memory

More on my father. Last post I mentioned that he made me feel right with my life. Isn't that what fathers are meant to do? I tend not to trust my memory when it's events I'm recalling. Those memories could be the collective memory of family stories. I do trust memories of feelings. Nobody can know how I felt so those memories are mine. So when I say my father made me feel right, that's a powerful memory specifically associated with my dad.

I'm not minimizing the value of collective memory because that's the family history that I'm attempting to save for Maya to draw on when it's her turn to tell the stories. They will change over time but the kernel of truth will remain constant.

My father was the non-intellectual son in a household of intellectuals. He was the last born and entered the world when my Opa was already on the downward slide of prideful self- destruction. His business was failing because he wouldn't allow his shop to be unionized. He had used up his wife's dowry and the family was forced to move often. Because my aunts were older, their academic patterns were already established, but my dad was still a young lad and couldn't hold his own in in the ever changing schools. So when Oma's cousin, my Jewish Tante Betsy settled scholarships on Oma's children, she was advised not to waste her money on Jan, because he was not a scholar. He was expected to learn a trade and go to work.

Opa (my grandfather) had won many awards for his craft. He was a first-class lithographer and book-binder who taught my dad his trade. Although my father never regretted learning the trade, it was a far cry from his dream of becoming a veterinarian. My father learned to settle very early. Once my Opa died, my father decided to leave the business of book making and emigrate to Canada as a farm worker. He had learned horsemanship as a conscript in the Dutch army and felt he had the requisite brawn and skills to make a good farm hand. It also allowed him the opportunity of escaping the orbit of his mother and sisters. They were not impressed with his decision but wisely offered little resistance. That is how my father came to Canada the first time, at the age of twenty-one. He began his love affair with Canada then and it remained steadfast until his untimely death at 52.

That trip opened the world to him. He started on a farm in the Hamilton area and eventually became a horse trainer just outside Ottawa. There are some wonderful photos of a handsome young farmer leaning against a Model T Ford with one foot on the running board. Other photos show a more mature man wearing a fedora style hat, leading a horse out of a stable. These were adventures prior to his meeting my mother. Once he met my mother he was already very ill with a lung infection that spelled the end of his happy life in Canada. He would be deported back to Holland once he was discharged from the hospital. My mother was his nurse.

Reflecting on my dad

I need to stop and reflect on my dad a while, lest you think I was only influenced by the women and not my father. In fact my father was extremely present in my life. I adored him and he loved me deeply. We were bound together in a secret pact to circumvent the Hogenkamp women. Our conspiracy started early.

The bonding experience was story-telling, not so much books, more adventure stories we made up as we went along. Long continuing sagas in which my dad and I featured heavily. We were the protagonists and it was wonderful. We sailed dangerous seas, took amazing trains, lived on a farm (always) with all the animals necessary to a great farm. We weren't so much super heroes, as super farmers. There were always horses, not donkeys, although I didn't object to including donkeys. Some horses had magic powers like mind reading, flight and great loyalty. These tall tales went on for many, many years across the ocean and settled in Canada. This was a logical place to end up, because the amazing farm of the stories was always in Canada.

My dad loved Canada. It represented freedom from the stiff formality of (burger) middle class Holland. Freedom from all the little duties and rituals that were inherent in Dutch life. Canada was where he went on the Farm Worker plan in the late 1920s to escape his formidable mother and his over- achieving sisters. He climbed out from under their obsession with "duty and honour". In Canada my father could be the simple farmer he so respected. It must have been a devastating blow when he became so ill in 1931, he was deported back to Holland with nothing to show for his absence but a box of phonograph records. And most of them broke in transit.

He also took back with him the memory of a nurse's sunny smile and her address. He corresponded with that nurse for seven years before he proposed to her. To his utter amazement she accepted his proposal and sailed to Holland to marry him in 1939. He renovated a beautiful spacious apartment to conform to Canadian standards of plumbing and kitchen set up. The lived in Scheveningen, cycled all over the countryside, visited all the great museums and art galleries while my mother was learning Dutch. She needed to lose her Canadian accent as quickly as possible. My dad never stopped loving my mother until his death.

According to my mother, my dad was always chivalrous, very kind, handsome and tall (6' 4").
According to military protocol, he clicked his heels and bowed his head when greeting a lady. My Canadian mom really found such formality a bit too much and persuaded him to stop doing it with her.

Somewhere between biking and bowing my mother became pregnant and my father, my Oma and my Tantes were thrilled and delighted. The clouds of war were darkening the skies over Europe, and my dad was called back into the military. He had been conscripted in his early twenties and served in Her Majesty's Royal Dutch Army before he emigrated to Canada. It was in the army that he learned to train horses and ride competitively, and now with war looming they called him up again.

I was born in March 1940 and the Dutch surrendered to Germany in May 1940. My dad became a prisoner of war with the rest of the Dutch Army. In fact there were so many Dutch prisoners of war, the Germans didn't know what to do with them all. So they were released and sent home. He came back to Den Haag and resumed his position at KLM. He joined a very different army in the early days of the war and became a member of the Dutch Resistance.

Thus began two lives for our family. Normal life - father a KLM young executive with a lovely "Dutch" wife and young child; secret life - resistance soldier, courier and distributor of forged documents for Jews and political prisoners in hiding (Onderduikers). His child grew up in a world of adults, with few opportunities to play with other children. Children innocently blab about their papas not being home when they should be and the to and fro of visitors, so it was safer if these children didn't play outside with other children. I was allowed to play with occasional children who I discovered years later, had parents in the resistance also. In fact, so close was the bond between these special families, we remained friends for the rest of our lives. My friends in Holland today are the children of my father's allies. Paula de Groot, is the daughter of our family doctor de Groot; Ineke Achiles daughter of neighbors who shared the hidden short wave radio; Martien vd Steenhoven, my sister in spirit and daughter of my beloved Oom Steen (Gert vd Steenhoven) my dad's dear friend. We are the descendants of the "secret army".

As a small child I only knew the normal- life father, who was fun and told stories; who took me for donkey rides, and who made life feel right. Much later the parallel story came out.

Tante Jo - A Knight of the House of Orange

I had the least identification with Tante Jo. Johanna Hogenkamp was the eldest of Oma's three children and she brought the greatest honour to our family. Her long career in education received many accolades and public honours while she lived a most ordinary and private personal life. She was the "man" of the family, the caretaker, overseeing the budget, and insuring Oma's well being. While Ina could take risks and be more flamboyant, it was Jo's steady dedication to duty that made Ina's freedom possible.

My recollections are of a jolly, humorous and generous woman, who loved nature, books and enjoyed reading to me. Not having the cursed hair lip like Ina, gave her an advantage in the marriage market. She had been prettier, less haughty, and more popular. My father said that she had received an offer of marriage and was seriously considering it when it all fell through due to some interference from her mother. My father darkened when he reflected on it. The fiance was deemed unsuitable in some way and that ended all discussion. Since social class was very important, I suspect that he was not from the right class.

If Jo was disappointed, she didn't show it. Being of a practical nature, she concentrated on her education and forged a career in teaching and later curriculum development and administration. It was a great concern to Jo that while working class boys could be educated in trade schools, there was nothing available to working class girls. How were these young women to support themselves in the absence of husbands and fathers. The war was a great leveler and Jo saw first hand the hardships endured by a nation without men.

Men between 16 and 45 were routinely rounded up and deported to German labour camps where conditions were very harsh. Many never returned. There would be sudden raids where whole districts were cordoned off while soldiers went from house to house rounding up the men and boys. A branch of the resistance became amazingly adept at anticipating which neighbourhood would be next and getting the warning out. Over time, fewer men would be caught in the German net. Although Nazi propaganda told the Dutch they were Aryan brothers, the Nazis, in reality, had no qualms about enslaving their "brothers" as needed.

Jo designed a trade school for girls that taught all the skills a girl would need to be employed in domestic service, hospitals, business and light industry. Looking from this point in time, it seems such a sexist concept, but in post war Holland, it was revolutionary. Jo lobbied tirelessly and eventually a pilot school was begun in Den Haag. In very short order schools for working class girls were launched throughout Holland and their success underlined the state's recognition that women needed to be self sufficient in a post war Holland. In the late forties and early fifties women outnumbered men. She was Principal of the pilot school, wrote books and lectured on the subject.

In today's society, equal education for both genders of all social strata is the norm. Jo's girls schools are long gone: an anachronism. But, it should be remembered that they paved the way for social change in education. Fortunately the Ridder Order advisory committee recognized Jo's pioneering role in education and she was invested a Knight in the House of Orange by HRH Queen Julianna. The van den Bergs finally stopped patronizing my Oma after that.

Meanwhile, Tante Jo continued to be the stable family caretaker. She read every book Dutch, and English on her towering bookshelves, continued to write articles for education journals and enjoyed the simple pleasures of a daily walk in the dunes by the sea. Her greatest enjoyment came from children's literature and she continued to revue them well into her retirement.

I don't think it ever crossed her mind to regret her unmarried status.

Back to the Hogenkamp women.

Tante Ina was a very unlikely candidate for heroism. She was certainly strong and could be noble, but she saw herself as deeply flawed. Ina was born with a hair lip, a family defect, that was underlined by her parents when she was named after my Oma's sister Clazien who also had a hair lip. Needless to say, the aunt and niece did not like one another. To be so scarred in those days meant certain spinsterhood. Realizing that at an early age, Ina devoted herself to a career and education, becoming a language teacher. Her specialty was German, as well as English and French. She could slip smoothly from one language into another. She was a good and respected teacher but poorly understood by her mostly male colleagues. High school and college level education was male stronghold in the early forties. Ina was an unappealing intellectual woman, an interloper.

During the occupation, she volunteered to be a negotiator for the release of arrested academics. Tall and stately, her bearing, dignity and skill with the German language took her into Nazi headquarters regularly. I can understand the respect the Nazis had for her. Ina was no game player. Since she didn't believe she had sex appeal, she used her class and intellect to impress. The German high-command was very class conscious. She must have been good because she got people released. I'm sure her patronizing male colleagues were more than pleased to let her take those risks. And risks there were. My Oma used to say that whenever Ina went into Nazi headquarters, she never knew if she would come out again. If Ina was afraid, she never let on.

What drove Ina to take those risks and stand so firm? There was one seminal event that could explain it. In the early forties when the occupation was still young, the Nazis began the systematic ghettoization of Holland's Jews. There was a big Jewish population in the cities, many of whom had arrived in 1938 and 39, from Austria, Germany and points east believing that Holland would stay neutral. After the 1938 Crystal Nacht, Jews in Germany who had the means to flee, did. Dutch Jews were very assimilated and had never experienced life in a Ghetto. Tante Ina was assigned to teach in the Ghetto elementary school in Amsterdam. She worked in consultation with the Rabbis to deliver a religiously sensitive curriculum.Very unusual for the time. She enjoyed teaching the Jewish children. She enjoyed their intellectual curiosity and grew to love her charges.

On weekends she travelled home to Den Haag and would return to Amsterdam on Monday mornings. One Monday morning on a beautiful day she arrived at the school to prepare for the day. There was not a soul in sight. It was eerily still. No children's voices, nor running feet and no laughter. Just empty streets and a silent school yard. She spotted the janitor and asked, "where is everyone?" He gave her a startled look and said "oh my God, nobody told you? They took them away last night". Ina asked in horror, "even the children?" "Everyone" he replied.

It was such a shocking experience, that years later as an old lady with Alzheimer's, she would tell and retell this story with tears streaming down her face. "I should have done more" she would say.

It was that event that decided my Tante Ina to join the Dutch Resistance.

Moving forward in time - Alfie and me. .

This post will be moved into the Mies era later. Mies was the Calico female kitten, I adopted after I married Alfred Pinsky in 1961. We met (Alfie and me, that is) when I was an art student at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia). I was a freshman who had won the University's scholarship to attend their art college.

Alfred Pinsky was a dynamic teacher with a passionate love of the Arts. He had a monumental knowledge of Art History and made it come alive for us. He has been described as having the best eyes in Canada, meaning he could spot the best in art and artists. I learned more from his composition and art criticism classes than from all the teachers combined, that came later.

Alfie was funny, irreverent and daring. From him, I learned to take risks and break rules as long as they were based in truth. No effect was encouraged that didn't have artistic integrity. But rules were meant as guidelines only.

I was eighteen when I entered University, a middle-class suburban girl with a background in Art appreciation and a healthy disdain for authority. I was enthralled by this learned, intense Jew with the laughing eyes. That should have been where it ended, but it didn't. Alfie had good eyes as I said, and saw in me a great modelling medium. He could mold me to reach for the stars. It didn't hurt that I was also young (19 years his junior) a WASP, very tall and beautiful. He used his mind to seduce me and ultimately married me when I turned 21.

Thus began my journey into maturity. He was a partner with Goodridge Roberts in a Laurentian farm where we built a house and converted the barn and chicken coop into studios. Goodridge and his wife Joan occupied the original farm house. A lot of art was produced there over the next eight years. We enjoyed a wonderful, creative life on that farm and I am grateful for the many years of friendship we all shared. I worked daily in my sculpture studio/chicken coop and my output was prodigious.

When Alfie wasn't in his painting studio/stable, he was in Montreal at the University. He had rapidly moved to professor status and then Chairman. He designed the art program to meet North American standards for a degree granting faculty of Fine Arts and they developed a Masters Program second to none. Ultimately, Alfie became Dean of Arts but the was after my time.

I became one of Canada's first Pop Sculptors (I preferred New Realist) but what's in a name. My exhibition schedule was becoming grueling: Musee des Beaux Arts, Musee Contemporaine du Quebec; New Brunswick, Lord Beaverbrook Gallery; Agnes Etherington Gallery; University of Saskatchewan; Winnepeg and Edmonton Galleries, Dorothy Cameron and Agnes Lefort galleries, Stratford and Place des Arts group expos, etc. etc. I was growing exhausted and not enjoying my work anymore.

In the sixties, a new medium had been developed to make fiber glass boats using Polyester and Epoxy resins. Harry Hollander, the inventor of the process coached me on its use and even featured me in his book "Plastics for Artists". I was becoming everything that Alfie had hoped for. Talk about your trophy wife. The very model of a "brilliant" partner.

I had no idea what I hoped for because my life was so intertwined with his. I think I believed we were happy, but, three developments were the hairline cracks in the veneer of our perfect life together:

• I was growing very weak and feeling sick all the time and was diagnosed with severe anemia. It took a dedicated country doctor to discover the cause from reading a medical journal from Britain. An article described all my symptoms in British plastics factory workers. Anemia, kidney failure, low libido, no appetite and exhaustion. He drove up to the farm and asked me what materials I was using, how often, and the key question - what type of ventilation. All my answers made it clear that the materials I was using were slowly, silently killing me. I had to stop immediately. Alas, I didn't.

I had been awarded a Canada Council Grant to mount an important solo exhibition in the Sir George Williams At Gallery for the spring of 1968. It was the fall of 67 and I was only half ready so I couldn't stop. I continued to work with that material in a poorly ventilated studio for six more months.

• The second crack was not unrelated. I had wanted to get pregnant for some time. Alfie was not enthused by my parenting needs. He never said no, he just let me know that a child would mean the end of my sculpting career. He also suggested that as a mother, I would hold less interest for him; that my true vocation was as an artist and I shouldn't sell myself short.

This was not a response that inspired confidence but I became pregnant anyway - twice. Twice I miscarried (possibly due in part to the poison in my system). I miscarried alone because I was afraid to tell him that I was pregnant. Looking back I can say there was something seriously wrong with that picture.

• The final crack developed from my Sir George Williams University exhibition. The opening date coincided with the 1968 Computer Race Riots. The first large scale student uprising in Canada. The school was in lock down. I was advised to cancel my show because the students who were occupying the campus would destroy my work and the public couldn't get in to see it anyway. My husband and I ended up in opposing camps. I went ahead with the show, betting that the students would not vandalize it. I also felt the message in my work had everything to do with the students' issues and less to do with public access. So the critics came by special invitation, praised and publicised my show, but nobody could get in to see it. By that decision, I threw a huge spanner into the harmony of our marriage. It demonstrated that I was a generation removed from the establishment that Alfie had become. Oh, and as I predicted, the students didn't damage my work and the gallery was open to them throughout the sit-in.

After the show was over, Alfie and I understood that we were packing up our marriage with my work. We carried on, sort of, till spring 1969 and then I moved out.

I left Alfie holding the "most interesting" part of me: my sculptures. There's no space for sculpture in a furnished room anyway.

For better or worse, I became my own person.

Those Hogenkamp Women

It's time to talk a little about the Hogenkamp women - my tutors, my protectors, my mothers. I add my mother because once she married my father she became a Hogenkamp in spirit and life.

Let's start with my mom, Florence Balharrie - She arrived in Holland in 1939, having sailed on the Queen Mary 1 from New York to England where my father boarded to accompany her across the North Sea to Holland. I suspect he wanted to prep her to meet the fearsome trio of Maria Hogenkamp (my Oma), Johanna Hoenkamp (Tante Jo) and Claziene Hogenkamp (Tante Ina) who would be dockside in Rotterdam. I don't know how the meeting and greeting went. The absence of family stories suggests that the first encounter was strained and very polite. The Hogenkamp's oral history has it that my mother was liked immediately and warmly welcomed into the family with a cup of tea and a "gebakje". My mother did allow that everyone was very kind and she was very nervous.

What was a 27 year old nurse from Canada doing in Holland in 1939 with the clouds of war hovering over Europe? She came to marry the tall 29 year old Dutchman she had nursed in the Ottawa Civic Hospital some seven years earlier. She didn't know anyone in Holland except my father and yet she left her affluent family home to come to the unknown. Years later she claimed that she sensed going to Holland and marrying my father would "save" her. Save her from what? The narrowness of her Ottawa life and the limitations of her family.

My father was much more clear. He met a nurse with the sunniest smile and the warmest laugh and loved her immediately. Once he recovered and was discharged from hospital, he was deported back to Holland. It was the Immigration policy of the time to deport all immigrants who became too ill to work. Since my father entered Canada under the Farm Labour Act, he forfeited his part of the agreement to work by becoming seriously ill (we never claimed it was a fair policy). Before returning to Holland, he asked if he could correspond with his favourite nurse. She agreed and so began a seven year courtship by mail.

Once he was settled with a good job at KLM, he asked her to be his wife and she said yes in spite of his warning that war in Europe could be immanent. Her answer to that was, "I would rather be with you in war, than without you". Very romantic and so naive: she hadn't the faintest notion what war would be like.

My mom was much more courageous than she ever gave herself credit for. I can't think of too many women who would pull up stakes, go to a foreign land where she didn't speak the language, settle into her future mother - in - law's home, proceed immediately to learn a new language and marry a man she learned to love by correspondence. Once the the Nazis invaded, she also was in danger of being arrested as an enemy alien (Canada, as a member of the British Empire, had declared war with Britain). She could never risk speaking English in public again. With my Tantes' help, her Dutch became impeccable and as a result, I learned to speak Dutch and English interchangeably with my earliest words.

My Oma, Maria van den Berg, came from a family of means, land and education. She was formidable - strong minded, stern and very dignified. As was the custom of the day, she always wore widow's weeds. The country was full of older women in somber clothing because there were many widows after the First World War, "the war to end all wars". Oma ran a tight ship of moral rectitude, duty and good reputation. That was her face to the world.

I knew a warm, loving and funny Oma that always had time for me. She adored her only grandchild, and I adored her. She was strict but never patronizing. I spent two days each week in her care and loved every minute of it. I made tents from the bedding, played dolls under the table, helped her with the cooking and ate up her stories. Stories about little girls who overcame many obstacles. There was never a prince charming in Oma's stories. She knew better. We would both take a nap after lunch in her great bed. When visiting in the country, we sat facing each other in a hammock as she invented tales about little girls and animals. At two or three, I collected a pail full of rabbit turds and proudly presented them to her. Oma commended me for my diligence and generosity before disposing of those nice round pellets - rather like me praising Chester when he would bring me a mouse.

Oma was also the fulcrum around whom the family turned, the glue that held us together and was the book keeper who collected my Tantes' wages to measure out the regular debt repayment. To me, it seemed she was afraid of nothing. But she had a big fear. That of losing face. Respect was everything.

She had another fear as well. She was afraid for the safety of her family after son Jan and daughter Ina had both enlisted in the Dutch Resistance and placed themselves in harm's way. She was proud of them, didn't discourage them, but deep down, I think she wished they hadn't joined.

More about my Tantes later. It grows late.

April 4,2009 - Student Art Show

A quick look at today - Peterborough School of Art Student Exhibition.

I went with Megan and Freya. It was very exciting to have a sculpture in an exhibition after 39 years - even a little student show. The last show I saw my work exhibited was in was a great deal bigger, the "People in the Park" exhibition at the Stratford Art Gallery in 1968. It was a show of national importance which was written up in several international Art Mags.

I was happier at today's little opening, than I was then. Alfie and I were splitting up and went to the Stratford opening as a formality. I remember slipping away amid all the adulation to sit quietly by myself. Alfie had given me flowers for the first time in our entire married life. It was in response to having asked him why he never saw me as a woman and not just as his clever wife. He was startled. He'd never thought about it. So on this occasion, he bought me a big bouquet of flowers. Too little, too late. I was wondering where I would go after the triumph at Stratford, The Venice Biennale? Then I began to cry because knew I couldn't go on. I would never be free if I kept chasing Alfie's dreams. The marriage was over and with that, the resources to sculpt.

Today's little exhibition was a true triumph - it celebrated me recovering a piece of my self. It celebrated overcoming barriers and fears. I bought myself flowers.

Back to my past..

It is so complicated this thing called memory. Some memories are sharp and some are vague. Where do my own memories begin and the collective family memories end? How do I tell them apart and does it matter?

Some memories are clearly mine and go back very far. How do I know them to be mine? Because no-one else ever talked about them. Here are a few early ones in no particular order:

• It is dark and I'm in my crib supposedly asleep. It's very still outside. I suddenly hear foot steps running, and a voice shouting "Halt". Nothing and then more running. Shots echo in the empty street. No more running just men talking, words that are not Dutch. My father checks on me, but I pretend to be asleep. I must be about three.

• Looking out the window at the broad Escamplaan boulevard. There are people with pails and baskets smacking the pavement with tools (chisels and axes maybe). I have no idea what they are doing. Later I'm told they are chopping up the asphalt to take home for fuel. It was the hunger winter so it must have been 1944. It was a brutally cold winter and the people had almost nothing to eat and no fuel to keep warm.

• I was two and a half, when I was first aware of Christmas. It was Christmas Eve and the door into the parlor had been closed all day. There was scurrying in and out but I was not allowed to see. Once it was dark my parents led me through the mysteriously closed door. There on the table was a small tree festooned with tiny decorations made from walnut shells, acorns, and pine cones, painted gold and silver, hung on the branches with red ribbons. My mother must have been making them for weeks while I slept. Most of all I remember the bright glow of all the small candles alight on the tree to symbolize the Christ candle - birth of Jesus. It was pure magic. In all the deprivation of the occupation, I don't know where my father got a tree and my mother must have been hoarding candles for months. They produced a miracle in this small child's life. I have loved small trees ever since.

• I also remember very well the ominous night they came for my father. My Tante Ina was at our place. She had put me to bed early and told me I was sick. I didn't feel sick, but since Tante Ina could be quite resolute, I was sick. My mother was in bed in my parents bedroom, also sick. Both rooms were in darkness. My father was away on Red Cross business I was told. They came up the stairs and into our flat. My Tante opened my bedroom door to let the men look in. There was a man in uniform and a man in a leather trench coat framed in the doorway, with the light behind them. They looked in, my aunt said something in German, they nodded and withdrew. I was probably four and aware that I had to keep very still. I remember fear. I was afraid.

Much later the true story was told. My father, had been a member of the resistance movement, and was not away doing Red Cross work. He was hiding in my parents room, on the top shelf of the closet rolled up in a blanket when the Gestapo arrived to take him away. Someone had informed on him but he had been tipped off that they were looking for him. He was approaching the KLM office when he saw the blind on his window was lowered. This was the prearranged signal for danger. He didn't enter the building but walked to his mother's place, where he and his sister Ina hatched the plan that saved him.

On such short notice he had to hide at home. Once hidden, Ina took over. She was a German history scholar and very familiar with the German psyche. She spoke fluent educated German. She created a sick house to ward off a careful search because the Germans were phobic about illness. When the Gestapo arrived she explained the nature of the illness and asked them to be quiet because mother and child were both asleep and very contagious. So instead of doing a thorough search they kept their distance, hovering in the bedrooms doorways, and avoided the closet. My father was spared that day and left immediately thereafter for a safe-house in the country. He joined the ranks of so many others, and became an "onderduiker" (he went underground). He became one of those people he had previously been working to save.

He rarely spoke about the bad times nor did he aggrandize his role. He once told me about an event that gripped him in fear. In his courier role, he delivered bunches of newly forged ration cards and travel documents to different to drops in various cities. He traveled by train from city to city. On one such trip, the train was stopped and boarded by Nazi soldiers. They proceeded to randomly search the travelers and as they were coming through the car toward my father, he was seized with such terror he was frozen in indecision. Should he throw the bundles of cards out the window thus leaving countless hiding people without food for days, or should he hold onto them and gamble that he wouldn't be searched. He described that moment of indecision as one of the most terrifying in his life.

He hung on to the forged cards . As luck would have it, he wasn't searched and the onderduikers got to eat for another month.

• I also remember what hunger felt like. I mean real starvation type hunger. The corollary to that hunger memory, is my recollection of my first piece of good bread. At the end of the war the allies made food drops into the starving cities. Such a large bundle had the good fortune to land on our apartment roof. At the age of five, I was given my very first slice of Swiss bread and it tasted better than the finest cake. To this day, I continue to need bread in my home at all times. It is a true "comfort" food.

• I remember my excitement because my father was taking me to Zuider Park to ride a donkey. My father was not very impressed with the donkey but it was better than nothing. I loved my donkey. It had soft ears and a nuzzling nose. We were one that donkey and me. I was blissfully happy. We didn't do a lot. We walked around a ring and I learned to steer him, make him stop and start him up again. I'm told that the donkey had more enthusiasm for stopping than starting. Life was perfect, I was with my father and riding a donkey. I don't know how old I was because we went a few times. It must have stopped sometime in 44, because the donkeys couldn't have survived the "hunger winter". I still love donkeys.

Horses were important to my father's life. He trained them, rode them on parade, rode in competition and was mounted in the advance to meet the invaders. The Dutch on horses meeting the Germans in tanks. He was a crack horseman in the mounted infantry. After the defeat he had little to do with them, but he wanted his little girl to learn to ride and love these great beasts as he did. So he gave me lessons in the park. But it was wartime, there were no horses and ponies to ride in the park. They had been requisitioned by the Germans. He hired a donkey to teach me the basics of riding. In the hunger winter, donkeys also disappeared. It was not a good time to be an animal.

These are some of my most vivid memories. There are more that I'll add at another time. I'm growing too sleepy to continue now.

News of today - Copy-cats

I have to enter this now before I forget. My sculpture class has been busy today with getting our work finished and ready to show on Saturday. Since I finished my head first, I've had time to work on my torso, which won't be fired in time for the show. Too bad, it's a very nice piece.

Remember in an earlier post I described the general reaction to my painted head? The teacher was disconcerted and the students were surprised. Today two students in our group finished their heads. Can you guess how? With polychrome of course. While the older artists did traditional finishes - bronze, ebony, bisque, the university students really broke free with the colour. Seems Gail has come along too. She really has an open mind - bless her. I mounted my head on an ebony very matt base which looks great.

I loaned Gail three more books, one with reproductions of my work "The Sunbathers" so the cat is now out of the bag. She showed the pictures to everyone and I was really pleased by the reaction. They were interested, questioning and then got on with their work. A healthy and positive response.

We have a good group, some more talented than others, but all are enjoying themselves. The few who enjoyed it less seem to have drifted off.

I registered to continue in the spring semester. This has been so good for me.