Anyway here's the pics of my birthday outing to Franeker:

Where? What? Well, it's a quaint old town that's pretty, but what makes it special over all the other quaint old towns we have here, is it has the world's oldest still-working orrery - that is Unesco world heritage. It's called the Royal Eise Eisinga Planetarium and is a pretty amazing visit.

To harbour the many visitors, the planetary has now gobbled up the 2 buildings beside it to teach about the galaxy and to display beautiful old telescopes and such.


View of Franeker, with town hall


The museum (Planetarium with black sign, and the two buildings to the left of it. The centre building has a pretty jugendstil restaurant.)


The beautiful former town hall of Franeker


The museum shows many old astronomical instruments and clocks. I tried to translate some of it but couldn't figure it out.


A beautiful antique astrolabe, a device to measure how high the stars are and thus position yourself;


Here it i, or the main part of it! In 1776 Eise Eisinga started to build the orrery, which took him 7 years to complete. On the side, as he also ran a successful wool business (he was well-love for his woad blue dyes) and held numerous prominent positions. The orrery is in the main room, the living room where you would receive visitors - but also dining room, kitchen, and bedroom. (and this clock ticks believe you me.

Eise bought the clock with a regular 25cm pendulum (which moves back and forth once per second) but he found that he would have to gut a hole in the ceiling of his already tiny alcove, so he shortened it so it goes back and forth 80 times per minute and adjusted the gears.

All the gears were hand made, mostly from oak wheels with every single one of the iron nails hammered in separately at the correct distance. For Venus and Earth, where there is a lot to do in the centre (and there is a little moon circling Earth as well) the gears are metal with the teeth filed out.

Eise did have help from his father and brother for the hammering and the painting, but he largely made it on his own and did the brain work for all the on his own.

The orrery is to scale, the size of the planets and distance between them are to scale. Uranus was discovered in 1781, the year Eise finished the orrery - had it been discovered earlier, the planetarium would have to double in size or only use half the scale (which would get very crowded in the centre).

To install it, Eise had to make a deepened ceiling - about 40 cm deep I estimate - where he somehow had to manoeuver these huge hoops. He also regularly maintained it and left detailed instructions for his sons on how to take care of the orrery. These are used to this day.


Here are: a sign that says "remember that God is everywhere", on the right the largest gear is the day indicator (goes round once per year), Saturn (goes round once every 20 -odd years or so) and Jupiter (goes round once every nearly 12 years)


With this time indicating - you'll hear it ticking, believe you me, but you don't see it moving at all. Just come back later and compare photos.


There! I was there on my birthday, April 4th!


In the beautiful salon, there is a treasury of orreries and assorted instruments, like this gorgeous tellurium. It sadly didn't appear to be running but it displays the positions of sun and moon, moon phase and such. The dominical letter (D) is correct for 2026 though.

very nice Bonny

Well done Bonny on getting the site back up and what awesome pictures from your trip, happy birthday!


I am still plugging along trying to stay healthy working out 3 days a week, riding bike 3 days a week and golfing 3 days a week as weather permits.


I went to a No Kings protest a couple of weeks ago we had a really good turn-out for this small town.


My oldest daughter visited last week from Rohde Island with her family which was nice, her oldest daughter is 10 years old and already 5'3" almost as tall as her mom the dad is 6'5" so there is some height on his side of the family.


Kathy retires next week so we will be entering a new phase of life that I am looking forward too.


No golf today it is raining here, we head out on vacation to the Central Coast in 3 weeks.


I have to see my new ophthalmologist tomorrow I have been having sever eyesight issues in my right eye so we will see what they say for what is up there.


Good to be back with you all...😀

Hi Plook! Lovely to hear from you again!

Sorry to hear about your eye, I hope it'll get well soon!

There are still some issues with the site, these involve quotation marks. Once a post has a certain quotation mark or apostrophe mark, the post is shown as empty. (For example my thread about Wuthering Heights in the book zone appears empty). BF and I intend to work on that during our holiday week.

Today is the Dutch national celebration the King's birthday. I don't care about the royal family so to me it's just a day off. Tomorrow will be my last working day as a travel agent.

Bonny what are you doing after you leave the Travel Agent position?

I'm going to work for the municipality - client contact, so initially back to the phones and later e-mail and if I'm advanced enough at the desk. It means I'll be leaving tourism. Hopefully the municipality is more stable - less impromptu extra work if the Orange One decides to start another war.

Instead of panic sewing I did some panic crocheting to give to dear colleagues. I'd found a mini teddy bear pattern and managed to whip up 9 teddies in just a few days.

Well done on job hunting

Awesome Bonny I wish you the best but knowing you I am sure you will do just fine there.

Teddies were well-loved. I could make a business out of them except it takes about half an hour to crochet and then three hours to put the little bits together.

I have a question for the native English speakers here: in Dutch we have tons of folk birthday songs: Lang zal ze leven, Er is er een jarig, Zij leve hoog, 2 violen en een trommel en een fluit and I can name quite a few more. But whenever people have a birthday in an English show, I hear Happy Birthday. Whenever there's a French or German song, it's their version of Happy Birthday (Joyeux Anniversaire / Zum Geburtstag Viel Glück).

Are there any other folk birthday songs than Happy Birthday? What did people sing on birthdays before that song was patented?

It has always been Happy birthday here since I was a kid, here is what I found:

Before "Happy Birthday to You" was popularized in the early 20th century (originating from "Good Morning to All" in 1893), people didn't have a single standard song. Instead, they commonly sang "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow". Others would simply offer toasts, shout congratulations, or sing celebratory songs that varied by region and culture.

• "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow": This song was, and still is, a popular celebratory song that was used for birthdays as well as other occasions.

• "Good Morning to All": The melody for "Happy Birthday" was originally composed by sisters Mildred and Patty Hill in 1893, and was used in schools with the lyrics: "Good morning to you, / Good morning to you, / Good morning, dear children, / Good morning to all".

• Other Celebration Customs: Before birthday parties became widely common in the late 19th century, celebrations focused more on the cake and well-wishes rather than a specific, standardized song, according to a 2010 paper by Robert Brauneis.

The "Happy Birthday to You" lyrics were combined with the 1893 tune and appeared in print around 1912.

Thanks Plook! It's almost comical that we have so many birthday songs, I wonder if they originate from the 1800s reeducation.

I had to go on an emergency trip to the dentist - last week my molar started to hurt badly and as a lump had developed, I feared that there would be an infection of some kind and that I would have to have it pulled. Not something I would want so shortly before my vacation (postponed to tomorrow).

I was so scared and basically had gulped ibuprofen, but the dentist found no root infection, just a bit of parodontitis. She cleaned my molar and sent me off with recommendations for interdental brushes.

Just saying hello. Really busy as usual. I hope everyone’s well. Plook, I hope your eye problem gets sorted - I’ve got some eye problems of my own.

Bonny, good luck with the new job. I had an infected top left number 7 a week ago. Antibiotics have settled it down and I’m on a waiting list to have it out.

Bf and I are hard at work restoring the forum. There are 3 issues - missing smileys, one issue converting special symbols translating to different ones (like Poly's apostrophe not shoeing up properly). Lastly and leastly some posts show as empty. These are caused by a discrepancy in language set. The symbol conversion issue started after a server issue on Godaddy's side.

It's very interesting and I am learning a lot about SQL.

Bonny I also notice when I go to a "Subject" and click in it takes me to page 1 were it used to take me to the most current page, just letting you know it really isn't a big deal.

We appreciate you doing the work to get things back up and running, I am glade you are finding it a labor of love that always makes the task more enjoyable.

With Hanta vrus showing up, I'm glad I left tourism.

First work week has been three days long, today I began on the phone for the first time. The work is a bit much, but it's also fun, the atmosphere in the office is great, we have a nice view and I have great working conditions. I'm making my former colleagues jealous with being free on Ascension and te day after - at the travel agency they decided this year it's not a day off anymore. Kicking back and chilling!

Yesterday there was a performance by Gruppo Sportivo, therir 50th anniversary tour (also their final tour). It was a hassle getting DED there (and back!), but he was very happy we went and I enjoyed myself. With such an old band it's a surprise that their keyboard player is a 14-year-old, but Len de Quant is pretty exceptional as a keyboard player. Remember that name, people!

Happy mothers day everybody

We have Mother's Day three weeks before Easter in the UK. (It is the second Sunday in May in Australia.)

Same here.

I have a 2 day work week this week, need to be careful not to get too used to it now I have a 36-hour work week. But it bafles me that I leave home later, come home one hour earlier (at least) and have half an hour of extra break time per work day.