Add a little pepper too---sublime is just fine!!
Bethie, I loved the site and the photos of Bailey and Cleo. I'm off to Denver for almost a week, but I'll try to get a couple in there soon as possible. We also need to take more pics.
Sally the rescued dog that ate my Stetson:
Sally Stetson, helluva gal.
It's Monday & a public holiday! (And an exquisite sunny one too! )
It's Labour Day! Let's have a round of applause for the workers of Oz!
<clap, clap, clap!)
whaddya mean!
No public holiday here - we're slaving away.....
Oh, sorry about that, margo! But I must say, it's very nice!
OK, then! Let's have a round of applause for the workers in the state of Victoria, in that case!
<clap, clap, clap!)
I went to the city archive of Amsterdam today, because it was the last week of an exhibition of photos by Frits Weerda. Beautiful photos, if slightly depressing: the expo (and accompanying book) is called "In the shadow of prosperity". You see, Weerda obsessively photographed everything he encountered in the city between 1958 and 1965, the years of feverish post-war reconstruction, when entire neighbourhoods were demolished to make way for splendid, hygienic new housing complexes. Of course, many of those new blocks are now run-down before their time, while the lively, local culture-filled neighbourhoods of yore will never return.
The city government of the day, still filled with ardorous belief in progress, was planning to tear more neighbourhoods down still for new highways and towerblocks - even the Jordaan, then a working-class neighbourhood, now a much-prized, expensive and picturesque piece of real estate that every tourist goes to see, was slated for demolition. Kattenburg could have been what the Jordaan is now ... but it, alas, was torn down, there's just the one and a half street in adjoining Wittenburg that's still quite like it must always have been.
In fact, the whole tearing down business stopped only after massive resistance in the 70s, with an odd coalition of green/hippie squatters and old-time residents standing up against the coalition of True Believers that dominated the city council at the time, with the all-mighty Labour Party flanked by the Communists and the free-market VVD in an unlikely coalition of its own, united in the cause of doing away with all that old mess and erecting the city anew in imposing modernity. But "massive resistance" was what they eventually encountered: the "Nieuwmarkt riots" in the neighbourhood around the Nieuwmarkt, which was to be demolished for a new subway - the entire neighbourhood was occupied, barricades thrown up all around, and they had to break it down with armored carriers. That was in 1975. After that they mostly gave up on that kind of mass leveling (until now, alas - its starting all over again).
Anyway, Weerda hated what he saw - hence the depressing theme. While other photographers enthusiastically zoomed in on sturdy workers erecting brand new buildings and neighbourhoods, he photographed the "shadow side", the old houses slated for demolition, the neighbourhoods left to dilapitate because they werent expected to last long anymore anyway - the burning of chemical refuse on the dyke whenever the wind was towards sea, without anyone thinking much of it; and as the years progressed, he became ever more pessimistic. In 1965 he was admitted in a clinic, followed by a decade or two of drifting and odds and ends and addiction - and the man never ever took up a camera in his life again. He shot one more film, a dozen or two years later, that's it. Fascinating if tragic story.
Anyway. The pictures were beautiful - and because the man loved Amsterdam so much, they are also, in spite of the depressing theme, alive with vibrant care and excitement. In the (remnants of) the Jewish neighbourhood, the pickling of augurken in big vats, outside. A vain-looking gang of teenagers roaming the street for lead and old iron. Kids, outside, engrossed in the newest fad: building houses in the street. Entire little houses, made of wood and random found stuff, built with hammers and nails and noone who called them back because "that's dirty, honey"! Those kids knew how to make things!
And the visitors, of course, honed in on that as much as they could, one older, crisp-looking lady explaining, "of course we went out and built huts and everything!", then, snidely to her fifty-something sister, "no, not you, you always stayed inside". LOL. The place was busy, especially for a city archive expo, and everyone had come in twos or threes. Whispering to each other, reminiscing, or recounting to son or daughter how things had been. "Yes, that's where we used to", or "of course, back then we would just" ... The woman of an older couple elatedly asks her aging husband, "don't look now [at the names], can you tell me where this was? Its the Noordermarkt! Its your favourite place, do you recognize it?" The man mumbles, perhaps he does ...
I love this atmosphere, the grateful recollection and melancholia, and I slapped myself for not realising that these were exactly the years my father lived in Amsterdam, and I could/should have asked him to go with me. The "guestbook" of the expo is an odd ambivalent mix of remarks: on the one hand, sighs of yes, thats also how it was ... life wasn't all easy then ... he caught the mood well ... let it be a warning ... On the other hand, grateful acknowledgements of "good memories" awoken by the photos, "a celebration of recognition", those were the times! Speaks to the credit of the photos, I think... The two sides were mixed together in the one remark, left by the family Peek - thats the family Weerda lived with, ten children they had, there's just the two or three pictures of the house; when he showed them, mother Annie had sighed, in embarassment or sadness, "what a poverty", so he hadnt made any further ones. Now the guestbook had some Peeks, thanking Weerda for the beautiful exposition, the memories, they had come together "except for Annie, because it was too emotional for her".
What struck me, of course, is that these pictures look so East-European! Especially the ones with people. Once again (hardly for the first time), I realise that what we call "typically East-European" has more to do with travelling in time than with regional specificities - it was just the same here, x years ago. Only fitting then, with all this recollecting and typically (proudly) Amsterdam mood almost touchable in the room, that when a cellphone does go off, suddenly, its ringtone is the opening bars of the Internationale ... <big grin>. I didnt even know that existed!
Will look up some photos on the archive's exhaustive website and post on the "favourite photographers" thread ... perhaps look up some Amsterdam photos by other photographers as well and leave a marker on the A2K Europe meeting thread, cause I promised to leave some tips about Amsterdam there ...
I noticed, a couple of hours ago, that nimh was hitting the big 10,000 in posts to A2K. The number of posts that a member makes is of no great consequence to me; but I would like to acknowledge nimh's efforts. Thanks to him, we knew more about the US elections than most Americans. Thanks to him, I know more about Dutch politics than many people in Holland. And his tales about life in his city are always fascinating.
I look forward to 10,000 more. As we say in the south (US): "Way to go, dude."
Nimh,
Beautifully written post. Thanks for it - made me smile too.
The problem you described so well was not unique to Amsterdam. In San Francisco during the same period the advocates of grade-separated freeways for automobiles were building an elevated freeway around the the perimiter of San Francisco, from the Bay Bridge to the Golden Gate, separating the city from the bay. They got as far as Broadway on the west shore, before an aroused public forced an end to a project that aspired to cut right across the northern shore of the city at the water's edge. Finally the 1989 earthquake damaged the structure enough that it was all torn down and the new shoreline along the Embarkadero is a delightful place.
Music made me smile today
Had breakfast this morning down at the corner cafe. Sally the owner's wife had a furrowed brow. She wanted to make banana bread and needed a recipe. When I finished I went home and went to one of my favorite sites (www.lii.org) and clicked on recipes. Then went to general resources, then located Recipe Resources (formerly SOAR searchable archive of recipes), clicked on bread, then banana bread. 219 recipes. printed 5 and took it back to her. Elapsed time 10 minutes. She couldn't believe it.
<blushes>
thank you all three of you ...
<feeling undeserving>
Gray, rainy day here and much colder than yesterday. But I took the afternoon off and treated myself to a lunch of only chocolate, a manicure and a pedicure. Lalalalalalaa.......
Not undeserving nimh. Allow us our moment of appeciation. Your efforts are deeply admired. You are the essence of what many a2k'ers hope to be. Bravo!
My big fat ugly collegue next to my cubicle came to work with a mint or something that looked like a mint, stuck to her hair.
I don't know, it must've been a booger.
I feel I must give credit where credit is due....and the thing that not only made me smile today, but laugh out loud on several occasions (and yesterday, and the day before) iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiissssss
GUSTAV RATZENHOFER.
I love the way that he spots a seemingly serious topic, lets four or five people have their say about knitting, weather, etc. and then WHAM.....
.....he arrives with a short, succinct Ratzenhoferism that just blows the subject out of the water and sends everyone off on a road to hilarious chaos.
A typical example is the "Avatars for sale" thread (on this section I believe)......watch out, he'll appear, as subtle as a brick through a window.
Jolly well done, Gustav old boy....you are one funny man.
Ellpus.
