Serendipity in photography, science and cooking

My brother Peter made this serendipity-picture. At first he intended to make a still life of salt and pepper flasks. He didn't notice the girl portraits in the picture because his original version was too dark. I made it lighter and the two ladies appeared, which had a revolutionary effect on the picture. It occurred to me too when I shot a light lamp against a white wall that disappeared. Making the picture darker, the lamp appeared and improved the picture remarkably, making it a mysterious top-photograph.

Serendipity is a quite common phenomenon everywhere where people deliberately and systematically try to construct something new: a new insight, a new product, a new theory. Serendipity is the phenomenon in which the constructor or researcher during or directly after his work discovers something he didn’t have in mind while starting or completing his work, but which appears to be very useful for other purposes than he was working for. It can best be illustrated by two examples: one humoristic example and one serious example, both given by professors who tried to explain the phenomenon to students.

Example #1
This is very short and very clear, and contains all elements of a genuine serendipity occurrence. Suppose, you have to search for a needle in a haystack. They told you that this needle is in the haystack and you have to dig it out, for whatever reason (maybe the farmer wants it to remove before it gets into a cow’s mouth). You start digging into the hay, carefully feeling around, prepared to feel something small and sharp. It’s already dark and you have been digging all day, but found nothing up to then. Then all of a sudden you feel something round and soft, completely different from what you are focused on. It appears to be the farmer’s daughter who likes sleeping in the hay and had gone to bed early. You look into each other’s eyes and you fall in love with each other. You think: this is far better than a needle.

Example #2
This is from social science and is described in the book “Social Theory and Social Structure” by Robert K. Merton (1959). He describes how sociologists investigate the living situation of a group of people who recently moved from an old city quarter to a new quarter. They asked about the opportunities to go out for e.g. a party, theatre, cinema etc. in comparison with their previous living quarter. People said: “oh, this is far better here than where we first lived, there are so many more teenagers around who want to babysit, than where we first lived”. The researchers found this strange because statistics showed that in their old neighbourhood the number of teenagers was far bigger than it was here. They researched deeper and found out that it was not the number of teenagers that facilitated the bigger going-out opportunities, but it was the way people dealt with one another. In the new neighbourhood people knew each other better and most people knew more people than before.

Many inventions, especially in medicine and chemistry but also in other disciplines are caused by serendipity. Look for it on Wikipedia for a list of serendipity-discoveries.

Since I am an ethoustiastic amateur photographer I discovered serendipity when I took a photograph in a bus. I have a mini-tripod and I had installed the camera when the bus stopped to let passengers in. It was dark and traffic and lanterns gave interesting lights outside, so I wanted to use the stop for an extended-exposure photo for a nice view of the nightly atmosphere with the bus window as a frame. The camera had to be absolutely motionless for a couple of seconds. My camera was ready, and I pressed the postponed-exposure button because directly pressing the shoot-button causes a very tiny movement which I wanted to avoid. But just during the opening of the shutter the bus started and I considered my attempt as failed. Afterwards the picture appeared to be an interesting abstract “painting”, and I decided to consider it as “succeeded”.

On Wikipedia I read that many researchers are reluctant to admit serendipity-results because they feel that it wasn’t the researcher, but coincidence that achieved the result and of course they want to be good and respected researchers, able to make interesting and useful discoveries. So also a photographer can think: such a “coincidental picture” cannot be ascribed to a competent photographer, my 5 year-old son can take such a picture. So let’s forget it and delete it, it’s not what I wanted, and only results that I wanted in advance, are successful (read: “make me a successful photographer”).

I find that everybody who reasons this way over-estimates his/her capabilities. Like scientists who made their serendipity discoveries public said, they work in a systematic, facilitated environment that gives him/her the opportunities and tools to search for intended results, but also for not-intended results. Seeing a serendipity result also requires a competent and alert eye, it’s easily overlooked. The only thing the photographer does in making a photograph is selecting the topic, and setting the camera in position (point of view, shutter time, etc.) to register the topic in an attractive way that expresses what the photographer sees in his/her subject. All the rest is technology, all the rest is technology. I say this twice to stress the importance. Making yourself important and seeking recognition by camerawork or science is idle, what you do is register beauty or invent recipes for other people to see, to get better. If you do it successfully, then it may raise your self confidence and happiness, but only because you made other people happy by means of technology invented and constructed also by other, anonymous people, registering and manipulating things, materials and situations that you didn’t create by yourself. You are a competent messenger or cook, nothing more and nothing less. (Talking about cooks, do you think that the chef who discovered that chocolate goes very well together with chilli pepper by serendipity – he accidentally took the chilli powder instead of the vanilla – that this cook will admit his lucky error? I doubt this seriously :)

Do you have a serendipity-picture, and are you subscribed to www.aminus3.com? Then please post it, (see my general call for serendipity pictures on my photoblog).

Geert Wilders' provocations

In our country we have nine members of parliament (out of 150) who are strongly opposed to any Muslim influence in the Dutch society. It’s the PVV (Party for Freedom), which grabs every occasion to criticize Muslim traditions, culture and religion. The Netherlands is a small country with 16 million people, of which about 1 million Muslims. PVV's chairman is Mr. Geert Wilders, who recently declared that the Koran should be forbidden because of its, in his eyes, prescriptions to exert (sometimes lethal) violence to everybody who insults the Prophet Mohammed, to Muslims who leave their religion, and other severe punishments to people criticising Islam, Koran or Mohammed.
It’s true, most Muslims who immigrated into the Netherlands since about 25 years have totally different and often even opposite values and norms and also lifestyles, than the Dutch have. The language is also totally different: mostly Moroccan-Arabic or Turkish. They are very proud people, and where “guilt and forgiving”, “love thy neighbour” and “freedom of speech and writing” are core values in Dutch society, we saw that “upholding respect”, “pride” and “watching your words to avoid offence” are core values of the immigrants. Many small and big conflicts arose, enhanced by nine-eleven (when we asked Muslims why they didn’t protest) and the murder attack on Theo van Gogh because of his insulting Mohammed and Muslims. Everywhere we see how Muslims, full of self-confidence, demonstrate their presence, building mosques, refusing to shake hands with women, organizing their own Muslim schools giving subsidy-money to friends and family by giving them jobs in the schools without any application procedures, etc. etc. When asked, a great deal of them give priority to the Muslim-law “sharia” above Dutch law. Their culture doesn’t know separation between state and religion. If Islam is the only true religion, why shouldn’t government or legal courts obey the Koran? Sounds logical.

We also see how Muslim people protest against any restrictions on their way of life, using “freedom of religion and speech” as an argument, when they are said that Islam also restricts these freedoms severely, they answer that this isn’t true, because Islam is the only justified world religion and within the norms of Islam every speech or act is free.

Many Muslims, however, very well adjust themselves to Dutch society, but these people are the better-educated. For them it’s often impossible to obey norms and traditions of many Muslim brothers and sisters, because their jobs wouldn’t allow them to.

Now Mr. Wilders has announced a film he is making, heavily criticising Islam and Koran. He does so because Theo van Gogh has also been killed because of a film he made, and to make a statement against what he sees as a threat to Jewish-Christian civilisation, and the acquirements of Enlightenment, namely separation of the three forces, separation of church and state and parliamentary democracy. But above all he criticises the Muslim physical violence and death penalties because of religious views people have. Now he says: I have the freedom to make that movie, why should I yield to death threats?

And yet I think he isn’t right in acting this way, he provokes. His message is only negative and appeals to fear. I think it’s far better to identify the differences again and again, but also to call for mutual tolerance. A great deal of mutual mistrust comes forth from ignorance and fear for strangeness. I also think that the Dutch welcome Muslim people: they let them build, because of the freedom of religion, huge Mosques in their cities, they give them Dutch nationality, and accept them as their fellow-countrymen. Mr. Wilders, please point to these positive developments. Islam will eventually shed off violence, taking the Koran that literal isn’t possible in an industrialized, democratic country with many views and lifestyles. People calling themselves “the true Muslims” who refuse to accept this, must be isolated and if they put their opinion into practice by using violence, they must be punished. Mr. Wilders provokes these people deliberately, this solves nothing, but confirms them in their views, they see: there is the enemy, let's burn Dutch flags!

For the rest I find that everybody is allowed to utter his opinion of views. But this is a matter of provoking people who think that everything not fitting in their view, is a provocation. When innocent people are held as hostages, the police or any sensible human will not provoke the hostage-holders with a reference to freedom of speech.

Me and my guitar

During my study years I started to study guitar. I took lessons from another student who studied guitar at the Tilburg Conservatory. I owed my initiative to my father who sent me to guitar lessons in Leyden, but like so often happens, I didn’t continue my practice. Guitar, and especially “classical” guitar, is far more difficult than most non-guitarplayers think. What you see on TV and what you listen to on CD’s are the top talents, cherished and nourished by parents and teachers, gifted with great motivation and self-discipline. They were my inspirators, too. I reached a lower-middle class level because other activities and gifts pushed me into another direction. But what I have is the sense of dedication when I’m studying a piece. It’s almost meditation, and that’s the reason why after several years I picked up the guitar again. Attention is the key word. Every note has its own character, and fits harmonically into the series that form the piece. The music must be produced by pure attention. The whole body is involved by this spiritual effort. Islam to music. This way my performance differs to performance of more talented musicians who play as kind of self-expression (they use the instrument and the music to express something of themselves) or as a kind of “interpretation”: they interpret the music and produce it like they feel it. So Alfred Brendl playing Beethoven is different from Bernstein playing the same Beethoven piece, while both are masters. It’s not said that these people pay less attention than I do, but they are far less involved with playing technique than I am. Sometimes my fingers press another string than intended and it is hearable as a loud curse in the church. When this happens I say: shit, and my wife has forbidden me to say it during guitar study.
Like so many hobbies, playing music is expensive: you must buy a good instrument, don’t say to yourself: I’m only an amateur so a cheap one will do. On the contrary, a good instrument is far better to practice on than a cheap instrument.
Years and years ago I fell in love with the lute, and wanted to own one. The problem was that I had no money for it. Well there was enough money of course but I was married and you know the priorities: car, house maintenance, washing machine, TV, all these are more important than a lute. (The same thing I now feel with my new hobby: photography, but that’s another story). What’s so special about a lute as compared to a guitar? Lute tones are clearer, more honest. They sound like crystal. A guitar is, in my opinion, a more convenient-to-handle variety of the lute and this greater convenience has been achieved by compromising with sound quality. It has fixed bars, it’s flat so easier to transport and to hold whilst playing, it has a straight neck, etc. The sound is also louder than the lute sound which makes it more suitable for concerts.
So I wanted to have a lute and decided to build one myself. I succeeded in constructing something resembling a lute, but the sound was far from what I heard on LP’s (the predecessors of CD’s) and performances. I also used guitar strings, and after several months of playing efforts I put it away and now it hangs in our bedroom as a wall decoration. Building lutes is a craft of its own, I learned, although I used selected wood and had consulted a lute building construction manual.
I also discovered the blessing of YouTube where I found several performances by Valéry Sauvage, excellent! I’m almost jealous of this gentleman because he has so much that I miss (that’s mostly the case with being jealous: a splendid view from his window, several lutes and guitars, an outstanding playing technique etc., and also equipment and skills needed to broadcast yourself the way he does. So I need all my philosophical competencies to keep jealousy out of my door. Let’s be happy with such people because jealousy is a form of disrespect, and that’s what it is! I wrote to him (also an Internet blessing!!) a message in which I compared him with John Willams and Julian Bream, but he found them of a much higher level than he. I find him on the same level because these top-artists often over-play their music: the pieces sound more polished and “techniqued” than they used to be played. This holds especially for old folk tunes and non-pretending but beautiful pieces from centuries ago. It doesn’t hold for Bach, his lute pieces or transcriptions from violoncello or violin for guitar cannot be played with enough virtuosity, and it doesn’t hold either for more modern or romantic compositions by e.g. Villa-Lobos, Brahms or the famous “Clair de Lune” by Debussy. Virtuosity is not what it’s all about, E.g. Franz Liszt and Paganini composed many things for virtuosi, but is this music “better” in that it evokes more or deeper musical emotions in the audience? I doubt.
So now I’m preparing myself on playing music with a talented friend playing flute. I look forward to our first study session.

The unquestionable question - part II

A place of silence where the light isn't comprehended by darkness...

This morning I read in the newspaper that there was a legal conflict going on in Malaysia. According to the newspaper, the government had prohibited Christians to use the name of Allah in their magazines and newspapers, and the editors had started a lawsuit to remain allowed to use the name of Allah. The reasoning behind it was that the God of the Christians wasn’t Allah. It reminded me of our R.C. bishop Muskes who is now retiring and had suggested that we as Christians could use the name “Allah”, and the protests he received from orthodox-Catholic Christians against this suggestion. He replied that in Java it was quite common for Christians to call God Allah, because in the Malay language (a version of it is spoken in Indonesia) the word for “God” is “Allah”. At first reading it made me smile, and then I remembered bishop Muskes’ story from which one could conclude that this was so since Christianity was first introduced in Indonesia, and probably was also a habit in Malaysia. Simply a tradition, tolerated by both Islam and Christian people: God is Allah and Allah is God. Then I realized the differences: Allah had revealed the Koran to Mohammed, and not to Jesus Christ or the Evangelists. Allah has no son, and God has a Son. But there are also similarities: Both Allah and God are unique, there is only one God and only one Allah. They created the universe, rule everything and are omni-present. Within human communities non-believers are not tolerated. Changing Allah for God is in many countries forbidden by law and a shame for the community. Changing God for Allah also occurs, although with less severe consequences. So when Christians call God “Allah” it could cause confusion. Probably the tradition is broken now by the new fundamentalists in Islam who preach return to the “pure” Islam from Mohammed’s time. Returning to the topic of my story, for these people raising the unquestionable question: “Does God (Allah) exist?” is just like asking: “Does or did my mother exist?”, or even more serious because my mother isn’t holy and God (Allah) is. For millions of people God is anchored in their existence, in their identity. Like the chairman of the Dutch Foundation or Islam and Citizenship says: “One’s personal identity is in the first place a social identity”, quoting a Scottish philosopher. People who grow up in big cities and take part in city life by higher education, a job, a social network etc. come into touch with many, many religions, views on life, life situations, and many many people they don’t know from before. These people get doubts about these religious stories and truths and find a way to reconcile themselves with God or Allah in a way strongly disapproved by e.g. Taliban Muslims or orthodox Christians. They aren’t used to, and refuse to accept, that other people have other social identities. They see God’s name as a brand name, and they are the only people who are authorized to use it.
Who is God, who is Allah? I can refer to the paragraph in the Bible where Moses met God in a burning shrub. Moses asked who it was that spoke to him, and God answered: “I am that I am”. Although the bible book Exodus (3,14) runs like an epic story, this answer tells me everything about the Supreme Being. Tells ME, which means that others might understand otherwise. I cannot experience God with my human senses, as something identifiable: “this is God, and that isn’t”, just like we can identify everything this way. What I observe is that some people think that God can be spotted and is maybe hidden somewhere. Goethe was looking for God, he wrote, under leaves and behind stones. The first Russian (communist) cosmonauts were mocking with God when they reported to earth that “they didn’t see a sign of God”. Spinoza was accused of atheism, repelled from his Jewish community and also not accepted by Christians, because he concluded that God was in everything, everywhere and refused to accept God as kind of Supreme Personality. I think Islam comes closer to this conception of God than Christianity, although it assumes as a natural, physical fact that God (Allah) gave guidelines to people about how to live in a book written by Himself through the hand of His Prophet. Again, one has to use his own personal compass, formed by one’s own (social) identity, for an image of God. Books give metaphors, reflections. God is everywhere, also within myself, where I can recognize His workings, e.g. by recognizing the meaning of what the book says and acting accordingly. We can see around us how people are confused about God, and I think by myself they don’t need to. There are people who call themselves atheists because they don’t accept “all those stories and obligations” as true and binding. There are people who find themselves elected or doomed because they assess themselves according to the true stories and binding obligations in the Holy Book. Among them, there are people who want to urge other people also to believe in the stories the way they do. For me, God or Allah or JW speaks to me via the Holy Book in metaphors, just like the silent fir wood I walk through is a metaphor of His Existence. God is Existence, He is Who He is. He is the rock in the ocean of existence, and also the ocean.

The unquestionable question

Today an old question becomes relevant again. I read about a protestant vicar who says he doesn’t believe in God anymore, but keeps working as a vicar. In the Christian newspaper “Trouw” an interview was published with the famous Dutch poet Rutger Kopland who also says he doesn’t believe in God. And yet, if you read and listen to their thoughts, you recognize their feelings about God. They have indeed religious feelings, but at least Kopland doesn’t call them religious. The vicar says in very interesting words that “he believes in a God who doesn’t exist”. I come back to this later.

Now there’s also published the Dutch translation of the book by Francesco Carotta who claims by means of a lot of “circumstantial evidence” that the Gospels are inspired by the life of Julius Caesar, and that Jesus is not a historical person but made up of traits and characteristics of Julius Caesar.

And yet it belongs of course to the essence of being religious: that you believe in God. I can remember that we as children went to friends because they had a “holy mass acting set”: a little altar, toy holy mass accessories, and holy mass priest and acolyte clothing. So we could “play holy mass”. My parents found it a bit blasphemous, so we hadn’t got such a set. I remember that when my friend stood on the chair leaning on its back (the pulpit) as a priest to start his sermon, he never could be more original than shouting “God exists!” He always played the priest because the toys were his so he wanted to be the boss. I found it the dullest and dumbest cry one could utter as part of a sermon. Of course God existed, you don’t need to emphasize that so strongly. It was a given fact, and if you had doubts, then it was your fault and not God’s fault of being non-existent.

Now I hear that even the Dutch archbishop Cardinal Simonis has sometimes doubts. But what kind of doubts are we talking about when we ask the unquestionable question whether God exists or not? If we say “God doesn’t exist” do we mean the same as if we would say “Santa Claus doesn’t exist” or “it’s only a dream, these things don’t exist” or “miracles don’t exist” etc. Many religious people think that denying God’s existence is in the same kind of meaning. Something exists, and “exists” means that you can notice it, or could have noticed it if you were there, with your senses, it’s something touchable, visible etc. and if you can’t notice it, it doesn’t exist. Existing things and phenomena have something sacrosanct, non-existent things you can ignore, they don’t “matter”. Writing this – and hopefully you reading this – this reality starts to stagger. Are our senses trustworthy in deciding if something exists or not? Must something be existent in order to be real, and must something be real to be existent? This is not playing with words. There are realities (or, if you like, there is a reality) that we cannot notice with our senses, not even with the finest observation instruments, even the harshest “atheist” will acknowledge this. There were times during which scholars presented calculated and logically coherent “proofs of God’s existence”. What they did, was applying a human idea (the concept of “proof”) to God. And that ‘s also the reason why there are atheists: these people refuse to accept something for existent that cannot be described or logically deducted. People who pray to “The Lord” do accept this, without being able to describe Who or What He is. Of course, masses of religious people think they can describe Him, in an image that we all know: a man on a throne, ruling everything. You can’t see Him because He is some kind of Almighty Ghost, steering everything with His invisible hand.

I strongly believe that we humans are very good in telling Who God is not, and very unable to tell Who He is. I think that’s also the reason why God’s name is so important in Judaism and Islam: in Judaism He has one unspeakable name (you may not even mention it), in Islam Allah (God) has 99 names. In Christianity we use the metaphors of “Lord” and “Father”, which are rather role-names than names referring to an identity.

The only way, I think to approach a description of God is speaking in the “I’ and “me” – mode, and I’ll try to do so. Whoever thinks to be full of faith and absolutely without doubts, and speaks of “God will…” or “God is…”, and also whoever decisively rejects any talking or thinking about God, might both well be wrong in their idea of Who or What God is. Why can I say this? Can I assess another’s faith? No, my idea of God is wrong because as long as I (emphasis on “I”) think that my idea of God reflects the reality of God, I’m wrong, God is beyond any idea, I notice God, if I may say so, at least with my needs, not with my senses. God is there because I need Him. I could write a book about it, and it will not be sufficient. I think I understand the vicar who said: “I believe in a God who doesn’t exist”, but I don’t understand people who tell me that God exists or doesn’t exist. Next time part II of this deliberation on God.

A grey autumn day

Thursdays are my days "off". That is to say, I'm supposed to do the laundry, shopping, walk the dog, take care of my son during lunchtime, repair and maintain things in and around the house etc. There were times I took work with me from school but I don't do that anymore unless it's very urgent. The problem is that I got hooked to photography. Not the laborious work with tripods, lenses, photoshop-processing etc., but simply taking a light camera with me and snapshot what I find interesting to register. Today the photos got my priority and after this post I'll take care of the laundry. This is contrary to what's taught in time management courses, but I also learn that if you first do the "important things" ("urgent and relevant", and "not urgent but relevant") then you never can do unimportant things such as writing a post on your blog. Anyway, after my son and wife left the house for their work and school, I asked my dog Joris "Gaat-ie mee?" (Dutch for: "Will he be accompanying me?"- who said that English is shorter than Dutch?) and of course he didn't say no. Did I have my shitspoon (don't know the right word but you know what I mean) with me? My keys? My camera? I close the door behind me for a 90 minutes walk. It isn't a bright day, outsiders would say: this is no weather for taking pictures but I know better (see my photoblog, the reedland series). The shining sun gives a lot of restrictions: sharp contrasts, fragmentation of what you want to picture as a whole, etc. First I walk through our prosperous, but rather dull living quarter. People from poor countries wouldn't find it dull because there's maintained green everywhere around, and all houses have well maintained flower gardens. Despite it's 1 November, there are still flowers here and there. Then I walk along the railway street (parallel to the railway), and cross them to arrive in the countryside on a road called "Slachtedyk". I don't understand why I mention the road name because readers in the USA wouldn't find it important, but this is an unimportant walk, so let it be. On the other side of the railroad I stunned because what did I see? A protest meeting of cows! They were gathered around a protest sign and watched me silently with their eyes full of accusation. The only thing I could do for them was taking a picture and send it to the local newspaper (I did both before starting this posting - both? Redundant information, because I can't send it to the newspaper if I didn't shoot the picture before, sorry for this extra reading). I think it's more relevant for you to know what they were protesting against. It was against the construction of a new road which is intended to lead the traffic around our village, instead of going through it. But this road would go through their land and this was of course more than the ultimate they could bear. Then I decided to walk along the Slachtedyk. Joris was sniffing and trying to stop us at every tree because of the interesting odors that tickled his nose, and I was looking around for interesting picture material. Here our interests clashed, but I am the boss so the eye won over the nose, although he tried to annoy me a hundred times ( I didn't count) by pulling the belt I held him with. Yes, nice trees, yes, nice views, but here it was a lamp pole, there a car, and / or a traffic sign spoiling the potential picture. Then, after going to the right into a narrow alley, I got a new surprise. Would this be my once-in-a-lifetime picture? A whole crowd of hundreds of geese were sitting in a large meadow. We had been walking behind a rather tight wall of vegetation so they hadn't noticed us, but coming near an open spot in it, I noticed how all of them had stretched their necks to monitor what we did, ready to take off. I quickly attached Joris to a branch behind a shrub and prepared my camera, and I was just in time to capture the take-off. They flied in two groups: one to the North, the other to the South, and I realised this was a survival technique, developed in thousands of years being hunted by my fellow-species specimen. I captured first the North group, then the South group. Later on it appeared that they could have been closer for the ideal picture, and that I needed a better camera to get them crisper on the screen, but I'm satisfied. Walking further through the lane I arrived at a tree wall in nice colors with a red hay shaker which I of course pictured. On our way back I was charmed by the wheel prints of a tractor in the mud, and pictured the trees along the Slachtedyk after having hidden a lamp post behind one of the trees, if you look closely you see the lamp seemingly attached to a tree instead of its picture-disturbing pole. Walking through the streets of our living quarter I couldn't help taking pictures of a hydrangea flower bush and some rose hips, beautifully enframed in yellow leaves.

Of course I had to immediately process the harvest of pictures, which are shown above, fresh from the field, picked today. Enjoy!

Three cases

1.
A friend of mine is in Afghanistan at the moment, not to fight but to cure: he is a surgeon in a military compound. There they treat under dangerous circumstances the many severely wounded with modern equipment. He regularly sends e-mails with pictures to his Dutch friends in which he, like in a diary, describes what he and his colleagues are experiencing from day to day. His e-mails let themselves read almost as a novel. You know that there are doctors over there, you know there's fighting, etc., but when you read the daily reports about the accidents, the injuries, the amputations, the failed operations (luckily they are few because the very dangerously injured die during transportation, if you survive this, you have a reasonable chance to make it), the way the doctors pass their scarce leisure time, etc. you really become aware how foolish war is in fact. Although the field-hospital is primarily intended for military, most helped are Afghanistans, and even the civilian hospital in Kabul sends patients to them because of their medical skills and advanced equipment.

When in the Netherlands somebody is shot in the street, all newspapers and TV report exensively about it. This week there were two casualties: one schizophrenic patient escaped from his guidance during an outing in the city, ran to the police station and stabbed the officer at the counter, after which he tried to stab her colleague, who shot him before he could do so; on his way to the hospital he died. The stabbed officer survived after medical treatment. The night after this happened, there were protest demonstrations against the police who allegedly "murdered" the man who entered the policestation. Two days after this event, a 14 year old high school pupil killed his classmate with a knife because he didn't like him. These casualties cause waves of upsetness and sorry in the whole country - in Afghanistan things like these occur hundreds of times more often - . And in Iraq it's still worse.

My friend the surgeon explained before he left that he went there voluntarily, the Netherlands were bound to provide a certain amount of medical support, and contributions to this support were given by regular hospitals throughout the country by means of a system built on free will and equal distribution of burden.

2.
Nearer to home, I saw on TV teams of volunteers recruited via a special Internetsite, who help people without money in deep trouble. Since about ten years, our government subsideses so-called "care far"ms": those are farms provided with the needed housing facilities, to house people like homeless and difficult life circumstances, not able to lead a normal civic life. In exchange for farm work - to the extent of their abilities - these people get housing and professional guidance leading them to a life with a job and income, if needed, with extra education. The farms are far from the cities and they have proven to be effective in most cases. Next to the professionals, also volonteers work on those farms. On TV one vould see how a teenage mother was in deep trouble because she was pregnant of her second baby and the welfare authorities would take the baby away from her because she had no house. Her family was poor and she stayed for the time being in a small bedroom with one of her familymembers. She put a help call on the Internetsite, and got an invitation from a "care farm": she was so happy, and could keep the bay, while her young husband (also a late teener) would get coaching for a school where he would learn a job.

3.
Another help team from the Internetsite was shown while cleaning up the mess in a house, and restoring it (it leaked, there was draught everywhere, the electricity cables were not in order etc.) because there, too, a kid would be taken away because of the miserable living circumstances. The boy (I estimate around 10) would "never" leave his parents he said, and his mother would flee the country if they would come and collect her son. The mother was 46 years old and the father 72. The help team was welcomed whole-heartedly, they cleaned up and repaired, and the family could stay together.

You see, these are the people who put everything in practice. They deserve a medal and a guest seat in Oprah's show.