A Morning Walk in Amsterdam
This is definitely one of my gnarlier re-entries from resource-poor work setting back into developed-world life. Not surprising, that fact, since it was a full intense two years in Papua New Guinea, a place which remains unique to me in its vast and complex history and sociocultural variety. Plus the fact it was my longest assignment so far. But the fact it’s not surprising doesn’t make the re-entry any less personally … well, gnarly, which is basically a nice way to say challenging as all get out. I sit in darkened auditoriums – mostly Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA, where I’m spending five weeks just now – and when the orchestra goes through its organized tuning-up ritual, tears come to my eyes that humans can organize themselves for the creation and appreciation of beauty and magnificence, not just death and destruction. I sit, finally, at the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica and find myself racked by sobs when we sing some of the hopeful, compassion-and-acceptance-filled hymns that are standard UU fare: again, reminded that the world can be full of hope and collective human effort towards generosity, warmth and creation rather than in-group fighting against in-group. It’s also me letting myself, finally, feel some of the pain and grief our patients experience in PNG and which I’ve not let myself feel since it would have impeded my work while I was still on the job…
I know this is all a bit raw, and I apologize – but I do need to move through this process. Remembering beautiful times and places, like the daffodils above which I saw during my too-short two-day sojourn in Amsterdam, helps. As do all the bike rides I’m taking up to Topanga Canyon or down to Hermosa Beach, here in LA. You’ll see those in due course. But I still have a lot of basic sorting and catching up to do, and my basic apartment setup is lacking in many basics such as printer and even reliable steady internet… So I’m still color-correcting and sorting – and yes, I really do delete most of the photos I take and try to put only the ones I think will you give you some window to where I’ve been. My soul and body are still landing back on this side of the world; in some ways these photos help me trail myself back to where I am now. Maybe they’ll give you either a glimpse of places you’ve loved or would like to be, or lacking that maybe a sense, if you know me, of why I seem to confused a lot of the time lately! 
Ahhhh, Springtime in Northern Europe
So at this moment, smw slt has actually been in one region (the NYC area) for eight nights! That means, as I sat in a lovely NY Philhmarmonic Ensembles chamber recital yesterday and let the music soothe out the kinks of my scattered psyche, that I could count back the Sundays and realized I’d actually gone to bed the prior Sunday in the same rough location as where I’d be going to bed last night. And that’s a big deal since I’d woken up each of the prior several Sundays in at least different countries and more often than not on different continents. And that, my friends, does get old fast. 🙂 That said, there are clearly joys to travel and they include both seeing old friends and meeting new ones, as well of course as having one’s sense of the possible expanded. After two years in the tropics of PNG, I found myself utterly captivated by northern Europe in spring. I also found myself captivated by the grand buildings, the flat fields, the old brickwork and lovely metal and stonework adorning so many buildings. And I was delighted by the freedom and safety to walk or bike at will, at sunrise or sunset and all hours of the day, through the fields and along the streets. In this entry you’re seeing a bunch of shots from the fields and streets around where I was visiting friends in East Frisia & Schlewsig-Holstein in Germany, plus a few urban scenes from Hamburg where I also spent a wee period. It does all look rather different from, say, Port Moresby or the highlands around Tari? Hard to really believe that phase of my life is now wrapped up… 
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Hamburg Church…Petrikirche perhaps??
Hamburg Public Library
Hamburg Canal and Buildings
Hamburg Rathaus
Intersections in Amsterdam
smw, slt has been back in Europe for a bit more than a week, first for a week+ of intensive, big-idea, stimluating meetings with colleagues from around the world – the kinds of meetings that renew one’s pride in the organization one works for, and one’s respect for the colleagues pursuing that work all over everywhere. Mornings I went running a few times, evenings I enjoyed the longer evening daylight to take in some concerts and enjoy the freedom to roam the streets at will. Amsterdam: a city I’ve come to know better each time I’ve visited it since starting to work with the operational centre based there, back in 2009. I’ve shown some views of it before, but this time I’m caputirng a few new areas I don’t think I’ve shown you before. Hope you enjoy. 🙂
At the very top is a morning-run shot from Flevopark on the eastern edge of the main city part of Amsterdam; the others above here are of the newly-reopened (after major renovation; haven’t yet been inside…) Rijksmuseum and museum plein park of which it and the Van Gogh Museum are cornerstones.
This sequence of shots is trying to illustrate the range of different kinds of intersections one encounters, constantly, in Amsterdam – canal with canal, canal with street, street with strangely angled (due to canal) street, canal with street with buliding with canal…it’s quite amazing, really.
…this is the southern edge of Museum Plein, across from which is the Royal Concertgebouw about which more below.
…Amsterdam can be a quirky city, from its interesting street art and sculputre scattered here and there to bikes, which its inhabitants take v e r y seriously: the bike is king in Amsterdam as the car is king in LA.
Above and below, more examples of gorgeous Dutch brick building works. (The one above is the first central prodessing facility for pressurized natural gas pipelines, if I understood correctly – i.e. the first time gas came into homes not in bottles but the way most developed-worlders know it now.)
If you look closely you will note that there’s a house boat hidden behind those plants. It was hard to capture in the shot but I decided to show it anyway – I assume the plantings all around it mean it’s pretty much never moved any more but I could be dead wrong. And below, my ode to the nature that crops up surprisingly around Amsterdam.
About the Concertgebouw: after college I lived in NYC and felt very grown up listening to classical music on WNYC, back when they had more music programming. For the life of me I can’t remember the lady’s name b/c Sarah Vowell of more-contemporary public-radio fame has drowned her out, but I do think it was a Sarah someone or other and she’d often play things recorded by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Hearing it on the radio and not knowing anything about Dutch I didn’t understand it just means royal concert hall…but I loved my monring radio, and had never been inside the building until this visit where I went wild with three concerts including one by the eponymous orchestra itself. It’s a lovely building so I got carried away with the shots in different weather conditions hehe.
Ambling in Amsterdam
For anyone curious about the sequence of flights and stays that brought me where I am now, it was: boat from Star Island to mainland NH, bus to Boston, plane to Cleveland with connection to LA, some time in LA, plane to JFK, a day in NYC, plane to Paris with connection to Amsterdam, several days of meetings and such in Amsterdam, plane to London with connection to Delhi. Whew, I get tired even saying it, and we’re not quite done yet with the whole plane thing. I cannot wait for that happen.
Still, one major plus to all these flights was a chance to enjoy the lovely canalscapes and streetscapes of Amsterdam, a city which combines in a compact little package so very much history, art, archtiecture, cuisine, culture, contemporary western adult life in all its various manifestations, and just plain general-audience fun. It being high summer, with Amsterdam so far north, I enjoyed gloriously long evenings after work to wander the streets and canals of the cities enjoying the sites; I spent my final evening before flying out relishing fine food and live jazz in a cozy canalside cafe, then found the westernmost sky still tinged with deep blue from the sun’s last light, at nearly 23:00. Though my first long evening was blessed with tremendous sunny warm weather, I was too lazy to take along my camera. These photos were taken on subsequent days, when the weather had reverted to more typically mixed North Sea standard weather.
That’s right out the window in my hotel room: is that cool, or what?!The Church Anne Frank Looked At
My friend Bart took this picture during our stroll through a Saturdayafternoon in Amsterdam on March 19. In her diary (so Bart tells me; I
can’t claim to remember it so well), Anne Frank wrote about looking
out at a church tower and hearing the bells ring, and how that lifted
her spirits sometimes. This is the church immediately next to the Anne
Frank house in Amsterdam.
(so much world, so little time....) 
