Friday, the last day

The cheese market at Alkmaar reminded me, at least, of Orange City--or Holland, or Pella, a recreation of the old ways, women and men in hats and traditional dress fussing almost as if the whole business was a pageant, which, I'd say it really was. It drew tons of people, and it was, well, cute. Crowds in Orange City react just like the Dutch crowds, with a kind of sweet charm. They too thought it was all cute.

The cheese was, as they say, to die for. There is some coming along home.

One more gigantically wonderful organ concert, this one in the Oude Kerke of Alkmaar, just up the block, on maybe the finest organ in the Netherlands (that would beg a fight somewhere I'm sure). The young lady, a Hungarian, who was doing the recital, reminded me of my students. She said the word was that the only place in the world an organist can play professionally is in America--and in a church.

Most of the most ancient cathedrals, the ones that take your breath away, are museums these days, businesses really, historical artifacts larger than almost anything else that can be stored or, for that matter, remembered. I suppose it's only right that these ancient pipe organs (the organist played one piece on the oldest playable organ in the Netherlands, built in 1511) go the way of all flesh as well, relegated to history, to antiquity, valuable as a register of what once was but largely irrelevant from day-to-day life. They speak already of another time, really, a time that fits more squarely in these mammoth old cathedrals, where awe sits beside you almost anywhere you plant yourself inside. There you sit, slack-jawed. Then the organ starts, and it's like the voice of God.

I guess we aren't that big today. Maybe we've grown so big that God isn't.

Anyway, one last fling on the biggest organ I saw in the last ten days.

And then Anne Frank, where I've visited twice before. The place itself doesn't stun me anymore, but the story does--this little girl writing out her thoughts, then dying, tragically, horribly, before realizing that her words, scribbled down in the annex, have been read by millions and will be for some time.