Some prose and Skywatch Friday

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It's been a while (nine years?) and I miss the Skywatch community. In the meantime I started weekly posting a short story or a poem. "So why not do both?" I asked myself. And here I am.

How 're all you lovelies doing in your parts of the world?

Today I'm taking you on a tour of Amsterdam/ Not extremely hard to do since it's where I live. Compared to other capitals Amsterdam is relatively small with less than a million inhabitants and you can walk from one end to the other in under three hours. Good luck doing that with Mexico City, Chicago or Guangzhou!

You're in luck because this morning I had an appointment in a part of the city where I don't often come. Around Weesperzijde.

All around Amsterdam you can spot ornaments on bridges.

Now an eventlocation, this once was the building for all things diamond trade in Amsterdam. Not needed after most diamond traders had left. And not out of free will. More on that later in this tour:

On the Amsterdam streets you can also find quite a lot of modern art. No, not the grey thing in the foreground; that's the top of a larger underground waste container than can hold dozens of full standard garbage bags

The Jewist Name Monument. Always impressive to realize murdered people are individuals, not unlike you and I.

Amsterdam once housed a thriving Jewish community. First came the Sefardic Jews (from an ancienct word meaning something like 'From Spanish origin'. The word 'Sefardic', not 'Jews'). Who were not welcome the first few generations. 

And later proved that's a natural response to strangers coming to 'your' town when the Ashkenazi Jews came, descendants of people from south-Russia/Turkey that had converted to Judaism somewhere around 840 and were prosecuted all over Europe. Where they were welcomed 'as long as you bring money to the table, everyone is welcome in Amsterdam!', as the first tourist wrote in his journal in 17 something. If you happen to know the name of this Italian merchant and/or under what title his journal was published? Please!

Most of my readers will know why we don't see that many Jews (Sefardic nor Ashkenazi) anymore. Unfortunately the Jews who survived the Holocaust were not welcome back anywhere in Europe and thus deported to the Middle East. With well documented results, not taught by and to every group.

A church in or near what an occupying group called 'Judenviertel' is the Mozes and Aaronchurch, only since fairly recently a Roman Catholic church again.:

The next three pictures are taken off or from a bridge called Blauwbrug (Blue Bridge. Taken from the colour it once had?) over the Amstel River

Home again I enjoyed some down time at the waterfront on this lovely spring day:

You know, watching the boats go by and listening to the sounds of the bir...waitasec! That's not the sound of birds but...a neighbour vaccuuming his or her lawn? 

Nah. Probably just a subcontracter who's making adjustments to a home after the tennents moved out, so the housing company sold it for a quick buck to a foreign investment company, that's putting in a new kitchen, will wait for six months and sell the place with some €100,000 net profit to yet another investment company and currently over 10,000 Amsterdam appartments are standing empty because no normal person can afford them, investments companies can't find other investment companies to invest in the pyramid scheme that's called 'housing market' and one day we will all be homeless and a handful of multibillionaires are the proud owners of millions of empty appartment buildings. Yeah!

Enough sillyness, time to get serious:

In high school I wrote this circle poem (circle? Yes: the first and last line are identical. Is there an oficial word for that form of poetry? Let me know!) to help people remember under no circumstance a people should be displaced, oppressed and even killed, just because of who they (supposedly even) are:

How soon do we forget

How soon do we forget

our dreams, our hopes, our passions.

When we were young, we had them all

our dreams, our hopes, our passions.

How soon do we forget

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Want to read (more of) my short stories? My author page: Terrence Weijnschenk at Amazon

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