Persephone Abbott

Posts from the “History” Category

Illumination

Posted on January 6, 2026

2025 was a bit of a deadbeat year for me. Having cancelled one vacation due to poor health, it dawned upon me that life could end up being short. And then the medical news I was expecting wasn’t too bad after all. So, it boiled down to what did I want to do with myself for New Year’s Eve? The people of the Netherlands have an unreasonable attraction to extreme amounts fireworks. Just the thought of this overindulgence provokes me to immediately plan to depart the country before the end of the year. And how many more New Year’s Eves was I going to experience at my age? Too many in the Netherlands or not enough elsewhere? I wasn’t feeling up to taking a…

Categories: History, Tourism

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Prague To Budapest

Posted on June 27, 2025

I have to admit that I am becoming a bit of a fan of the Austro-Hungarian empire. And I am not talking politics. Having paid much less attention to this particular historical region of Europe than others, I realized the inevitable fairly early on while in Prague. I’d have to review history to understand the buildings and their historical context for this trip.  *** During one of my last days in Prague I had a mind to visit the Museum of Decorative Arts. The main displays weren’t quite what I was hoping to see. The interior of the building, though, looked like a mix between a festive birthday cake and a fantasy set for a First Communion celebration and it was around then that…

Categories: History, Memory, Mindfulness, Tourism

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Reflections in Aachen 2025

Posted on May 3, 2025

In 1984 I visited Germany for the first time. Although I didn’t get to visit Aachen in 1984, I definitely wanted to see Aachen. Having read up on Charlemagne during my high school’s medieval history class I well understood the core concepts: throne, crowning, important location.   Instead of Aachen in 1984, I was placed as a summer exchange student in a small town in Westfalia. It was a beautiful town with gabled houses and a medieval ruin. I took walks, but as I was socially not very outgoing, you might say I didn’t “react” well to being in a small town. I started to watch Herz zu Herz (Hart to Hart dubbed in German which is the only way to watch Hart to Hart…

Categories: Autism, History, Memory, Tourism

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Some thoughts while transcribing my father’s memoir on his acceptance of Zen Buddhism and his relationship with Kobun Chino Roshi 

Posted on April 12, 2025

I was, by all means, skeptical. My father had never shown any interest in organized religion, but there he was in front of me in his study in Longmont, Colorado. He was talking to me about sewing up his little pouch and explaining how my mother had helped him.  This was possibly a few years after his refuge vow ceremony which I missed. At the time I had been in the process of moving from Singapore back to the Netherlands. I don’t recall if I actually had been invited to witness his vows. It seems to me that I had been told about the occasion and was, in some way, expected to show up. Didn’t I understand the importance?  In years prior to Keith’s…

Categories: History, Memory, Mindfulness

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Paradise

Posted on March 31, 2025

I had thought about it. The American Photography exhibition at the Rijksmuseum. Then my phone via Facebook or Instagram or Osmosis-Goo suggested that I seriously consider buying a ticket, like right now, click the link and chakka-gotcha! The Rijksmuseum sits just around the corner from my apartment, a five minute walk. Motivated, I took the bait. Walking through the exhibit at 9 a.m. on a Monday morning, I thought about my age. From my memory bank I can understand the subject matter in the photographs, either because I was already born or my grandparents were alive during the early to mid 20th century era or because the historical photographs of locations were still somewhat recognizable to what I recall seeing when I lived in…

Categories: History, Memory, Mindfulness

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After the Diagnosis: Part Eight

Posted on February 13, 2025

It’s one of my favorite buildings in Amsterdam and it happens to be called a palace. But the building was not designed to be a palace. Magnificent, Amsterdam’s City Hall was the first Republic building of its sort in Europe. Napoleon, after invading the country, transformed the city hall into a palace and, to this day, the building is retained as a royal residence.  On the occasion of the fiftieth birthday of the King of the Netherlands, the palace – once the celebrated invitees to the state dinner in honor of King Willem-Alexander had departed – was opened to the public. To gain entry all I had to do was sign up online for a timed spot, free of charge. That particular April night…

Categories: Amsterdam, Autism, History, Mindfulness

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After the Diagnosis: Part Five

Posted on January 26, 2025

I would really like to go mudlarking. I daydream about this possibility. Wait, hold up – such a funny word daydreaming. As opposed to night dreaming. I don’t think I have ever dreamt about mudlarking at night. At least I have never woken up thinking that I almost took hold of a miniscule and wafer thin rose farthing only to watch it gently slip out of my grasp by the force of a passing wave as a seagull squawked overhead. (Pan camera angle to grey sky.) Yes, Nicola White’s mudlarking YouTube videos entrance me. Occasionally she finds spectacular things like a whole Roman pot in an estuary, but most of the time the finds are odds and ends. But still items that  can tell…

Categories: Autism, History, Mindfulness

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Thoughts on Richard Brautigan’s A Confederate General in Big Sur

Posted on October 20, 2024

“There was a ship going someplace. It was a Norwegian ship. Perhaps it was going back to Norway, carrying the hides of 163 cable cars, as part of the world commerce deal. Ah, trade: one country exchanging goods with another country, just like in grade school. They traded a rainy spring day in Oslo for 163 cable car hides from San Francisco.” (Excerpt from A Confederate General in Big Sur by Richard Brautigan, 1965.) I first read A Confederate General in Big Sur when I was a teenager and I just finished reading it for the second time. I would like to think that this novel has made the same impression upon me as forty something odd years ago, however I must say that…

Categories: Book, History, Memory

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My Mennonite Heritage: The Ratzlaffs

Posted on August 9, 2024

I have a great fondness for documentation. I always have and I love that I am the present day keeper of my great-great grandfather’s Bible which is in both German and English. It’s precious to me that it has come down through the passages of time and remains in family hands. However, in more recent times, the tragic disppearance of my father’s important archival materials represents not only the loss of the Abbott family archives, but also signifies the mysterious disappearance of materials of some historical importance to the literary world. I am looking for Keith Kumasen Abbott’s missing archival materials which were taken from the house on 1046 Grant Street in Longmont Colorado. Where did it go? Who has it now? But back…

Categories: History

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The Professor’s Apples

Posted on May 14, 2022

On my wall there was a modest space available, large enough for a mirror, but then I thought, no, not a new mirror, better find a secondhand mirror, maybe oval or maybe rectangular. I felt there was an element missing between the paintings hanging on my wall and, besides, the middle part of my studio, the part between the front windows and the back balcony was a bit dark at times. A mirror might help. Did I, and I asked myself this while standing on the Keizersgracht one evening with a small object between my hands, favor this little mirror, poorly wedged into an old chipped frame? Someone had put it out on the street. I thought not. Months later, I passed by a…

Categories: Amsterdam, History

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