NYCkayaker In Dutch!

[johnsternow at netscape.net]

-----Original Message-----
From: erikbaard at gmail.com
To: bonnie13 at earthlink.net; nyckayaker <NYCkayaker at rockandwater.net>
Sent: Thu, 14 Feb 2008 2:45 am
Subject: Re: NYCkayaker In Dutch!










You remind me of a painful  memory, for a vegan...Back in my omnivorous 
childhood I had a delicious meal at my Frisian Dutch cousins' house. I asked 
what it was and the happy reply was "paard." Horse. Maybe that inspired my later 
certification in horse care!

Another Dutch name in New York Harbor inspired one of my favorite false "just 
so" stories. Wallabout Bay (aka Brooklyn Navy Yard) is often said to derive from 
"whale about," because the mighty mammals would turn tail in the East River upon 
hearing the riotous rips of Hell Gate in the straight (strait too!) shot north. 
Actually, it comes from "Waal Bocht," or Walloons Bay, for the lowlands 
Francophones who homesteaded the area. That said, the name Brooklyn does not 
derive from  in a lease arrangement term ("bruyk leen") with the Dutch West 
Indies Company or an observation of "broken land"; it's simply named for a town 
back in the Netherlands.

But at least it *is true* that whales did frequently swim into the harbor in old 
times, and we can work for their return by radically improving our local 
ecology!

And now I sign off as one of the harbor's two known Frisians - the other being 
Paul Sieswerda of the Coney Island Aquarium),

Erik
(aka to eastern relatives as Erik Christiaan Frans Van der Baard) 
  
 
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

-----Original Message-----
From: bonnie13 at earthlink.net

Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 23:56:56 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
To:nyckayaker <NYCkayaker at rockandwater.net>
Subject: NYCkayaker In Dutch!


I wrote the word "Paerdegat" on my blog yesterday & it piqued the curiousity of 
a paddler in the Netherlands. I went to answer, decided to use google to at 
least verify that I was correctly remembering the translation "Horse Gate" that 
another Sebago member had told me, and stumbled across a reference that was 
interesting enough that I decided that the answer was worth a whole new post. 
  
Hello , I had a relative who was the head of the "Holland Society".
You have to be related to someone who settled before 1700 and was 
from the Netherlands . Or something like that . In fact two sides
of my family belonged to it . The other was a Walloon , the original
settlers of Manhattan . I am not eligible because my name is of a recent
immigrant , from a Walloon region .By the way , Walloons often have a
germanic accent . 





 


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