’s part of our job or income. In this structure, he says, a power beyond our individual control could rise and pursue a Holocaust-like event; yes, there are such events already going on like for instance in South Sudan. Is there another direction mankind can choose? I think there is. All I wrote above is one side of the medal. When you listen to people carefully you notice that many (most?) of them are aware of all this, but that they let themselves float, like on water, to the decisions that are most “obvious”, most “taken for granted”, most “sensible” in terms of continuing a “normal” life for themselves and their families. But there is a deeper layer that shows the objections to these decisions, concerns if this really is the right thing to choose. Let’s follow that inner layer more often, it means that we become more alert and more aware and don’t follow hypes, the cheapest way, our urge to get satisfied. Show the marketers that we as consumers don’t want to get “satisfied” in our “expectations”, but that we want satisfaction provided by ourselves, by the inner layers of our consciousness.

The family Challenge

When we were visiting the family of my sister-in-law, we went out eating in a restaurant. Here Menno has great fun with his aunt and niece. Two pictures, an impressionist one giving an idea of quick movement and play, the other one showing the kinship between aunt and cousin.

A sailing trip (end for the time being)

Next time I 'll come with an article on "good and evil", so if somebody thinks I'm only busy with nice things of everyday life, please be patient and read just one time more about our boat life. Anyway. This afternoon we went to our boat again with two children who couldn't appreciate it very much. Luckily the cabin could be transformed into a bedroom so they kept themselves busy with experimenting with cushions and planks. The girl was less desinterested than the boy and asked sometimes a question. Menno was happy to assist with the start and mooring, he was in charge of a particular rope. We didn't sail much because there wasn't much wind and we had only 2.5 hours. Hoisting the sails takes a lot of work and time on this old boat, you have to go to the mast and the front to handle ropes, pull them and attach them, and with the children we were too lazy for it. After the trip we visited a terrace and had a snack and a drink, for the children a reward and for us an extension of our lazy afternoon.

Please pay attention to the foto's. There was a reunion going on of the Dutch Association for Old-timer Tugboats which yielded some nice pictures, unfortunately the sun kept herself hidden behind a heavy pack of clouds so the heaven appeared white on the picture. There was also a genuine Missisippi paddleboat for tourist taking a sightseeing trip through this area full of lakes and swamps (it has a National Park status).

Our first sailing trip with the new boat

This afternoon we "parked" the children (Menno and his "stepsister" as he clls her) with a friend to try the sailing capacities of the new acquisition. Wer discovered the following:
She really needs wind because by wind force 3 Beaufort and below she is slower than one can expect from a modern sailing boat. But she isn't modern. I think it's caused by her material (heavy steel) and her sail (not designed for her but deparately purchased from another boat). She has a gaff sail which isn't usual for her type of boat.
HOwever, being on the water was a nice experience and she did perfectly what she had to do. She will be at her best on more open water, with wind force 4 or 5. With 6 she will need a reef which she hasn't so we have to provide her with one.
Janine is enthousiastic. But she also thinks of the kids who don't like being on a sailing boat for longer than half an hour, so she was talking about little islands with playing and bbq possibilities.

Unfortunately we didn'have cameras with us (hers was just returned from repair and lacked batteries, mine was at home because I wanted to concentrate on the sailing and not be distracted by my other addiction), otherwise we could show you something. But tomorrow is another day and we will go with the children.

Helene Schjerfbeck

People who don't want to read religious ruminations can skip this post.

This morning I read an announcement about a second Finnish artist next to Akseli Gallen whom I discussed earlier in my blog. She is, like Akseli, from the time of the favorite statues of our co-blogger Robert (see sidebar). Her painting as I saw them reproduced in the newspaper (see picture above), penetrated directly into my soul. The woman lived from 1862-1946 and was constantly ill. I don't give a website here, please use Google for many sites in which she is featuring. The newspaper announced an exhibition of her work in The Hague, Municipal Museum, and I regretted that I had purchased a boat but such exhibitions are mostly during a couple of months so I will get an opportunity; The Hague is two and a half hours driving and that's long in our country.

Special attention was paid to the painting presented in the picture above (a scan from the newspaper, for I found no representations of it on the Internet. Your eye is immediately attracted by a black door in a monastery-like environment. Why? Because of the light behind the door. And I had to think of both Jesus and Death. Jesus, who said: I am the Door. Death which is terrifying for people, mostly accompanied by heavy suffering and pain, black is its color. But behind it the Light is shining. And I had to think of the suffering of the artist who was ill while painting this piece. Jesus wasn't only the Door, but went through such door Himself, as an example for us.

Two nice happenings

In our country we have a chain of druggist shops that offers next to the usual druggist articles such as soap, fragrances, bath-articles, anti-headache pills etc. also CD’s. Not only popular pop-CD’s but also very unique classical musiques, sometimes “all works from…” series in boxes. These CD’s are sold against unbelievably low prices. The chain is called “Het Kruidvat”. This week I had a bull’s eye again, from an early 17th-century Dutch musician and composer. I got it for only 6 (six) Euro’s (about 7.50 Dollars), three CD’s in a luxury box, together with a 60-page instructive manual about the composer, his biography, instruments, and the performing musician, Erik Bosgraaf. Holland is not very renown because of its music, it’s more specialised in visual arts, but sometimes a jewel pops up and here is one. So I didn’t need thinking for long. At home I enjoyed the music. The special thing about it is that the 3 CD’s are filled only with recorder music, on all kinds of recorders. Solo. An outsider, pestered by recorder lessons on primary school would immediately think: boring. But this virtuoso musician lets hear heavenly music. The text on the box says: “Jacob van Eyck, the blind city carillonneur of Utrecht, played his recorder on summer evenings in the Janskerkhof (churchyard of the St. John’s cathedral) The public, strolling in the churchyard, was overwhelmed by his visrtuosic art”. These words are not overdone. I refer to his special website, where you can hear samples of the music: http://www.jacobvaneyck.info/main.htm. (music samples: click on the tab "more"). The site of the “Kruidvat” where you can order the CD’s (I don’t know if this is possible from all over the world but you can try) is in Dutch but you’ll recognize the words “Der fluyten lust...” in the column "klassiek" no. 1, is here. Enjoy also the sound of the nightingale, imitated by one of the pieces.
Another cheerful thing happened when I tested my new camera, a second-hand Sony Cybershot DSC-S85. I saw the first orchid of this year on a place where I knew orchids were present, a small meadow near our house. There are several orchid meadows in the village and the municipal green maintenance department adjust their mowing schedules to them. Orchids are the most curious and beautiful plants, that’s what I find. They developed late in the evolutionary process and are very specialized but also very strong. An amateur cannot seed them, seeding can only take place by nature and in sophisticated laboratories. It was late in the evening and dusk was rapidly approaching, but my camera found it no problem, see picture. The species is “Dactilorhiza Incarnata”, meaning: “flesh-looking finger-rooted”. In Dutch we call it “flesh-colored orchis”. The specimen on the photo isn't very flesh-colored, but depending on soil composition the flower can take many colours around pink, from nearly white to purple like this one. I'm sure it's the species I mentioned. My plant book says it’s a rare and protected plant, you can expect a heavy fine when caught picking the flower or digging it out for your garden.

English words

When I was in Zaandam this week I spoke to my 16-year old niece and it was about the most beautiful words we knew in English. She is a very clever girl, I told her that I used the word "vicissitudes" in my blog. "Oh, there are so many funny words in English!" she said and promised me to e-mail her list she collected. Here they are:
1. Abbreviations2. Abominable,3. Ambivalence,4. Anthropomorphic,5. Benevolence,6. Double-declutch,7. Flabbergasted,8. Hieroglyphic,9. Homoeopathic,10. Incomprehensibility,11. Immoderation,12. Impermeable,13. Imperturbability,14. Indecipherable,15. Kilderkin,16. Kleptomaniac,17. Knighthood,18. Knowledgeable,19. Knuckle-duster,20. Labyrinthine,21. Lachrymose,22. Lackadaisical,23. Laryngologist,24. Latitudinarian,25. Leatherette,26. Lickspittle,27. Liquefaction,28. Loquacity,29. Machiavellian,30. Macroeconomics,31. Magniloquence,32. Maladjustment,33. Malevolence,34. Materialization,35. Medievalism,36. Misdemeanour,37. Misrepresentation,38. Multilingual,39. Mythological,40. Necromancer

Well, I hope the English native speakers can comment on this: maybe they discover failures, or may add new words for her collection.

Spirituality in Photos

I just added a new link in the sidebar, please have a look; it's a photoblog by a Dutch lady who combines spirituality with strength and doesn't pay like many of us, only lip service to the trend of respect for nature and the own body, and knows how to promote her view in a modest and attractive way, via pictures and genuine, authentic beauty.

Boat owner vicissitudes II

Photo 1: the seller explaining the attachment of the boom to the mast

Photo 2: the happy and proud new owner

Photo 3: Menno testing the front hatch

It is Friday morning, an obligatory day off between Ascension Day and the weekend. My brother Peter and I are surprised to discover that the seller of the boat has already put the mast on the boat (we expected that we had to do that); he had his son with him and he explained to us a few more details. After we finished we went home to lunch because our appointment with the engine deliverer was at two PM at the boat. This 2 PM became 3.15 PM because of traffic jams and unexpected busyness (nice weather, many people with holidays). Anyway, it took another hour to install the engine (unexpected complications with the electronic starter, the engine was with manual starting), so we could leave with the boat from her place where she had been lying during the last 4 weeks at 4.15 PM, too late for reaching the home harbor, 4.5 hours of sailing further: my brother had to be at home in the evening, so we decided to take a night stop at the very small village of “Gerkesklooster”. Janine drove to and from home to collect sleeping bags and stuff. She herself and my brother left the place, and I and my son who was excited about it, stayed at the boat. The other day I did some shopping and Janine arrived. We would leave heading for the home harbor in Earnewald. I started the engine but after 30 seconds, just before take-off, it stopped: I forgot to push back the choke button. It refused service for 45 minutes. Then I called the deliverer who explained me what to do (very normal things but it was 17 years ago I last started an outboard engine) and everything was perfect again.
Windforce was 4 – 5 Beaufort, blowing right against us, and half of the trip would be over open water. On board there were also 2 bicycles because we had to leave the car in Gerkesklooster. From Earnewald we would cycle to our home in Hurdegaryp (Menno on the luggage rack of my bike). Then I would take the train to Gerkesklooster (also with my bike in the train with me – 2 tickets please, because Gerkesklooster is 8 kilomers from its nearest train station). There I would attach the bike to the car (special bicycle rack, fantastic!) and drive home by car. Complicated, but it worked.

So it happened totally according plan.

The other day (Sunday) we went to the boat again to erect the mast which had been downward during the trip yesterday to avoid bridge delay and also because the wind was against us. We also repaired and changed some minor details (on board of a sailing boat almost nothing is “minor” however) and cleaned it. At last everything was ready to sail and the boat spic-and span, but… the sailors were too tired and decided to sail next week-end.

Oops!! No camera!!

Today we have our new 2nd-hand sailing boat at last in her home harbour, Earnewald, in the middle of Fryslân, after a 4.5 hour trip without sailing, by the engine alone, against a wind which blew with 4-5 Beaufort, partly over open water. So it was also a test for the engine, an outboard Yamaha high-trust 8 Horsepower. I was a bit sceptic because the boat is 8 meters long, built of steel and pretty heavy in comparison with wood or polyester. The engine seller told me that 8 PK high trust is as power as much as 25 Horsepower regular. They are especially suited for sailing boats. We are very happy and satisfied with boat and motor, costing as much as two 2-week holidays when you hire something or stay in a hotel in Italy, Turkey or other mid-far away country.

The reason why there are no photos yet is that my camera is out of order. It still has guarantee, but I'll miss it for a couple of weeks as it has been sent to the importer to repair or replace it. Happily enough I have far more photos up to now than I can publish, but no boat photos. The very same day that it got out of order, my brother (who was with me at my home) knew somebody who had a Sony camera 4 MP, the same model as he had, for only 90 Euros and I bought it at once. The advantage of it is that you can operate exposure time, lens opening and ISO manually which wasn't possible with my now broken camera. Also the brand of the lens sounded luxurious: Zeiss-Ikon. (No doubt these days there are fancy-brand lenses which are as good, but the name... I saw an advertisement for a Leica, a simple rectangular box which costed without any "extras" such as lens etc. - as if a lens is an extra - 4,200 Euros! I have my doubts if this costly device also will produce pictures that are 40 times better than a 100 Euro-camera.

It's late now and tomorrow we are going to set up the mast and sails and try her sailing competencies, we keep you informed and there will be pictures soon. Life is beautiful. By the way, her name is "De Nachtegaal" meaning yes, "The Nightingale", following the tradition that all boats of her type (brand: "Domp") have birds' names.

Boat owner vicissitudes

My computer is repaired. All misery is over and I deleted the Jeremiah-lamentations of my last posting, including the illustration the colors of which clashed so vehemently with the blog colors.
Apart from some problems with people I will not bother you with, our days are in the theme of the newly acquired sailing boat. I bought it “in three”: boat, outboard engine and rigging separately. Listen to the story.

On Internet I found a very cheap sailing boat “without engine” . I found the model and type attractive (=old fashioned quality, steel, nice and smooth lines, just big enough to lodge four people, suited for the sea if needed), and after having visited it and spoken with the seller several times, we decided to buy. The seller wanted to sell his boat because he was too busy with other activities than sailing, and wasn’t a typical sailor such as I am; he followed a short sailing course just for this boat which was his first one. Luckily he was very handy and rebuilt her so to speak. The boat is old (between 20 and 30 years) but well restored after he had bought her with big overdue maintenance.
Only, as soon as he had decided to sell her, he took her out of the safe harbor to “park” her nearby his house, at the private waterside of a farm in the attic of which he stored the mast, sails and other riggings. Then Maintenance Service of our provincial canals announced to the farmer that his boat had to be removed because of heavy maintenance work on the waterside. But the farmer forgot to pass this message to the boat owner. The morning that the works had to start, the working people (time = money) removed the boat themselves to 300 meters further at the waterside, during which operation they caused a small dent in the hulk (no big deal, barely visible). Within a few days his outboard engine got stolen and the insurance didn’t cover the damage because of the unsafe mooring place. So that was sh.. for him.

I had to find another engine, and I found one, from a reliable sales-and repair shop with 1 year guarantee. He would install the engine on the boat, but asked information about the specific type of cables. I sent him photos of the cables but the piece of info he was looking for, wasn’t on the pictures. Anyway, I learned what he was looking for and made a new set of pictures. He had to drive 40 kilometers to the boat and also 40 back so if he had the wrong cables with him it would be in vain (afterwards I thought what's against bringing several cable types?)

I also have to phone the former owner, who immediately after the sale departed for Turkey for a vacation from which he would return today (Wednesday), so I have to phone this evening, and ask him about the type of fuel, too.

I chartered my brother to help me Friday with getting the boat to the farm, putting the mast on the ship, and after the engine will have been installed, get the whole composition to the yacht harbor 35 kilometers further, with the mast down because of the many bridges.

I comfort myself with the idea that if I would have it otherwise (a complete ship ready-to-sail) it would cost me a x times the amount it costs me now.

Saturday, when hopefully everything will have come to a happy end, I’ll heave a big sigh of relief. I 'll keep you informed.

About networking

Below a column text published in our school magazine which I didn't want to be lacking in this blog:

After I posted a photo on my blog I watched it again: wasn’t that beautiful, those colours, framed in a soft kind of black, called “tower black”? I had a nice text underneath it, and all people around the world who would see it, could put a comment to it. Splendid. And then I caught myself being proud of myself. Wasn’t I a wonderful guy, who could make such a thing? It was as if I looked into a mirror, seeing something beautiful. My Better Half realized what I was doing, and disciplined the other, Worse Half. I suddenly realized that I added only the finishing touch to a whole range of valuable activities and achievements that made this possible. I was only a small node in a network. I looked at the painting on my living room wall, representing Indra’s Web. About this network, this web, it’s said (http://fusionanomaly.net/internet.html) “that it extends throughout the cosmos, through the countless planets and immense eons that Buddhists and Hindus recognized millennia before Westerners realized that the earth was not the center of the universe.”
You can admire this painting by Pieter Torensma on http://pieter.torensma.net. Click on 1990-2000 and click on the right one of the two paintings, then you see it enlarged.

On our school we propagate that students should “work on their network”, or simply should “network”. It means that students should contact people that are or could be of importance for their career or future business. This way they form a really positive and advantageous network, in the beginning one-way (experienced people in the business helping them), but soon becoming two-way. In the media you sometimes come across the term “old boys network”: These are not students but business or politics people who regularly contact each other for information and socializing, very useful and positive. More frequently they appear in the media in a negative sense, as a kind of secret fellowship, giving each other favors and protection against lawsuits etc., and keeping women under the glass ceiling J. Ever heard of an “old girls network”? Then you immediately think of a reading club or tea circle, don’t you?
Our school teaches other networks as well, e.g. CPM networks. CPM networks excellently illustrate real-life networks, and are more or less “Indra’s webs” in miniature, focused on a limited time and space. Every activity in a planned, co-operative work project is represented by either a node or an arrow (depending on what you agreed on) and connected to each other in a comprehensive way on paper. You clearly see what contribution an activity has on the other activities. Where activities come together (one is finished, the other one starts) you can see the milestones of a project, the nodes, where something has been achieved.
So, returning to our Indra’s web, I never got such a network-feeling in my life as at that moment after I posted my beautiful photo, and found myself such a genius who could produce something like that. The network-feeling brought me back on my feet. It is something far more beautiful than the photo I produced. At first, there is that whole chain of designers, engineers, managers, workers etc. who gave me the camera. Then, the same holds for the pc where the photo is posted on. But, most admirably and most important, there is the www. It’s the Internet that links all photographers to each other. If you maintain a weblog, and more especially a photoblog, you experience this. Dozens of contacts with people from all over the world. You feel the computer, the Internet, is becoming an extension of your personality. You are part of it, a new social world is opening to you. Not only the photographers are linked together, also designers, ICT-professionals, businesspeople etc., not only in complexity, but also in unity. I’m sure, eventually Internet will contribute to world peace.

Photoblog misery

Yesterday I tried to upload a photo on my photoblog, but it reported that they were busy with maintenance activities. Now I tried to get into the site, but I got no access to it at all. This appeared to be the case with the other aminus3.com blogs as well. This reminded me of the relativity of everything: never cling too much on something (a boat, a photoblog, you name it), there can always happen something by which you can loose it. One owns something, but owning doesn't mean it's totally yours.
In Holland many houses and boats bear the name: "Linquenda" which means: "things you have to leave". Everything appreciable is a gift, even when you "own" it. The only thing you really own is yourself, and not even that.

Oops! I tried again and got the message that they were really busy to update! I'm clung enough to it to be happy with this news.

Liberation Day 2007

Yesterday, May 5th, we had Liberation Day in the Netherlands. Normally this is a national day off. The media pay attention to the earthquaking happenings that took place in May 1945, they keep our minds busy. For two nights one after another we went to bed at around two AM because of emotional movies broadcasted on TV. During Saturday most houses in the streets were showing the red, white and blue of the national flag. We had my mentally handicapped brother staying with us, who cannot understand such things and only liked the flags. We decided to go to Harlingen, “watching boats”. We went by train because he is always transported in a car, and this was for a change which he much appreciated (when I was a child it was the other way around). It took 45 minutes to get there. I like the place, because the 18th century is omnipresent: history, houses, authors, etc. and of course the harbour. What New York is for the U.S., Harlingen is for Friesland. In the 18th and 19th century it was an important trade harbour, nowadays a tourist harbour filled with 19th century fishing and cargo boats rebuilt for pleasure use. One can rent these ships for group sailing trips on the Waddenzee, the water between the Dutch islands and mainland. Many sea-sailors use the harbour with their yachts, ready to head for the U.K., Denmark and France. Harlingen has also a Freemasons’ Lodge I visit one in a while, of course housed in an 18th century small building. Another 18th century building contains the Hannema House which we paid a visit for its collection of Frisian silver, its room memorizing Simon Vestdijk (1898-1971, http://www.svestdijk.nl/al/wpengels.html ) who wrote dozens of novels and about whom it was said that he read “page turning”: he only needed to look at a novel page for a second to fully read it.
The museum used to be a dwelling house belonging to the Hannema family, one of the influential Harlingen families, busy in salt mining and genever production and other commercial activities. The last member of the family living in the house donated the house to the municipality, and with the efforts of many money-donating foundations and the government it was turned into a beautiful small museum, specialised in earthenware tiles. Tiles were used for home decoration (not only floors, but mainly walls) and their production yielded beautifully decorated little paintings about all areas of life that people found important to be reminded of. Harlingen and Makkum were the places of industry where they were produced, and in Makkum they are still produced.
I was also reminded of the bitter conflicts between the Orangists and the Patriots after Napoleon had found his Waterloo resembling much the conflicts between the Orangists and collaborators with Nazi-Germany in 1945-1950. The Patriots were persecuted after Napoleons defeat by the Orangists who were happy to have the first Orange king of the Netherlands inaugurated, helped by the Congress of Vienna who decided that the Netherlands had to be a strong kingdom as a barrier against France. They added Belgium and Luxemburg also to this kingdom so the Netherlands also contained these two small countries after 1813, until 1830 when the Roman Catholic South obtained a separation and Belgium was born. The victory of the Orangists resulted in a mass fleeing of Patriots to Groningen and to Germany because they weren’t sure of their lives anymore. The Orangists were the rank-and-file working people, together with the old nobility and government and agricultural elite. The Patriots were mainly recruited from the intellectuals and “nouveau riches” in commerce and industry: they saw the advantages of the fruits of the Enlightenment Era, but were less powerful at the time.
Harlingen contains many things remembering these conflicts. The Orange Royal Family has always been a great impediment for revolutionary changes in the Netherlands, and still nowadays they exert a big influence behind the screens on public life. They are enormously popular, and also the intellectuals and business people fully accept their authority, not in the last place because the first king, William I, did very much to industrialize the country with railroads, canals and other infrastructural works, also in Belgium which belonged to his kingdom, too. He had much more formal power than our current queen Beatrix. Every now and then there are politicians who grumble something that this medieval foolishness has to be ended or at least reduced to normal proportions like in Sweden, but She and after Her Prince William-Alexander will remain the formal Head of Government.

This king William I is said to be a descendant of the Prince of Orange who leaded the resistance against the Spaniards. Everybody assumes he is, but it's never proven because during the French occupation he kept hidden in Britain and was eager to accept the crown, before Waterloo, nobody checked his CV. Anyway, he was a good king.

Our national anthem stresses that the Oranges are from outside the Netherlands, one of the lines of the first verse runs: "I am of German blood", referring to one branch of his ancestors, the county of Nassau; the other branch came from France, the principality of Orange. Since then this French-German blood has been mixed with all other kinds of blood, except Dutch blood, since our country didn't have nobility available assessed high enough to marry into the Royal Family. Nowadays this is changed for we have now several non-noble princesses married, our future queen will be an Argentinian lady, her father was a member of the Videla-régime, but that wasn't her fault.

In my heart, I’m a republican or patriot myself. But as long as they represent the national identity, I will respect them as well and celebrate their special events. I get always stuck in the remembrance of the beheading of the very skilfull and dedicated 17th century statesman Johan van Oldenbarneveldt by the Orange Prince Maurits (his pupil, like Nero did with Seneca), the slaughtering of the patriotic brothers De Witt by the Orangist mobs, tolerated by the Orangist police and the installation of the family as kings of the Republic by foreigners, the Vienna Congress. Our kings or queens are not “crowned”, like in the U.K., they are simply installed or, using a more formal word, inaugurated. The late husband of our current queen, Prince Claus von Amsberg (a German, again, almost all Oranges are foreigners) once said in public, that the Netherlands were “the only Republic with a king”). The people want it, the people get it, and politics have to tolerate it. I’d rather have a Republic, I think it urges people to think more of what their country means to them, instead of leaving most things to the authorities, incorporated in the National Symbol of a Family. On the other hand, I can imagine that once there is such a family, it can better function as a symbol spreading stability and peace than a Republic can because a Republic finds its roots in the divergence of views and opinions, which paradoxically are bound together in one over-all view by an abstract force, not by a tangible and visible group of persons. It’s what one prefers, and I am glad to live in a country where I can state this preference in public without fear to get arrested for it.

Wessel staying with us

This week I have the whole week off from work (school). Thursday I went to Bergeijk to pick up my brother who has the syndrome of Down, for a short stay until Sunday afternoon. Of course we had a break at the famous road restaurant Hajé, where all furniture is for sale (4th picture). Then we continued heading for Heeg, a small village with a reliable outboard engine sales and repair shop, where I bought a good 2nd-hand engine for my new 2nd hand sailing boat; he had good advice and we agreed that he would put the engine on the boat May 18, so that we could immediately sail to my newly reserved harbour place in Earnewald, at the Frisian lakes. I need the engine because you can’t get there by sailing because of the low bridges. I feel like a king. Wessel got a Tamaha-cap (the engine’s brand name) for his collection of I estimate a hundred different caps, and he was as glad as somebody “normal” who would get a Mercedes for free. The other day we went first to Leeuwarden to buy a clock, broken by Wessel at his arrival because we were so negligent to have it on our living room table, where it doesn’t belong, and to buy another cap worn by Frisian farmers as we told him (a tourist cap with Frisian flag decoration); in the afternoon we went to the clogs museum of the clog factory 3 miles further. Wessel can’t wear clogs, but he was happy with a red farmers’ handkerchief to put around his neck, how happy he was!

The 3d picture is a rack filled with tourist clogs (Frisians don’t wear them despite the flag decoration or maybe just because of that), the 2nd picture shows the genuine clogs from the area that many men wear when they do garden or other outside work, including myself. They show a traditional, centuries-old pattern.

In the clogs museum I took a picture of a school poster with a presentation in pictures and verses of what happened in Holland during World War II (1st photo). The fragment shows how in the Winter I was born (1944) masses of hungry people travelled by foot from the cities in the West to the North of the country where agricultural products were still available. It shows also someone listening to the English radio which of course was forbidden, and a group of Jews on transport to Westenbork, a “Durchgangsslager” (transition camp) to the final destinations in Germany. A very relevant picture today, the 4th of May. Click on it to enlarge so that you can see the details.