What you remember

Oh my gravy, it's been a long time since I posted. First of all, bonus points to anyone who can accurately attribute the phrase "oh my gravy." Second, what better way to fix the lack of updates than by updating?

This post is going to try to be an all-encompassing post that draws elements from different things I've done over the past four...five...six days. Sorry if it doesn't work. Bear with me.

We had a guest lecturer in Democratization yesterday, as we do on all Wednesdays, and I will be honest in saying that it was extremely boring. I did not do very well paying attention. At all. I think it is mostly because:

-These guest speakers are speaking in English, which is not the easiest thing for them. It's a hard thing, and I couldn't do it. I give them props for that. But...

-The speakers do not have the best organization for their lectures, as in main points of any kind. That makes it hard to jump back into the lecture after zoning out for a second or five.

-The guest lecturers are not inclined to speak very loudly. Maybe that is a cultural difference between the Netherlands and the U.S.? Calvin profs do a good job of giving animated lectures, and I think that goes a long way towards helping students pay attention.

All three of those are valid reasons why I had a hard time listening yesterday. But as I listened to "in the 18th century, the Netherlands did this" and "in 1918 women did that," I realized that maybe I could barely pay attention because the lecture was so stinkin' generalized. I like hearing stories of actual people, like the Mayor of Leiden who offered to cut off his arm to feed people. That's what I actually remember!

(impeccably appropriate segue to...)

On Saturday I went to the Dutch Resistance Museum.



















It was a good one. It definitely does not receive the Bijbels museum rating, which is "Go only if you have four months to waste." No, the Dutch Resistance Museum gets the rating of "After hitting the Rijks, Anne Frank Huis, and Red Light District, make this the fourth thing you do in Amsterdam." That might be extreme, but I really liked it. Can you guess why? The stories!

Keep in mind that the museum covered the reactions of Dutch people to German occupation in WWII, including people who resisted the Germans and people who collaborated with them. The stories of resistance were my favorite. I had to take pictures of a few signs so I could remember them and share them with y'all :)

So here you go:

"In April 1941, Jacoba Maria Blom-Schuh of The Hague tells a Winter Help collector, 'I won't contribute to Winter Help until our queen comes back. The proceeds from Winter Help are for the Germans and the NSB members, and they're a gang of thieves, just like Adolf Hitler.' The collector files a report and Maria Schuh is put into prison for three months. The experience does not soften her temperament. The SS guards giver her their socks to darn and she sews them shut, supposedly out of ignorance."

"The Hague, early 1941. Father and mother Niehot want to name their newborn baby Nelia after the midwife, Nelia Epker. But she suggests they give their child an 'Orange' name. The result is announce in the newspaper in a birth advertisement: Irene Beatrix Juliana Wilhelmina Niehot. ...Perfect strangers send cards, flowers, cakes and even money. When Nelia Epker places a thank-you advertisement in March 1941, so that all the names appear in the newspaper once again, she is arrested. She does not return until August 1945, a survivor of Camp Ravensbruck."

"Nico de Graaf is a senior officer at the Department of Social Services in The Hague. When faced with signing the Aryan Declaration he hands in his resignation. Ever since the first day of the occupation he has insisted 'You've got to stick to your guns' and 'Watch out for slippery slopes.' In a statement made to his co-workers he writes, 'Any partiality shown to one human being over another on account of his belonging to a particular race or nation is contrary to the deepest foundations of faith in Jesus Christ."

This is the history that I will remember, and people in the Dutch Resistance are my new heroes!

On a final note, I bought tulips earlier this week and they looked like this:


















And look at them now!


















I knew they continue to grow after you cut them, but wow! Tulips are my new friend :)