I just recently received the e-mail below, and I thought I'd post a quick call for help on behalf of my friends working to organize Serve the City:

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Just a few weeks ago project sign ups began for Serve the City. Currently we have about 200 volunteers who have signed up to take part in the projects. This is great news but we still need 150 more volunteers to make Serve the City reach it's full potential! If you haven't already signed up for a project, we invite you to come join us in serving.

This year Serve the City consists of 32 projects such as: preparing dinner for the homeless, pampering women from a woman's shelter, canal cruise with the elderly, raising funds for a refugee help organization, children's party in the Bijlmer and Bos en Lommer, collecting food for the Food Bank, gardening at an elderly care center, helping disabled people in practical ways, and much more.

Come have fun serving and make a difference in the life of someone in need. You can go to our website to see all the different projects and sign up for one, two, three, or even four projects. Even if you're not able to do a project we ask you to forward this email to your friends, colleagues, neighbors, family members, etc, who you think might be interested in the project.

On Monday, May 12th, we're having a festival with live bands and free food for everyone involved in the project. We hope to see you there!

Click here to see the projects
Website: www.stcamsterdam.nl

We come from six different countries. Our "day jobs" cover the spectrum from literature professor to student to waitress to pastor. Our creative interests vary from memoirs to film scripts to short stories. But we all have one thing in common: We like to write.

For the last six months or so, I've been getting to know a small circle of aspiring artists who -- like myself -- have long enjoyed writing as a hobby, but who are now looking to improve their skills and put their stuff "out there" a bit more. We found each other through a collective of international writers in the city of Amsterdam called wordsinhere (and through word-of-mouth, as things developed), and there are now ten of us who meet together as a "fiction critique group" every other Monday evening, in a small cafe in the Jordaan.

Last night, we met in the home of one of the members of our group, where we were treated to an Indian Tea and some wonderful homemade Indian snacks. A number of the members from our group couldn't make it yesterday (so unfortunately, they didn't make it in the pictures), but we really had a fun time together.

I'm going to miss being involved in the group this summer, while I'm gone in the United States...

Amsterdam is not a city of superlatives. Oh, I'm sure the folks at the VVV or the "I amsterdam" campaign could work up some statistics that would show how Amsterdam is the biggest or best at something. But the fact of the matter is that Amsterdam is not an inherrently "grand" city. Beautiful? Yes. Interesting? Absolutely. But let's face it: Amsterdam is not a city built to impress.

The city's "illustrious antiquity" is not self-evident -- as it so clearly is
in Rome, or Athens, or Beijing. Rather, the oldest buildings in the city date
back to the end of the Middle Ages (though there aren't many that even go back this far). There is very little in the way of massive monuments -- like you'd find in Paris, or Washington, or Moscow -- celebrating the city's or the society's greatness. The tallest structures in Amsterdam are stubby office buildings and hotels, very practical and proper, and if you were to look down from the top of one of these "tall" buildings, you would see a very sporadically sprawled, mismatched, happenstance arrangement of architecture spanning the last five centuries. The labyrinthine avenues worming through the city -- cutting thin channels through buildings stacked four, five, or six stories tall, just about everywhere -- are certainly fascinating and intriguing... But they are not impressive.

Consider this:  Commission any ten people to buy you "the quintessential" postcard representing the city of Amsterdam, and I'd be surprised if you got more than two or three that were depicting the same scene.

As any true Amsterdammer knows, the strength of the city lies in its incomparable ordinariness in the midst of its incredible diversity. By looking at a collection of scattered samples of items that more-or-less fall within the same category, one gets a better idea of the city. Taking fifty portraits, if you will, to get a single impression of Amsterdam.  But even then, the impressions of the city are never complete. They are constantly evolving. Stereotypes and clichés and slogans must be brushed back like the dust and cobwebs of a forgotten attic -- and then, only then, by way of glimpses stolen through the chinks and cracks and hidden crannies of honest everyday acquaintance can one begin to know Amsterdam. Not completely -- never with truly divine omniscience -- but more intimately, and increasingly more meaningfully.

In order to see Amsterdam through the eyes and ears of Amsterdammers, one needs to examine the images and stories of the city, uncluttered, stripped of any presumed glamour and grandiosity. But because Amsterdam is a mystical and spiritual city, we cannot help but be awed and impressed. The everyday gives way to the ethereal. And the small slivers of humanity, grasped and glimpsed through the tiniest of ever-moving spaces, illuminate the true greatness of Amsterdam and the presence of God in the city.

What a magnificent spring evening to go to the park!  I'm still missing my nice camera (the lens is still in the shop), but with a pristine blue sky like that and the golden light of a setting sun -- just about any camera takes beautiful pictures.  Especially with such beautiful subject material to shoot!

Can you guess who just got a new pretend sword?  Elliot invested €3.50 of his allowance money, and I'd say he's already gotten a good return on his investment, for all the fun he's had pretending to be Peter, High King of Narnia (we just recently loaned the film from a friend, so he's even singing the movie's theme music as he acts out his glorious battle charges and coronation scenes).

I'm lost.  Like a ship without a wheel, a touch without a feel -- I can't believe it's real.

I've been missing my camera (my Canon 350D) this week.  The camera is still here with me, actually, but the lens is at the shop -- and thus, the camera is useless... We've still got our old Olympus point-and-shoot, so I really shouldn't complain, but I just feel like such a tourist now, taking pictures around town with the little camera.

I've really been enjoying the process of developing my skills in photography over the last six months or so.  Perhaps you haven't noticed this for yourself, but my pictures are often used as blog post when I don't have enough time to write something more complete.  And since I haven't been shooting as much over the last couple of weeks, I haven't been blogging as much over the last couple of weeks.  I'm lost...

Like Elliot, in the picture on the left, trying to figure out if he's standing on the Bredeweg or the Linnaeuskade in Amsterdam's Watergraafsmeer region.

I just ran across this picture, which was taken almost two months ago, and it made me smile... and I haven't posted anything for a couple of days... so I figured I'd share it with you.