I Won't Celebrate the Centennial of the 19th Amendment

This is 2020, the centennial of passage of the 19^th Amendment.  It should be one good thing to celebrate in a year with too few good things.  Despite the pandemic and chaos, numerous grand events are going on to celebrate the Amendment for giving women the right to vote.  The suggestion always underlying those words is all women.

Yet, the 19^th Amendment was no more universal suffrage for women than the 15^th Amendment was universal suffrage for men.  In context, the 19^th Amendment probably did less than the 15^th.  Because of the 15^th Amendment African American men actually gained voting rights for the period immediately following the Civil War.  Then came systematic denial of voting rights, the hallmark of Jim Crow, until at least 1965, with remnants continuing to this day.

In other words, by 1920, when the 19^th Amendment was added to the Constitution, voting rights for men of color had already been stolen, especially in the South.  And, for all intents and purposes, the 19^th Amendment was irrelevant for women of color, particularly in the South.

Also, the 19^th Amendment in 1920 came before the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act.  It is odd even to type that last fact.  All native-born Indigenous people were not recognized as U.S. citizens until 1924 and thereby were denied the right to vote until 1924.  By interpretation, Native Americans fell outside the reach of the 14^th Amendment, despite its clear language:  All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.

So, in its effect, the 19^th Amendment did not do what we commonly say it did and want to celebrate it for doing 100 years ago.

But what about its intent?  Was universal suffrage its intent?  We may try to comfort our privileged white selves into thinking the 19^th Amendment did not have racist intent.  The historical record, however, suggests otherwise.  To find this out, we must dig deep, beyond the whitewashed tales we call history.

Here is what I managed personally to dig up.

A year or more ago the Library of Congress called for volunteers to transcribe suffragist papers – letters, speeches, diaries, etc. – online.  Crowdsourcing the effort seemed to make sense, especially since the LOC could depend on free, largely female labor to do the work.

I signed up because I can type and thought the content would be interesting.  I could quench my interest in history and learn more about the suffragists from primary sources, their own words.  I did learn more, but not what I expected to learn.  As I recall, I got through no more than two letters.

Why did I stop?  The content was so thoroughly racist I would no longer contribute my time to the effort.  Within the confines of correspondence not written for public consumption, the racism was laid bare.

This presents an obvious conundrum.  Getting the racist underbelly of the women’s suffrage movement out in full display has real value because it has been so well hidden.  I agree that transparency is a good thing, sunshine is the best disinfectant.  But I could not in good conscience contribute any more of my time transcribing the racist words of my foremothers.  Frankly, it made me want to go take a shower.

So, dear readers and fellow members of the League of Women Voters, please forgive me if I cannot fully buy into your celebrations of the centennial of the 19^th Amendment.  Until the real history is told, I have nothing to celebrate.

No Child Should Be Sacrificed

On March 15, 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci advised, “If it looks like you're overreacting, you're probably doing the right thing.”  His advice still rings true.

What is the right thing for K-12 schools?

No child, no teacher, no staff, no associated families should be put at risk.  Schools must not re-open, except virtually.

This is still being debated because all our actions and inactions to date have prioritized businesses – the ECONOMY – over schools, our children.  That must stop.  Now.

The President and his Secretary of Education are pressing hard for schools to be fully open in September.  It appears they have even beaten the Centers for Disease Control into line.  Why?  Never strong advocates of public education before, they are now hell-bent on forcing schools to open.  The explanation is obvious.  School children have been chosen as the lever to pry open the economy.

In recent months, we have been inundated with dogma:

·       People must go back to work to feed their families and keep a roof over their heads.  (Government could mitigate this for the pandemic’s duration, but it hasn’t.)

·       Businesses must open to survive and keep their workers employed.  (Government could mitigate this too.)

·       Children must go to school for education and social needs.  (Safety is notably absent from this equation.)

All these things are interconnected.  The single greatest impediment to parents returning to jobs are children at home.  Schools are being valued not for education, but for daycare.

So far, Congress and public officials have adopted temporary fixes, band aids for a pandemic.  We have seen one-time payments, temporary unemployment expansions for some (not all) workers, premature openings of nonessential businesses leading to resurgence of infections.  The country is bleeding through the band-aids.  Better solutions to ensure safety and security are possible while the pandemic rages, but Congress seems incapable of acting accordingly.

Other options having failed, the President wants to sacrifice our kids to restart the economy.  That’s code for enhancing his re-election chances, by the way.

He tells us, infections in kids are infrequent; serious complications in kids are uncommon; deaths in kids are exceedingly rare.  True enough.  Now, you choose.  Which kids are going to live with lifelong consequences from COVID-19?  Which kids are going to die?  You choose.

As a practical matter, no school or school district has the room, the staff, or the funding to accomplish a safe return to school buildings.  Years of experience on a local school board tell me it is just that simple.

In the spring, schools were forced to shift to distance learning without much notice or time to plan.  They did the best they could under the circumstances.  In the spring, that was the only possible response.  It is not a strategy, however, that anyone should willingly adopt for the fall.  Yet, that appears to be what is happening.  The summer has been squandered with dreams and plans to reopen “normally.”

That won’t be possible.  Repeat:  There will be no normal reopening.  The pandemic still rages in most states, uncontrollably in many.  With little time left, robust plans for distance learning must be developed.

What should that planning emphasize?

·       The highest, non-negotiable priority must be educating our most vulnerable students.  They cannot be allowed to fall through the cracks.  Period.

·       Distance learning must be extended to families without Internet access.  It can be done, with adequate funding.  Instead of spending Federal money on nonessentials (like roads), Federal dollars should be targeted to get our kids connected and keep them connected to their schools.

Tick tock.  Get creative.  The greatest deficits throughout the pandemic have been indecisiveness, impatience, and failures of imagination.  Delays and an abject unwillingness to accept how the virus behaves are a deadly combination.  Remember Dr. Fauci’s advice.

Instead, we act like children on a pandemic road trip.

Are we there yet?  Are we there yet?!

No, the end of the pandemic road is not just over the horizon.  That’s not reality.

Let’s accept where we are and adapt.  No life should be deliberately put at risk in any school building.  No teacher, no staff member, and especially no child should be sacrificed.

Let's Not Aspire to Normal

Credit to Artist:  Jennifer Wagner
Source:  Facebook post by Women of Appalachia, 4/22/2020

Governor Jim Justice of West Virginia, announcing the end of in-person instruction for the remainder of the school year but planning for students to return in the fall, remarked (Dominion-Post, 4/22/2020):

“This will be a memory in our rearview mirror.”

Really? Just a memory in the past?

Will the coronavirus epidemic mean so little?

My thoughts keep returning to the stories of World War II. We have all learned about shared sacrifice during WWII. Men and teenage boys went off to fight and die. Women left their homes and filled offices and factories to conduct business, run the government, and manufacture whatever was needed to supply the war machine. Rosie the Riveter, the iconic woman, was born. People bought war bonds, collected cans and newspapers. Those at home endured gas rationing, which limited travel. Imaginative cooks invented recipes to adapt to food rationing. Victory gardens to supply supplemental food were planted everywhere a patch of dirt could be found. Material for new clothes became unavailable, so skirts became shorter at the same time nylon stockings became luxuries available to few. Everyone chipped in.

I’ve never read a single account of anyone bemoaning the loss of a prom or a graduation ceremony due to the war. Perhaps this was aided by the run-up to the war: the Great Depression. Most people were accustomed to going without.

Perhaps that’s why I have so little understanding and, frankly, little tolerance for the loss many parents and students appear to be feeling and sharing today. I understand going without; that was my childhood. Knowing that I couldn’t have whatever I wanted was my normal. No doubt that colors my perspective today.

In retrospect, we know the public response to WWII was not all spontaneous and homegrown. It was aided by leadership. We were all in the fight together, everyone had a job to do, and everyone did it. And we could do it, successfully. Franklin Roosevelt, the messenger, made certain that message came through, loud and clear, with consistency. There was propaganda, indeed, but the propaganda was directed at unifying the people toward a common goal, not at elevating a single individual.

Did Franklin Roosevelt, or Harry Truman after him, ever say, soon this will be just a memory in our rearview mirror? Why would they?

No, once the war was over there was even more work to do: Millions of homes to construct, millions of returning GIs to educate and train, an interstate highway system to build, schools to expand to accommodate that post-war baby boom, diseases like polio to eradicate.

I don’t think anyone talked about “going back to normal.” Why would they? It belittles the effort that came before and reduces the incentives to undertake the efforts that need to come after.

I believe that the coronavirus epidemic has provided us with opportunity, along with all its death and economic destruction. Especially for those of us sheltering in place, one opportunity is the ability to take stock and assess what really matters in life. Our lives were so busy, so filled with stuff, we rarely had (or took) the time to do that before. I think families (kids and parents) bemoaning the loss of prom and graduation are missing out on supremely important lessons in their desire to “go back to normal.”

This is my opinion. Just an opinion. Understand that it is more reflection than judgment.

But, while you think I'm judging, let me be controversial here: It takes a lot of hubristic privilege to be concerned about proms and graduation ceremonies when literally surrounded by people dying by the tens of thousands, healthcare workers risking their lives during every shift, essential employees carrying on their essential and typically lowly functions despite the lethal risks to themselves and their families.

Now, back to reflection:

I’ve been told that prom and graduation (which in this conversation are symbols, let’s face it) are “rites of passage,” and that makes them important! Yes, rites of passage are important. But so is perspective.

In fact, we are smack-dab in the middle of the most extraordinary rite of passage of my entire lifetime and probably the lifetimes of most people alive today. And many of us are hellbent on ignoring its significance! Just letting it pass us by, in our eagerness to get back to normal.

Most of us alive now were born after the Great Depression and after WWII. Yet, the life-altering value of those events for the generations that experienced them is an established part of our cultural identity. What made those events life- and culture-altering? Possibly, a recognition of their importance for all of us, the shared experience, the weight of their impact.

Recently, I heard a different view, in one of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s daily briefings from New York. Following those briefings, I have never heard him talk about going back to normal. Instead, he cautions against it.

I have heard him talk quite openly and personally about not being able to visit with his elderly mother or his infected brother. I have heard him reveal publicly his own guilt about before, when he was too often too busy to visit Mom (he calls her “Mom”) when he could have. He considers this, then states as a simple matter of fact that not being able to do these things right now are necessary losses. I also have observed him light up the room as he talks about the unexpected gift of getting to spend time with his grown daughters who are staying-at-home and socially isolating with him. He willingly shares his reflections on his own experiences and circumstances, for our benefit.

And when he talks about what comes next, not now but when the time comes, he talks about rebuilding better, renewal. He talks about taking the lessons learned during the worst of the epidemic and the shutdown and using them for good. He treads on dangerously thin and frankly hallowed ice when he invokes memories of 9/11, before coronavirus, our most recent worst shared tragedy. After 9/11, he asserts, New York and even the United States came back better than before. He asserts that New York learned lessons from the devastation of Hurricane Sandy and rebuilt better.

Agree or not on the specific outcomes of 9/11 or Hurricane Sandy, he rejects the notion of going “back to normal.” Surely, he says, we can learn and do better. This is wholly unlike the mantra of make America [or New York] great again, which is, of course, just another way of saying let’s get back to normal.

This is our opportunity. We will face emergencies again, climate change is bearing down on us, we are inextricably linked globally, and we have uncovered flaws in our society, our economic, government, health care, and other systems that need fixing. We cannot and should not just go back. If we go through all this pain and suffering and inconvenience and desperation and learn exactly nothing, it would be shameful. If we learn but do not apply the lessons going forward, it would be worse than shameful.

For those of us who survive:

   Never forget.

   Go forward.

   Do better.

   Do good

Let’s make this time mean something.

Rationing of Health Care

Suddenly, rationing of health care has become real to Americans because of the COVID-19 epidemic.  I want to cry.  I also feel the urge to laugh, hysterically.

Rationing has always been real to some Americans.  It’s the American way:

For the uninsured part-time worker who puts off going to the doctor because the sign in reception says, “fee is payable at the time of visit.”

For the full-time worker with or without insurance who cannot take time off for fear of losing their low-wage job.

For the Medicaid or Medicare beneficiary who cannot find a provider in their community who will accept public insurance.

For the single parent who sets aside their own health needs and instead puts every resource, however meager, into keeping their children healthy.

For the underinsured with high co-pays and/or deductibles who must choose between health care and rent or food.

For the folks living in the rural areas chronically underserved by the health care system.

For the impoverished who lack transportation to doctor appointments.

For those living so distant from a health care facility that seeking care, even in an emergency, is impractical or impossible.

For those navigating poverty who accepted illness without medical intervention before and bravely hope that their family member will be lucky again this time.

For anyone who is uninsured and therefore faces the highest prices, because it takes insurance to benefit from negotiated discounts.

For someone simply denied access to care because they lack proof of insurance or ability to pay.

I could go on … and on.

Rationing, which has always been real to some Americans, is now becoming real to all Americans, even privileged Americans.  Privilege includes those who have never experienced rationing American-style, but also those who have never understood that others experience it.  Every day, every year.

I Trained for This

Just imagine:  The average American rolls out of bed one random morning, slips on shorts and sneakers, and sets out to run a marathon.  With no training.  That’s the task facing at least a third of the U.S. population (the fraction grows daily) who have been asked (or told) to stay-at-home to avoid catching or transferring the coronavirus.  People are inevitably impatient and anxious.  We are abandoning normal, busy lives to run a race, with most of us forced to run in place.  Are we making progress?  How do we tell?  Are we at mile 1 or 5 or 10?  There are no mile markers.  We can be certain only that we are nowhere near mile 26.  Yet, we yearn to reach the end where we can return to normal, but normal in our future may be nothing more than a mirage.

The novel coronavirus did not exist in humans when I was growing up in rural West Virginia in the 1960s.  But lessons learned from that time long-ago serve me well today, as I live under a stay-at-home order, recognizing that I am in that higher risk population of individuals over the age of 60.

Back then, outside of the school term, my family and I—Mother, Daddy, and I—spent a lot of time socially distanced from others.  We lived well outside of a small town.  We had no neighbors nearby.  Not having an automobile, we went to town “for essential services,” as we now say.  Grocery shopping, say, once a month.  Much of our food came from the garden my folks grew every summer.

Of course, my childhood preceded the invention of the Internet, and most definitely before the invention of social media, and my family didn’t even have a telephone, that social media instrument of the time.  There was no cable television.  Instead, we watched the local news on the one national broadcast channel that we usually got.  We weren’t completely cut off from the world.  Dinner table conversation often revolved around current events.

I had no friends who lived nearby and, again, the lack of transportation kept us socially isolated.  During the months of summer vacation when I would literally never see friends from school, we would write letters that would be speedily delivered back and forth by the reliable Postal Service.  Stamps must have been cheap back then because even my family could afford them.  Of course, there was no email.

For entertainment, I had occasional visits to the local public library, which was never crowded.  That library served the one high school in the county but stayed open in the summer because it served the community too.  I spent my summers reading nearly everything in my small-town library’s collection about World War II and the Great Depression.

Those summers were 50+ years ago.  Yet, I still carry one vivid memory of history as told in Dwight D. Eisenhower’s brick of a memoir.  He began his personal story of WWII by listing the specific numbers of weapons, ships, airplanes, and other essential war materiale in existence for the U.S. armed forces before Pearl Harbor.  And then he told the story of how the production capacity of the United States of America ramped up from such meager beginnings into supplying history’s most fearsome and successful allied forces in order to defeat the original Axis of Evil—Japan, Italy, and Nazi Germany—in a mere 4 years.  The opposite of beating swords into plowshares, it required converting virtually all production of consumer goods—washing machines and automobiles and radios and refrigerators—into military production for the defense of the U.S. and the civilized world.

This memory returns to me today when our health care system is desperate for the most basic supplies to protect health care workers and care for COVID-19 patients.  It is one more reminder that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.  But I digress.

In our social isolation, my family also did family stuff.  When I didn't have my nose in a book (as my Mother would say), we played cards, dominoes (a great way to learn arithmetic), watched TV.

We lived beside a little river and Daddy loved to fish, so he and I would often go out in our old, semi-leaky john boat, he in one end and I in the other, at least six feet apart.  In the stern, I paddled the boat.  In the bow, Daddy cast and reeled in the colorful lures designed for bass and whatever other fish might be attracted by the plop-plops and pop-pops the lures made as they hit and traveled through the water.  Unlike Daddy, I found fishing kind of boring—it is impossible to read a book and paddle a boat at the same time—and unproductive.  Usually, there was a lot more fishing than catching going on.  I never fully understood Daddy’s pure contentment with fishing, a contentment that never seemed to vary whether we had fish for dinner or not.  In retrospect, I realize the best part of these fishing excursions for me was spending time with Daddy, who alternated between castigating me for paddling too fast past the good spots and praising me for my superior paddling ability.

Those were good times.  That was also my experience with social isolation in the age of rural poverty, circa 1960s.  Rather idyllic.  Except for the poverty part, of course.

It’s not like that anymore, in the age of coronavirus.

I am retired and I live alone with a little dog and two kitties.  I love living alone, but now I wonder more than usual about what would happen if I got sick.  Mitigating those fears is the fact that I now live in a town with a University medical school, a fine medical center, and extraordinary healthcare access compared with where I used to live.  I have established relationships with providers even though I have lived here less than two years.

All the libraries are closed, but I can download books for free in digital form.  I can’t imagine living without broadband, but I also recognize that many people in rural America still lack any Internet access.  I keep in touch with local friends and those clear across the continent by social media and various communication apps.  Long distance, which used to be a luxury paid for by the minute, is now gloriously free.  I am a voracious consumer of news, which the Internet and cable TV bring me in mind-blowing quantities 24/7.

I still carry Depression mentality behaviors.  My cupboard is stocked to the gills with non-perishables, but that is no change from the days before the stay-at-home order.  The fridge and freezer stock is renewed perhaps twice a month.  I have a car.  I do make an explicit risk-benefit calculation for myself before any trip for “essential services.”

I marvel at the impatience I observe from others about how long this stay-at-home order and social distancing thing might last.  By nature, I am an impatient person, but I am not particularly impatient about this.

Initially, I found myself becoming impatient with the impatience I was observing in others (mostly on social media).  “Why are they so impatient?” I wondered.  “Get over it!” I thought.  And then, I stepped back to reflect on what I could control and I asked myself, “Why am I not so impatient when others are?”

Upon reflection, I realize I have it better than many.  That is a privilege.  My dog and kitties supply cuddly companionship every single day and night.  For once, being retired and living on a fixed income is a positive.  I am not an essential worker who has to put my life on the line every day to work in a grocery store or provide health care services.  I am not a first responder or any type of essential worker.  I am not a displaced worker who has lost a job and income but still have to pay rent and feed a family.  I can stay at home and still cover my expenses and feed my family.  Let me emphasize, that is a privilege.

All that is so, but it still seemed to be an incomplete answer.  Then, in my solitude, the answer came.  In addition to the benefits I enjoy, I am simply well equipped to run this marathon.  This is not unfamiliar territory for me.  I trained for this.

Hotels, Food, and Cultural Stuff

It's been a long time since I've been to Europe and most of my experience has been with the UK.  Here are a few things that absolutely fascinated me about the Netherlands.

People

I've mentioned before how friendly the people in Meppel were, and how they tried to help in my ancestor search.  Another volunteer at Oud Meppel searched and searched ... and searched until she found a photograph of Lisa's relative's storefront in Meppel.  Eventually, they found the digital copy too.  A small army of volunteers is scanning all the archives so that they are available online.

Then, while standing outside Lisa's ancestors' church in Venlo awaiting its opening, we had another such encounter.  Two ladies came up to us and learned why we were there looking lost (probably).  One went away, but the other stuck to us like glue, trying to find someone at the church or the administrative offices next door to help Lisa in her discovering.  She was about our age and lived nearby.  She must have spent 1-2 hours with us.  A delightful Dutch lady, grown children + grandchildren, very good English.  We ended up giving her all our contact info and info about our ancestral searches.  Before we left, Hannie (short for Johanna) sent us an e-mail offering to look more.

In addition to her kindness to us, we learned about Hannie's mother's good experiences with the U.S. liberators in WW2.  Soon there will be few left who remember firsthand, but this lady's mother passed her good memories down to her daughter, and I'm sure Hannie has passed the same stories down to hers.  It is good to know that current U.S. behavior is not entirely erasing the good done by generations past.

Coincidentally, we had 9 WW2 veterans on our flight to Amsterdam.  There was a big fuss about them and their trip while we were waiting to board at Dulles.

Hotels

Our hotel, The Little Duke, in den Bosch was completely self-serve.  The hotel in Meppel was self check-in (one day before arrival they text and e-mail a time-sensitive entry code for the hotel and your room), but there is a human there to set out/maintain breakfast and provide check-out.

At the Duke, they e-mail the entry code to the hotel, and then the guest uses the computer in the entryway to check-in and create a keycard for the hotel and the room.  There is a telephone at the check-in/out desk, should the guest encounter an error.

I assume this is how they keep prices low, and we stayed in some comfortable hotels that were not particularly expensive.  Hotels in Haarlem and Venlo were fully staffed.  For Europe, these were generally 2-star establishments.  They would rival and exceed the value of most 3-star U.S. hotels.

Every hotel (except the Duke) provided breakfast along with our room.  (Yes, I know this is not unusual.)  But the food was inevitably good and selections broad.  Breakfast at the Duke was available literally next door, but at extra cost.  And, of course, breakfast-included meant all-you-can-eat and all-you-can-drink for coffee/espresso/capuccino/hot chocolate/etc. The auto-machines in Meppel and Venlo were amazing and turned out high quality brews in a flash.

Dutch Food

I did not expect the food in the Netherlands to be so so so GOOD.

Even lettuce had a taste unlike that in the U.S.  I attributed this all to FRESH, local, and probably fewer additives.

I believe someone told us that the Netherlands grows most of its own food.

We saw agriculture galore in the north and west.  Fields and fields and fields of corn, oodles and oodles of corn (for all those cows?).  Fields and fields of asparagus.  Fields of cabbages not yet harvested.  Greenhouses galore.  Flowers (a whole field of cannas blooming in September).  A plethora of agricultural products that we couldn't even identify from the car.

We didn't eat in particularly fancy places, but we had truly amazing food ...

• Roast chicken that tasted like ... chicken, totally succulent with not a dry or chewy bite anywhere.
• Tomatoes so sweet you had to wonder how they came to be.
• Carrots I could/would/did eat.  (Normally, I avoid raw carrots, which I perceive to be cardboard-y and metallic tasting.)
• A "simple" lunch of avocado toast -- brown bread base, avocado spread piled with matchsticks of roasted veggies, all sprinkled with lettuces, drizzled with mayo, and crowned with a perfectly cooked, perfectly cylindrical (how?) poached egg.
• The best club sandwich in the world (Meppel!).
• Completely un-fishy fish, smoked and fresh.
• Calvesliver baked with onions and bacon, a full half-inch thick slab, meltingly tender.  To die for!

I would go back just for the food.

We also had one dinner from the local supermarket in Meppel:  very high quality and shockingly inexpensive.  And spitting distance from our hotel.  Just start by imagining a full baguette, pre-sliced for a picnic, € 0.98.  Add a selection of cheeses, fruit, dessert, and drinks.  Grand total € 17 dinner for three people, with leftovers enough for my dinner the next night.  Oh, and that total included a knife.  We had to buy a knife to slice and spread the cheeses!

Dessert

The Dutch are known for their desserts.  I failed to satisfy my yen for a stroopwaffel.  (Another reason to return!)  I suspect that the pre-packaged ones served by United Airlines -- pretzels or stroopwaffel? has become United's refrain -- are subpar, albeit locally sourced.

I admit to trying the Bosch boll (a cultural icon of den Bosch, or so I'm told).  The first came from the bakery near Lisa's cathedral, the only bakery that didn't have a queue, which was my requirement.  Because there was no line, my Bosch boll also came with instructions:  eat from the bottom or it makes a horrible mess.

So, what is it?  A cream-filled, chocolate-covered pastry concoction, flaky at its absolute best.  Size a tad larger than a baseball.  Oh, my.  How I wish I knew the name of the bakery!

Bosch Boll Extraordinaire

My first experience was so good, I decided to try another on our last night in den Bosch.  After all, the Jan de Groot bakery, known for its Bosch bollen, called to me -- it was directly across the street from our hotel.  Well, if the first was a 10, JdG was no more than a 7.  Different cream, different chocolate, pastry much less flaky.  Sigh.  I'll always remember my first time.

Then there was the pie/tart/whatever from the supermarket.  None of us was completely sure what it was, 4 little pastries in pie shells to the package.  Well, it turned out to be the Dutch version of a butter tart (a Canadian thing) with a nutty paste-like filling.  Great way to end a picnic, and very neat to eat without a napkin in sight.

The only other dessert I had was, of all things, a waffle (waffel).  A dessert waffle.  It looked kind of odd, almost burnt, with a goodly dusting of confectioners sugar, dollop of whipped cream, and warm cherry compote pouring over one side.  "Burnt" turned out to be caramelized; the cherries, which are often too tart for me, were sweet and wonderful.  In all, a tremendous success, not too sweet, not too much, but a luxurious dessert.

Infrastructure

I've mentioned the glories of Dutch public transit.  Dependable, quiet, efficient.  More on that later.

Roads were smooth and we didn't run into road construction that I can recall.  (Oh, yeah, the little bit of construction in Meppel demanded a round about entry to our hotel, but that hardly counts.)  I don't know when they fix the roads but, in fact, we didn't see roads that needed fixing.

I wonder if there is a Dutch word for pothole?  Perhaps they don't need it.

EU

Driving from the Netherlands into Germany is as simple as driving from West Virginia into Pennsylvania.  No border.  Only a modest sign (circular, blue with a border of stars -- the symbol of the EU, and the country name in the center).  Easy peasy.

Our time in the Netherlands also gave me some insight -- my own personal theory -- on Brexit.  I believe Brexit is happening because the UK never really bought into the EU.  Oh, sure, they thought the "common market" was fine.  But they chafed against the EU government and the "leave" faction failed to recognize (or ignored) the benefits of EU membership.  They never adopted the common currency, the Euro.  Preserving the pound is probably the greatest evidence of kinda in, not so much.  And because the Channel separates the UK from the continent, the freedom of movement that exists on the continent is different for the UK.  Bottom line:  they never fully bought in!  So, now they want to leave.

I believe they will be sorry.  The divorce, once done, will be a disaster for the UK, and the UK itself is apt to fragment -- re-establishing the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland could well be a disaster, Scotland will break away, Wales may also.  Sad.

Climate

The agricultural areas sported many massive barns with roofs covered with solar panels.

And that brings me to the completely different attitude toward climate change that I observed.

Virtually everywhere I saw warnings about the need to conserve paper, as in paper towels, etc., because paper kills trees.  Many places did not provide paper napkins for snacks/coffee.  They were available, but only if requested.  Some drinks came with straws, most did not.  When I ordered sparkling water in restaurants, it came with a glass (usually no ice) and in a glass bottle.

Hotel staff were more responsible (than I have experienced in the U.S.) about leaving towels that had been used and hung up for another use.  Beds were made but not changed every day.  Two of our three hotels had refillable bath gel and shampoo products.  The hotel rooms weren't littered with little printed notes about what to do/not do.  I don't think any of the hotels were air conditioned, but all had windows that opened.

I have already commented on the adorable little cars.  But bicycles and motor scooters are ubiquitous.  Most of the town centers we saw were walking/biking ways, no car traffic allowed.  As a result, traffic was less a problem than I would have expected.  There was a well-used plug-in for electric cars (5-hour limit) at the curb in front of our Venlo hotel.

Bike lanes sometimes were separated from the roadway completely.  Where I could observe them, bike lanes were consistently paved in red.  Only rarely did I see bicycles having to share the road with cars.

Traffic is calmed with narrow streets in towns and with innumerable roundabouts everywhere.  I learned that I do not understand European traffic sign symbols.  Fortunately, I was not driving anywhere.

Wind turbines dot the landscape EVERYWHERE.  I adore windmills and never tired of watching them.  I saw few, if any, houses with solar panels.  I concluded the windmills do the job that we are trying to do one house at a time.  Alternatively, the Dutch have realized that transportation is the disproportionate energy consumer and have concentrated their efforts there.

City buses are 100% electric, with concomitant noise and pollutant reductions.  Intercity trains are zero emission, powered by wind-generated electricity.  And, yes, the trains go when the wind doesn't blow.  The trains are also shockingly quiet, compared with what we call trains.

In fact, public transit is a marvel to American eyes.  We missed our train in Amsterdam going to Zwolle, so we had to wait, oh, 15-20 minutes for the next one.  The only reason we "needed" a car was to go off the beaten path.  Lisa wanted to go visit her ancestral spots in nearby Germany, and we visited the Hunebedden and a national park.  Our city pairs were all connected by train, and the trains all ran frequently.  The direct train from den Bosch to the Amsterdam airport took one hour and dropped us off under the airport (literally).

I believe the lesson is:  people will use public transit if it is available and convenient.  Make it unavailable or inconvenient and ... not so much.  Listen up, America.

Venlo and den Bosch, Lisa's Ancestral Lands

Lisa's ancestors came to America a bit later than mine, and she has much more solid information about their origins.  This led us to western, western Germany and then Venlo and den Bosch in the Netherlands.

A comment on Germany.  I love German food, but the worst German food I have ever had I had in Germany.  Enough said about that.

Venlo was a shock coming after Meppel.  It is much larger, and it is a greater mixture of old and new.  Even the old town is less quaint than Meppel.  That's not a complaint, but it is a fact.

Our hotel was directly across the street from the railway station.  Oh, the glories of public transport in this country!  If only ... Well, you know.  If only.

If I leaned past the "Danger!" sign on my window, I could see the lovely fountain at the crest of the roundabout.  At sunset, it could be spectacular.



I soon learned that many/most of the roundabouts -- and the roadways were dotted with roundabouts -- sported art at their mounded cores.  I theorized that the art is to warn drivers that the roundabout is coming, plus it is just ART for art's sake.  I even saw one where the art turned out to be alive:  On one side numerous vertical "structures" appeared flat and whitewashed, but on the reverse side you could see that they were actually living trees split in half vertically with fine limbs sprouting out the tops on the still-rounded sides.  These split trees were growing and they were art.

Walking from the hotel into the old town, we saw this adorable fountain -- a series of water spouts, each going about 12-15 inches high -- in the middle of the street.  In most towns this might be a kiddie fountain.  But in Venlo, we observed a person taking his dog to play in it.  The dog was clearly having a blast, as the water spouts shot up into his belly and mouth.

Doggie play fountain

Netherlanders seem to love their dogs, all kinds of dogs.  I met a friendly (and beautiful) Italian Hunting Hound, and I saw dachshunds of every size, color, and hair length, among others. In fact, Dutch doggies were too numerous to count.   Despite this, the absence of green areas for the dogs to go plus the absence of dog poop in non-green people areas, was flat-out remarkable.  The other thing of note is that I don't believe I ever heard a dog barking anywhere.  In short, Dutch doggies are well behaved.  I am sure my constant commenting on the dogs was an annoyance to Lisa and Robert.  But I missed Berkeley, and I was surrounded by dogs to enjoy vicariously!  Some restaurants permitted dogs (at least in their outdoor seating areas).  Churches were less dog friendly.

's-Hertogenbosch or den Bosch, another of Lisa's family's origins, was even larger than Venlo.  While Lisa went off to find her roots, I spent some time alone there getting lost and found again.  It was delightful; my favorite kind of traveling.

Among the many things I found was a massive "Wednesday market," in the square in front of the Stadhuis (city hall).  Stalls and stalls of foods (cooked for take-away and a staggering array of fruits/vegetables), flowers and plants (many still blooming in September), leathergoods, buttons/zippers and a zillion other sewing notions, TWO (or was it three?) stalls selling fabric by the meter, another staff selling undergarments, and on and on.  I didn't know that the market was just for that day, so I missed my opportunity to get a real, honest-to-Dutch stroopwaffel.  At that point, my only cash was a €50 note that I didn't figure any vendor was going to want to break.  My reluctance was just as well:  I could have spent a lot of Euros at that market.