Things making us happy in Leiden

1. We now own rain gear.

It rains a lot in Leiden, and biking is our means of transportation. Owen is a strong enough biker to hold an umbrella while he bikes, but I'm still getting to that point. And although I have a couple of jacket-like articles of clothing I didn't have anything resembling real rain gear til this week. After last Sunday's trip to church and getting soaked to the skin both ways, I went and bought us both some cheap raingear. 

grocery bags don't really cut it.

rain gear is much better!

2. Visitor!

Mark, one of Owen's closest friends, and a friend of mine since Deerwander days came to visit us here in the Netherlands. It has been a blast having him around during the days, going to museums with him and having him in and out over the last nearly two weeks. He's come and gone a bit, going on adventures to Scotland and Ireland, making the most of this visit to Europe. It's been great. 

3. Museums.

I mentioned that I've been heading to museums with Mark during the weekdays, but Owen and I have also been going. He's writing up a blogpost about the Naturalis Museum now. I should say that for a city this size, Leiden has a ton of excellent museums, all with a very Dutch flair. They are usually bilingual throughout the museum (which is so nice for us) but the museums are always eager to point out local achievements. These artifacts were brought by the first Dutch archeologist working in Egypt, these tools belonged to an innovative Dutch surgeon, these tile pattern was originally based off of Chinese influences but became emblematic of Dutch domestic culture and export. I think in the US, we are much happier to dip our fingers into other people's achievements, or to not care as much how the things we use came to us. I like this Dutch national pride. And it makes sense. They have a lot to be proud of. 

4. Baked goods.

It's been chilly in our house, and although we now have learned how to turn on the heat, a cold house has made me very eager to bake. I will post another post very soon with the recipe I use for Roman Apple cake adapted for the gluten intolerant, but for now, here's the original recipe I found online. 

5. Dutch class.

Owen and I are taking a Dutch class at his department. It's an immersion class so you really have to do the work or you'll look like an idiot, but I already feel like a bit of one given the other students. We have a lot of students from Italy in the class, and many of the students know four or five languages. This past week we all went around the room saying where we come from and which languages we speak. The first student said, "Ik kom uit Italië, ik spreek Italiaans, Engles, Frans, Spaans, en een beetie Nederlands." There were almost as many distinct languages as students, with languages as diverse as Latin, Romanian, Mandarin, Hindi, Japanese, Russian, Serbian, and it made my shaky accomplishments in highschool French look poor indeed. Everyone in the class is fluent in English as well as their native tongue, (Owen and I are the only native English speakers) and most students knew at least three if not more. It's so easy to think of my language as the only one worth knowing, (particularly with all the time and effort I've put into studying it) but how simple to not realize other people think the same. 

6. Knitting. 

Another way we've been keeping warm is knitting. I am very nearly finished with my first ever sweatervest, and I'm thinking fondly of my mother-in-law and new family and our happy trip to Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool festival a year ago this weekend. Here's what I wrote about it last year.

7. The Prague fiasco

Here is some of the furniture at our gate. 

Now this story may not sound like a happy story at first but stick with me. Mark, Owen and I had planned to be in Prague this weekend. We thought it was high time to explore a little more of Europe, and Mark was eager to see Prague, so what better occasion? After much careful planning (it can be tough to travel with significant allergies in yet another unknown language) we got up very early yesterday morning to head to the Rotterdam Airport, a place full of cushy couches, delightful little coffee-drinking nooks, security with our shoes on, and decor with a whimsical flair putting us in mind of the Oegestgeest Bank office. Our flight was cancelled, and then merely delayed, then cancelled for real, no reasonable flights to take us there a little later, so our plan was a wash. Mark was still eager to go and see another country, so he caught a train to Belgium, and we planned on heading back home, figuring out how to cancel the rest of our flights, and get our money back and our new plan was to meet him in Brussels today. But here's what happened. We got home and my stomach with which I had been on nebulous terms all day, decided to outright revolt, and I found myself sicker than I've been in about seven years, probably longer. Which brings me to the happy parts of the story. I am so thankful that I was sick at home with a immeasurably sweet husband taking care of me. Not in a youth hostel. Not at some great historic landmark. Not on a train. Not in a plane. Not anywhere but home. New weekend plan? Sleep. Stay in bed. Watch old Disney movies. Eat applesauce and bananas, maybe rice. Work on finishing the sweatervest--or possibly just watch Owen finish it. Maybe go to church and a baby welcoming party if I'm feeling stronger tomorrow. Mostly? I'm planning on loving and being loved. 

The Naturalis Biodiversity Center

Hello again, friends!  Here's another post by me, Owen.

We've posted before on going to the Van Gogh Museum, but Leiden itself has a lot of museums we can visit for free with our Museumkaarten.  Last weekend, Clara and I went to the Naturalis Biodiversity Center, whose exhibits on the variety of life are astonishing.

More pictures below!

Why is Clara learning Math?

One of our readers asked about a note in the corner of our whiteboard in the kitchen. It has my to do list for every day, three things: learn math, learn dutch, finger puppets. The reader understood the bit about Dutch, and who knows about the finger puppets, but what is this about learning math? Owen already knows math, but why is Clara spending her time every day learning math? Here are some reasons. 

Which makes the implication false?

Because I am married to a mathematician. 

As the wife of a mathematician it is totally socially acceptable for me to say, "oh I don't know anything about math" or "I don't understand any of it!" It's totally acceptable for wives of mathematicians, biologists, computer scientists, etc. to not know or care about their husbands' work. This not a thing I like. In a letter to Owen I remember saying that when I'm dealing with math I feel like trying to scuba dive with only snorkeling equipment. I know there's incredible stuff to see down there, but I don't have the resources (be it time, education, or perhaps determination) to dive down and actually see it. Owen compared our individual fields to countries. Theater-land is very tourist friendly. It's made for visitors. But Mathland? "It's a nice place to live, but I wouldn't want to visit." This is probably part of why it is so standard for the friends and families of mathematicians to be okay with not knowing about math. But I don't want to be acceptably ignorant.

Because I spent three years with the PEGs.

Perhaps one of the reasons I don't want to be "acceptably ignorant" is because of three years living and working in the Program for the Exceptionally Gifted, with girls (affectionately known as PEGs) as young as twelve going to college early. There was no such thing as "acceptably ignorant" in that dorm. I was surrounded by young women who wanted to create whole worlds, who would sell geeky Math Club valentines in February, who worked with animation. PEGs who did cognitive and behavioral research with shrews, slicing the brains of their experimented-on shrews to understand more about how our own brains function under certain stimulus. PEGs who loved math classes best of all, perhaps because no one was telling them it was a thing for boys. 

Because I want to become the role model I would want my kids (or nieces, or nephews) to have.

Amelia Earhart? Not a mathematician, but her quote holds

I love a lot of things associated with traditional femininity and domesticity. I like to cook, and I'm glad that I can have built up kitchen skills for adapting recipes, substituting ingredients with confidence and ease. I play the violin. I like costume dramas, and have read all of Jane Austen's novels. I have two masters degrees in Shakespeare. I love fairytales. I have a lot of poetry memorized. I knit. I crochet. I sew. I even embroider. I do a lot of papercrafting, and although I'm not sure I would qualify the work of my hands as art, I certainly fall into the highly skilled side of the crafting frontier. I love children's books, and have been told dozens of times, "You will be such a great mom!" With all these (often) gendered skills and activities, it would be easy for me to just stay in the "right brain" side of the world. There's enough in art and music, in fairytales and all these interests to last me a lifetime. It would be easy to stick to the creative and artsy humanities side of things. Let other people (guys?) do the math and science "left brain" stuff. But I don't want to be that example for the world's next generation. I don't want to encourage girls to go into math and science because I approve of that idea, or because it frustrates me that our world still thinks of math and science as things that women aren't good at. I want to be a woman who is competent and capable with numbers. I want to actually think that math is fascinating and beautiful. 

Paper engineering? I love this stuff.  

Because math is fascinating and beautiful.

A lot of things I've loved my whole life are math-y things. Origami, patterns, logical thinking puzzles. In college I took a class on "Advanced Logic" which was really a giant excuse to read Godel, Escher, Bach-- which is a gorgeous, complex book, full of ideas so fascinating I still lie awake thinking about them six years after taking the class. One of the reasons I fell in love with Owen was all the years of hearing about math from him. He would tell me about theorems or paradoxes which fundamentally changed the way I thought. Learning to think in new ways made my world bigger, full of even more questions, more things to discover. This sort of learning feels great. Don't believe me? Listen to RadioLab online. Watch Planet Earth on Netflix. Or just watch some Vihart videos, like this one about Fibonacci numbers (I bet I can tell you how many petals are in a flower!) . Or if you think that factorization isn't beautiful? Watch this, fast forwarding when you like but make sure you get to 243. Owen got all excited when our friends' house number was 243, and I didn't get it till I saw the animation. Which is another thing that's crazy and wonderful. Owen sees numbers as special and interesting, the way I think about words, not just a combination of digits but entities with meaning and relationships. I want to dive down into that. 

Owen used tea to explain logical implication. (see first image)

IBM has a bunch of short films out with little girls interviewing women working in technology for IBM, and they end every interview saying "Let's build a smarter planet!" I like this plan, but I'm also excited about us all just becoming smarter people. Stanford offers a ton of classes online for free! I'm taking the one on Mathematical Thinking, and it's great. I'm glad I have so much opportunity to learn here. Learning Dutch. Learning about a whole country and its history and its place in the history of the world. Learning to edit video, learning screenwriting, and yes, learning math.

Leiden's Relief: a city-wide party

The celebration of having food to eat is something I can get behind.

This week marks the anniversary of Leiden's Relief in October 1574.  Short version: after Leiden's city council decided to swear loyalty to Prince William of Orange, rather than Sovereign Lord King Philip II of Spain, Spanish armies sieged the city for several months, and the inhabitants ran out of food long before help came.  But eventually, a fleet of Dutch rebels broke dike after dike to flood the land around Leiden, and the Spanish forces fled the rising waters.  The fleet brought white bread and herring to feed the starving citizens, who had also scavenged the abandoned Spanish camp for some "Hutspot" (mashed potatoes, carrots, and onions).  These dishes are traditionally eaten every October 3rd since.

I had originally thought that this was something the rest of the country quietly noted, but apparently it's all and only Leiden that closes shop to celebrate.  (Thanks, Michiel, for the correction!)  I got both Thursday and Friday off work, but the city had been gearing up all week—on my Monday morning commute, I noticed the sudden appearance of a roller coaster in the town square:

Meanwhile, Clara tried to post a letter and discovered that the postbox had been temporarily sealed so that (in the words of a helpful passerby) "drunk people don't try to pour beer into it."  Two notes: 1. This was three days before any celebrating was due to start.  2. Yes, we now have stamps and can reply to letters!  If you've written to us already, we are on it!

By October 2nd, on whose evening the party started, I was having difficulty getting home on my bike through the crowd, so when Clara and I decided to see what the celebration was like on October 3rd, we went on foot.  Here are five things we noticed:

1. Crowds.  Not just near the open areas by the train station, like we'd thought at first, but thronging the streets and canals.  It was clear from the massively multiplied quantity of parked bikes and cars that this was an event people travel from far and wide to witness.  We had left our valuables at home and took only a little cash, but even then we didn't feel comfortable stopping to take pictures except from some quieter vantage points (so you don't get the full effect from these photos).

2. Temporary platforms had been raised over the canals to facilitate the festivities.  We think there might have been some temporary bridges too, but we're not sure yet.

3. There was so much garbage.  Empty plastic cups and cans, paper plates, even a mostly full but abandoned wine bottle in the street.  Here's a shot of a (usually pristine) grassy area so you can see some of the detritus.

4. The city was just generally decked out.  Even to the rigging on some of the ships, everyone seemed really happy to be celebrating:

5. Live music.  Mostly people singing English pop sings with Dutch accents, but Clara and I love to hear people singing.  Tiny venues like this one sprang up all over town, so that you could always hear someone playing as you walked. 

By midday on Friday, everything was back to normal: streets swept clean and people going about their business.  Next time this happens will be Queen's Day King's Day, when not just the city but the whole country celebrates.

Thanks for reading!  You've asked for shots of funny Dutch signs (we're on the lookout), more candid photos of inflatable kayaks (may be a while, folks), and more pictures of us happy.  Here's an installation on the last request:

Does your hometown, or anywhere else you've lived, have any unique holidays?  Tell us in the comments!

A Peek into our Home

This week, we decided it was high time to show you our apartment.  We're feeling moved in, the house is not a wreck with our belongings spilled all over it, and we've even got some of our own decorations up.  So this post will be mostly pictures—as always, you can click on any of them for a closer look.

The street we live on is a tiny alley, which you've already gotten a glimpse of in the Bike Tales of Doom post.  Here are some more shots:

Here is our street-level front door, with the "2G" you'll recognize if you've needed to mail us anything, and looking up and to the right you can see our kitchen windows, open on a nice warm day:

Our apartment occupies the second and third floors of the building (or "first and second", for our European readers), so after a flight of stairs and an inner door you reach our apartment proper.  First up, the living room, complete with some Monet, the Van Gogh museum brochure, and "Nederlands voor Buitenlanders" on the coffee table.

If you need to use it, the only toilet in our apartment is in a tiny room right by our entrance.  It's got just enough room for the essentials, and not much else.

In contrast, the living room (as you've seen) and the kitchen are quite open and airy, with lots of natural light.  We're really happy with the touches we've added, such as the hanging herbs and bulb baskets.  It's also lovely to have an oven (most apartments just have a combination microwave/oven)—and if we didn't have a fridge, where would we put the pictures of and from some of our favorite children?

Here are some closer looks at the artwork adorning our walls in the kitchen and living room:

I'm really impressed at how Clara could hang seven pictures from just two pre-existing picture nails!  And a couple of the postcards are from since we've been here—we're so excited to send some ourselves! (Let us know in the comments if you want one from Leiden.)

Our bedroom is up a narrow half-octagonal staircase:

We have nice views out of both sides of our upper level:

That latter view is the balcony off our guest room, which is where you could stay if you come visit between now and December:

We do not own the lion stuffed animals.

We also have a lovely bathroom at the top of the stairs, complete with laundry machines (but no toilet—that's downstairs in the tiny room):

Lastly, here are some cookies Clara has discovered!  They're called "speculaas" and are apparently very tasty:

Speculaas cookies go well with plates.

Thanks for reading!  What would you like to see more pictures of?  Us being happy? Cool places in Leiden?  Candid photographs of inflatable kayaks?  Let us know in the comments!

Pictures of Leiden!

This post is almost entirely pictures. We've had some beautiful weather, so neither of us had to worry about a rain-soaked camera. It's felt really good to be able to zip around on my bike, and we're really starting to love our own city, setting down what feel like roots. But enough talking, here are the pictures!

A shot of some row houses on the way to the thrift store

Ivy strewn design store on the route to buy groceries (Hooglandse Church in the background!)

Same location as the precious shot, just looking street-side

This is the gateway to De Burcht, a fortress on a hill (yes, a hill!) in Leiden

Fantastic coats of arms around the entrance

As a true military fortress, it has little window peep-holes.

Here's one of the views from the top of the fortress, and pretty typical shot of Leiden

I'm getting to know my way around the city, in part by knowing the different steeples, and locating myself by them

And Hooglandse Kerk.

Again, but this time taken with an arm stretched over the wall.

Here I go, back into the city!

If you have questions or things you wish we were saying, let us know, and we'll write about them next week, as well as all the joys we can now experience, because yesterday... (drumroll please)... Owen and I got our very own Dutch Bank cards. Only a month after coming! There may also be tales of the celebrations of the Relief of Leiden, the city's biggest holiday.

Going to a Baby Shower? 12 book suggestions.

In honor of the many babies soon to be born or recently come to this beautiful world and into the arms of friends of mine, I have put together a list of books. These are all picture book, many of them board books I love and which I would regularly recommend to customer when working as a bookseller at Labyrinth Books. I've shied away from more typical/popular books, but by all means, please buy Very Hungry Caterpillars, Goodnight Moons, The Snowy Day or Where the Wild Things Are for the children you love, though bring a gift receipt just in case they already have it.

1. Brian Wildsmith's Animals to Count
A very small board book, this gem is defined by its hauntingly beautiful illustrations and its unusual choices of animals. Rather than non-specific "monkey" or "dog" has cranes and deer, weasels and tigers. The author has many small boardbooks, I recommend them all, but have found this one to be especially nice for the littlest of little children, as it has less text than some of the others.


2. Bruce Degen's Jamberry

You may know Degen's illustrations from the early Magic School Bus books, wildly energetic and bursting with life, all qualities healthy and present in Jamberry. This book is a frolicsome, whimsical rhyme about berrypicking, lots of fun to read, and one parents have mentioned to me as a book that doesn't get tiresome with frequent repetition. Available in boardbook as well as paper and hardback, I like the boardbook best, because the illustrations seem particularly lively in the smaller scale.




3. & 4. Sara Pinto's The Number Garden and The Alphabet Room
The two books are some of the most delightful Alphabet and counting books I've seen. They are board books, but for slightly older kids, maybe 24 months and up? They cardboard is thinner (and the price is a bit higher) because they have many more pages than typical boardbooks. However, they are utterly charming wordless stories for children to page through again and again. In the Number Garden each page presents an object or a character to join in the action of the story. 6 might be garden gnomes, so starting on page six, every page has six garden gnomes. On page 7 we might find seven pairs of sunglasses--six of which might be worn by the garden gnomes, but who gets the seventh?--and so it continues onward up to 12. Alphabet Room has the same format, except teaching letters instead of numbers. 

5. Taro Gomi's Bus Stops
Another boardbook, this one is a find and seek book. Each spread shows different people getting on and off of a bus, and asks the little reader to find the people described. On each spread there is also a little orange car. It's a quiet book, with a fair deal of emotional variation, commuters rushing, one stop where no one gets off, and finally a return home.

6. Anno's Counting book (Mitsumasa Anno)
One day lady came in looking for a book for her granddaughter. She had a specific counting book in mind, "the Japanese one, with the field and the river. It fills up as the numbers rise." I hadn't known the book before, but we found it together in the counting section, and she pointed out why she thought it was so special. She smiled at me, opened to the first spread and said, "It starts not with one, but with zero. My husband and I, we are mathematicians, and we care a lot about zero." So there you have it. Besides being a counting book, it also shows a town growing (one more building, and tree, and train car) with each turn of the page, and the seasons changing. It's lovely, though not available in boardbook to my knowledge.



7. Lois Ehlert's Eating the Alphabet
Ehlert is famous for illustrating Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, all brash greens, oranges and hot pinks. While that is a lot of fun, I like her illustration style in this book even better. It's done in gentler colors with watercolored cut paper, and shows off the beauty of fruits and vegetables, produce for every letter of the alphabet. Because this title is particularly popular, it is available in boardbook, both large and small sizes, as well as paper and hardback.

8. Pantone Box of Color
When customers came in looking for a book for a BABY--not for a baby to enjoy later in his or her life, but AS A BABY, I was glad to recommend this box of little books. It comes with six extra small, extra thick and sturdy board books each one showing a different color in its variations. The charm of these books is in the transformation of shapes from one image to another. If you look at the "Firetruck" image below, you may be able to see that the red shape shown is a shape cut out of the cardboard. When you flip the page, that same firetruck shape becomes a wagon! Each cutaway shape makes two different pictures against the background color on either side. It's mesmerizing even for adults, and the books are sturdy enough to last the teething of more than one child.

9. Catch Me and Kiss Me and Say it Again by Clyde Watson, illus. by Wendy Watson
Unlike the other books on this list, this book is out of print. That means that you'll have to search for a decent copy online and buy it used. While this may deter you, (who wants to buy a used book for a babyshower?) let me just say that this book is one I loved beyond expression as a child. It is a book of rhymes for children infinitely superior to most typical nursery rhymes because they are about normal life (including mundane things like clipping fingernails and taking baths) and they come to mind when doing normal things (like cutting portions in two). I still have many of them memorized. For example:

One for me and One for you
If there's One leftover
Then what'll we do?
We'll take up a knife
And cut it in two
So there's
One for me and One for you.



10. John Feierabend's The Book of Lullabies

 
This book is a treasure house, particularly for parents who like to sing and can read music. John Feierabend is an expert in folk music, and this is his compilation of words and music for dozens of beautiful lullabies. If you don't know if the parents can read music, don't despair! I'm certain there are recordings on YouTube of people singing the tunes, and both words and music are in the book. This is one in a series of books (including The Book of Wiggles and Tickles, and The Book of Bounces) also excellent for the parents of babies.


11. Sleep Like a Tiger by Mary Logue and illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski

This gorgeous picturebook came out last year, and when we sold out in the holiday rush we were dismayed to find that the distributers, even the publisher was out of stock, and that there were no more available until they could print more. It won a Caldecott Honor, and no wonder, since the illustrations are so luminous and rich that you can just fall into them. The story is also gentle and gracious, showing a little girl as she gets ready for bed. It's not a book geared for infants, but it's one that will last years of reading. As far as I know, this book is still only out in hardcover.

12. Rosie's Magic Horse by Russell Hoban, illustrated by Quentin Blake

Remember the Frances books? A Baby Sister for Frances? A Bargain for Frances? Wonderful, right? Russell Hoban wrote those, and this is the last book he wrote before he died. The story alone is pure gold, but it's also illustrated by another one of the greatest contributors to children's literature, Quentin Blake. When I read this book, I spent about a week, reading it to anyone who would stand still. Don't just give it to children, give it to everyone you know.


Those are some of my favorites. Have I forgotten yours? Let me know which books you think are a MUST for the smallest of children.