Time marches on, as the saying goes. I had a great trip to Amsterdam to see Sjoerd and Onah. Then Somerset for a week, now in Black Dog Ridge for a week. Boston next week and San Francisco the week after. And that’s a wrap for September.
Amsterdam and Holland was a success. Sjoerd, Shane, and I, escaped for a few days of merriment, camaraderie, and occasional semi-craziness. I landed Friday morning—Shane had come in the day before. We had a lovely breakfast at Onah’s table and then took the train into town for a private canal boat excursion with a few of Sjoerd’s friends. Then to St. Paul’s for Sjoerd’s 65th birthday bash which culminated with Sjoerd and I joining the professional singer to lead the bar in a drunken rendition of ‘Take Me Home Country Roads’. It was superb and we were hailed as heroes.
I traded Johan my shirt for his ‘St. Paul’s’ logo’d button down in a gesture of international drunkenness.
For no good reason at all, the 3 of us continued singing ‘Take Me Home Country Roads’ up and down the roads of Holland for the next few days. On the ferry, in Sjoerd’s VW Bus, on bikes. A few eyebrows were raised, but we cared not.
Next day we wandered the city a bit, visiting the usual haunts. The big beautiful cigar shop where I dropped a small fortune. A favorite coffee shop, and lunch at the Spanish Tapas place near the international bookstore. I stopped to buy Sjoerd a couple of books of Bukowski’s poetry for a birthday present. We had Bear with us of course. It was nice sitting in the sun sipping cold beers and smoking a cigar and people-watching in one of the world’s most beautiful and interesting cities. We stopped often to admire and pet the dogs we met along the way.
I’ve probably made this trip 50 or 60 times in the last 25 years and it never gets old.
Sunday we drove north and ferried over to the island of Tershelling. I was there once before with Sjoerd, but it was colder and it was just a day trip. This time the weather was beautiful.
Sjoerd had organized a private whiskey tasting which took place on a high hill, overlooking an old German WWII bunker on one side, and the harbor on the other. The next day we did a foraging tour with a local guide, and the next went oyster picking in the bay after a short boat ride out to the shoals. We ate oysters as fresh as they come and washed them down with cold Prosecco.
In between organized activities, we biked and walked 40 or 50 miles over the few days and balanced that with about the same number of beers. A perfect synthesis of low level exercise, relaxing walks, chit-chat, drinks, food, and seeing what is to be seen.
Our final night was a simple but elegant dinner at Onah’s table followed by a cigar on the deck, overlooking the canal heading in to North Amsterdam.
We are already planning our next get together. Options so far are Kings Day, Oktoberfest in Munich, Rugby World Cup 7’s in Singapore, or salmon fishing in Alaska.
In today’s news, back in the real world, I see Matthew McConaughey has written a children’s book. How fucking quaint. What is it with celebrities and their children books? Couldn’t any of us write a kids book on a long lunch break? And of course no one would care. But there’s Matthew, staining the pages of my newspaper, rambling about his literary genius and the inspiration of his damn kids.
If you Google ‘celebrities who have written children’s books‘, you’ll see the full spectrum of this craziness. Channing Tatum? Alex Rodriquez? Julian Lennon? What in the name of Jesus makes these people think anyone gives a fuck about their insights on being a kid?
But this is the world we live in now. Serious matters get pushed aside so we can hear an over-paid under-talented entertainer ramble on about how their kids inspired them to heights of philosophical perspicacity.
Do people with kids never understand that no one else really cares? I especially love the bit where parents complain incessantly about the costs, drama, hassle, insomnia and general chaos involved with raising kids—but then they follow that with how much it’s all worth it. They insist that they prefer sitting on hard soccer benches every night to spontaneous long weekends in cool places or happy hours with friends or simply having some peace and quiet. I’ve often been told that someone feels sorry for me for not having children. Really? I think I’ll be just fine having fun and enjoying life instead of being constantly harassed, stalked, badgered for food and clothing, and relentlessly interrogated by a gaggle of little people.
I do brag a lot about my dog, but she’s different. She’s special in a way no one dog or kid could be. So that’s fine. Maybe I’ll write a book about how my dog has inspired me to be my best self.
I went outside at 5:00 one morning to take Marti for our early walk, and Terri and my cousin Steve were outside drinking coffee. Apparently no one in my family sleeps. I like to get to the park and get our hike in before the usual crew of walking dead shows up. There’s a freaky ass old lady who doesn’t like dogs and so she and her BFF’s are always side-eyeing me when Marti is running around. Marti is perfectly well behaved, but these are unenlightened people who think dogs should always be on leashes.
Thankfully our park does not have a leash law. (Update since writing that sentence. I now know the park does have a leash law—one of the freaks called the popo and now we have to find a new place for Marti to stretch her legs. Bastards!). I would love to put a leash on that crazy old bat and lead her around the park a few times, although I think now she may actually like it.
History does repeat. In reading ‘Africatown‘ by Nick Tabor, he quotes
“And in Alabama, in 1875, the New Democrats called a constitutional convention. Presiding over it was LeRoy Pope Walker, formerly the Confederacy’s Secretary of War. The purpose was to repeal the 1868 constitution, which had secured rights for Blacks, and adopt a new one more favorable to planters and big business. The document slashed property taxes, eliminated the state board of education, cut education funding, segregated schools, and imposed a new poll tax meant to exclude both Blacks and poor whites from voting”.
Nick Tabor, Africatown
So, that sounds pretty familiar except it is now the Republicans cutting taxes for the wealthy, cutting education funding and making it harder for blacks and poor people to vote. We presuppose that society progresses as each generation learns from the mistakes of the past. But obviously that is a fundamentally flawed assumption.
With the menace of global warming, and a host of other serious threats to every human, plant, and animal on the planet, we should be joining forces to save ourselves. But it is business as usual. A war or two around the world, rich getting richer, pollution and carbon emissions not really changing much. People still have tons of kids so the world is marching towards 10B souls living on a planet that is probably optimum at 2B people or so.
I came out on the porch the other morning and Marti was proudly standing over a headless rabbit. I can’t imagine she could catch a rabbit unless it was wounded, and she surely did not chew off the head as she did not have blood on her. So she found it, but it made me wonder what animal would chew off the head of a rabbit but leave the body. A bobcat or coyote would have eaten the damn thing. I went in to get some gloves to throw away the carcass but when I came out it was gone. Marti likes to bury things so I suppose the rabbit got a funeral of sorts.
Every four years I go from watching virtually no television to watching sports. Rugby World Cup has kicked off in France. It’s an exciting time for those of us who love this real sport over all the other bullshit out there. So I’ll catch what matches I can in between the routines of living life.
No other news of note.
Humbly submitted.
The Martini Tales 