89

89                                                  HOLLAND CANALS

SNEEK         

The train from Amsterdam to Sneek was pre war, not sure which one.  Probably the first steel railroad cars, no one had invented Air Conditioning at the time. Man, was it hot! We couldn’t even open a window to cool off, Hard trip.

Hot, hot, hot! Took us three trains, called taxi from free kiosk at Sneek station, dropped Joy & Jean at boat, BJ & I taxi’d back to a liquor store & Super Market. Loaded up on booze & supplies for our week long trip. Received instructions from Port tech, start, horn, run generator when needing 220 v., asked if I had experience; “ of course, in mid France canals”. Showed how to change controls from cabin to upper deck (Piece of cake!).

 

OUR BOAT

 So he leaves, we cast off bow & stern, I’m at controls inside, BJ topside for the scenery. I can’t seem to get thrust but boat moves out off dock & BJ says “We’re off!” & I realize she has control of boat does not know first thing about it. I race topside, take over steering & throttle, and make our first two left turns out of the yacht harbor & eventually are cruising on a canal out in the country. No damage so far.

  Having started about five PM we needed to find a place to stop for the night as, unlike France, there are only designated places to tie up. A couple of hours we came upon a spot and tied up between a couple of other travelers. It being pretty hot, we moved the table & chairs to the bank, broke out the wine & cheese & fruit & supped in a peaceful pastoral setting.

 

STOPOVER

  Stopped at a small town and Jean & I got the bikes out to find supplies. First thing is my bike had two flat tires but I rode the thing anyway. Rode two blocks to edge of town, turned around & Jean hollered “Here’s a store!”. Sure enough, we had went right by it and didn’t recognize it as such. We entered and it looked like a very small meat shop with a cold case of meats. We weren’t looking for that and asked if he had any milk. Sure , right there on that shelf in a paper container. Not refrigerated, but it was milk for our coffee. Any bread? Sure, got a frozen loaf from the back, Beer?, brought out a six of cold Heinekin. Pretty much had all we needed, but did he have a tire pump? He brought it around & pumped up my tires (Talk about full service!) and we were off to the boat. That store must have had a backroom the size of Costco.

TOLL BRIDGE

 Came upon a small town of Eikhorn, waited for the little bridge to open, then putted through as the bridge man had a fishing pole with a small wooden shoe dangling over us. We didn’t know what the hell that was until he started hollering at us and telling us to pull over. We managed a quick stop along the quay and Joy ran back with some Euros, to give him E1.40.  Finally got the idea after watching the other boater catch the line and put in their money.

  Arrived in the old town of Kampen, but not before running aground on the huge sea en route. No perceptible damage. Found a small but difficult pier to moor & nearly ripped the dock apart as I was trying to nose into it get tied up, then roll the aft over to it but my line handlers didn’t get it plus there were only small rings instead of bollards on which to tie onto.

LIFT BRIDGE IN KAMPEN

Walked across the great old lift bridge and found a little café for Petit Dejeuner. There were glass floor areas that showed old burial vaults plus a bubbling hot spring right in the front room. A great old Kerk (Church)  that used to be Catholic but now Protestant. Fortunately they were tuning the fabulous old organ with 1200 pipes so we sat and reveled in the vast sounds. Tuning consisted of hitting it with a huge sledge hammer.

 Found a cheese shop with a wall of shelves with 12" wheels of different cheeses. Displays of Chilean wine for e3.00 a bottle, so picked up a few.  I found a shop that sold art supplies and bought some sketching materials.

BOOM CHICAGO

BACK IN AMSTERDAM

Caught a performance by "Boom Chicago", had fun and a dinner & bottle of wine and lots of really good laughs, mostly trashing Bush.  The Handicap laws are  not as crazy as in USA, as accommodation is easily accomplished with simple methods. At Boom Chicago the hall is stepped 3 times with 6" steps. The server brings over a small wood ramp, sets it down for the wheelchair person, then takes it back up to the Matre de station. I didn’t know what she did about the toilet on the next floor.

BREAKFAST

 There was a big construction project going on in front of our breakfast cafe.

We talked with superintendent who informed us they were digging a new Metro tunnel in order to get some fast Metro to the outlying areas. We were intrigued by the equipment as they had two large cranes each with a 90' tower and were drilling about every 3 meters, and pumping in concrete grout under enough pressure so that the grout would blossom out to 3 meters in diameter. this is how they were forming the bottom of the tunnel. They had already dug the side with a slurry trench.  When they had all the bottom pads set, the will excavate the 90' deep tunnel, pour a solid bottom, middle floor and then the street level. Since this is all well below the canals I would assume de-watering is a major factor in all this.

METRO

CANNABIS

  While riding the new metro one day Joy noticed a sign right in front of us that they would be on strike the next day. This is the first we heard of it so we thought we would be clever and bought a canal boat tour for the next day for 14 e each. We were able to get down to the station but since the boats came by every two hours it was not so easy. We did a lot of walking, thru Chinatown, red lite district, finally got to the Marijuana Museum to watch them grow several different varieties of pot in the back rooms. Didn't seem like a big deal that there was a 4' tall pot plant sitting out in front of the store, on the sidewalk.

 We usually walked along the canals to our hotel, passing lots of quant scenes, like the lady busily vacuuming her front steps, of granite! I'd heard they were really tidy folks. One evening we were hungry and went out to find a bite to eat at some local, low cost venue. It looked like rain so we took our little folding umbrellas and strolled out into a tremendous heavy rainstorm, all the way to a corner bar/cafe where we ducked in totally drenched. Found a corner table and ordered a couple glasses of vin ordinaire and sandwiches. Just what we were looking for. It being a Sunday, most places were closed, but they always have a few bars open for the Dutch quafers.

 Stopped by the OLD MAN'S, the ultimate head shop, replete with a n entire line of cannabis clothing., Joy had to buy some pipe lighters for you know what.

16TH CENTURY WAREHOUSE

 We spent a few hot hours searching for the fabulous canal with all the great 16th cent. warehouse that are restored/converted into modern use. The clear beauty of these are really remarkable. We didn't find them but we now know they are on the Brousgreet canal for next time, and there will be a next time.

ARCAM BUILDING

 Of course the highlight of our trip was finding the ARCAM building, where we were given literature about Java & Borneo Island. We forthwith caught the proper bus and walked through the Dutch's idea of hoe to design and execute new towns. I suspect their type of government is leaning towards socialism with a monarchy in the form a Queen Beatrice? They seem to have it pretty well organized.

JAVA DOCKLANDS

JAVA TOWNHOUSES

 BJ and I went to walked over to the Van Gogh Museum. It was pretty hot so we had to stop at the huge reflecting pool to put our feet in and cool a bit. I was anticipating going into the new adjunct to the museum by a Japanese ‘Starchitect’ but we were relegated to the existing one. I don't know what they use the new expensive one for. On the way back home we stopped at the VG Cafe for a good Belgium beer. To cool off, of course.

BEER TIME!

88

88 REMINISCING

Once in a while I have a small thought of my earlier life(Virtually a lifetime ago) and want to share with you a short time during the Korean War .

           

When I recently came across a section of an old “Guppey” type submarine I surely remembered my bunk in the fore’ard  torpedo room, sandwiched in between a torpedo and the motor for the port bow diving plane.  The electric motor was about the same diameter as a torpedo (about two feet)  and fit well there. We had a crew of about 90 with only about thirty bunks, we had to share with two other crewmen. That worked OK as  we all got seven hours sleep a night. Unfortunately, this bunk was for the lowest rated guys and it was too narrow a space . If you wanted to turn over, you had to get out of the bunk  to do it. These “boats” were diesel and ran on a large store of batteries. I’ve included a photo of my “Dolphins”, (comparable to a fliers’ wings).  One earns his Dolphins whenyou are able to operate most jobs on the boat , as you must carry on even after half you crewmates have drowned like rats.  I was attracted to subs as I saw them as a self  contained city in one small package, more for it’s technology than for it’s killing ability.

HISTORY OF ASTROLOGY

As you may have noted from my last blog, I was intrigued by the distant planets in our Solar system were and changed gears to astronomy. But still, I came across some old Astrological charts made for me (I cast one of them) and have always been  a little sceptical of how a planet  could have an effect on our lives, especially at our births, as they seem so far distant.  I became interested in the art during my time in Los Angeles with Judith Tyberg’s “East- West Cultural Center’. (She was the first woman to gain a degree in Benares University in the old days).  Anyway, it seems to have originated by the Sumerians around 2000 BC but used primarily for weather and Politics only.  By 400 BC they pretty much knew where the planets would be at any time. Which gave rise to Natal and Horoscoptic Astrology. Egyptian Astrologers were extant at Alexandria , Egypt around 332 BC  but Ptolemy was there organizing Astronomy instead.  By 200 AD, the Indians were working on it but the Arabs finessed the Art about 700 AD.  Not everyone was on the bandwagon as Saint Augustine (350 AD) was skeptical and wondered how twins born at the same time could lead vastly different lives. I gave it all up when one of my charts said I was a no good jerk.

WORKERS OF THE WORLD , UNITE !

Since Sanders has been in the spotlight lately, espousing a Demo-Socialistic take on government, I decided it was time to read THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, some early work of Marx & Engels.  They really spent too much time sitting around in French Cafés drinking coffee & wine as their manifesto is too damn long and they were enamored with the words “Proletariat (Worker) and Bourgeois (Boss)”, since they use them both in about every paragraph. They ranted about the exploitation of the many by the few (You mean the 1%?), in which the Theory of The Communists may be summed up in a single sentence:    Abolition of private property.

They also set out their Ten Commandments ;

1.1    Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to the public purposes.    (Just who is this public purpose?)

2. 2   A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.  (Starting from the top?)

3.  3  Abolition of all right of inheritance.    (That will not be popular)

44    Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.  (Wait! That’s Trumps deal)

5.  5 Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital  and an exclusive monopoly.    (Like our Federal Reserve?)

6.6    Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.    (Get rid of those pesky journalists)

7.7    Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of wastelands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.     (Environmentalists don’t call them wastelands)

8. 8   Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies , especially for agriculture.    (Armies?)

9.9   Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.    (Right. More to the Gulags in Siberia & Colorado!)

110.  Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination  of education with industrial production, etc., etc..    (We did do that)

MEIN KAMPF (My Struggle) by A. Hitler

  Since Mr. Trump is appearing to represent most voters in the US, I thought it  relevant to review Hitlers’ thoughts on how to govern since Trump may soon be The Leader of the Free World. About the only admirable thing I could find about Adolph was how many people do you know that spent their time in Jail writing a thick book? It did show that hisa intellect was not much but did show how he was able to generate a significant hatred for the Jews around him, even though he was mystified how much they looked like Germans and also human. 

PRIORITIES, COST BENEFITS & OTHER FANTASIES                        Or

HOW YOUR MONEY IS MIS-SPENT

  Graton has just undergone a complete rehabilitation of  handicap related curbs, gutters and walks. I would estimate the cost as tens of thousands of dollars.  How can this happen?  Our roads are nearly unuseable in certain places, yet, there is plenty of money to tear out concrete that is not up to the current, ever changing , H’cap standards. As you may know, I’ve done a lot of work in Graton during the last 30 years, ( restuarants, Atelier One)  actually initiating the renaissance of a decaying town with my Atelier One project, a building that  Sonoma County had condemned.  As you may not know, I’ve been involved with these H’cap  laws for years, even extending into a lawsuit  by the U.S. Dept. of Justice in Washington D.C. ($350,000).   This was from my work for years in designing large apartment and condominium projects throughout the United States.  I had to abandon that work just when I got good at it due to these lawsuits.

I also know these laws are written by lawyers who have little knowledge of construction, ergo, the Zero Tolerance principle that they work on.  Some of this make-work stuff is due to a fraction of an inch deviation (Zero) from the codes. Some of  these moneys are from the Federal government and probably have no connection with our poor roads and such.  But the public should know where our moneys are being squandered, as it is from our pockets .  But here’s the rub; it is virtually impossible for the public to know about these projects due to the extreme secrecy of the proceedings as there are “Lawyers involved”. And they couldn’t possibly let the public know how heavy handed they are . I’ve written before (If not, I should have) about watching the our cities’ curbs & gutters being torn up again as the codes have been updated about every ten years. When you consider that each corner costs $5,000 or more to change , consider what the bill is for all the corners of all the cities of all the states in the USA comes to!

My questions are;  And how much did it all cost? Who initiated the work?  Who decided on the scope of work?  Who designs these projects?

 AN OVERVIEW OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

With all this brauhau Caucasus I had to see if I could get a view of how we are governed in this Republic,( It is not a Democracy, don’t forget.)

See if I have this right:.

PRESIDENT                                     SUPREME COURT                                    CONGRESS

 Cabinet – Civil Servants                 Picked by Pres for Life                     SENATE

White House Staff                                                                                                                           6 year term

National Security Council                                                                                                            Two per State (100)

Budget

Economic Advisors

Environmental

Trade                                                                                                                    HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Drug Control

Science & technology                                                                                                                    2 year term

                                                                                                                                                                 Maximum 435

INDIVIDUAL  AGENCIES                                                                                                                 One /60k to 90k

Postal

NASA

CIA

EPA

Internal Revenue

Government Owned Corp.

FDIC

National Rail Corp.

I guess we have about 50 stats now, but just what are the following?

North Marianas Islands

Puerto Rico

U.S. Virgin Islands

Haiti?

Grenada?

Although we are basically a two party system, there are actually about 30 Parties that you can join.

MY BURNING QUESTION OF THE DAY;  Are all politicians afraid to appear without an American Flag pin on their lapel?  That is really embarrassing.

SINCE ALL THE ABOVE IS NOT WORKING, LET’S JUST VOTE FOR THE LOBBYISTS, since they're running the country anyway.

86 GETTING OLDER

                                                    

You might as well face it, your body  will deteriate and I will try to give you a preview of things to come as we never get to hear about all the weird things that happen to your poor old body as it ages.

Here are a few things that surprised me as I aged….;

1.    One of my fingers curled under and It was difficult to get into my pocket. It is called_Dupuytren’s Contracture .  Minor operation on that.

2.    You tend to get a lot of “barnacles” all over your body. Nothing serious, but you won’t win any beauty contests.

3.    .  One of your toes may curl up and it’s called Crooked Toe . Only uncomfortable.

4.     If you’ve spent your youth in the sun and sea at La Jolla and Waikiki, you probably start getting spots of Melanoma Cancer here and there. Not to worry, if caught early, your Dermatologist will just exorcise it and you may not even have  a scar.  One on six of you will get it. Minor surgery.

5.    Once in a while, your kidney or gall bladder will toss a “stone” and it will scour down your little tube and end up in your bladder where it will disappear. Mine only last for an hour or 8 at the most. Just bite the bullet (A tip from me; take a Cannabis lozenge  for it and forget any pills doctors give for it)

6.    The latest fashion is to have Sleep Apnea, which means you will have to get a small machine to help you breathe at night but Medicare will pay for it and all the accoutrements to go with it. Mostly, you will not need this but all Doctors will prescribe it. However, it does help a snoring problem.

7.    They will also prescribe a bunch of pills to take each day, one of which will be a Blood Thinner”, after your heart attack, a super expensive pill, about $230/month,   but Medicare will pay for half of it. Of course, every time you have a little cut or bang into wall, you will get a big purple bruise or bleed.

8.    By this time, your eyes will have a bunch of clouds and you see  stuff floating around in your eyeballs and will have to have it cleaned out if you want to read or see. Not to Worry! Your Optometrist…… will just give you a little drug, cut a slice in your eyeball, vacuum up all the shit in you cornea, then insert a small taco that will replace your glasses and send you on your way, with a Pirates eye patch for a couple of days. That should last you for the rest of your miserable days.

9.     Can’t hear what the little wife is saying anymore? (Also called “Blanking out the Wife”). You can get a couple of swell hearing aids for only a thousand dollars each, but Medicare doesn’t cover that either, so tough shit.

10. What’s left? Teeth! You’re also on you own here as there is no help from your local Health Program. All I can say is “Just Keep on Brushin”. I was kind of lucky as I began my tooth journey by getting all my fillings from  the University Medical School (Washington) where it was all free but you were a subject like a gerbil for the soon to become dentists who needed some live bodies to work on.

11. You may get a heel spur, they like to cut through your tendons and cripple you, also called “Planter Faciatis” then you get to do stretching exercises to stretch the tendons, also sensible shoes with arch supports.

12.   Bunions. When you can’t get a foot into a shoe without lots of pain and start wearing slippers because that is the only comfortable item . Stay tuned for how much that hurts to have it fixed. Can’t believe surgery would be worse, but that’s what “they” say.

13.  Gas. Oldsters seem to manufacture more internal pressures than you might think..

14.  Breathing spit. This is a great gagging scene, as it seems you can  die for lack of air. Very uncomfortable. Doesn’t look good ,either.

15. Vertigo  -  Musn’t forget this one as it may occur at any time. Mine only lasted for a few minutes and has not re-occurred, but my mother had it  a lot (Well, hell, she was 95).

16. Mystery eyebrows  -  This is a guy thing; If you don’t trim your eyebrows, they will get huge and may curl up. Or curl down, or just straight out. But here’s what is weird, they will change direction overnight sometime, but it has nothing to do with how you sleep. Then a few weeks later, some will change direction again. (Just become a curmudgeon.)

17. Of course, none of this talks about cancer, which may signal the end of your stay on Earth. Well, you have to die of something.

GOING POSTAL

            I really have to rant a bit about this! Your Post Office (Not Mine!) is always broke and having a hard time keeping up the Head guys Limo seem to have unlimited funds to design and create a [plethora of stamp types . But that’s not the big problem I have. They are still cutting them with perforated edges, even though they are peel & stick items. Wait! There’s more! Then they have the audacity to leave a 1/8” strip between the perforations so that it comes off when you are trying to peel a stamp off.
AAhhg !   You may have noted that since they raised the price so often they don’t print the cost of the stamp on it, it’s just a “Forever Stamp”. What does that mean? If I buy one thousand stamps  today for 50 cents each and hold them for a couple of years I could sell them for a couple thousand more cents than I paid?

ONE WORLD TRADE CENTER

I just can’t let this one go!  Did anyone build a zillion dollar shrine for the boys who died at Pearl Harbor in ’41?   The same number died on the twin towers (about 3,000).  Here’s even more history. ..in 1945 a B-24 bomber crashed into the 79^th floor of the Empire State Building. 11 dead on the building + 3 from the plane. Foggy day, an ugly accident. Firemen had to haul hoses up 80 floors.

Wait – There’s more! In 1993 terrorist exploded a huge truck bomb in the basement of one of the World Trade Towers, trying to topple one into the other. This killed only six people but injured thousands, mostly from smoke inhalation. They mostly were trying to get us to stop supporting Israel, an arch enemy of Iraq. (When did that start? 3,000 years ago?)

But meanwhile, back at the SACRED SITE, they finally finished the most expensive building in the world, in their infinite wisdom that “ Nobodies goi’n  knock this baby down “ mentality. The base is a70 foot high  fortified concrete fort to fend off any more truck bombs. But it’s all glazed with special blast-proof glass, that doesn’t shard when blown up.  The rest of the building’s glass is 1” thick that maybe could stop a Piper Cub. The original cost estimate of 3 Billion escalated to 4 Billion by the time it was finished.  The insurance paid 1 Bill., The Port Authority chipped in another Billion, and the City of New York put in 250 Million Dollars.  That might be about $1150 per square feet). So who is the first tenant? A Chinese Real Estate firm took seven floors  Next up was Conde Naste Publishing (Moving from Boone, Iowa?) who leased floors 20 to 44 !  Since money was no object, the builders had to invent concrete with a strength of 14,000 psi (pounds per square inch) when normal high strength concrete is about 4,000 psi. At least the architects made the stairs a little wider to accommodate the screaming, panic  driven  crowd flowing down the stairs. However, if you think we threw money at that project, let me tell you a bit about the replacement of the Transit Hub that was also destroyed in the attack. First off, you hire one of the current  “Starchitects”, Santiago  Calatrava,(He must have been scared by a “Comb of Venus” (Mure Tiremus in his infancy)  so he can design his standard “Winged bird about to fly off” or a giant “Spiney Shell”. , the type of project that was initiated by The Sydney Opera House’ ; in other words, a form totally unrelated to it’s function, a budget that will be doubled to 4 Billion. (but to be fair, the Sydney job was ten times over the budget).  The Director of the Hub said “A Symbol of Excess”, other comments were “Costs of the Hub were “Troubling at a time of limited resources for infrastructure” . “The Cost of Beauty is High”.  By the way, the ceiling leaks.

BOOK REPORT

A study of THE BROTHERHOOD OF ETERNAL LOVE ,by Nick Schou;  where a bunch of hippies in Laguna Beach in the 1960’s who initiated the smuggling and distribution of Cannibus,  Hashish, and especially LSD on  scale that may have initiated the DEA.  I had no idea !  I was there and knew a lot of these folks but didn’t know about the filling of Volkswagons with Hash oil and shipping it to Long Beach from Afganastan. Most of the happenings were in Laguna Canyon (called “Dodge City”) and ‘The Mystic Arts building on the main drag. The whole thing started to unravell when a plane flew over a rock concert and dropped thousands of tabs of LSD on the crowd. You can imagine!.

  UNDERSTANDING THE UN-UNDERSTANDABLE

Just the other morning, over the breakfast table, I was asking my lovley wife the burning question of the hour; “What keeps all the planets in their orbits around the Sun and why are the orbits elliptical? It seems too far for gravity to keep them pulled in.”. Well, strangely, she didn’t have an answer for me, other than “Are you fucking nuts?”. Hmmmm, I guess I’ll have to look elsewhere for that answer.  Well, if you believe in coincidences like I do, my neighbor  Steve stopped by a couple of days later  with an exquisite little book  by Carlo Rovelli entitled “Seven Brief Lessons on Physics” that he laid on me. Opening it up to “First Lesson”, it is the story of Albert Einstien and what he had actually discovered.  But prior to him, Newton had some ideas on how some of the planets worked. (Force of gravity). But how did this work in a vacuum? ) . A couple of physicists, Faraday & Maxwell, said this void was actually filled with a magnetic field and can transport magnetic force. Einstiein  posited that gravity, like electricity, must be conveyed by a field as well: a gravitational field must exist. Then he thought “ the gravitational field is not diffused through space; the gravitational field is the space itself”.  Space is no longer  distinct from matter  ---- it is one of the  “material” components of the world. But wait- there’s more  -  Einstiens’  E = MC2 means that space curves where there is matter, and somehow that’s were all the planets follow their orbits.  It goes on to explain how space bends around stars (suns) and all that to readily convince me that that must be how planets keep to a trajectory for eons.  If this leaves you confused, the following equation by Riemann should clarify it all:

Rab – 1/2Rgab = Tab   (But you’ll need a font that will drop the lower case letters part way down the line to make it read correctly).

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