De Kleine Beer, by Else Holmelund-Minarik is the original most loved children’s story I have kept all those years from when our children were toddlers. It has rested peacefully on my bedside table all those decades. Somehow, I still peruse the wisdom and sheer folly of its story. It seems to suggest that folly and wisdom might well be related.
When I get cold callers from a countries with strong Hindi accents, I now, without further ado, start to recite a page taken at random from De Kleine Beer. Most times at the end of just a few lines read in Dutch, the phone line at the other end is blissfully mute and very silent. It works magically. The true wonder of good literature.
Here is just a one page templet for your free usage for those that are game and brave enough to try it out. It does no harm and is devoid of malice, anger or retribution.
Zo gezegd, zo gedaan. (As said, as done)
Kleine Beer maakt een pan vol soup. ( Little bear makes a pan full of soup.)
De eerste gast is Kip. ( the first guest is a chicken)
‘Wel gefeliciteers, Kleine Beer.’ (‘Congratulation, Little Bear.’)
‘Dank je wel, Kip.’ (‘Thank you very much, Chicken.’)
Hm,wat ruikt het hier lekker. ( Hm, it smells so nice here.)
This is usually enough for the caller to give up and discontinue the call. I hope it helps. Please, let me know.
As an aside; Lately we talk a lot about Australian values and how they relate and might even be similar in many other countries, or indeed how they might differ.
Australia has as many good ordinary people as any other country we have lived in., perhaps even more… but what was going on when we elected people such as Dutton into power? We put the most inhumane man in charge of asylum seekers.
We must not ask the possibility of Frydenberg’s dual nationality, yet at the same time allow Dutton the freedom to make 600 refugees on Manus stateless.
Please read this link; The world is watching.
Tags: abc., Anger, Australia, Dutch, Dutton, Else Holmelund-Minarik, Hindi, Kip, Kleine Beer, Malice, Manus, Retribution
Oosterman Treats Blog 
November 4, 2017 at 12:04 am |
Hope that more of the world will be informed about Australia’s discusting, brutal and very selfish treatment of those poor desparate souls. Dutton needs to be sent to Isis head office and after to Guantanamo bay for 10 years
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November 4, 2017 at 4:12 am |
Each time, we think it can’t get worse, Dutton puts up the torture level one more notch and from a safe distance watches the result with glee and unbridled satisfaction. Nothing fazes him into understanding and compassion.
The fact he mentioned refugees wearing top-range sun glasses just shows what he is on about.
He was made minister for immigration and border control. How awful!
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November 4, 2017 at 1:20 am |
Why not send your man and our man off to Manus together? They will see first hand.
As far as unwanted calls, they are increasing tenfold, many who never reply. Ne scams crop up daily. Those sking for money can be dangerous when directed to aged persons, as some are not aware that they are fake. We have our number on a National Do Not Call list, plus have called telephone co. and police to no avail. They simply say “hang up”.
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November 4, 2017 at 4:21 am |
Yes, your man (Trump) is getting proto-type unscaleable wall barriers in place to keep people out. Our Government is stopping water, food and electricity to 600 refugees on Manus
.
The old here are being swindled like there is no tomorrow. The worst are the ‘retirement villages’ whereby all sorts of schemes are into place to keep siphoning off their savings.
It are often the children or others that through the placing of secret cameras expose some of the methods being used to torture and abuse the elderly.
The more determined we are to stay well away from ‘care’.
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November 4, 2017 at 4:06 am |
Drat those telemarketers. They are a nuisance here as well. I usually cut off the call as soon as I see the area code. The same folks call over and over and just do not stop I’ve been told that most are robot calls. I think you have a brilliant approach. It must be hilarious.
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November 4, 2017 at 4:29 am |
Thank you, Ivonne for your support. I appreciate a good ‘mate.’
My Dutch story telling to the cold caller gives me joy to read out. I practise to put as much into the way I speak the sentences as possible giving it a kind of lyricism and poetry, which I hope gets carried over to the cold-caller stuck in a huge call centre in New-Delhi or so.
You know, I do it for my own pleasure as well and without exception the phone is eerily silent after just a few lines. It works!
Helvi thinks I am on a downward spiral into gibberish and incomprehensible nonsense.
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November 4, 2017 at 4:41 am
Oh I think what you are doing with the those calls is pure genius.
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November 6, 2017 at 12:14 pm
I have told my wife this amusing story about modern-life and meta-communication, she likes such nonsense in any case, otherwise our life would be anyhow a bit boring >:D<
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November 4, 2017 at 5:55 pm |
Kleine Beer was ook onze (mijn zusje en ik) favoriet! Als ik het mij goed herinner was dit uit Kleine Beer is jarig.
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November 4, 2017 at 9:42 pm |
Yes, Elisabeth. Dat is zo.
The boek is titled ‘Kleine Beer’ and it is about a birthday amongst many other adventures, including a trip to the moon.
The author is a Danish born American who wrote over 40 children books. There was a TV series made based on her ‘Little Bear’ stories. She died in 2012 and was born in Denmark 1920.
It is worth pointing out that for his birthday (little bear) there is no cake at first. Instead Mama bear had made a delicious vegetable soup to be shared by all his birthday friends sitting at the table. The friends are a cat, a chicken and a duck.
It would have been totally wrong and a bad mistake if the soup would have been a chicken soup. You can imagine the consternation of his feathered quests!
Even so, can you imagine today a birthday party where a vegetable soup is part of the celebration?
Towards the end and after the soup, a real cake makes its entry and all came good.
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November 4, 2017 at 10:00 pm
It’s a sweet story, and I never knew it was Danish. I remember the illustrations now of Kleine Beer going to the moon. Vegetable soup is nice, but cake is nicer!
Happy memories, thanks, Gerard!
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November 5, 2017 at 4:03 am |
Well, we (not me) elected Trump. I think it is a disease, Gerard, seriously. Worse than any plague.
On a more humorous note, I just had Peggy read your Dutch out loud, sort of. She was a high school exchange student in Holland in 1967. We revisited her Dutch classmate and her family a few years back. They all spoke English but had Peggy read Dutch out of a book at dinner. There was lots of laughing. –Curt
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November 6, 2017 at 9:00 pm |
And today we heard from Trump that the Texan shooting is not a matter of guns but merely a mental issue.
It is frightening!
I can well imagine the laughter resulting of Peggy reading in Dutch.
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November 6, 2017 at 11:55 pm
People wandering around with semiautomatic assault rifles are almost a guarantee of mass killings.
I was laughing myself a bit when Peggy read from your book. –Curt
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November 7, 2017 at 12:18 am
That is a great compliment, Curt.
Thank you.
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November 5, 2017 at 4:06 am |
BTW, Peggy was in Goes, which she just pronounced for me. –Curt
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November 5, 2017 at 7:26 am |
You have found an intelligent, funny way to end those pesty callers/calls, Gerard!
Ha! I love it! 😀
Having taught Kindergarten, I love the Little Bear series of books! 🙂 I have many of them in my collection of children’s books.
I will read the link you shared.
I hope your Sunday is bright and wonderful!
HUGS!!! 🙂
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November 6, 2017 at 9:07 pm |
So far so good. The children story read to those callers is satisfying to at least myself if not the recipients.
I have also thought of extending my repertoire in perhaps singing old children’s songs s.a ‘ Simple Simon met a Pieman, etc’ or in Dutch ‘Klein, klein kleutertje’ (my most favourite when I was a child.) Little, little todler.
Hugs too
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November 7, 2017 at 7:39 am
🙂 Such a sweet song and video! 🙂
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November 8, 2017 at 7:21 am |
Shoot Dutton and the rest of them and then lets get on with it.
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November 8, 2017 at 9:11 am |
I try and not think of someone taking a pot-shot at him, Mark. Even so, it is tempting to think along those terms, especially now that the Government is refusing to feed them and provide them with water.
Dutton’s face is starting to look very dark.
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