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DOCTOR TRAVERS BARCLAY CHILD |
I went to
Amsterdam not on buskation, but on kindred adhesion. My youngest son, Trav, was defending his doctoral
thesis on political economy (specifically the war in Iraq and Afghanistan) at
the University of Amsterdam. The panel
“opponents” (we would refer to these scholars as “external examiners” in North
America) were flown in from The Hague, University of Palestine, The Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, and from the University of Oxford. I must confess I was immersed and impressed
by their academic grandiloquence the entire defence.
Dressed in
the finest tux and footwear from a local Dutch haberdasher, student
Trav was anointed, Doctor Travers Barclay Child.
This blog
title: In the Land of Giants because the tallest men on the planet are
Dutch (and the women of Holland are tall, too); Just Follow the Tram was a line of advise from our hotel clerk, the secret to
finding places and not getting lost in Amsterdam; and Photo Memento is today's blog format.
No matter where you go, there you are (Rolf Potts). Well here we were (Carol and I) back in
Amsterdam, joining Trav and his Turkish girlfriend, Sila. (Sila has been in my blogs before, especially
when we are mountain hiking, the last time being in SKETCHES OF MARRAKECH, April 2017, hiking the Atlas Mountains in
Morocco.)
ALWAYS, except
for this one trip, whenever traveling abroad, we hike and I make time to busk. This trip, however, was different. We stayed in a hotel in downtown Amsterdam,
had coffee and a waffle every morning at the bakery next door, took the Tram
several times by day, and dined at night on ethnic cuisines. I did not thrum. I did not draw. We stayed put in Amsterdam the whole time.
And so now
with a chuckle I’m thinking of what Underground Garage radio host (Sirius radio)
stated about going outside of any city.
“I prefer garbage cans and gun shots. Nature connotes eight-legged creatures and
serial killers. Nature, being a
slaughterhouse, is Exhibit A for Existentialism.”
Of course I’m not in agreement with his
preference for city over nature; but I do certainly agree on Nature being
Exhibit A for Existentialism. (Exhibits
B and C could certainly be human beings in their natural competitive habitats,
war being just one example.)
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THE VIEW FROM OUR HOTEL ROOM WINDOW |
Those
marching in my CHAUCERIAN PARADE this week:
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JORDAN, A PRACTICUM SOCIAL WORKER COLLEAGUE |
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SID, ANOTHER COLLEAGUE AND FORMER UNIVERSITY STUDENT OF MINE |
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