Mired in details. That’s what I’ve become today. Everything I’ve set out to write has become completely weighed down with dates, and facts, and figures. And every time I read it back, I could see its little pockets being overstuffed with the particulars, its pants beginning to sag, with an early onset of plumber butt. And, who wants plumber butt on their morning blog?
I started writing about Jacob Corneliszoon van Neck. Oh, don’t get me started again. I went on and on about his world. But in a nutshell. He was just a Dutch explorer who had a successful voyage, bringing back spices from Indonesia. All in the 1500s. That’s all. Trust me, there are loads of other names, and dates, and expeditions before his. But on today’s date, back in 1599, good old van Neck brought home a million pounds of pepper and cloves, and even more nutmeg, mace and cinnamon. People cheered. Wildly. Dutch people.
That’s what started to get me off track. I had read another article about the folks from the Netherlands, who are known as the Dutch, and not the Netherlandians. Or Netherlandiites. No. They are the Dutch. Anyway, they don’t want anyone, anywhere, calling their country Holland any more. They have two provinces that are known as North Holland and South Holland, but the country as a whole is the Netherlands.
Here, I go again, with the details. But apparently, Amsterdam, that lovely city in North Holland in the Netherlands, is getting overrun by tourists. The Dutch want people to go to the other regions of the Netherlands, not just Amsterdam. In other words, we still want your money, but just not crowding up our good little city in North Holland, that we really don’t want to be associated with the name Holland.
Truthfully, the whole region gets confusing in my brain. I loved it — absolutely fell in love with it — when I visited. Both times. But to me, it seems like it should be up there with Norway, Sweden, and Finland, and not right next door to Germany. Anyway, geographically, my brain is a muddy mess when it comes to the Netherlands. And then I have the whole Sweden / Switzerland debacle. Every time someone mentions the Swiss, I have to slap myself into thinking Switzerland. And all that cheese. Over 450 varieties. And of course the Alps. And Knives.
Hey, do you know the best part about Switzerland?
Well. The flag is a big plus.
Okay, so as you can see, my brain is taking a detour, somewhere between the top of my head and tips of my fingers on the keyboard. That’s how it is going today. I’ve now written almost 500 words since I started to tell you, that I am mired in details, and I might be better off just reciting nursery rhymes today.
Do they have dells in Switzerland? Or farmers? Or is it too hilly there? Because that Farmer in the Dell is one of my favorite nursery rhymes of all. Spoiler Alert.
At the very end, the cheese stands alone.
Yes.
The cheese stands alone.
No one really knows what that all means, the cheese standing alone.
What’s becoming of this world? The Netherlands. Holland, no more? Lonely Swiss Cheese in Switzerland? And it all started with a guy named van Neck on a boat filled with pepper.
Today, I seem a little mired in the details.
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“Facts are like cows. If you look them in the face long enough, they generally run away.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers
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“For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses. ”
― Robert M. Pirsig
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“Everything is complicated if no one explains it to you.”
― Fredrik Backman
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