Reese and the Police

image from foxnews.com

So last week “America’s sweetheart” Reese Witherspoon’s husband was arrested because he was driving while drunk. Bad. Badbadbadbadbad. You get no argument from me there.

But Reese herself was arrested, as well. Why? She got out of her car. Not only that, but when the police officer told her to get back in the car, she drunkenly told him she had a right to stand on American soil. Gasp! The horror! How dare she!?!

The Netherlands in WWII: More Aftermath

image from wikipedia

An American Facebook acquaintance recently posted this video with the comment: “Just for the record”. I watched it and I found it to be a strange hodgepodge of information, rumor and images without commentary. It’s in Dutch, so let me briefly tell you what it’s about.

It begins with  KLM, the Dutch airline, and its role in helping Nazis

Brigham Young and Infamous Legacies in General

Brigham Young
(image from biography.com)

Well, I’ll probably be banned from ever entering Utah for this, but here goes.

I just read The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff. It tells the somewhat parallel stories of two nineteenth wives: Ann Eliza Webb, wife of Brigham Young, the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints’  second leader in the 1870s,

1978: A Rockin’ Year to be Seventeen

Image from http://www.fanpop.com

Evolution of X just had a post about her memories of 1978. She invited readers to do the same.

So, let’s see. Not in chronological order:

Raft Books: My Excuse For Browsing

I’m not big on collections. I used to be. I had all sorts of collections. If I saw something I liked, I would start a collection. Until I felt that I was surrounding myself with things just for the sake of surrounding myself with things, and I got rid of most of them.

Martin Chuzzlewit in the U-nited States

(Image: charlesdickenspage.com}

Since I’ve been blogging about Victor Hugo’s stories, let me jump over to England and Charles Dickens.

This winter break I had the bad luck to get the flu. For days I could barely get out of bed. But every cloud has a silver lining, and this cloud’s lining was that I got to read Martin Chuzzlewit in a few days.

Writing Prompt 1984: Paquette and the Nazis

(Image from Oo.Cities.org)

Writing prompt 1984 asks about being locked in a room with my greatest fear. I suppose that having nightmares is a pretty good metaphor for being locked in a room with my fears.

When B was about six months old, we were staying with my in-laws for what was supposed to be a week to ten days, because the front windows in our house were being replaced. It ended up taking more than two months. But don’t get me started on construction work in South Texas . . .

Load up, Boys, It’s the Asian Menace Again!

image from breitbart.com

Okay, finally I’m getting around to the post about Red Dawn.I think it’s no coincidence that it was remade around this time.

All Heil to the Good Guys

In my last post, I addressed the idea of giving teachers guns in the classroom. But the NRA wants more than that. They want everyone to have a gun, because, as they say, “The only thing more dangerous than a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”. Or something like that.

September 11, 2001: Where Were You?

They say that any American alive at the time can tell you exactly what he/she was doing when JFK was shot in Dallas. September 11, 2001 was one of those days as well.

American International Dissociation and the Melting Pot

Cartoon by O’Farrell

One of my readers asked me a while ago to give my take on the apparent ambiguity between the American “melting pot” diversity and America’s dissociation from the rest of the world.  Well, here it is.  My take. I’m fully aware that I’m generalizing the heck out of this, but the question itself is generalizing, so that makes it totally okay.

Latent Foe

And now for something completely different.

In the 1960′s, Australian public school was still very much based on the system for preparing future factory workers from the Industrial Revolution onward, churning out good little citizens who didn’t question authority, followed instructions and didn’t make waves.

American History in the Netherlands

Image: Wikipedia

Another question I got from my funk post was: What do European kids learn about American history. Well, I can only talk about what I learned, but feel free to add to it in the comments, Dutch readers.

I had History several times a week, from seventh through eleventh grade, and from Mesopotamia to the Vietnam War, more or less. I seem to remember that we started learning about America in tenth grade, and it would have continued through eleventh grade, whenever America came up in realtion to a certain period. This would have been around 1977-1978. I’ll just describe what I remember; trying to be systematic after all those years wouldn’t work.

Where Have All the People Gone?

I’m in a photo mood. Also, the issues readers have brought up require more thought than I can give them right now, since I SHOULD BE TRANSLATING. Which I will get back to, right after these pics. Blogging: the perfect procrastination.

Ten American Things I’ll Never Get Used To

Photo: motivators.com

Although I’ve lived here for 18 years now, and although there are a lot of things I’ve gotten used to and in some cases even adopted, there are some things that, by now it’s safe to say, I’ll never get used to. Here are ten of them.

1. Bobby socks for men. Yep, men here (including T) often wear socks that barely show above the shoe, just like girl bobby socks in the fifties. The only difference is the absence of pompoms. I know they’re considered perfectly normal here, but to me they will always look ridiculous. Sorry, guys.

The Netherlands in WWII : It’s Still Not Over

This is the thirteenth and last (for now) post in a series about American high school students’ impressions on a presentation about the Netherlands in World War Two. Click here for the introduction to said presentation.

Photo: historietilburg.nl

Any member of the resistance who was captured, was interrogated/tortured first to get names of more resistance members, and then shot. Sometimes in the dunes on the coast, sometimes in the street, as a deterrent.

Photo: Joh. van Bueren

The Netherlands in WWII : Lessons Learned

Photo: rijksoverheid.nl

This is the eleventh post in a series about American high school students’ impressions on a presentation about the Netherlands in World War Two. Click here for the introduction to said presentation.

Authority Before the war, the Dutch were a very law-abiding people, with great respect for authority. During the war, the majority of the Dutch police

The Netherlands in WWII : The End

Photo: sg7cz6o.edu.glogster.com

This is the tenth post in a series about American high school students’ impressions on a presentation about the Netherlands in World War Two. Click here for the introduction to said presentation.

About a week before the end of the war, planes from Britain began food drops. They were a drop in the bucket, but they gave hope. And on May 5, 1945, after five years of German occupation, the Netherlands was liberated.

The Netherlands in WWII : The Hunger Winter

This is the ninth post in a series about American high school students’ impressions on a presentation about the Netherlands in World War Two. Click here for the introduction to said presentation.

On June 6, 1944–D-Day–the allied troops landed in Normandy. The idea was to

The Netherlands in WWII : The Day Bed

My mother and my aunt on my aunt’s first birthday

This is the eighth post in a series about American high school students’ impressions on a presentation about the Netherlands in World War Two. Click here for the introduction to said presentation.

The following is another example I told the students of an almost-disaster story.

The Netherlands in WWII : The Gun

Photo: smith-wessonforum.com

This is the seventh post in a series about American high school students’ impressions on a presentation about the Netherlands in World War Two. Click here for the introduction to said presentation.

I told the students the following story as an example of how even ordinary people, who were not in the resistance, who were just trying to survive, were faced with decisions that affected lives.

The Netherlands in WWII : The Resistance

This is the sixth post in a series about American high school students’ impressions on a presentation about the Netherlands in World War Two. Click here for the introduction to said presentation.

“The resistance” was anyone who thwarted the German occupation and the German war effort in any way.

Photo: http://www.en.bestpicturesof.com

They could be teenagers, like high school boys and their teachers who organized into gangs, or men spying and communicating by illegal radio with the government in exile and with the allied forces.

The resistance was involved in hiding Jews, providing the allied forces with information,

The Netherlands in WWII : Forced Labor

This is the fifth post in a series about American high school students’ impressions on a presentation about the Netherlands in World War Two. Click here for the introduction to said presentation.

The Germans were fighting a war on two fronts, and they needed every able-bodied German man to join the military. So they needed workers from elsewhere for their war factories, where materials from uniforms to aircraft were

The Netherlands in WWII : The Occupation

This is the fourth post in a series about American high school students’ impressions of a presentation I gave on the Netherlands during World War Two. Click here for the introduction to said presentation.

The Netherlands in WWII : The Jews

Photo: http://www.members.home.nl

This is the third post about impressions of American high school students of a presentation I did on the Netherlands in World War Two. Click here for the introduction to said presentation.

The Jews were by far the worst affected by the war. First they had to sew a star of David on their clothing, so

The Netherlands in WWII : Soldiers on Bikes

This is the second post in a series about American high school students’ impressions of a presentation about the Netherlands in World War Two. Click here for the introduction to said presentation.

I started my presentation with a map of Europe, showing where the Netherlands is, and all the countries under German control.

The Netherlands in WWII : The Beginning

This is part one of a series about a presentation I gave to a high school class in Austin, Texas, about the Netherlands in World War Two. Click here for the introduction to said presentation.

American Teens and WWII Netherlands

My son B.’s ninth-grade class is learning about World War Two right now, so I offered to give a presentation about the Netherlands during WWII. Not because, in itself, the Netherlands’ history is so important in the big picture, but because I suspected that otherwise the students probably wouldn’t learn too much about how it was for Europeans to be occupied by the Germans.

The demography and geography of the different countries in Europe may vary greatly, but the stories of German occupation, resistance, and living in constant fear and uncertainty have much in common.

And, of course, the occupation of countries, the killing of Jews and the constant intimidation and terror all over Europe is what American soldiers were fighting, even though they may often not have been aware of it, since they were mainly in battle situations against other soldiers. But when they were fighting for freedom, this is what it meant.

So I gave a Powerpoint presentation (my first ever) about WWII in the Netherlands, basically talking about the same things that I mentioned in this post. Only longer, and with photos.

The Runs

This is the first of a series of posts about my family during WWII. For a brief history of the Netherlands in WWII, click here.

Most of the stories about WWII come from my mother’s side of the family. My grandparents were in their 30s when the war started, my mother was five, and my aunt turned one on a beautiful day in May 1940. (The family celebrated her birthday outside, and saw the first German planes fly over on their way to bomb the blazes out of Rotterdam.) My uncle was born two years later, in the middle of the German occupation.

War Stories: Introduction

Photo: Rogier Bos

One thing every person my age grew up with in the Netherlands was war stories. Stories about World War II, that is. But before I share some of my family’s stories, let me first give some background info.

Germany attacked the Netherlands in the beginning of May, 1940, and a few days later we capitulated, because the Dutch army was pathetically outdated, having been neutral during World War I. Most soldiers moved around on bikes. The Germans bombed the hell out of Rotterdam and told the Dutch government that Utrecht would be next if they didn’t surrender.