Cheeseheads

The Dutch victory over Spain in the seventeenth century is still a big deal in the Netherlands. Our host in Alkmaar, Netherlands, Leen Spaans, told me that. He’s the town historian, but more than that, he knows everything about what happened in that part of the Netherlands, and all around it, all the way back to the Middle Ages. He and his wife live in a house that has a sign that says it was built in 1623, but really it’s 30 years older than that. He showed Meg and me bricks from the old wall that the town erected in those days to defend itself. The reason the bricks were easy to come by is because the Spanish came with big cannons and patiently bombarded the wall until it crumbled. Later, civic leaders from Alkamar visited an Italian delegation to learn how Italian cities defended themselves. Build a moat to keep the cannons at a distance, the Italians said, and then build walls out of earth instead of bricks; rather than blasting down the bricks, the cannon balls will stick in the mud.

We were in Alkmaar to visit the memorial to Truus Wijsmuller, the Dutch heroine who rescued 10,000 children from occupied lands in WW II and who inspired Meg’s novel The Last Train to London. We met the sculptor too, Annet Terberg, who depicted a larger than life Truus with children in her arms and all around her, some consoling others in their grief at being separated from their parents, some with their small bags or stuffed animals, all with faces that showed their pain and courage. That was something that struck me about the children, their faces were true, rendered in bronze as if in flesh, by someone who, like Truus, understood children on their level.

The day we were there was also the opening of the cheese festival, and we saw the orange wheels of gouda and the cheese carriers taking the big rounds to be weighed on huge balance scales. One of them told us about the cheese carriers’ guild. Once a member, you were a member for life, and you could depend on your fellow members to look after you when times got tough. What he described was the best of what unions offer their members, an honest version of what, in the United States at least, ultimately became protectionist schemes with politically corrupt leadership that led to their demise, and a loss for workers.

The cheese traditionally was made in round bowls with wooden lids about the size of a skull cap. In the war—I wasn’t sure which one—the wooden tops were worn on the head for protection, like helmets. The people wearing them were called cheese heads. And here I thought that term only applied to football fans in Wisconsin with foam blocks of cheese for hats. 

What I learned in Alkmaar is what I always seem to learn in Europe. Over the centuries, the people are constantly in strife with their distant neighbors, but always close to their near ones. It is the same today. Even now. Especially now. Again. 

It makes me wonder, as always, why the love and empathy we feel for one another when we are close at hand cannot be extended further. Perhaps it is not the limits of our love and empathy that are the problem, but rather the ambitions for power of our leaders, who for their own gain, not ours, convince us that our distant neighbors are our enemies.