I started taking pics of gevelstenen (facade stones) last year. Here's one on the Herengracht:

Otto drops by with this very tasty Frisian sugar bread, which we have with coffee, and then the three of us bicycle over to the verpleegtehuis (nursing home) to see Hans. It is shocking how much he has gone down since last year, when Rina was still caring for him at home, particularly since we are all the same age. Now, he no longer knows Rina and can no longer even communicate. The three of us talk with, or rather at him, but he shows little sign of awareness of this. Part of the problem is that the home keeps him sedated because he has become violent. That this has to be done is dreadful, but consider the alternatives.

What finishes breaking my heart is seeing Rina and Otto sit there on either side of him holding his hands. Hans and Otto have been friends since they were five years old, and by chance they were together when Hans and Rina met as teenagers. A tried and true friendship.

A view from Hans' nursing home:

And now, a little background on Otto...and me:

My first visit to Amsterdam was in the spring of 1966 when I was in the Army Security Agency stationed in Heidelberg, Germany and doing cryptosecurity inspections. My "territory" included various US military facilities in Germany and France...and one Dutch/US Army missile base out from Het Haarde here in the Netherlands. I stayed in a hotel in Zwolle and had Sunday free to drive to Amsterdam to spend the day sightseeing. I wrote in Dutch in Three Weeks about taking a canal boat tour and being able to remember that the appearance of the city from the canals has not changed all that much. Of course off the canals, the changes are dramatic.

What I didn't write about then was an incident that I still remember vividly. After the canal boat tour I had several hours before I needed to head back to Zwolle, so I strolled around sightseeing and taking photographs. It was a pleasant afternoon until I encountered three handsome young men about my age walking toward me.

In retrospect, I realize that they were probably gay, but at the time all I knew about gay was that such a thing existed. Well, on some level, I also knew I was one, but I was years from admitting this to myself, much less accepting it. What I knew back then was that these guys were astonishingly attractive, so much so that after they had passed, I without thinking turned to look back, only to see that two of them were looking back at me. And thus caught me looking at them and exposed me as a latent homosexual.

Luckily, I was at a corner, and in shock I turned it, took a few steps to get out of their sight line, and ran, turning in opposite directions at every corner. I ran until I was exhausted, which was some distance since I was in good training. I had never been so freaked out in my life, and as soon as I could make my way cautiously back to my car, I fled the city.

How strange, to think back to that visit and realize that at that very time, although I would not meet them for thirty-five years, Hans and Rina were a young married couple who were socializing with their dear childhood friend Otto and his male lover. Yeah.

Meanwhile, back in America, our loving priests and ministers were teaching their flocks to hate us....and us to hate ourselves. I expect God to give them an appropriate eternal reward for their splendid job at both tasks, oh yes I do. I can forgive the ordinary men and women and children who those evil scum brainwashed. I find it hard to forgive the ones who are doing the brainwashing...and, with the exceptions, to the best of my knowledge, of the Unitarian and Episcopal churches alone, they still are.

This is part of why I love the Dutch. Their tolerance is so relaxed and unforced that they don't even think of it as tolerance.

Note: I have since discovered that in addition to the above tolerant churches, there is one called the United Church of Christ that has been willing to put down the hate.