A Good and Sweet Year

In a Universalist Fellowship church nestled under towering Doug firs near Garden Home, a community of humanistic Jews celebrated Rosh Hashanah last night. The weather was transitioning from summer to fall with rain drizzle, and mildew smells abounded at the entrance. As she entered the building, a woman from dry Calgary Alberta Canada said, "What's that smell?"

On the stage inside the auditorium a small ensemble softly played melancholy music on guitar and keyboard. A chorus of ten faced the audience, where conversations salted with oi's and peppered with grey hairs drifted in the air with the mildew spores.

The Bema Reader (Bema means raised platform) tries the microphone, which isn't working it seems. Several people work to repair it, and after about ten minutes, the Bema Reader says through the now-working mic: "How many humanistic Jews does it take to get a microphone working?"

All sing “lie-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie” as the evening's celebration begins in earnest. The Bema Reader reads, the 100 or so people of the audience follow along in the program, singing along with the chorus.

This is the beginning of a new year and a time to come together with "warmth within our hearts, wisdom in our minds, and passion in our souls." Candles are lit. It’s a time to reflect deeply at one's reality and life for the next ten days during this time between tonight's Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The reward for proper atonement is the prospect of a good year to come, which is expressed in the greeting "May you be inscribed for a good year."

Then comes the much anticipated blowing of the Shofar, a ram's horn, by an esteemed man whose fingers and hands shook a lot, signaling the start of the holiday observances and, for our little gathering, a proclamation of the faith in the humanistic values needed to create a happy and secure society. Then, for the Remembrance of Our Dead and with mounting tears, people here and there in the audience shout out names of loved ones. I wanted to shout out: "Chuck-a-Luck and SweetPea" but thought it would sound disrespectful. (Two clowns I miss every day.)

At the end, just like the traditional New Year’s Eve tradition, people kiss and hug. Apples are dipped in honey and wishes are extended for: "A good and sweet year!" It was an uplifting and inspiring get-together.

This video was made inside the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam.

In Loving Memory of Leroy

My neighbor Leroy died last night. He always had a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eyes. He always tried to help me fix stuff like my lawn mower and water faucet. When he thought my dandelions needed mowing, he’d say, “Nice crop of yellow flowers you’ve got going over there.” We’d argue softly over politics and religion and never thought the worst of each other. His dog Nakita would chase my cat Ethel. He tried to give me a lot of knick-knacks that belonged to his third wife Nila. She died not too long ago and Leroy missed her terribly. I only accepted one garden statue that looks a bit like Snow White that I’ve named Nila. I drive past Nila in and out of my driveway and say hi to her. Now, if he’s right and I’m wrong, he’s in heaven now with all three of his past wives, and a big grin on his face. Here’s to ya, Leroy.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it

Day 7 – Friday - Gardens

Observations on Belgium/Belgians … things I -- a native pacific northwestern United States born average-aged person -- did not notice right away. It’s sunk in slowly while motoring the back roads near where long-dead famous artists once lived. Flat landscapes of muted blues and faded yellows under gunmetal blue skies. Most people, most cars, most buildings are dressed in somber black, gray, dark blue, silver, white. It’s unusual to see a gold car or someone wearing bright clothing.


Being a gardener, I naturally notice gardens -- like an avid garage-saler who causes traffic tie-ups rubbernecking the items laid out for sale on someone’s driveway. And what I notice here is that same muted and somberness spills out into the gardens. When there ARE gardens. Color interest now (mid-September) seems to come from white hydrangeas, the ubiquitous red geranium, lots of ornamental grasses and green shrubs. A Japanese maple just starting to put on its fall color surprises me here and there and puts a lie to this generalization of dull colors. And here is a photo of one garden I saw that made me say, “Stop the car!”

Outside the city, trimmed evergreen hedges abound. Green SpongeBob SquarePants guardrails separate homes from zooming cars. Lots of everything is sheared into forms alongside the roads, up the walls, and in the small front yards with little patches of lawn. Box, yew, juniper and cypress transformed from nature into formal hedges, topiary and standards. People generally use mass plantings in miniature places. Dwarf trimmed box hedges line tidy-with-barely-a-pebble-out-of-place gravel pathways. London Plane trees with their peculiar odor and flaking gray bark survive to a large size here and there, alongside blue Atlas cedar, juniper, pine, elm, chestnut, and espaliered fruit trees. In the cities, the tall narrow homes, packed together like sardines, open right up to the narrow sidewalk so few trees or flowers seem even possible.


One morning after breakfast I stumble across the Gent flower market and crutch my way through, checking out the plants. Mostly commodity-type plants, but still ones I have not seen in people’s yards. Cyclamen, heather, heavenly bamboo, palms, asters, and a large assortment of clipped evergreens, ready to pop into the ground.

So I wonder, where do Belgiums garden? What’s growing in their backyards?!? Do their somber facades of face and garden open up to colorful personalities dressed in gold clothing and interesting private gardens? I believe so.

Plant geek comment: at the flower market I was surprised to find a cultivar of the red-berried groundcover Bearberry (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi) that is native to my hometown. The native Americans ate the berries and smoked the leaves. It is also called kinnikinnick, mealberry, upland cranberry, rhamnus purshiana, aconitum napellus, aconite, bear’s-food, friar’s-cap, helmet-flower, luckie’s mutch, monkshood, soldier’s-cap, turk’s-cap, arberry, mountain cranberry, and uva-ursi.

Death in the Afternoon

Day 6 – Thursday – Vinkt

Finally a sunny day after five days of gray skies. Everything looks different. Warm streams of sunshine slant through the open wood-framed window and dance dust particles to the floor. Waking up, I swear I hear chickens from the other side of the wall. Below, cows moo in the pasture across the lane, and a wind rattles the tree leaves that are just starting to turn and fall. Further off, a dog barks now and then, the swish of a passing car, a small airplane in the sky.

Bed & Breakfast Deinze seems like way out in the country, but is actually just five minutes outside the town of Vinkt. You turn at the café ‘De Haring,’ where it’s not unusual to see John Deere tractors parked alongside the sedans. This is farmland. One-lane roads lined with cows and cornfields and modern commercial greenhouses.

Martine Haerens, our hostess, explains the B&B used to be a dove or pigeon barn (duivekot). A dark wooden barn door opens to an inner glass door, and a white tile entryway. And then I see them. “Stairs?!?” I think, leaning on my crutches. In one corner, the white tiles lead up steep and winding stairs. Hardly-adequate handrailettes are mounted on the red wall in a couple places. The corner turning stair steps are barely wide enough for my entire foot near the wall side, and like vertigo, the outside ends of the steps narrow away to nothing but the floor below.

The accommodations at the top of the stairs are so pleasant I decide it’s worth the effort to deal with these stairs. Up on my hands and knees, down on my butt. Not pretty, but it works.

A superb breakfast including coffee or tea, sugar cubes and cream, orange juice, milk, assorted croissants and brioche with chocolate, gouda and laughing cow cheese, little jars of local jams, cereal, yogurt, mini chocolate bars, small cookies, butter, and a fleece snuggie covered eggcup keeping one very local hardboiled egg warm. All artfully laid out at the hour of our choosing, with lots of cups and saucers, bowls and plates, silverware and napkins. Fortified, we’re off to visit the mother, brother and sister-in-law.

Dirk and Vera are literally just back from the south of France as we arrive. Unloading the travel trailer and doing laundry quickly segs into sitting around in the sun drinking Pastis - licorice-tasting booze mixed with water. Pictured are Dirk, Vera, Jonn and Clarissa. It’s a good thing we had a substantial breakfast, otherwise, it could have been like drinking Death in the Afternoon - an absinthe drink invented by Ernest Hemingway, consisting of Pastis mixed with champagne.

Later the same day: Belgian pancakes and coffee in the afternoon, served with ice cream AND whip cream. A lovely fish dinner at Leie Zicht (which means “the view of the river Leie”) where they served garlicky artichoke taupinaude for which I want the recipe. And the climax bar of cigarette smoke, the Bachtenaarke, a typical Belgium neighborhood bar, I’m told.

Ooidonk Castle

Day 5 – Wednesday - Bachte-Maria-Leerne

The weather is still cold and windy, the sky dull gray. Far away, thin wisps of clouds scratched into the sky. Autumn is just around the corner. Enroute to Ghent, we take the scenic way through little brick towns with narrow brick sidewalks, surrounded by little farms with fat cows, fat horses, and wavy fields of well-ripened corn awaiting harvest. It's for the cows, I’m told.

Further along through winding neighborhoods of large brick houses all painted white, sweeping American-style front lawns, set well back from the narrow roads behind clipped hedges.



Unbeknown to me a forehand, we suddenly turn down a side road and shortly arrive at Ooidonk Castle. With my left peripherals, I see an asphalt parking lot and a few tour buses maneuvering around in front of the gift shop. My right peripherals pick up a lush sweeping lawn leading up to a good-sized red brick castle with turrets and whatnot like what you would expect to see on a Flemish castle. Between the tour buses and the castle, and not slowing down a bit, we zip forward, past a ‘keep out’ sign, and dip down onto a small gravel driveway. Just ahead is a little brick-lined tunnel leads through a dike. Beyond the dyke, reflected in the lily pond, is this romantic view of the castle.

This is the third Ooidonk castle, built on the site of a 14th century fortress and open to the public. You can rent some of the rooms, like the ‘stylish dining with adjacent round drawing room and the tapestry gallery’ for workshops and such, or have an outdoor party with tents and walking dinners. There’s parking for 150 cars and several coaches.

I think it would be okay with the family if I mention that back in the 70s my companion’s aunt used to date the count of Ooidonk Castle ... but that’s another story.

You can't go home

Day 5 – Wednesday – Lake Overmere-Donk

Woke up late at the Diamond Hotel. The noise of trains and traffic below no problem evidentally. Across at the Belgie-Lei apartment buildings, a window washer sits in a swing, a bucket and squeegees hanging from his belt, gently swaying to and fro with a dancer’s steady rhythm and fluidity. No movement wasted as he massaged and caressed each little windowpane. Like he’d washed those windows a million times before and could do it in his sleep. Checked out and left Antwerp for our next destination: Vinkt.

Enroute we passed several houses where prostitutes ply their trade morning, noon and night. Like big spiders in a web, each girl presents herself in the big front picture window with special costumes and lights and a chair maybe, waiting for a passing motorist to slow down and check her out, stop, come in, yessir!

Stopped for lunch at Lake Overmere-Donk, which is in East Flanders, where my companion lived until he was about 9.

Before going to the restaurant, we drive the one block (remember, I’m ‘walking’ with crutches) to where his old home still stands. Up a gently sloping hillside, past a manicured privet hedge and behind a glass and wood monstrosity that is now a restaurant, the tip-top of an old house can be seen. It’s hard to tell what style architecture it is, but it's striking because it doesn't seem to be made of brick. There’s a small broad roof and a sharply peaked front façade just visible, and an old whitewashed garage up a long driveway behind the house.

As we sit in the car, he tells me of his boyhood adventures and how things used to be: an orchard in the back yard, ice-skating on the lake. Just across Donklaan Straat – as scenic as it gets - is the longest lake in Belgium, Overmere-Donk. Roses, rush and manicured hedges fringe the visible shoreline. Boats sit waiting to be rented. Close by, a small island, home to a miniature forest, contrasts with a round manmade fountain further out, shooting plumes into the wind, sprays of moisture heading south in the gray day.

As unsightly as the old family house has become as a restaurant, right next door, however, takes the cake for bad – the Wok Palace. A picture worth a thousand words.

Diamond and Dim Sum

Day 4 – Tuesday - Antwerp

Staying at the Diamond Hotel in Antwerp. Straight out the window, a hodge-podge of residential windows and curtains and buildings and rooftops in dull browns. Passers-by across the street six floors below are men with long, uncut sideburns, dressed in black trousers, white shirts and top hats; and modestly-dressed women wearing wigs, pushing baby strollers and holding hands of even more children. Leaning further out the window, directly below, every five minutes a subway train appears briefly, then disappears down a tunnel. A macabre discovery on the ledge outside the window: a hundred years of cigarette butts (including an overflowing ashtray) slowly decomposing, all turned the same brown color as a smoker’s lungs.


We are in Antwerp to visit my companion’s son Nathan and his long-time girlfriend Goshia, and hopefully see their new apartment they are in the process of remodeling. Joining us is Goshia’s cousin Roman [say: ROW-man] who lives near The Haag, but is here working on the new apartment. We enjoy the evening and dim sum at an outside table at Lucy Chang’s, across from a statue of Neptune.

Traffic and driving is crazy in Antwerp, even for a native-born son. I would never have found my way back to the hotel.