Two happy days

Our dog Joris is jawning, sooo boring! (picture taken a month ago, now we had to wear jackets)

Last week Sunday we celebrated the last day of Menno's "birthweek". His official birthday is September 3, and on that day he became 10 years! During the whole week the guirlands were hanging from the ceiling, as a welcome to adults and children. This last day we went with a group of little friends to the movie, made cheap by the supermarket chain of Albert Heijn: for every x Euros spent, you got a free second movie theatre ticket, so we only had to pay half the total price. We watched "The Simpsons" so the adults among us had also a good time and didn't have to watch computer-made "plastic" puppets experience adventures liked by children alone. (At least it's not my first choice for a movie).

Yesterday the weather was 1st choice for a sailing day: wind force 4 and a brilliant sun, so the three of us spent the day on the water. Up to then, it was one of the nicest sailing days. Janine took sailing lessons from me and Menno kept himself busy with all kinds of little jobs such as taking care of the "willen" (cushion-like devices to protect from bumping - most younger sailors use the English word for it but the older people still use the good Dutch word for it, I forgot the English word) and other things that had to be done.

This week I have to make an appointment to have the boat put on land, at a shipyard owned by the son of the designer / builder of the boat, Lodewijk Meeter. He built only around twenty of these boats in the 19seventies, and he still has the original drawings. Then it will be much work to get the boat in a better condition by sandpapering (rust!), painting and improving the rigging! Everything advised by Lodewijk, and if craftmanship is involved, he could help us very well.

Photoblogging and psychology

I always admire people who can make an unequivocal choice: they choose their profession at ten years old, at fourteen they make a CPM network schedule for the rest of their lives, they are always optimistic and motivated, are creative, and a pleasure for their family, friends and colleagues.
They always have been working at some project(s) in Africa or India (“they have fallen in love with it”) and know what poverty and self discipline is, but at the same time, having passed their 40th year of age, they drive a USV 4-wheel drive, own at least two houses and a yacht.
Because of the success they had in their career, they are often asked as a keynote speaker on conferences. They have been asked to become a politician many times, but they preferred the business world with network connections to education and universities.
Next to their business positions they are chairperson or board members of at least one charity foundation.
They have written and published at least one book, mostly a book about how something can and must be improved (your career, your personality, society, business, management, always “spiritual” and are now busy with a second bestseller. They are wonderful parents and their children are proud to have such a father / mother.

This is what they do. Now what they don’t do.

They don’t waste time with irrelevant hobbies such as fishing, cooking, horses, dogs, collecting stamps, etc. Of course they have a hobby (cooking when they cook once every three months, or dogs if they own a dog they never walk with – ever seen a celebrity walking with his/her dog in the park? They never do useless things such as counting the tiles in the bathroom while doing what they have to do, maintaining a photoblog, watching TV, doing the dishes, searching the whole city and Internet for a special item they need for a repair job, and other dull John Doe activities.

They don’t read articles about successful people, instead they call them for appointments or simply a chat.

I envy these people because of what they have, not because of what they do. I would also like to have all these things: celebrity, houses, yacht, charisma, the skills to immediately know what the trends are and knowing how to respond on them, clearly visible in word and image. I don’t like doing what they do and/or I don’t master the competencies needed for it. Having your agenda completely filled with appointments, meetings, travels, storing everything in your or your secretary’s memory, always showing strong motivation for things I find taken for granted, boring repetition or fashionable hot air. Hot air? What a disdain! Look how much money you can make out of hot air!

But sometimes… I read about somebody who actually HAS all these things, and also hates the things I also hate, and also does what John Doe also does. And then I get an indescribable feeling of failure. Why not me? Oh, I should have lived like he did! If only in 19.. I wouldn’t have done this-or-that, if only I wasn’t so stupid to…, if only …

And I fall in the trap of relentless ego-lamentation. Poor me! And I look helplessly around me. And then I discovered the photoblog. It really helps, you feel accepted and sometimes even admired! Make a good picture, look around at other pictures, discuss the content, admire other people’s products and get admired, enjoy visual beauty, get stunned about free and super-fast communication, get hooked.

But then, after half a year of photoblogging, the old feeling comes back. You see that somebody owns a couple of Canons and Leica’s. You have started with a mobilephone, and now you have a small pocketcamera. You see that these Leica’s produce better pictures. You hate Photoshop, because it’s fake, you think. And you see how Photoshop can make a piece of art out of a bad picture, and how these artifacts are admired…. The little devil whispers: buy also such a beautiful camera with a couple of lenses. Why? I think I postpone it, I know it’s the old feeling again and I don’t like that. It’s all psychology.

Stephen's challenge

Stephen has decided on the photochallenge of September for the Sears family and their visitors who are also invited to take the challenge. The theme is "harvest". This word (as a schoolmaster I can't help teaching) is closely related to the Dutch word "herfst" and the German word "Herbst", both meaning "autumn". For harvest the Dutch have the word "oogst" (requires long practice for non-Dutch for the proper pronunciation), and the German say "Ernte" when they mean harvest (requires for English speaking people also a lot of practice to be pronounced the right way). So I think that the English simply took herfst / Herbst and chose a variation that suited their tongue and cheek movements, to indicate the collection of fruits and cerials in the Autumn, which they called "Autumn" because harvest / herfst /Herbst was now reserved for the fruit-and-cerials collection.

This theory will soon be published in the Hurdegarypster Journal for Historical Linguistics.

Anyway, cycling home from school I found one of these mini-stands along the road that pop up here and there around this time, offering fruit, marmelade and vegetables from the home's gardens. Alongside the products you find a price list and a jar in which you are supposed the money. Unfortunately this one was already nearly sold out, I already had marmelade, beans and red beets from them. I'm proud to live in a region where people trust each other this way!

A day on the water and with family

Yesterday we went sailing; my boat never went so fast, aroud 2 PM the windforce wasn't 4 but 5-6 and on top of that the main sail lacked a reef possibility (which I'm going to change this winter). At the end of July we had also this kind of wind, but then I improvised a reef by binding the hind-part of the sail to its bottom bar ("giek" I don't know the English word), but although it worked, it didn't satisfy because of the loose sack which it causes at the sail bottom. I don't trust the boat 100% because of its old rigging - I heard too many stories about broken masts etc. - so I only dared sail with hoisted sails with the wind blowing from behind. Janine, Menno, my brother Peter and the dog were with me on the boat and Janine and Peter (who don't know much about sailing) encouraged me not to put on my improvised reef (why do we need that? - this is not a storm!). After the trip, when we were at home Janine told me that I should be more bossy and a real captain so when people wanted other things than I had in mind, I should overrule them and make my word law. That day she got familiar with the forces that a boat has to endure at windforce 5-6 with full sails. I was on the other side happy to got familiar with how the boat behaves under these circumstances, nothing was damaged but I was sure it would have been very difficult and probably impossible without severe damage, to sail with the wind from 45 degrees in front of us(in Dutch: "sharply to the wind"). We went that fast that after having dropped the sails and started the engine I thought at first that the engine didn't work because of the difference in speed with the sailing movement. Under more normal circumstances we could sail the whole route until the home marine, but this route leads us through rather narrow canals, and with that speed this could have been dangerous because there were more boats and collisions are not easy to avoid then. Apart from this: the big number of motor boats nowadays annoys me sometimes because these people often lack knowledge of (1) traffic rules on the water and (2) sailing, so one cannot rely on traffic rules because you don't know if the motor skipper knows them and I most of them are not familiar with the possibilities and restrictions of a boat with sails, so they simply keep their course and take priority also if they haven't. I suspect that many of them think that a sailing boat is more "primitive" and never have priority!

The late afternoon we spent at my brother's new house in a village in the Eastern part of the province, and we admired the way he has (re)furbished it. He has a son (17) and two daughters (I think 14 and 12), he and his wife working and still studying so their life is one big agenda without holes. He shares the photo-hobby with me. They went to the Czech Republic on holidays (formerly part of Csechoslowakia, what a shame that this small country has been split up in two still smaller parts!) and he showed me a number of pictures he made over there. Two of them you can see on my photoblog (4 and 5 September).

As for my thoughts on the subject I wrote about the two previous times: I don't think we have tot take this too dramatically. It's true that many Christians and Liberals in the West on the one hand, and many Muslims in the East on the other hand, mistrust each other. It's true that many Muslims adhere more strongly to family- and respect-values than Westerners do (translating respect by adherence to tradition values and not to achievement values per se) and that in Western eyes there's not much difference in their perception of a Biblical desert-society and a rural Muslim society nowadays, but it's not true that there are no liberal-thinking Muslims. Just as is the case with Christians, what people hear, read and see are the loud preachers and the Truth-owners, not the silent spiritually-inspired or the hard-working and modest contribuants to prosperity and welfare. Preaching that people who have another belief must be fought, or must be converted by all means, means that one is scared: there simply MUST be one concrete and tangible truth with all rules and regulations attached to it, otherwise earth (and the preacher / converter!) will end in hell. I don't hesitate to say that the Liberal truth is also one of many truths, although I love the heritage of Goethe, Spinoza and Kant.

This is a view, a vision, and one cannot do more than living according to this view as much as possible, although emotions often challenge you. I hope and trust that eventually Reason will win.

One of today's questions

Tomorrow’s program tells us that we’ll have a sailing trip with my brother. There will be windforce 4 and a reasonable chance of some rain. We are not sure whether Janine and Menno will join us, we decide that I think this evening. The school will take its normal course again. I just have sent an e-mail to a student whose dissertation concept was awful, I’m afraid that he will require very close guidance, according to the famous 8—20 rule: 20% of all cases ask for 80% of time and attention. He hasn’t been guided up to now by me and luckily these cases are rare. His study pace is slow because since 2 years we have team-dissertations: groups of students study like consultants company problems for which they design a solution, a very successful formula; the only disadvantage is that it’s not individual, but individual contributions within the team are weighed and included in the final assessment. A problem is also that there must be sufficient co-operating companies, and that the cases are sufficiently serious to reach a dissertation’s level.

Something else: last time I asserted that when you ask an Afghanistan opium-growing farmer if growing opium is in accordance with Islam, he would answer that such a question wouldn’t suit me, because the Western world causes much more problems than he does with his job. I gave it a second thought and I think I have to adjust this: probably the farmer would take his life and world as it is, without such “Western” questions, even if he could read and follows the news. So many people everywhere in the world take everything as it is. They follow the tradition of their cultures and clans, and when these traditions have been weakened or are threatened by Western influences, there is always the daily struggle for food and living which will be done by means that in our eyes are less moral or objectionable.

Many hundreds of thousands of these people have immigrated into Europe, or try to immigrate. Of course, they bring with them their traditions and leaders who try to keep them on the right track, which is often contrary to the Western right track which they often consider to be sinful and despicable. Their world of views and truths are often diametrically opposed to values we find important: women and men treated equally, own choices in marriage and education, freedom of speech, variation in clothing, loose family bonds, rewards for achievement and not for kinship or tradition-adherence, etc. etc. Ten years ago I was very surprised by what I saw as arrogance, the way some of their leaders preached hatred against Western society, at the same time receiving social welfare benefits. I thought: “Why are you here then?”, a very obvious question in Western eyes. In one of my lectures I showed in my ignorance a portrait of their prophet in a Powerpoint presentation, the same week I got reprimanded by a Muslim colleague because Muslim students had complained to him. I got flabbergasted because female teachers refused to shake hands with men (parents, colleagues) because their faith forbade them to do so, and a Muslim priest (imam) refused to shake hands with a Minister (State Secretary) visiting their mosque. I asked myself if Muslim ministers would visit Christian churches in a Muslim country, even our queen did so once and she wisely avoided trying to shake hands with the mosque leaders. In a TV program a Muslim leader refused to sit at an interview table together with seven other partners in a debate, because one of them had a glass of wine before him. His son, also a Dutch “celebrity” walked away from a program because one lady’s skirt was too short according to him.

I just read a wise article in my paper which brings me back to my rational senses. It says: let’s stop arguing and debating about how Muslims should adjust themselves to our values. Don’t pay attention to it anymore. In another newspaper there was an article discussing an American philosopher, Lee Harris, who has a more pessimistic view, he is right when he says that our values, based on philosophies by people such as Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Voltaire etc. is very rare in the world. Only a few countries have succeeded in overcoming the all-embracing power of tradition, clan and family, trying to defend themselves with all thinkable means. In our laws and legislation “tolerance” is a main virtue, in most other countries it means weakness.

The way Muslim groups and leaders link their values and views to their fait is highly questionable. Many Muslims adhere to tolerance, reward according to achievement, respectful treatment of everybody, etc. but most of them live in the U.S.A. or have positions requiring high education in Europe, they are only a small minority, often considered as non-Muslims by their own brethren (sisters don’t have a say). We in Holland have a Muslim Minister and many Muslims are in local or regional governments.

After reading and thinking, I was left in confusion, there are still many questions, or maybe one or two very big questions, left to be answered.

Varia Diversa

Hello blog, here we are again! I’m sorry for being absent for such a long time so you think I’ll have much to tell. Well, te be honest, the fact that I had little to tell was one of the causes of my absence so I have to do my best to get something worthwhile from the little corners of my imagination and memory. Of course, I could tell about my holidays and other stuff people tell each other when they are at work again. Why wouldn’t I? Well, we, that’s to say my wife Janine, our son Menno, our week-end “daughter” Elyanne and our dog Joris went sailing in Friesland, so we didn’t travel far away. It was lots of fun: the adults enjoyed the sailing and the children the playing along beaches and in marinas. We enjoyed all kinds of weather you can imagine: tropical heat, autumn temperatures, strong wind, almost no wind, tropical rain, Dutch rain (steady long term, not sudden showers), mist, clouds, clear sky, you name it, this is Western Europe, man! Now I’m at work again, already since a fortnight. My job is to assess dissertations or theses if you like, at bachelor’s level, and I try to avoid that the students’ stress will infect me, although many are in a hurry, if they get their grading too late (15 September they have to pay new tuition fees. No, they cannot charge it to me when it’s my fault because I left their work in the drawer for too long. I’m at an age at which many are already retired and I always try to keep up the image that I don’t want to retire that early and keep working as long as possible, but I know that’s not true, my true reasons for not retiring are secret and then you know already what I mean.

I’m also almost addicted to photography. Not that I picture everything that comes before my lense, but I like to photograph nice items, especially landscapes and “landscape furniture” such as mills, sailing boats, churches, etc. On my photoblog I discovered that there are as many photographers as kinds of subjects, and every photographer has his/her favourite subject items. My weakness is landscapes and related stuff, also because I cannot find time to be busy with creating the right light conditions, much Photoshopwork, arranging things, waiting long for the right moment, etc. No. Veni vidi vici (aut non successi): I came, I saw and I achieved (or failed). I make too many good pictures to post on my photoblog, which is restricted to only 1 picture per day – a very wise policy of the blog management.

Above I show you some pics that couldn’t be posted on my blog because of this restriction. I also don’t want to become a bit one-sided and show each time either a mill, a house or a sailing boat, so some of them could have a place here. Enjoy!

Like so many other people I’m also bothered about what I read in the newspapers. I recently read the startling news that 90% of all heroine is grown in Af…istan. It has been found that the Nabilat (I don’t want to be found by searching machines on these words but you know what I mean) encourages to grow it, and get much profit from it. I’m sure these opium farmers are faithful Mu…ms and I wonder what they would answer when you would ask them why they grow opium, and if that is OK with the K..an. I know what they would answer me: you are rich, you drive a car, you have a machine for everything in the household and thanks to you the climate is changing so that people in Bangla Desh suffer from floods when the sea level is rising because of melting poles and glaciers. So what’s wrong about a heroin enjoying looser who is, on top of that, a victim of your pagan way of living, no, if you would follow the K..an and become mu…ms like me, there would be no heroin problem; what do I have to do with it, a poor farmer who works hard to earn a living? Thirdly: if I didn’t grow the opium the Nabilat would punish me. Etcetera etcetera.

So many things are relative, and many times I feel I have to choose, take a standpoint, be a MAN! There are many view- and standpoints to choose. In debates you notice that everybody is right and only a few people are completely wrong, but that people who are both right don’t seek to compromise or to find the common basis of their different views, but on the contrary, want to show how different their view is from their opponent’s view, and how wrong he is, and how right their own view is.

So much for today. Next time my latest contribution to the school magazine if I’ve nothing else to report.

Photoblogging

I don’t know what’s going on with me. I seem to be hooked on my photoblog, neglecting my written blog. Well, let’s start afresh, and try to maintain my written diary of thoughts and events. First, my experiences with the photoblog and then my vicissitudes with boat and family.
The photoblog made me more aware of visual experiences. Also, I try to understand what photography, as mere expression or representation of visual reality, can mean for people, and then I mean the watcher. There’s no sharp distinction between watcher and maker of a picture, because the maker also watches his/her own products and enjoys them. One essential difference is that the maker selects and processes the picture, (s)he chooses an image, a frame, decides whether it will be black and white or in color, etc. and the watcher is there to assess it. I went browsing through many photoblogs and I must say that some attract me more than others do. Taste is an important factor, and there seems to be no room for “principles”: everything is allowed.
Another thing that struck me was that people from different cultures that according to the newspapers should be hostile or suspicious towards each other, are instead very much appreciating and respecting. So I know for instance that Islam tends to see dogs as haram animals, but when I publish a photo of my dog I receive positive reactions from Islamic countries; Christian people also tend to express admiration for characteristically Islamic images such as the calligraphed name of Allah. Also I saw positive response from Iran to an Israeli photographer. Most of the bloggers are from the USA, but that doesn’t seem to be a hindrance for the Islamic photographers. Maybe it’s a bit too much said, but photoblogging can be a contribution for mutual understanding and world peace this way. I love it.
Overseeing the different kinds of pictures there is certainly difference in quality. Some posters don’t seem to “have it”, and will not acquire it, but continue to post their products. I’m aware one shouldn’t be too quick in such an assessment for it can also be myself who don’t have the needed competence to assess pictures. Others post amazing photos which could yield good profit if offered for sale. This raises the question: what makes a good photograph a good photograph? I think it depends on the kind of picture. I make a distinction between “event pictures”, “emotional pictures” and “esthetical pictures”. All three share that they evoke emotion. A picture of an angry mob demonstrating against something, a portrait of a lovely baby, and a beautiful landscape or flower are three characteristic examples of what I mean. The emotional picture doesn’t need (but mostly has) event- or esthetical criteria, as long as the emotion is evoked. But the other two must have, next to their representation value, also an emotional value. Many photos on the photoblog don’t evoke emotion in me but seem to do so in others, so that makes them valuable pics and I have to be careful to reject them as good pictures. It’s amazing that in this world where everybody always has critical or negative remarks on other people’s products, photobloggers seem to be aware of that. If they don’t like a photo, they simply don’t comment.
What is also striking is the widespread use of advanced and expensive camera equipment and the use of Photoshop programs to process the pictures. When I started to be caught by the digital photovirus (it really becomes a virus if you can put your photos on the pc) my first pics were made on my 1 MP mobilephone. Some of these pictures seem to gain in value thanks to their blurredness. Then, after half a year or so, I bought a 5 MP HP Photosmart and carried it my pocket wherever I went, a flow of nice pictures were the result, many of them I posted on my photoblog that I started. Then on a sad day my wife dropped the camera and it turned out almost to a divorce :-) but we got a brand new one because it happened within the warranty period! But I had to miss my camera for a couple of weeks, and via my brother I bought a second-hand Sony 4 MP for 90 Euros (new in 1991 it costed 750 Euros!), my wife kept the HP. The Sony has several advantages such as macro-possibility but is a bit slower in starting up and editing stored pictures. Anyway, now I’m looking with water in my mouth at the expensive cameras with which most of the bloggers work, with changeable lenses and so on. In my non-digital days I used such a camera for films which now has become almost worthless on the second hand market but has cost me the amount of the cameras that I’m craving for now.
There are two things that withhold me from purchasing: first the price. It’s something luxury exclusively for my own usage within the household family, and I’m not allowing myself to spend that amount for a “toy” for only myself, where I can do with a cheaper product with a bit less possibilities. The second reason is that a good photo isn’t dependent on the equipment it is made with: there have been made excellent pictures with mobilephones, and lousy ones with 1000 euro-cameras. The more sophisticated equipment only offers more possibilities, and let’s not talk about the processing computer programs! No Photoshop process can turn a bad photo into a good one, only into a nice arrangement of colors and forms. So let’s do a while with my “primitive” little camera that I can use without getting the image of a photomaniac by people around me who are not contaminated by the photovirus when I always have that black machine around my neck (the grapes are a bit sour you notice). Next time more, about my boat-and-family vicissitudes.