sat 14 jun 2008 07:11:32 — witte de withstraat
quakes, floods, football
when i woke up this morning, the RTV noord holland news was on tv. the presenter started a story about how the smoking ban might spell doom for small neighborhood bars. i thought of "het stoplicht" on the corner of our street, cuz marina and i went there last night. cozy little very dutch place.
next thing on the screen: an interview with the owner of het stoplicht, mohamed qara. a man who is always nice to us, but whose name i never got round to asking. with B roll shots and more interviews w people hanging out in the kroeg.
i think the maddest football fans were elsewhere last night. at stoplicht it was loud and enthusiastic but not irritating. marina and i could still sit in the corner and talk, and look out the window at people walking by with orange wigs or orange cowboy hats. it was still light out when we left, between nine and ten in the evening. the whole neighborhood was pretty quiet. later on as we were sitting on jk's sofa we could hear horns honking in the street, so we figured something good must have happened for holland. turns out they won 4-1 against france.
other news:
during a big earthquake on the island of honshu in japan, a man ran out of his house fearing it would collapse. and got hit by a car.
flooding in the midwest USA has destroyed lots of corn and soy crops, which will probably worsen the worldwide food crisis they've been talking about. in cedar rapids, iowa, the water was up to the car rooves.
and a US congressman named kucinich has called for impeachment of george bush. i'd seen it on a news crawl, suzanne in haarlem wrote to tell me about it, but i was told this is not making headlines in america. (?)