Out at noonish with Rafaël to view the Queen's Day aftermath. Not a pretty sight. Streets full of trash, broken glass, and puddles of vomit. Enclosed areas reek of piss...at best. Very few people are out, and the pathetic thing is that some are clearly remaining on the street from last night, only semi-ambulatory but still drinking.

We stroll down nearly deserted Kalverstraat so I can check out Blackstone's, that fine British bookstore on Kalverstraat at the Spui that Edward thinks might have the English translation of Geert Mak's My Father's Century, which I am unable to get back home and am eager to read.

They're nice but don't have it. We drift through the Spuiplein on the way to the Athenaeum, hoping to catch Sunflower playing or one of the art vendors who have the excellent postcards. Alas, none of the above is present. The Athenaeum, though, is open and does not disappoint even though they don't have the Mak book. What they do have is the information that it is currently out of print but will be reissued later this year. They also let me know that a new edition of the computer version of the Van Dale Engels/Nederlands - Nederlands/Engels dictionary will be appearing soon, which will solve the problem of my not being able to get the old version to install on my new laptop.

The clerks there are downright crisp. What they don't know, which is not very much, they can look up instantly, and all too frequently they somehow manage to add a little extra tidbit of information that is above and beyond what might reasonably be expected. That place is the finest bookstore I've ever frequented. And now that I think about it, on a per-diem-in-proximity basis, I've spent more there than in any other bookstore. All it lacks is my friend Paula, who now manages the bookstore in San Francisco's Ferry Building.

On the way back, I take a few pics of architectural innovations, like this stunning new addition plunked down on top of a centuries-old building on Rokin. I love the way they use the setbacks to increase utility while getting around the height limitations. And since I honestly couldn't avoid the wires this time, I figured I might as well get the crane into the shot, too.

Later, we stop to take a pic of the window display in an upscale trendy men's shop called "Chasin' Denim", male mannequins dressed in the latest casual chic but wearing handkerchiefs like the bank robbers did in the old western movies. Nowadays, of course, the echo is Moslem fundamentalist rather than cowboys robbing banks. Bizarre.

As I focus my camera, a guy leaps out shouting at me that photos are forbidden.

I'm so gobsmacked I can't think of a pithy rejoinder, since I cannot imagine how they expect to prevent photos when the street is packed with shoppers. But hey, I'm a visitor and must be nice, so I reassure the guy that the photo in fact failed and that my wanting a picture was actually a compliment even though what I really wanted to do was organize a flash mob of hundreds of people swarming around taking pics of their damn window.

I must get off my butt and do that in San Francisco in front of the Federal Courthouse there at 7th and Mission. The building is a registered national landmark that had suffered some neglect but was lovingly restored to its full glory after the Loma Prieta earthquake had forced some structural reinforcement. I went by last year, but discovered that "for security reasons" the public is now allowed to view the restoration our taxes paid for only during monthly escorted tours. Stifling my outrage, I went back outside, and while I was taking pics of some of the architectural detail, a guard came running out and told me this was forbidden.

Oh please. This thing is no World Trade Center. It has no symbolic significance to anyone other than a handful of history and architecture buffs. However, I was able to think fast enough to realize that the guard was just doing his job, so I politely asked to speak to his supervisor.

When the supervisor came out, I established my credentials as a Vietnam-era veteran and patriotic American, and then went on to observe that it was utterly preposterous to forbid photos of a building that 1) was already photographed from every conceivable angle and the photographs published for three-quarters of a century in countless books and eriodicals and 2) was sitting on a major bus line where thousands of people every day could easily snap pics out of the bus windows and 3) was across the street from an apartment building where any of the occupants or their visitors could use high-powered cameras to take detailed photographs.

I may have gone on to ask a rhetorical question or two about the fascist fools who set him there to enforce such stupidity, but since at that time I was not quite ready to be hauled off and locked up forever in one of our anonymous confinement facilities with no charges being filed, I didn't make a fuss. Ummm, more of a fuss.

I'm getting ready now, though. If there is anything good about being old and sick and in pretty much continual pain, it is that with every passing day I have less to lose.

I also have less and less time to do something for my country. The Rev. Niemöller was right. I need to follow his example and start speaking out in public and actually doing something rather than just preaching to the choir. If you don't know about Niemöller, Google on "when they came for me".

As the sign above the flower box outside the window of an ancient gentleman up the street says, "Onz kostboorst bezit is frijheid". I'll translate that as "Our most precious possession is freedom".