Let us know why you should participate in the Women2Women International Leadership Program 2020 in the U.S. and maybe you’ll be selected to participate. U.S. Embassy The Hague is accepting applications for the Women2Women International Leadership Program 2020 , which will take place in Boston, Massachusetts from July 30 to August 8, 2020. Are you a young woman (ages 16-19) …
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On April 1, 2019, former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich participated in programs in Amsterdam and The Hague. He started the day with a visit to the Artis Amsterdam Royal Zoo . Mr. Gingrich has a lifelong interest in zoos, and was very keen to visit one of the oldest zoos on mainland Europe. Together with …
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During International Education Week , the Netherlands Fulbright Alumni Association and the U.S. Embassy The Hague organized an early Thanksgiving event for Fulbright alumni at the Ambassador’s Residence. The fifty guests had a lovely evening which started off with speeches by Public Affairs Counselor Sherry Keneson-Hall and Chargé d’Affaires Shawn Crowley. The Fulbright program is the flagship international …
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On August 6, 2018, Laura and Trudy Roosevelt, granddaughter and great-granddaughter of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, unveiled a bronze bust of Laura’s grandmother Eleanor Roosevelt in the Abbey of Middelburg to mark the seventieth anniversary of the universal declaration of human rights. The province of Zeeland wanted the bust to be placed in the …
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The 10th European Square Dance Convention is taking place in Amsterdam July 20-22. The weekend is a gathering of members of the European Association of American Square Dancing Clubs ( EAASDC). Three Dutch clubs (the Tulip Twirlers, Rainbow Strollers, and the Motiveters) organized the event along with Maarten and Wil Weijers. This is the first time …
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Together with Dutch astronaut André Kuipers, Ms. Christine van der Sman, director of Museon , and former Deputy Mayor of The Hague Karsten Klein, unveiled a special moon rock in the Museon science museum in The Hague. The moon rock was collected by NASA’s Apollo 17 mission in December 1972. The stone is 3.8 billion years old and …
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The U.S. Embassy co-hosted the annual Dutch-American Friendship Day reception with the organization “Americans Overseas Remember” (OAR). Ambassador Hoekstra delivered brief remarks and presented a Certificate of Appreciation to Sebastiaan Vonk of the “Faces of Margraten” organization. He received the award for his commitment to the memory of the American soldiers who are commemorated at …
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March 21, 2018 – Ambassador Hoekstra and his wife, Diane visited the Voorlinden Museum and Gardens to familiarize themselves with the American Embassy’s new neighbor. The Voorlinden is an influential local museum that connects people, art, nature, and architecture. Established in 2016, the museum showcases modern and contemporary art and wants to be “an oasis of tranquility in the …
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March 6-7 2018 – Ambassador Pete Hoekstra visited his birthplace – the city of Groningen. His two-day journey offered a nostalgic look at the city where his parents lived, but also included briefings and meetings with officials, local businesses, universities, and institutes to learn about the innovative opportunities in the northern city. The Ambassador visited …
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“Let us know why you should participate in the Women2Women International Leadership Program 2018 in the U.S. and maybe you’ll be selected to participate.” U.S. Embassy The Hague is looking for young women (ages 15-19) who want to participate in the Women2Women International Leadership Program, which will take place in Boston, Massachusetts on July 19-28, …
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The Drents Museum in Assen, the Netherlands, opened an incredible exhibit November 18, with music, food, Elvis and Marilyn. “The American Dream” is an exhibit that spans more than 70 years and is spread across two museums in two countries. The Drents Museum is displaying works covering the post-war decades 1945-1965 and the Kunsthalle Emden, …
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A rare artifact is coming to a Dutch railway museum in Goes this week: a Whitcomb diesel locomotive from after the Second World War. The Whitcomb locomotive type was bought in bulk by Dutch Railways after World War II. A part of the Marshall Plan – the U.S.-funded blueprint for reconstruction of 16 war-crippled countries …
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John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, would have been 100 this year. To mark that occasion, Alex Krijger published the first in-depth biography of JFK in Dutch in almost 25 years. At a book launching event at ProDemos in The Hague, Krijger presented Chargé d’Affaires Shawn Crowley the first copy of …
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Museum Voorlinden, which celebrated its one-year anniversary on Sept. 11, opened an exhibit by Los Angeles-based artists Shio Kusaka and Jonas Wood on September 28. With this exhibit, which runs through January 7, the modern and contemporary art museum kicked off its year-long American Season series. Also to be featured in this series are Martin …
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Leo S. Ullman was one of the lucky ones. It probably didn’t feel much like luck at the time. He was taken away from his parents. He had to stay with strangers for more than two years. He had to disappear, given false papers. Become illegal. He ended up in an orphanage. His parents had …
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This month’s book, “Someone,” is the seventh novel by award-winning American author Alice McDermott. Published in 2013, “Someone” recounts episodes in the life of the book’s main character, Marie Commeford, as she transitions from bespectacled child growing up in Brooklyn, to teenager, to mother, and finally to old age. McDermott’s rich and unpretentious prose not …
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A photograph taken March 1843 in Washington, D.C. is the oldest known photograph of a U.S. President, but could this be the oldest known photograph of a U.S. Ambassador too? John Quincy Adams was the sixth President of the United States from 1825 to 1829, but before that he was also the fifth U.S. Ambassador …
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This month’s book, Let it Come Down (1952), is the second novel by enigmatic writer and composer Paul Bowles (1910-1999), who spent more than 50 years of his life in Tangiers, Morocco. In addition to four novels, Bowles drafted numerous musical scores, more than 60 short stories, and dozens of translations of Moroccan authors. His …
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July’s book is The Buddha in the Attic (2011) by Julie Otsuka. The novel tracks the lives of a group of young women brought from Japan to San Francisco as “picture brides” in the early 20th century. Told in the first-person, the novel eloquently evokes the women’s day-to-day struggles in a new land: meeting their …
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On June 19, 2017, Acting Deputy Chief of Mission Sherry Keneson-Hall attended the Fulbright Award Ceremony in the historic Academiegebouw of Utrecht University. Twenty-three Dutch students and scholars were honored as the latest Fulbright grantees. The Fulbright Program offers scholarships to highly motivated foreign students to study in the U.S. and about an equal number …
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June’s book is The Season of Migration by New York-based author Nellie Hermann. Hermann’s second novel, published in 2015, paints a vivid picture of what Vincent van Gogh’s life might have been like during the roughly ten-months he worked as a minister in the coal-mining region of southern Belgium. Little is known about van Gogh’s …
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Acting Deputy Chief of Mission Bob Kingman was in Maastricht for the presentation of a new book by Mieke Kirkels, “Children of African-American Liberators.” Along with Kierkels, he presented copies of the book to the 12 “children” who were featured in the book. Kirkels’ first book, “From Alabama to Margraten,” told the story of Dr. …
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April’s book is Pale Blue Dot from imminent U.S. astronomer and Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Carl Sagan (1934-1996). Long-time Professor of Astronomy and Space Science at Cornell University, Sagan played a leading role in advancing America’s space program, from briefing the Apollo astronauts to collaborating on the Viking, Voyager and Galileo space missions. Creator of …
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Winner of the Kirkus Prize for Fiction in 2014, King’s fourth novel is based loosely on the real-life passionate love triangle between pioneering U.S. cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead (1901-1978) and fellow anthropologists (and second and third husbands) Reo Fortune and Gregory Bateson, while the trio conducted research in Papua New Guinea in the early 1930s. …
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As February draws to a close, Black History Month also ends. March is when Women’s History Month is celebrated in the United States. This video on the life of Sojourner Truth highlights her contributions as a woman and as an African-American to U.S. history. As a young girl, Truth was known as Isabella “Baumfree”, after …
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Public Affairs Counselor Sherry Keneson-Hall joined Mayor Bruls and other regional leaders in laying wreaths at the annual commemoration of the Nijmegen bombing February 22, 2017. The ceremony has taken place since 2001 to remembers the 800 victims of the tragic 1944 bombing of the city of Nijmegen. Keneson-Hall was asked to speak as the …
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When Dr. King visited the Netherlands in 1964, he said, “Honesty and realism impel me to admit that we still have a long, long way to go. But I think the important thing is that we are making progress.” At Sunday’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Tribute Dinner in the Hague, Chargé d’Affaires Shawn Crowley said …
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American author Colson Whitehead visited the Netherlands last week to participate in the Winternachten Literature Festival in The Hague (January 19-22). The most recent National Book Award for Fiction winner talked about his award-winning novel “The Underground Railroad,” a story about fugitive slaves Cora and Caesar in the ante-bellum South. The network of Americans, black and …
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U.S. Consulate General Amsterdam paid tribute to the memory of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during a January 12 reception. Click here to see students from the Lucia Marthas Institute for Performing Arts in Amsterdam give a special performance in his honor.
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This month’s book, the first for 2017, is Cannery Row from Nobel winning author John Steinbeck. Born in California’s fertile Salinas Valley in 1902, Steinbeck went on to become one of America’s most celebrated writers of short stories and novels. Steinbeck captured the lives and day-to-day struggles of working-class America in ways that few other …
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Thanks to the U.S. Consulate’s Youth Advisory Board (comprised of Amsterdam University College students) for recommending this month’s book—“Catch-22” by Joseph Heller. The iconic 1961 novel, set off the coast of Italy in World War II, chronicles the experiences of Captain John Yossarian and his 256th air corps squadron as they confront the violence and paradoxes prevalent in …
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In many ways, this is where it all started: Leiden’s Pieterskerk in the Netherlands. In 1620, 35 pilgrims departed Leiden for Plymouth in England. From there, they sailed onward aboard The Mayflower to the new colonies of Massachusetts. The first harvest festival celebrated in the new colony is seen as the origin of Thanksgiving. And here, …
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More than 100 Dutch students were able to ask their most burning questions about the United States at a recent Kids’ Lecture at Humanity House in The Hague. The students attend Public Primary School (OBS) Waterland from The Hague and the School van Maas en Waal in Amsterdam. During the “KinderCollege,” the children interacted with …
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Last week, U.S. Vice Consul Kharmika Alston (left) attended the closing the Netherlands’ first annual Black Achievement Month (October 1-31). See www.blackachievementmonth.nl to learn more about this important milestone.
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The famously reclusive Emily Dickinson might not have felt comfortable with all the attention. But surely she would have loved the fact that one of her poems has been immortalized on a wall of a school house in a lovely neighborhood of The Hague. Dickinson, whose work received almost no recognition while she was still …
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This month’s book is “Love Medicine” by award-winning author Louise Erdrich. Erdrich won the 2015 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction “for [portraying] her fellow Native Americans as no contemporary American novelist ever has, exploring—in intimate and fearless ways—the myriad cultural challenges that indigenous and mixed-race Americans face.” “Love Medicine,” the first of Erdrich’s …
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Sandra Cabrera, spouse of CG McCawley, and a proud U.S. citizen of Colombian descent, introduces this month’s book, “The House on Mango Street”, by Mexican-American author Sandra Cisneros. In her 1984 novel, Cisneros chronicles the life of Esperanza Cordero, a young Latina girl coming of age in a poor Chicago neighborhood. This beloved book has …
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Showcasing American authors, past and present This month the Consulate General introduces a new social media series to highlight American writers. Please join us each month as we choose a new book and author. Some names will be immediately recognizable; others you may be hearing for the first time. In every case, our hope is …
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