XPost: alt.religion.christian.2, alt.religion.christian.adventist,   
   alt.religion.christian.anabaptist   
   XPost: alt.religion.christian.anabaptist.bretheren   
   From: dolfboek@hotmail.com   
      
   — THAT’S LIFE JIM EPITAPH   
      
   (c) 2017 Dolf Leendert Boek, Revision: 2 December, 2017   
      
   This Facebook post was repeatedly subject to censorship as deleted by   
   “The Free Thought Project” without reasonable cause and who as a   
   misnomered and supremacist organisation exercise prejudiced hedonism   
   against life by their indolent manner as the intolerance which is the   
   American Dream of vacuity.   
      
   EXCERPTS FROM "VERTREK CHAPTER 23: THE SHED—DE SCHUUR"   
      
   Piet had told me that every man needs a solitary place to daydream and   
   be himself. He felt that daydreaming is a definite key to   
   self-discovery, finding one’s place in the world. I often wondered if   
   the majority of Dutch people ever daydreamed.   
      
   What did Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, Gustav Mahler, Henry David   
   Thoreau, Thomas Jefferson, and Virginia Woolf have in common with my dad   
   Piet? All these great artistic men and woman had their schuur (shed)   
   either on a mountain or in their backyard. Piet had his in the backyard.   
   Not that Piet would have equated himself with these great men; his   
   cultural influence was too Calvinist for that, leaving him sober and   
   self-deprecating. Yet he made some of the most beautiful models of   
   vintage ships that I had ever seen. Of course I am biased; he was my   
   dad. We called the shed de schuur. Whenever we would ask Bets where Piet   
   was, she would answer, ‘Why do you ask? You know he is in his schuur.’   
   Wherever we lived, Piet had his schuur, although it was by any measure   
   not conventional.   
      
   The schuur centre was where beautiful things were made and happened.   
      
    From day one in Australia, Piet maintained his craft of building wooden   
   model ships, specializing in vintage ships. He would spend hours   
   carving, bowing, and sawing chiselling, bending, nailing, and measuring.   
   Friends or strangers would just sit in the schuur near him and watch,   
   often silently, sometimes quietly talking in the background. There would   
   frequently be quiet music, street organs, light classical, Vera Lynne,   
   Glen Miller, Duke Ellington, Corrie Brokken, Annie De Reuver, Toon   
   Hermans—the singers and musicians of his youth.   
      
   People wondered why Piet would make these beautiful ships. Was he   
   homesick for the Dutch waters, the river barges, the open North Sea, or   
   did he want to relive his memories through making models? Ships and   
   crafts were used as teaching aids by our parents for us kids; there was   
   a story attached to everything they made. Bets would make and teach   
   crafts for the Leopold Uniting Church, where young women would come and   
   learn. At times, the financial situation would be bad, and some of the   
   ships would be sold to the antique shops in Toorak, helping the family   
   out of difficult situations. He made ships of his youth, and the ones he   
   had worked on, such as the Koningin Emma (Queen Emma), a ferry ship   
   crossing to and fro on the River Scheld. Piet worked on this ferry after   
   he and his mates returned from police action in Indonesia and it had a   
   lot of meaning for him. He often said that the shapes of ships were like   
   beautiful women, symmetric curves, well-balanced and designed to move   
   swiftly through the fluids of life.   
      
   He built several models of James Cook’s ship, the Endeavour. Piet   
   realized that Captain Cook was a revered personage in Australia and the   
   building of the Endeavour would show that we Dutch were not only eager   
   to assimilate, but also eager to create a common element which we could   
   talk about with Australians, when we exhibited the splendid models.   
   After the Endeavour, models of other famous English ships followed, such   
   as Francis Drake’s Golden Hind, the first ship to circumnavigate the   
   world, then Captain Bligh’s Bounty, of Mutiny on the Bounty fame. Local   
   models were not forgotten. After a visit to Loch Arch Gorge near the   
   Victorian coastal town of Warrnambool, he was impressed. He made a visit   
   to the wreck site of the clipper Loch Arch, and wrote away to Scotland   
   for plans of the Loch Arch; it took him almost two years’ time to build   
   this magnificent and historically relevant sailing clipper.   
      
   One of his crown ships he made, besides the infamous but beautiful   
   Batavia, was the crown jewel of all of Piet’s models: De Zeven   
   Provincien (Seven Provinces), named after original provinces of the   
   Dutch Republic when it declared independence from Spain. De Zeven   
   Provincien was the flagship of the famous Dutch national hero Admiral   
   Michiel De Ruyter, a fellow Zeelander, who sailed up the River Thames,   
   causing the city of London to be evacuated. There were always exciting   
   stories, and he would entrance me with them as he was building his   
   creations.   
      
      
   [IMAGE: DE ZEVENPROVINCEIN (SEVEN PROVENCES) as some of the treasures   
   made within solitude within de SCHUUR (SHED)]   
      
   He would tell me about the Battle of Solebay, which had a combined   
   French/ English fleet of seventy-four major warships against a   
   (victorious!) Dutch fleet of sixty-two. Of course history has forgotten   
   this; Piet was convinced that the English made sure it would be   
   forgotten. The Solebay battle pitted eighty-five Dutch warships against   
   an English fleet that eventually numbered at least seventy-four major   
   warships over a period of four days! Yet the English still credit   
   Trafalgar as the ‘greatest’ of sea battles! As kids, we all loved to   
   hear the stories of when De Ruyter and his fleet not only sailed up the   
   Thames and the Medway, destroying and carrying off a major portion of   
   the English fleet, but actually continued there for over a month,   
   blockading the Thames, terrorizing London, and raiding up and down the   
   river at will! Yet so little is written about this by the English. The   
   captured trophies of the Dutch invasion of England are still on display,   
   such as the stern carving of the biggest English warship, the Royal   
   Charles, captured by the Netherlanders still hangs with pride in the   
   Rijksmuseum at Amsterdam.   
      
   Of the many stories told in the schuur was this one, still my favourite:   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)