Thursday, April 21, 2005  Anne Frank  Statue of Anne Frank,
Amsterdam Originally uploaded by panopticon.  When I realized I
would be traveling to Amsterdam for this university tour, one of
the first thoughts that popped into my head was, "I'll be able
to visit the Anne Frank House."  In fact, the opportunity to do
so was one of my prime motivators in spending four vacation days
there before the tour began - the tour group experienced nothing
of Amsterdam but a paltry cruise through the canals.  I first
read Anne Frank's diary when I was about ten years old. It
immediately became a perennial for me - one of those books I
experience a need to re-read every so often.  It didn't just
make an impression on me, it made several different impressions
on me. There was the usual one, of course, a visceral feeling of
what suffering the Jews underwent during the war.  And there was
another that I would venture to say has been fundamental to my
view of my place in the world, and which fostered my love affair
with language