Freedom vs Safety (No, This Is Not About the War on Terror)

Photo: tellurideinside.com

Every now and then I make myself unpopular with many of my neighbors. We have a Yahoo group, which is great, because with lightning speed we can get the word out about a lost dog or a scam artist in the neighborhood. But sometimes it can get contentious, and when it does, it seems that I’m often right in the middle of it. I have no idea why, because I’m just mild, non-confrontational, li’l ole me, right readers?

Introducing the Bakfiets

I don’t have inspiration for anything right now, at least not for anything upbeat, which it is time for after a few rants. But here’s an amazing woman in Portland who cycles around six kids in a bakfiets. (Yep, apparently they’ve adopted the Dutch word. So much better than apartheid!)

Most of those kiddos would be cycling on their own by now in Holland, but I wouldn’t let my kid cycle in American traffic either. But to then get a bakfiets instead of a minivan? Wow! That takes guts, and a hell of a lot of muscle!

Someone Get This Woman a “Stupid” T-Shirt

Photo: spreadshirt.com

I have no patience with stupidity.

Ignorance I can tolerate to a certain degree. It comes from lack of education, and it doesn’t tend to occur to uneducated people to look things up. Especially because many uneducated people don’t realize they are. And so they can remain relatively ignorant the rest of their lives. I get that.

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.