Virgil

Jon Water Melon Camp

If you have room in your brain for only one iconic, epitomizing fact about Amsterdam; one simple, true specific that coaxes its municipal soul out of its municipal mouth and onto the municipal dinner plate that lies before it, where you and Amsterdam can sit together and contemplate this perfect regurgitated symbol in a silent mixture of reverence and nausea, my nomination for that symbol would have to be a large, beautiful, ripe summer watermelon, sliced lengthwise and left by the side of a canal for the ducks. Click the photo to see just how purty it is.

Pass The Dutchie

It's summertime, which for most Americans means sitting in air conditioned rooms, shopping in air conditioned malls, and driving in air conditioned cars to air conditioned airports to fly in air conditioned planes to air conditioned hotels in other countries, some of which, outside the hotels, actually have surprisingly few air conditioners.

I look forward to the summer as a time to start getting ready for my annual trip to Amsterdam, where my sister lives with her baby-daddy and her child-daughter. I always like going there, for the biking, the delicious beer and bitterbollen, the slightly different vice laws, and the peace and quiet of not speaking the language. I should say peace, not quiet, because the Dutch language as background noise sounds like drinking songs at a phlegm convention.

Nonetheless, the Dutch themselves are lovely people once you get to know them, or so they keep telling me as they hurry past my outstretched hand of friendship, into their cozy(or "'t zellig") homes, where they sit, happy and peaceful, framed within their massive picture windows for all to see.

I fly out tomorrow night, so stay tuned, and I'll tell you all about it, at least as much as I can retain in my short term memory, which always seems to get a little fuzzy around this time of year.