image: themirror.co.uk
Today I have 1000 followers.
It looks good, but I wonder about most of them. On average I get about 50 hits a day and anywhere from five to thirty likes per post, most of them from the same loyal readers. So who are these 1000 followers? Continue reading
I’ve been blogging for about three years now, so this is the third time I’ve been made aware of NaBloPoMo–National Blog Posting Month.
It’s always hard to decide whether or not to join. Continue reading
image from 123thearts.com
Daily prompt: Talents I’d like to have, but don’t. Well, jeez. Where to begin.The thing about talents is that they are per definition great to have. So I’d want them all–why not? Okay, okay, I suppose the idea is to force me to choose the most important one. Well, I’m not going to. I’ll give you my top ten. Number one being the most important, but the others are close followers.
I know I promised in my last post that I would continue with a post about my gear, but I walked into the garage to find my lightweight camping stuff and two steps into it I changed my mind. First our garage will have to be straightened out. Ugh!
Posted in Writing
Tagged being Dutch in America, blogging, education, Facebook page, Gun Violence, healthcare, humor, Opinion, photography, politics, religion, resident alien, Social media, society, Writing
Hey readers,
I have absolutely no inspiration right now. I just read a post by The Byronic Man about being featured on Peg-o-Leg’s Ramblings, and that gave me an idea. Or rather, the idea is to steal this idea. Continue reading
(Image from sodahead.com)
It never ceases to amaze me how so many people in America can live in what has been called a “parallel universe”. A universe Fox News not only helps to create, but apparently believes in itself, as witnessed on election night, when its pundits were taken completely off guard by Obama’s victory.
Posted in Holland, Media, Society, Television, US Politics
Tagged Amerika, blogging, community, conspiracy theories, information, Newtown shooting, Opinion, politics, politiek, Social media, televisie, television, The Netherlands, vuurwapens
‘s up?
I am thankful for my friends. From my best friend since we were almost fifteen and my other Dutch friends, to my friends right next door here in Austin, and everyone in between. I don’t need to blog about my appreciation of them, because I connect with them in other ways. (But if you’re reading this: Hi. I love you.)
Here, I want to give thanks to the blogging friends I’ve made. Continue reading
Tagged blogging, community, friendship, Opinion, religion, Thanksgiving
Ah, it was wonderful, being Freshly Pressed. But it has its downside as well.
Before Being Freshly Pressed (BFP), I was perfectly content with my 72 followers, which meant that about an average of one new reader per week was joining. I was proud of my stats, which showed that my record number of visits in one day was 139. People from an average of ten countries visited my blog each day, and I enjoyed seeing them on Feedjit. Continue reading
Posted in Writing, Writing Prompt Responses
Tagged blogging, blogging awards, Freshly pressed, wordpress, Writing
What an honor! Thank you WordPress. And thanks to everyone who visits my blog. I suddenly got so many likes and responses today that it will take me a while to visit all y’all’s blogs, but I will try. How exciting!
While B was in the hospital, or rather hospitals, blogging kept me from freaking out about things I had no control over. At first I still had several posts to do about the Rockies, and then I started blogging about the hospital experience. Continue reading
Posted in Healthcare, Photography, Writing
Tagged blogging, health, hospitals, photopraphy, stress, Writing
My blog is a year old today! Well, officially I started it in April, but the first two months I was mostly filling it and the hits during that time were mainly mine, because I kept visiting my blog to see what my writing looked like when published. I hadn’t yet discovered that I could preview my posts without them being counted. Continue reading
My goodness, it must be award week! This time I got the Versatile Blogger Award from Sat Nav and Cider, an American blogger in the UK. Check her out. She has beautiful photos of British landscapes.
So now to pay it forward. I will: Continue reading
One of the Mindbump prompts was: What makes your blog different from any others?
Well, I regularly google to see if I can find any other individual Dutch bloggers in America writing about being Dutch here, and I have yet to find a single one. I just can’t believe it! There are tons of Americans in Holland blogging about their expat experiences, and I know there have to be way more Dutch people in America than Americans in Holland, so where are you guys? Continue reading
(For my Dutch-English translating and proofreading business, please go to my D-E Translating WordPress site. Thank you.)
Welcome to my blog.
I’m a 57-year-old Dutch immigrant. I didn’t come to America for a better life. My life was just peachy in the Netherlands. I came here for love — no other reason. I met my American husband while on vacation in Scotland. He tried to get a job in the private sector in Holland, but since he could only speak two languages — neither of them was Dutch and English really didn’t count, because everyone in the Netherlands can speak English –that wasn’t going well. So I moved to America. To the Rio Grande Valley first, and after twelve looooong, hot years we moved to Austin, where we’ve now lived for almost twelve years as well.
I love living in Austin but I’m chock-full of criticism of America in general. The Rockies bring me to tears, but so does the health care system. I’ve adopted Thanksgiving, but not the Pledge of Allegiance. If I seem elated and unbearably grouchy in sometimes dizzyingly quick succession, this is why.
I love the usual: my husband, my children, my friends and our pets. I hate heat, willful ignorance, bone spurs, spiders, and walking or cycling in place.
I collect raft books and I’ve developed a weird obsession with the bottoms of bridges.
When I lived in the Netherlands, twenty-three years ago, I loved hot tea, wild camping in Great Britain, gardening, reading for days on end, and I walked and cycled everywhere. Now that I live in a pretty darn hot part of the U.S., with kids who have to be driven everywhere by car, I love reminiscing about hot tea, wild camping in Great Britain, gardening, reading for days on end and walking and cycling everywhere…
My blog is a crazy—some might say completely unhinged–collection of posts about any of the above-mentioned issues and then some. Nothing is sacred. I blatantly ignore all American no-nos. Which means I talk politics, religion, I don’t idolize teachers and I swear (though not that much — well, maybe a bit more than usual since November 2016).
As you read my posts you might laugh, seethe, weep or shrug your shoulders. If you like a post, great. Let me know. If you hate a post, great, let me know. I like to think I’m always right, but don’t let that stop you from telling me if you disagree. We Dutch love a good debate.
If you want to know more about how I got here and an overview of how that’s been, visit my About page.
Otherwise, have at it!
(In my posts, I refer to my husband as T, my 21-year-old son as B, and my 18-year-old daughter as R.)
Posted in Writing
Tagged America, Amerika, Barbara Backer, Barbara Backer-Gray, blogging, Dutch, emigrant, immigrant, kultuurverschillen, Nederland, Netherlands, Opinion, resident alien, United States, Verenigde Staten
In the late 60s Richard Proenneke built his own cabin in the Alaskan wilderness with only a few simple tools. He spent most of the rest of his life there. Sam Keith fleshed out Proenneke's diary of his first 16 months, when he was making his home by a lake. I love these kinds of books!
An old Oji-Cree healer and her nephew canoe down a river in Canada, away from the world of white people. They both have to come to terms with their past. The woman has lost most of her tribe and the young man is traumatized from his recent experience in the Belgian trenches of World War One. My second book by Boyden. Can't say enough about him.
An incredibly comprehensive history of everything related to slavery in the Southern United States, from the beginning of the colonies to the end of the Civil War. Over 700 pages and I took over 30 pages of notes. I will be sharing over many posts to come!
Hamid's debut novel. I love this author. A young man in Lahore, Pakistan, is the victim of love, drugs, obsession, the class system and his complete lack of self-awareness.
A golem, created in Poland and brought to life on a ship to America, and a jinni who was trapped in a flask a thousand years ago and released in New York -- the most unusual immigrants you'll ever meet.
The only part of her life a Korean woman can control is her body, so she withdraws into it. Harrowing.
Autobiography lightly disguised as a novel about the son of Southern migrants growing up on the streets of Harlem, New York City, in the 1940s and 50s. Written like you're hearing the whole story in a bar. Quite a feat.
The story of a man struggling to make a living in Morocco. No plot, no clearly defined characters, but fascinating in its authenticity.
Pakistani man tells an American about his experience as a college student and employee of an assessment firm in America years ago. Smart, nuanced and pretty darn honest considering the unreliable narrator.
Wow! The answer to the inane platitudes about how all parents love their children and how children should always respect their parents. The protagonist must come to terms with his deeply flawed immigrant parents in order to change himself.
Seven short stories about life during the Kim Il-sung regime, by a writer who still lives and works in North Korea, were smuggled out of the country and translated. Mind-boggling stuff.
A 15-year-old autistic narrator wants to know who killed a neighbor's dog, and ends up much further out of his comfort zone than he planned. Wonderful read!
In politics, education, religion, agriculture, business--it turns out that dumbing down has been here from the start.
Fifty years of Istanbul seen through the eyes of a street vendor who migrates to the city as a young boy. It's also a window into the complicated dance between men and women in Turkey.
Hey, don't laugh, at least I'm trying.
A Norwegian immigrant is cooped up with six other people on a tiny island off the coast of Maine all winter in 1873. A woman in the present researching the Norwegian immigrant is cooped up with three other people on a tiny sailboat. What could possibly go wrong?
A man stuck between two worlds in more ways than one. Fascinating!
Historical novel about early contacts between first nations and the French in Canada. Beautifully written story that doesn't pull any punches. I bought his other two novels right away.
Beautifully written. By my children's favorite English and Creative Writing teacher! It's got rave reviews and we're all very proud of her.
Suki Kim is a Korean-American journalist. She poses as an evangelical Christian posing as an English teacher at a school for the sons of North Korea's elite. Her experience and the information she manages to get via writing assignments are incredible. Definitely a lot more eye-opening that any CNN special.
This. Explains. Everything!!!
Why has Islam not undergone a reformation like Christianity? Why is it so easy for Islamic extremist groups like IS to recruit young muslims? What would it take for Islam in fundamentalist Islamic countries to enter modernity? Does the West have a role to play?
Amazing! A man wanders endlessly through a dreamscape, becoming other people, himself in the past, everything is fluid. Kafkaesque disconnect between people and their different needs.
A multi-layered novel about the history of Libya. A fast read, but one you can repeat and find something new each time.
Twelve Americans go missing in Burma/Myanmar during a tour. Touching and hilarious, but mostly hilarious.
The most unusual murder mystery I've ever read. Incredible writing. It haunted me for days.
The quote on the front mentions that these stories are exhilerating. I couldn't disagree more. They are almost unbearably painful to read, and yet I couldn't put them down. Very well done, apart from the third story, which is written in the second tense. Please let me know if you know of ONE story that works in second tense.
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Fascism, Nationalism and Authoritarianism in U.S. History
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Wanderers on two wheels!
Quintin Lake's photographic Journey walking around Britain's Coast
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Historian, Folklorist, Writer, Re-enactor, Museum Professional. Follow me on Twitter: @stuartorme
“I have tried my best to keep my country alive by writing about it.” - Nuruddin Farah
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een amerikaanse schrijft over liefde, ouderschap & volwassen worden in nederland
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Resident Alien -- Being Dutch in America 