Welcome to my Blog!
I hope to share here my irrepressible thoughts on news, music, books, arts and such like. In general these will be items, events and issues which I feel have no place on my website (which focusses on aviation history and my travel photography).

The item immediately below this would be the latest posting.

Anybody, providing he knows how to be amusing, has the right to talk about himself. - Charles Baudelaire
Esse est percipi (To be is to be perceived) ¬Bishop George Berkeley

Not even I understand everything I am ¬Aurelius Augustinus of Hippo

In 2013 I started a series of photo albums on Blurb.com, named '36Exp' (a subject adressed in 36 exposures, a reference to the exposures on most common rolls of 35 mm film: 12, 24 & 36.) back in the day.
The books can be ordered directly from the Blurb.com or Amazon.
www.blurb.com/user/ruudleeuw

CURRENT BLOG

Jacob Olie (b.1834 – d.1905) was a Dutch photographer from Amsterdam.
He was known for his scenes of everyday life there.

Olie was born in Amsterdam and was trained as a carpenter and draughtsman. He became a teacher at the local school for craftsmen known as the 'Ambachtsschool', converting it to be the first ever vocational school of the Netherlands for boys.
He took up photography as a hobby.
Today he is known for his unusually sharp depictions of various parts of Amsterdam that no longer exist. His son, by the same name, also became a photographer.

The windcornmill 'De Hoop' in Giesbeek (Glederland) is a round stone scaffolding mill.
The mill was built in 1888 as a belt mill. A belt mill, or mountain (hill) mill, is a windmill that stands on a natural or artificially raised hill, the mill belt, which takes over the function of the scaffolding at a scaffolding mill.
In 1927, the roof and the blade cross of the mill were removed and a major restoration was necessary. During WW2, 'De Hoop' was severely damaged.
It was not until 1956 that the mill was restored, using parts from the Mill 'De Dankbaarheid' in Kreijel.

In 1964, the entire interior was broken out and the belt was excavated. In 1979, the municipality of Angerlo bought the mill to restore it in 1981.
The former belt mill definitively became a scaffolding mill. Part of the scaffolding is formed by the roof
of the supermarket built next to the mill.
It's open for visit on saturdays 9:00 - 13:00.

Historic windmilld Flickr.com
NL.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Hoop_(Giesbeek) (NL)

Ten photographers from the 'Deventer Fotokring' documented the river De IJssel, each in their own way.
The exhibition I visited was not in Deventer, but in Apeldoorn, the CODA Dok Zuid to be exact.
In various ways the landscape was photographed, some stayed stationary and on various time & date
shot at different angles, there was an interesting theme translated in close ups, I also very much liked the graffiti and the time exposures turning the river and sky in a blur.
It was very inspiring to see so many different views displayed, all taken along the river IJssel.

www.deventerfotokring.nl

CODA Dok Zuid also has a library.

Val McDermid’s take on the year 1979 begins with the birth of a baby on a snowbound train between Edinburgh and Glasgow. It’s an exclusive for young reporter Allie Burns, who happens to be on board. She is the protagonist of '1979'.

Burns is determined to make a serious journo career and to be taken seriously at 'the Clarion'. She's clever and with plenty of moxy, she has read Tom Wolfe and Joan Didion, and she soon finds herself working with fellow reporter Danny Sullivan on a tax fraud scandal involving some of Scotland’s seediest businessmen.
Danny s an investigative reporter but needs Allie's writing skills to shape the story.
Her next big scoop takes her to the SNP, portrayed as an earnest fringe pressure group arguing about what it really wants in the approach to the 1979 referendum. Burns, however, unearths a trio of hotheads who have ambitions to spice up the independence debate with a spot of violence.
Danny infiltrates the group by offering sponsorship for guns and semtex.

McDermid’s 35th book is the first in a series of 5 tracking Burns through 5 decades of journalism.
In the first instalment, she draws on her own experience as a young reporter in Glasgow in the late 1970s, a world of of clattering typewriters and cigarette smoke, not to mention rampant sexism, racism and homophobia.

Not a bad book as crime writing goes, the 2nd crime fiction I've read by Val McDermid, but she is very descriptive of scenes, moods, thoughts, locations and relations. There is not much edginess in the narrative (though it has good plots and turns), which I so much like in Ian Rankin's books and authors from Iceland and Scandinavia.

McDermid comes from a working-class family in Fife. She studied English at St Hilda's College, Oxford,where she was the first student to be admitted from a Scottish state school.
After graduation she became a journalist and began her literary career as a dramatist.
Her first success as a novelist, Report for Murder: The First Lindsay Gordon Mystery occurred in 1987. McDermid was inducted into the prestigious Detection Club in 2000, and won the CWA Diamond Dagger for her lifetime contribution to crime writing in the English language in 2010.
She is co-founder of the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival and the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, part of the Harrogate International Festivals.
In 2017, McDermid was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh,as well as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

www.scotsman.com/ - 1979_by_ValMcDermid
en.wikipedia.org:_Val_McDermid

Celebrating Magnum's photographic excellence in this captivating tome of a book, readers will travel around the globe with the world's finest photographers through 365 images.
Featuring new and iconic images, this follow-up to Prestel's highly successful A Year in Photography: Magnum Archive includes some of the most striking photography ever collected in one volume.

As readers flip the pages they will find themselves traveling from west to east across the globe. Each country is represented in 3 or 4 images captured by a single photographer. While renowned figures such as Robert Capa, Bruce Davidson, and Martin Parr are included, readers will also find younger photographers such as Olivia Arthur, Alessandra Sanguinetti, and Mikhael Subotzky, all of whom present dazzling new views of our changing world.
It was nice to see work by Ara Güler included here!

Shining a light on the human condition in every corner of the globe, this compilation exemplifies Magnum founder Henry Cartier-Bresson's vision of -a community of thought, a shared human quality, a curiosity about what is going on in the world, a respect for what is going on and a desire to transcribe it visually.
It was hard, impossible in fact, to make a selection and I wanted to depict images from most continents.

Absolutely recommended to acquire this fine photobook for your collection or to become inspired!

www.goodreads.com/book/ - / -Magnum_Atlas
en.artbooksonline.eu

The title of Dorrestijn's new book already reveals that the author is omnipresent in this new work. But he also speaks on behalf of all those contemporaries who do not feel at home in this century, who cannot and do not want to keep up with developments..
Those who no longer receive a letter but e-mails. Not getting the doctor on the line but a voiced menu with options. Those who see no salvation in artificial grass, although they love poems and paintings.

Those who have nothing to do with toxic dangers on land and in the sea, referring to 'windmills'. In the past, a windmill was a beautiful and purely natural thing..
In this book Dorrestijn also does not avoid the real Big Modern problems. For example, those semi and certified meteorologists who call themselves weathermen or women still announce beautiful weather
(35 ° Celsius) adding "wonderful terrace weather".

'Nobody holds his heart as much as I do' (a Dutch expression, to be in fear) is full of brand new stories, poems, thoughts and songs, such as 'The Language of Annoyance', 'Babysitting with optimism', 'Animal Humor-Silence Bomb', various Cat Bubbles, , Vicious Circles and Cheerful Roundels.

Hans Dorrestijn (b. 16Jun1940- ) is a Dutch comedian and writer. His look on life, objects, customs, traditions, nature, environment, people young & old, et cetera is often wry bordering to 'noir' plus his verses styled not the way one may be used to.

en.wikipedia.org:_Hans_Dorrestijn

During this Dutch Ice Sculpture Festival one makes a magical journey along dozens of life-size snow and ice sculptures.
The theme this year (W2022/2023): "WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD".
A joyful event very welcome in this day and age.

Be amazed by the beautiful things in life; LOVE, ART, ARCHITECTURE, FLORA & FAUNA and BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE.
Fantastic!

Much more on www.flickr.com/photos

From Aleppo to Turin
(Prometheus, 2023)

In "Dreamland Italy"( subtitled 'From Aleppo to Turin') Dutch author and Rome resident, travels through Italy and sees how the situation of immigrants is hardening, but also how resistance is rising from the churches, among others.
Steenbeek returns to Lampedusa, where she stayed in 2016 and 2017, aiding the migrants. Lampedusa had changed since her earlier visits, onlookers are no longer welcome and arrivals of migrants are screened from the public. She visits a.o. Bolzano and Triëst.
She stays in the heart of Venice in a B&B of the Waldensians, the once heavily persecuted Protestant minority, who donate their proceeds entirely to the refugees.
She (re)visits people who came to Italy through a humanitarian corridor, such as the women from Aleppo with whom she spent the night in a Lebanese refugee camp, and who are now building a life in Turin.
In the deep south of Calabria, she sees how migrants are exploited as slaves and are targets of aggression. But also how people are committed to changing these abuses.

Increasingly, it seems, criminal actions against refugees are becoming legal and acts of solidarity criminal. Has Europe sold its soul to the devil?
Rosita Steenbeek documents her meetings with empathy but what she paints is a bleak picture, with little improvement on the horizon.

Rosita Steenbeek (b.25May1957- ) is a Dutch writer and occasional actress. After spending her childhood in Amersfoort, she now lives in the Italian capital Rome.

www.rositasteenbeek.com
www.hebban.nl/ - /droomland-italie_rosita-steenbeek