Leidsch Dagblad
Saturday, 24 February, 2001, p. 13 (Leiden & Region section)
Leiden. Wim Koevoet [translated by Jeremy Bangs]"In No Way Does the Pilgrim Center Improve Leiden's Image"
The town of Leiden doesn't make good the demolition of the remains of the Vrouwekerk wall by setting up a Pilgrim archive. That's the core of the reaction from the American Andrew Lang of the United Church of Christ, located in Cleveland, Ohio. The Leiden town council appropriated 150,000 guilders for such an archive in combination with an exhibit area. The Pilgrim Information Center to be formed that way can be consulted digitally or visited "normally." The city wants to polish up its image in the U.S. this way and prove with it that the town really does have an eye for the great historical importance of the former Leiden Pilgrim community. Lang let it be known via e-mail that he's not falling for it. "On the contrary, such a center will make little impression on the thousands of Americans who have pled for the preservation of the remains of the Vrouwekerk." According to Lang there isn't any comprehension among his followers for the investment of 150,000 guilders in the Pilgrim Information Center. That money could be much better used to clean the grafitti off the walls and get rid of the mists of urine, couldn't it? In his electronic letter, Lang joins the discussion on the importance of the Vrouwekerk for the Pilgrims and the history of America. That connection was explicitly denied in the town council by Christian Democratic Appeal [Party] council member De Jonge. But according to Lang there can be no doubt that the church played a crucial role in both the Leiden Pilgrim community and the American one. According to that, Walloon members of the Vrouwekerk are supposed to have travelled with the Pilgrims to America. They contributed to the development of the Pilgrim community in Plymouth, Massachusetts. That their names can be found in the municipal archives is something Lang knows, and they are also registered in Plymouth. The ancestors of four American presidents belonged to these Walloon families, - Grant, Roosevelt, George Bush, and his son, the present head of state, George W. Bush. Moreover, Lang maintains that Leiden cannot deny that some of the families that travelled along have to be considered the founders of New Amsterdam, "today's New York," according to Lang. The setting up of an information center would be good news in America, he claims, only if this news is accompanied by the announcement that the remains of the Vrouwekerk will be preserved. The V.V.D. [Conservative Party], in any case, appears to support that more and more. The party produced a motion during the debate about the information, in which they argued for including the "authentic wall remains (thus not the bricks that are mortared on top of them) in the restful place that the plaza has to become in a busy inner city" in the redesigning of the Vrouwekerk Plaza. The motion was not taken into consideration because it fell outside the order [topics restricted by Pechtold - JDB] of the meeting. But just like Lang, the V.V.D. thinks that preserving the monumental, architectural-historical and archaeological values of the wall remains that are there would contribute towards improving Leiden's image in the United States.
[On the same page, next to that article, is the second part of the quasi-clever column called "The Mood," by Aad Rietveld and Wim Koevoet. This part is titled:]
Pilgrim-gate
Alderman Alexander Pechtold (Democrats of '66) [Party] is going crazy from those telephone calls from journalists from American newspapers. He's been in the Washington Post and the New York Times more often the last while than in the Leidsch Dagblad. In Leiden it's sufficiently well known that the Vrouwekerk Plaza and the Aalmarkt really are two different places in the city. But grabbing a map of Leiden is evidently asking too much for the revealers of Watergate, because the American press stubbornly maintains that the Aalmarkt project is coming at the expense of monuments that recall the Pilgrims' stay in the city. They also keep on caring a lot about a pile of pissed-on bricks on the Vrouwekerk Plaza. These wall remnants are from the Vrouwekerk, that the American trash journalists describe as a sort of keystone for the Pilgrims. [The Dutch is "Blauwe Steen" - a reference to a blue stone marking the center of the oldest part of Leiden. -JDB] No matter how many facts the alderman uses to disprove this hysteria, in almost every article he's shafted with a sword. He is an anti-cultural barbarian, who is wiping out the traces of the Pilgrims, so important for the United States, without a pang of conscience. If the Pilgrims weren't already dead, then Pechtold would have slaughtered them, - that's more or less the tendency of the articles. His quotes are continually taken down distortedly. Nothing helps, not even flattery. Even tossing back that Uncle Sam himself exterminated its original inhabitants and right up to today is treating them badly only works against him. That's because Pechtold's real enemy isn't found in American editorial rooms but in the Mandenmakerssteeg in Leiden. That's where a certain Jeremy Bangs lives, a Leiden American who runs a little Pilgrim museum in the Beschuitsteeg and who has to be held responsible for the Pilgrim mania spread via internet. He does that so thoroughly and persistently that Leiden's image in the United States is damaged and Pechtold finds himself forced to stamp a Pilgrim Information Center out of the ground at the cost of 150,000 guilders. To put the brakes on Bangs'"disinformation." Leiden's image in the United States? Yes, just laugh! Soon there won't be a single investor to be found if it keeps on going like this. Pechtold's method is really very cumbersome. Why not just have hired a lawyer for that 150,000 and had Bangs charged with slander? The American press would certainly come to Leiden for the trial, and the local press would also give it a little column. Feast those press mosquitos and give them an extended tour. Leave that to Melanie Schultz [alderman] of economic affairs. The entire Leiden business world is eating out of her hand. No one can resist her long blond hair and charms. Is a trial too chancy, because you could lose it? Organize a public debate, then. The facts speak for themselves, [so] Leiden has to win over Bangs. Unless Mayor Jan Postma chairs it, because he'd let Bangs filibuster until Pechtold gives it up. [After an earlier scurrilous personal attack in the same column, I remarked that even (then candidate) George W. Bush would not refer to the author(s) as "world-class." I guess that, as they say, even flattery doesn't help. - JDB]