Lets get Small

"I'm on drugs. I'm, uh, I mean, you know what it is. What's the deal, man? I like to get small. It's a wild, wild drug. Very dangerous for kids though, because they get really small. I know I shouldn't get small when I'm drivin', but, uh, I was drivin' around the other day, you know and a cop pulls me over. And he goes, 'Hey, are you small?' I said, 'No, I'm tall, I'm tall.' He said, 'Well, I'm gonna have to measure you.' They've got a little test they give you; it's a balloon, and if you can get inside of it, they know... you're small. And they can't put you in a regular cell either, because you walk right out."

   --Steve Martin 

HA HA, its really just a very large planter in front of the Jopen brewery (a former church, makes for a religious experience). Leslie and I went in for lunch and drinks, and I really did start to get small.

Amsterdam Pocket Atlas

More than you need to know about Amsterdam, but- ooooooohhhh- just look at the maps and pretty colors!  thanks to L. Moma for the link

poppin' out- trees and maps

So I was wondering what the tree on the canal was outside our apartment, the one that has green stuff poppin' out all over. There's an app for that! More specifically, a City of Amsterdam Elm map. Lo and behold, our tree is an elm, ulmus minor. 

elms-amsterdam
amsterdam maps

Windmills

Holland means windmills; also those weird wooden shoes, of which I have seen exactly zero. But we have seen windmills and toured one recently in Haarlem.

In the Netherlands, and many other countries around the world, wind power was the major 'industrial' technology, equivalent to steam power which arose in the 19th century and brought on the demise of the windmill. To give you a sense of the importance and scale of this technology, at their peak in the 19th century, there were an estimated 9000 working windmills in the Netherlands (wind-powered mills in Europe is estimated to have been around 200,000) performing many industrial functions; pumping water, hulling barley and rice, grinding grains, pressing olives to olive oil, pressing linseed, rapeseed and hempseed for cooking and lighting. There were also cocoa mills, mustard mills, pepper mills, spice mills, tobacco mills, snuff mills, paper mills, paint pigment mills, and sawmills. 
history-of-industrial-windmills

The functioning windmill (and museum) in Haarlem dates to 1779. In 1932 it burned but was meticulously rebuilt in 2002. By meticulous I mean the wooden structure, gears, wheels, etc. were custom manufactured similar to the original. The structural components don't have any nails or screws, and few steel connectors. There are also these amazing scale wooden models of windmills on display. The tour guide was from England but has lived in the Netherlands for the past 30 years. He was totally into windmills.

e energy generated by wind and watermills was used to turn any raw material that needed pounding, mauling, shredding, hacking or mixing into a tradeable product. The Zaanstreek paper mills, for instance, were renowned throughout the world for their good quality paper. In fact, the American Declaration of Independence was printed on sheets produced there. There were mustard mills, hemp mills, grain mills, snuff mills, cocoa mills, oil mills, chalk mills, paint mills and saw mills.

Read more at DutchNews.nl: 10 things you should know about Dutch windmills http://www.dutchnews.nl/features/2015/05/10-things-you-should-know-about-dutch-windmills/

e energy generated by wind and watermills was used to turn any raw material that needed pounding, mauling, shredding, hacking or mixing into a tradeable product. The Zaanstreek paper mills, for instance, were renowned throughout the world for their good quality paper. In fact, the American Declaration of Independence was printed on sheets produced there. There were mustard mills, hemp mills, grain mills, snuff mills, cocoa mills, oil mills, chalk mills, paint mills and saw mills.

Read more at DutchNews.nl: 10 things you should know about Dutch windmills http://www.dutchnews.nl/features/2015/05/10-things-you-should-know-about-dutch-windmills/

e energy generated by wind and watermills was used to turn any raw material that needed pounding, mauling, shredding, hacking or mixing into a tradeable product. The Zaanstreek paper mills, for instance, were renowned throughout the world for their good quality paper. In fact, the American Declaration of Independence was printed on sheets produced there. There were mustard mills, hemp mills, grain mills, snuff mills, cocoa mills, oil mills, chalk mills, paint mills and saw mills.

Read more at DutchNews.nl: 10 things you should know about Dutch windmills http://www.dutchnews.nl/features/2015/05/10-things-you-should-know-about-dutch-windmills/

The energy generated by wind and watermills was used to turn any raw material that needed pounding, mauling, shredding, hacking or mixing into a tradeable product. The Zaanstreek paper mills, for instance, were renowned throughout the world for their good quality paper. In fact, the American Declaration of Independence was printed on sheets produced there. There were mustard mills, hemp mills, grain mills, snuff mills, cocoa mills, oil mills, chalk mills, paint mills and saw mills.

Read more at DutchNews.nl: 10 things you should know about Dutch windmills http://www.dutchnews.nl/features/2015/05/10-things-you-should-know-about-dutch-windmills/

The energy generated by wind and watermills was used to turn any raw material that needed pounding, mauling, shredding, hacking or mixing into a tradeable product. The Zaanstreek paper mills, for instance, were renowned throughout the world for their good quality paper. In fact, the American Declaration of Independence was printed on sheets produced there. There were mustard mills, hemp mills, grain mills, snuff mills, cocoa mills, oil mills, chalk mills, paint mills and saw mills.

Read more at DutchNews.nl: 10 things you should know about Dutch windmills http://www.dutchnews.nl/features/2015/05/10-things-you-should-know-about-dutch-windmills/

The energy generated by wind and watermills was used to turn any raw material that needed pounding, mauling, shredding, hacking or mixing into a tradeable product. The Zaanstreek paper mills, for instance, were renowned throughout the world for their good quality paper. In fact, the American Declaration of Independence was printed on sheets produced there. There were mustard mills, hemp mills, grain mills, snuff mills, cocoa mills, oil mills, chalk mills, paint mills and saw mills.

Read more at DutchNews.nl: 10 things you should know about Dutch windmills http://www.dutchnews.nl/features/2015/05/10-things-you-should-know-about-dutch-windmills/

the Panopticon

We went to Haarlem on Friday, which is a more like a large town than a city. You get there quickly by train. It is only about 10 miles west of Amsterdam and is totally different; wider streets, more cars, fewer bicycles. We visited a site that is an element in one of Leslie's school projects, had lunch at the Jopen brewery (future post), and went to one of the few remaining and functioning windmills in Holland (yet another post). While up in the windmill on a tour, we noticed a large domed building in the distance. Th tour guide said it was the former jail and was now being used to temporarily house Syrian refugees. Dredging up some memory of architectural history, I realized it was a panopticon, a relic of 18th and 19th century ideas about prisons and social control. Right there in Haarlem!

The Panopticon was a type of institutional building designed by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century. The concept of the [circular] design is to allow all inmates of an institution to be observed by a single watchman without the inmates being able to tell whether or not they are being watched. The inmates cannot know when they are being watched means that all inmates must act as though they are watched at all times, effectively controlling their own behavior constantly.

The term has become something of a metaphor for the modern surveillance state although whereas prisoners in the panopticon knew they were being watched, we can only assume that maybe we are being watched.

There are only a handful of panopticon prisons in the world and 3 of them were built in the Netherlands. The Haarlem prison was built in 1910, but no longer functions as a prison. There is some irony that the aforementioned Syrian refugees are currently housed here.