Birthing stool out of a milk bucket

Birthing stool out of a milk bucket, originally uploaded by Amazing Amazone.

So I am pregnant.
Living in Holland, we just handle the pregnancy with a so called verloskundige (midwife): a medical professional who is skilled in pregnancies and delivering babies. No need for a gyneacologist when there is no medical reason.
Birthing should be done as natural as possible, so preferable just like in the old days, at home. So to help me with that, the in-laws provided me with their birthing stool.
These days most midwives carry one standard with them at deliveries. Sitting on it the birthing woman can make good use of gravity to help getting the child out. It also helps a little preventing a disaster zone down there...
But this is not a regular birthing stool.
The in-laws used to have a milk farm, so when the use of birthing stools came in use, a home made one was soon provided for the births of the third and fourth child.
Kneeling on it helps bearing the labour contractions better before, and after the birth, catching the placenta.
And yes, this one is made out of a proper milk bucket, with a piping of rubber and a metal seating. Covered with warm towels, it should do its work well.
I'll let you know how it worked out.

Pom and pokoe

Molecular cooking, gazing at the stars, winning a 17th century print and free pom. That is only some of the many things you can do this saturday at the Museumn8 in Amsterdam.
What will I do? I will be going to serve you.
Not the pom, which I will be eating too, but I'll provide you with some good tunes and pokoes at the Persmuseum from 19.00 until 23.00. Again, like last year at the Theater Instituut Amsterdam at the Red Dress fashion lounge (that's why I put in the picture)
What I would do if I didn't need to spin my wheels of steel? Check my program:

Enjoy and see you at the Persmuseum!

DJing with a view

DJing with a view, originally uploaded by Amazing Amazone.

Last sunday I was invited to come DJing between debates on the OMWaNa Stadsmanifestatie, at Pakhuis De Zwijger. Not very exciting, but I did my best and I got some good reactions from onhearers. And I loved the view!

Wolkom yn it Heitelân

A few weeks ago I was invited to attend a diner parlant for the project Wolkom yn it Heitelân. This is Frysian for Welcome in the father country. In this project Wouter Osterholt en Elke Uitentuis want to explore the range of cultural identity between localism (Frysian identity) and globalism. How open is Friesland towards new arrivals? What is Frysian identity? How do you conserve cultural heritage? DO you conserve cultural heritage?
Off course I accepted the invitation and traveled north to Leeuwarden. There I told something about Verhalenvanger and listened to and discussed with artist Misja Immink, Bert Looper and Goffe Jensma. Misja made us all an agent for the ministry of in love-affairs, Bert read some poetry and Goffe told us the entertaining story and its implications of the Oera Linda boek. What we spoke about exactly, you can read here, what I liked personally was to get a good introduction of Frysian culture, which seems to become a new part of me. This was the third time in two weeks I was in Frysland; the weekend before we even attended a family gathering of Farquaads Frysian family. Nice and beautiful country too, sitting on the back seat of a motor cycle or on the back of a horse! Thanks again for riding and staying, Florie!

El Salvador

Not only my own brother lives far, far away across an ocean, the brother of my girlfriend Maaike does too. Also in the Americas, but more south, in one of the continents most dangerous countries. And beautiful. He writes about living in El Salvador and throws in some interesting links to give more context about the troubling history of this petite country.

Blanchefosse et Bay

Blanchefosse et Bay, originally uploaded by Amazing Amazone.

The first weekend of september we celebrated the 20th birthday of my cousin's circle of friends. They met at school two decades ago and thougt it was a good time to celebrate that with family and friends. And we all came. With 80 of us, some shacked in the nearby hotels, others like us set up camp on the grounds of the little French estate of the parents of one of the friends. Drinks, food, campfire fireworks, nature and DJ's were all for free to enjoy us through the whole weekend. And boy, did we enjoy it. So thanks, you eadevieguys! And thanks parents of Vincent for the hospitality.
The shack sits along the road into the valley and houses a lot of swallows and the arrows and bows we got to shoot with too.

Gay bashing

Amsterdam used to be a tolerant city towards the gay scene, and even embraced it in all it's glory. But what were incidents are culminating into a gulf of gay molesting.
Yesterday it happened in front of my door. I tried to help, but the two youths (Moroccan and Turkish) were so aggressive, in no time one of them hooked me. When I got back on my feet again, the gay neighbour had been attaced with a bicycle chain lock. Blood all over.
So there we went to the hospital, he to be stitched, me to check if I hadn't broken anything. Luckily I didn't but this is how my face looks now.
Job Cohen, I don't want to drink tea with these people. These homophobic cowards deserve to be castrated because they don't deserve their balls. Stop the terror on me and my friends and neighbours.

Update: One of the guys has been caught, the one that hit me is still out there, but the police knows his name, where he lives and where he worked.
To the left: my face two hours after
Beneath that: my face after two days

At the farm

Last week me and farquaad took care of his parent's house and his younger brother.
Horizons all around, lots of weather: sun, rain and wind, a dog, a cat and two horses made it a real nice holiday setting. Friday afternoon the sun shone brilliantly after lots of rain. While I was drawing a little spec appeared on the fence. Then another one and when a swallow flew by to feed the young in the nests, these dots started to scream and yell.
They were young swallow chicks, already being able to fly but too lazy or unexperienced to go hunting for critters themselves. At the end of the day five little furry balls were seated neatly on the fence.
Takkie the dog (real name: Kojak) was hanging lazy in the sun while I was drawing, but later on we made a long walk of two hours. I had to carry her on the last few meters, poor little Takkie...

Jonas the movie

This week I started off a new film project again.
With Erik Rauws, the cameraman of Johan Verberck's A Detective Story, we will shoot the short movie -with the work title Jonas- this summer in both Amsterdam and Nijmegen.
I like this, doing another small movie. This year, I've already been approached for another movie, but unfortunately I couldn't make the time to put in time nor energy, so I gave only a little production advice for the Dutch horror movie Asian Import Ltd. The director Barend de Voogd also used a blog to track the filmprocess. It's fun but also good for the group dynamics, I found out already with the blog Hidde Simons set up for the filmproject Olifant.
One of the reasons I'm looking forward to be producing this new film project is because it's fiction and short. Horror is not my special interest and being on the road with Couscous and Cola wore me out extremely because I couldn't agree with some of the decisions made for me, but which I had to execute. On this film, we're all in for the fun of it, so here we go!

Insight

In the end, it's all about perception. Sometimes it is good to realize how other people see you and experience your behaviour. It could help you really helping others. Plus another example of how warfare these days is becoming less and less governmental propaganda, though they try to limit free information because of security reasons.

I see what you don't see

A very beautiful website for a horrific subject. It's very easy from your lazy chair to sign the petition, to help fill the need for foster parenting is something else.
Still, look at the beautiful designed site, sign up and consider what you can do.

Compa Nansi

The one heritage the slave trade brought to the new world are the stories of Compa Nansi. These fables about spider Anansi originate from Ghana and West-Africa, where they are told unto this day. The slaves couldnt bring anything material during the crossing of the Atlantic'except their languages, knowledge and stories. This way Anansi storeies are now also being told through out the Caribbean.

Me too grew up with the adventures of cunning Anansi, therefore I am very happy that on Saturday the 2nd of june an Anansi storytelling festival is taking place at Imagine IC, organised by Anansi Masters. You can come and tell your own Anansi story or just lay back and listen to some good story tellers.

Next to this story telling festival there is also an exhibition, a theater piece and many movies are to be seen on the website. Amongst others from Ghanean story tellers that tell their version, sometimes even without Anansi himself at all.

Stakeholdership

ImagineIC would be nothing without other organisations. People knock on our door for help, space, networking, facilities, in short, for all kinds of coöperation. Often we can find a means of helping each other out.
Today I spoke with two people from Antillean TV for example and the guys from the Temple of Hiphop kept me company during the late hours of working overtime.
Some other participants: Ting Chan exhibits right now her beautiful portraits of immigrant families in their living room.

To Berlin!

In a few days, I'll be on a holiday trip with my love. We will wander the Teutoburger Wald, climb the Harz mountains and end up in Berlin to see a good friend of mine. He expresses himself through ink and soundwaves and I look forward to hang out with him and his sweet wife. In the old days a member of mythic punk band Urgent Fury, he now is busy with Rope Burns.

Bijlmer Film Festival

Next month, a new film festival will start in Amsterdam. Cinemix will be the first proper film festival targeted for the inhabitants and the atmoshpere of the Bijlmer. A diversity of blockbuster Nollywood, Bollywood and other films will show at the Pathe Arena and at ImagineIC
I cannot announce the main movie as of yet, but I've heard different critiques about it. If you want to see it for free, mail quickly and maybe you win one of the free tickets to this opening film.
At ImagineIC we will show home made One Minutes and the documentary Cu salu den mi wowo.

Plant a heart

There are numerous tree-planting projects. But this one is really nice, especialy if you're an avid googlemaps lover like I am. Help plant a heart in the middle of Niger!

K-Swiss Event

Tomorrow, friday the 30th of March (time goes fast!) K-Swiss store finally does an event. The store is open for ages already, in the former Bestcompany headquarters at NieuweZijds Voorburgwal. But now, they've decided to let Best Comapny organize a nice event. The store opens in the evening with a free concert and goodies for less and free. I'm curious, though K-Swiss is not my brand - they're not Adidas- and these events are always fun.

Story catcher

For a year now, I am working on this wonderful oral history project Verhalenvanger (story catcher). Together with a symbolic table I have visited three elderly homes for people from the former Dutch East Indies and will continue with a tour along Surinamese and Antillean houses. After showing the inhabitants of the home old film footage, I catch their story together with pictures or documents. This collection of stories aims to tell the personal stories behind the grand political history and to show the communality within such a group of immigrants. In this project we focus on 'inburgering' and collect the stories of newcomers in Holland.
Read and enjoy!

photo: picture from a private collection from the website, showing son of the house posing next to the newly bought television set. Black-and-white off course.

Pom

In May 2007, ImagineIC will host an exhibition on Pom. Pom is the traditional and national recipe of Surinam and it is soooo nice!
The exhibition will explore the zillion diverse ways pom is made, but will also cover the urspunglich jewish root of the recipe. The oven cuissonière was brought to Surinam by Jews, but adapted to their tastebuds by Creoles, Marrons, Javanese and Hindustani.
Check the Pom map of Amsterdam if you wanna taste some good pom in the different neighbourhoods of Mokum

First post

w00t!