One moment marred the otherwise perfect harmony of last night's dinner. After everything else was on the table in serving bowls, the cornbread was ready and I pulled it out of the oven. Rina reached down to a bottom shelf - just inches above the floor and thus the coldest place in the kitchen - and pulled out a large ceramic platter that must have been a full two cm. thick, nearly an inch. We came as close as we ever have to an argument when I recoiled in horror at the idea of putting the cornbread on this thing that would instantly suck every last iota of warmth out of it.

Rina didn't understand why I was being so obstinate about not wanting the cornbread to look nice on the serving platter, and after a difficult couple of moments I with only marginal good grace came up with the compromise of sticking this thick straw mat between the cornbread and the platter.

What Rina didn't know is that there is in America, especially in the South, a tradition of serving hot breads that will immediately melt the butter that you put onto them. Often, you slice them open, put a piece of butter inside, and then close them back around the butter for a couple of minutes to melt the butter. This is done not just for cornbread, but also for dinner rolls (like small yeast-risen breads) and biscuits (not biscuits in the British sense, which we call "cookies" but rather small, unsweetened breads that are leavened with baking powders).

In our culture, all these breads must be hot to be fully appreciated, so they are the last thing brought to the table. Too, they are traditionally put in baskets with napkins draped over them to keep them as warm as possible as long as possible. There were even special baskets with something to retain heat in the bottom.

I was so focused on serving a traditional East Texas meal that I wasn't thinking that the Dutch do not have the tradition of serving hot breads and that Rina would never have seen this. Of course we didn't understand each other!

I just love comparative sociology.

Now, regarding today: surely nobody expects me to be doing anything exciting today after a day as full as yesterday.

It is kind of wonderful that I have been walking so much at top speed that I have shin splints....a mild case and actually a not completely unpleasant indicator that I sure am working my legs now. Besides, it makes me feel kinda jockly, a feeling one gets less and less frequently after he passes sixty.

Today's pics are graffiti, the first from Mosterdpotsteeg, which is about ten feet wide and is mostly blank concrete walls. It's hard for me to get upset about folks painting stuff on the walls of this stark alley.

On the other hand, even I have to call it vandalism when it's on a brick building facing the Prinsengracht, which makes me feel guilty for liking Morcky Boy's style.

Yesterday was Herdenking, the Dutch Memorial Day when the Queen marches from the palace across the Dam and lays a wreath in front of the monument, but I was so involved with dinner that I completely blew it off. In my defense I must whine that this is the first time that I've been here in May and missed it. Well, sort of. I watched it last year on TV instead of in person because it was cold and raining and I was being a big sissy.

Today is the anniversary of the liberation from the Nazis, and I've written enough about this in my previous accounts of visits, but speaking of the Nazis, I'm just sick and tired of all these liberals comparing the Bush administration to the Nazis. Oh, please. Sure, there are superficial little similarities like mounting a propaganda campaign to stir the citizens up against contrived external and internal enemies and get them so worried that they'll happily give up their civil liberties one by one. But that's just trivia.

Anybody with a grain of common sense can see that the Bush Administration is not a bit like the Nazis in the ways that really matter: The external enemy is the Iraqis rather than the communists, the internal enemy is the gays rather than the Jews, and most importantly, Bush is adamantly opposed to socialism.

And speaking of the Nazis, remember that little stir a couple of weeks ago when some meddlers had the poor taste to point out that the new pope had spent his youth as a Nazi but excused this on the grounds that he was forced to join as a child but had left the party when he grew older and understood what it was all about? Who was it who pointed out that that paralleled exactly his own experience with the Catholic Church?

But enough of all that. A couple of folks had inquired how I managed to smuggle a couple of razor-sharp knives through the airports. Easy, I stuck 'em in my checked baggage. It's alright to have kitchen knives in your checked baggage! It's not like they're explosives or something. And I need those knives over here. As much as I love Rina, I have to tell you that the knives in her kitchen are not going to be inflicting any serious damage on a modern Dutch tomato.

Unlike our limp-wristed California fruit, these dudes have got tough hides on 'em.