Email: "ON THE SCENE: Dutch days"
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What comes to mind when you think of the Dutch? Tulip bulbs? The color orange? Windmills? Wooden shoes? Speed skating? St Nicholas? Cookies? Gouda cheese? Amsterdam’s infamous red light district? Tall, blonde people?


    What didn’t come to my mind was the chef and a couple of his assistants walking backwards down the middle of the dining table, pulling a huge (and I mean huge) pan of steaming mussels.


    “Don’t use a spoon, grab them with your hands. Not so many. Other people have to eat too,” he exhorted. “Come on, quickly now. Put them in your bowls.” The chef was dressed in white, wore wooden shoes, and the table had to be eight feet wide and a good 500 feet long. The patrons sat on benches along either side and eagerly reached forward and dug in to grab five or six hot mollusks. About every 150 feet was a small bonfire. The chef and his assistant placed the monster pan on the fire to crank up the heat a little bit, and would then continue on.


    People didn’t seem to mind that it was raining, not a heavy rain, but still wet is wet. Maybe it was the Dutch beer. The crowd of people with headsets on were dancing in a frenzy to a tune only they could hear. The monster cows were the size of Clydesdales. The street performers were all over the place.


    “How come all you Dutch are so tall and thin?” asked my cousin Barbara, bending backwards to look up at one.


    “Maybe because our food is better that what you eat here and we bike a lot,” answered a man who towered a good 16 inches over her. Indeed, the island and lower Manhattan were filled with hundreds of bikes that could be used for free during the festival.


    “You certainly get plenty of exercise just trying to get your food on a plate,” I said as the mashed potatoes (cooked with apples) went by. 


    Barbara and I, along with several of our other relatives, were on Governors Island just off Manhattan for Friesland Day, a part of the celebration of the Dutch aspect of Quad 400 New Island Festival, an event sponsored by the providence of Friesland from which Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch Governor General of New Amsterdam, hailed —  as well as my own ancestor Peter Claesen Wyckoff, he arriving less gloriously 11 years earlier as a 12-year-old indentured servant to the Rennselaers.


    They did meet; indeed, halfway through Stuyvesant’s tour of duty, Claesen was hired to manage his farmland out in New Armersfoort (Canarsie, Brooklyn), land that he eventually purchased from the peg-legged governor general and, under the hands of many other Dutch farmers, became the most productive farmland in the country for the next two hundred years. What remains is Claesen’s homestead, now the oldest house in New York, the oldest Dutch building in America and one of the half dozen oldest wood-frame houses in America.


    On Friday, at a rededication of a stained glass window of Peter Stuyvesant at St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery, a gift and event sponsored by the Society of Daughters of Holland Dames, I met Jannewietske De Vries, minister of cultural affairs for Friesland.


    “About 20 years ago I met the then-Dutch cultural attache.” I said to her. “I was in charge of events at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, where the consulate wanted to host a reception. Do you know what he did when I said my ancestors were from Friesland?”


    “He stepped backward,” she said.


    “Exactly. He said, you are one of them.”


    She nodded her head with understanding.


    “I said, ‘one of them?’ He said, ‘One of the stubborn ones.’ I said, ‘Wait, the Dutch have a reputation for being stubborn. Are you saying my ancestors came from the stubborn part of a stubborn nation?’ ‘Exactly,’ he said.’”


    “It is so,” De Vries said. “Friesians believe their cows give better milk, their eyes are bluer, and they are very proud of their language. We are Friesians first.”


    While Friesians speak Dutch and English fluently, the language of business and daily life is often in Fries, which can be practically unpronounceable by others. Friesians will take the time to share their opinions about the world in a very direct and forthright manner. They are very relaxed, have a good sense of humor, work hard and enjoy life. With Friesland located on the northwest coast, the people are very connected to the sea, and many are accomplished sailors. They have lived on and nurtured the land for more than 2,000 years. They would say, “It beste lan fan d’ier-die” (the best country on earth).


    On Saturday I met Russell Shorto, author of The Island in the Center of the World, the story of the founding of the Dutch colony in America and how the Dutch values of tolerance and welcoming diversity shaped our country. He was out at the Wyckoff Farmhouse Museum for Boekdag 2009, a celebration of stories old and new that featured readings, book signings, storytelling and tours of the 17th-century house.


    Later I learned that cousin Charlotte Van Horne Squarcy and Matt Jensen of the museum board were hanging out with Crown Prince Willem-Alexander and Princess Maxima of Holland.     “I love the Dutch,” Matt said. “They are so unpretentious. They are so natural. They are so friendly. Their beauty is in their good health and attitude. It isn’t in makeup, surgery or anything artificial.”


    “Their pomegranate ice cream is pretty good too,” I thought, thinking of the dessert served the night before.


   

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