DOWN BY THE OLD GRISTMILL

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 02:03:00 +0000

We will be back in autumn 2023

FEATHERED DANCERS OR THE TURKEY TROT

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 26 Sep 2020 18:57:00 +0000

Art by Ohara Kozon, Houston Museum of Fine Arts.

Yesterday, I had nearly finished writing a post for this blog when I accidentally hit the wrong key. Close to a thousand words on a paulownia tree that grows, uninvited, at the end of my driveway, vanished. This happened at the end of a long day when I was too try tired to resurrect the vanished text. I thought that was pity because I had done quite a bit of reading on the pros and cons of paulownias, including a blog post by a woman who is passionately opposed to their presence anywhere in the world. She heaped vituperation on this "most hated tree in the world, the destroyer of ecosystems..." Well and good. She is entitled to her opinion though it conflicts with that of Japanese families who so prize paulownias they plant one when a baby girl is born. Years later, when the baby becomes a bride, wood from her tree can be fashioned into domestic utensils for her dowry.

Utensils made with paulownia wood can be beautiful in their elegant simplicity. As a basis for urushi lacquer, it gains in such splendor that in days gone by, artisans were willing to to accept the risk of coating it with lacquer made with the sap of Toxicodendron vernicifluum, the lacquer tree. In its liquid form, the sap contains urushiol, the irritant also found in poison ivy. In addition, the manufacture of urushi lacquer required exposure to toxic cinnabar . However, as early as the Heian Period (794-1185), Japanese artisans who engaged in this risky occupation, produced pieces of surpassing beauty.


Heian period tebako (cosmetic box), Wikipedia

My paulownia is too little to provide me with wood for crafts. It has not grown 25 feet in a year, as projected by its detractors. Neither does it seem to have produced the 20 million seeds it allegedly scatters far and wide, every year. Its lovely, box-like seedpods do release a number of rounds seeds that look as if they were vacuum-packed in translucent cases of the finest, pale green silk. It stands next to other trees that grow from seeds with which resident squirrels replaced my flower bulbs--an eastern cedar and a yuzu--and sulks.

Inkberries, wild grapes, and hackberry trees are among the contributions the squirrel tribe made to my yard and the modest woodlot that separates it from a stream that debouches at the Potomac river. Their fruit attracts wild life not seen in other parts of my little town. Today, it was the turn of wild turkeys. These usually process through the woodlot in orderly rows, looking more professorial in their dark plumage than the staff of the nearby university. Today's visitor had no notion of decorum. It walked on my roof, making a loud sound with its feet, as if it were a flamenco dancer. Eventually, it perched on a pine tree behind my house until a bluejay chased it away.

I thought that was the end of turkey performances for the day but an entire flock followed the flamenco dancer. He, the rascal, perched on my neighbor George's maple tree and preened, knowing fully well that I did not have camera in hand. Then there was a fwoop-fwoop sound announcing the arrival of its comperes. It was quite impressive. I think that the profusion of hackberries, inkberries, and wild grapes that grow around my house is the reason these omnivores like make it their pit stop.

A THING WITH FEATHERS

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 11 Sep 2020 20:38:00 +0000

Prior to the pandemic, parents brought young children to play in the pocket handkerchief park across the street. On holidays and weekends, tourists carrying cameras climbed the steps of an unhandsome monument at the same park to catch a glimpse of an antebellum mansion perched on a hill on the distant shore of the Potomac river. Bikers, joggers, Morris dancers, and the rare bagpipe player put in an appearance once in a while. Most evenings, commuters returned from city, brought took their dogs for a walk on trails frequented more often by quail, turtles, and wild turkeys. The entire neighborhood exuded the calm,that has not been disturbed since the XVII Century, when it was a pasture for the local miller's sheep.

Although largish groups of tourists occasionally materialized in response to some enterprising event planner's money-making scheme, the hustle and bustle of city street did not come to visit. Neither did the dead quiet that has replaced the voices of happy children at play, the chatter of friends jogging in little groups. Cars came and went, but never in great number. The street is not wide enough for that. Sometimes, the loud music emanated from a car driven by a university student eager to share his musical preference with those of us yet to lose our hearing. That sort of auditory assault, rare as it was, is not something I miss in the least. I miss the reminder that roughly half of the population of my little town is young and largely carefree. I miss the old life when fear was not a barrier around so many of us. I am not a member of the group that calls COVID-19 a hoax. I am well aware that the virus will have killed 200, 000 American by the time I publish this post. I believe the stats, I believe in science, I believe in the measures medical experts devised to keep us as safe as possible from the virus. I wear a mask, I maintain social distance, I make no attempts to take part in group activities. I do not take the advice of demagogues whose only focus is personal power.

I know that am lucky, compared to those who lost family and friends, who lost jobs, who lie in hospital beds, fighting for every breath. I am also lucky to be able to distinguish fact from wishful thinking, political propaganda from reality. My age and a couple of health issues place me in a high risk group. That's is real and reality is not going to change because a large segment of the population acts like a baby who believes that the world really disappears when he hides behind his hands. I know I am vulnerable and that is why I chose to live in isolation for the past six months. That would have been impossible without my small but highly effective support group. I have excellent neighbors who did my grocery shopping until I found two supermarkets that offer home delivery. My pharmacy offers the same service. My doctor is willing to teleconference. I belong to an organization that helps senior citizens who need help getting the mail--the local post office offers no home delivery. I have a list of online stores that Fedex packages to my door--UPS often takes packages to the post office and we all know that the postal service is in the process of being dismantled by appointees of the current administration.

Do I find this relatively privileged life easy? Not exactly. While the internet and phone system allow me to have some human contact, online chats will never replace the warmth of a hug, the pleasure of sharing a meal with a friend. I know that this uneasy life is in which so much is on pause, is better than no life at all. I aam not alone. Much of the world is holding its breath until there is a reliable vaccine, which probably will not happen for a couple of years. Meanwhile, the grass continues to l grows and my good neighbor George continues to mow it. The autumn clematis blooms in my wild garden, as it did in previous years. The young yuzu tree, a gift from a squirrel that stole fruit from my neighbor's garden and buried it in mine, offers me six little plump green globes filled with delicious juice--the largest number it produced in four years. The Canada geese still overflow my house on their way to the river. The house wren that thinks it owns my yard, still grumbles at real and imaginary intrusions of its space. These patterns will exist long after I have moved on.

There are old patterns I also keep. I still read poetry as soon as September rolls around--haikus, Pablo Neruda and John Donne's work, Maurice Sendak's lighthearted, deceptively silly chicken-soup-with-rice verses. I still collect Pinterest images of great paintings, vintage illustrations, photos that captured the elegant austerity of Asian houses and gardens. I still history, fiction, journals, letters. Right now I am enjoying Nabokov's letters to his wife in hard copy, and audio versions of Daniel Silva and Michael Chabon's novels. These simple activities sustain me, as do the plans family, friends and I make for when life returns to normal. Emily Dickinson calls hope "a thing with feathers." For now, it nestles in my heart and I hardly dare move lest it fly away.

COMMITTING JOURNALISM

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 20:43:00 +0000

Journalist Daniel Perl, brutally murdered by Islamic radicals, used to say, jocularly, before he went to work,
"Let's commit journalism."
It is highly doubtful that he intended his work to be the kind of news aggregators such as The Huffington Post publish. For those who honour their profession, the commitment to commit journalism does not involve creating headlines laden with qualifiers, copy that reeks with partisan bias. Honourable workers who make editorial decisions at do not consign journalistic ethics to the waste bin.They bolster their stories with facts and they allow their readers to come to his own conclusions.They do not pander to prejudices, political preferences, personal animosities. Such journalists still exist, but their work is rarely seen in The Huffington Post or its conservative counterpart, Fox News.
Clearly, both of these news outlets have a strong bias--one is purportedly liberal, the other conservative. They are, in essence, both sides of the same coin.
The mistake the members of the editorial board of these two sources of news make is that their audience prefers pandering to objective reporting. As a Liberal who reads The Huffington Post, I find all bias repugnant. I think that a news organisation that attempts to manipulate the political beliefs of its audience insult it demeans it when it assumes that they are incapable of distinguishing between legitimate reports and copy unsupported by facts.
It is not legitimate journalism, in anyone's book, to lower the tone of a of political discourse that has already reached astonishing lows. To deify a political figure North Korea's Kim Jong-un, Russia's Vladimir Putin or own Donald Trump is not journalism.It is sycophantism. To praise President Barack Obama for idiotic utterances, such as those that reflect his dislike of the words "radical Islam" is patronising and unacceptable because it involves the assumption that readers cannot form their own opinion. It is to act on the assumption that being a liberal means blind admiration of liberal politicians. It means suppression of critical thinking.
The thing is, that being a liberal demands that one use one's brain. It demands a clear vision and actions that are in accord with democratic principles. It is being an egalitarian without being a tool. It is thinking critically rather than following blindly. It is uniting rather than dividing. It is reaching for a consensus rather bludgeoning others with one's ever so admirable goodness and superiority.
The United States is an increasingly divided nation. It is hard to believe that members of the editorial board of blatantly partisan media outlets can go home at the end of the day and claim that they did their bit to heal the fissures in American society. Providing unlimited airtime to an idiotic presidential candidate who opposes one's own choice of representative is the job of political hacks, not the duty of honourable journalists. Such work is not a service to the nation. It is simply keeping alive what caricatures such as Donald Trump represent--hatred, racism, obscurantism. Who gains from that work? Is it useful information or a silly game devised at newsroom where workers have lost touch with real people?
The role of the media is to inform. Opinion columnists do have more leeway--I was one of them not too long ago--but that does not entail passing off bias as objective reporting.Being a journalist is to have a privileged position. It an opportunity and a challenge, not just the means to earn a living. When a journalist fails, society is at risk of seeing reality through a damaged prism. When a journalist panders to a political group, be it liberal or Trumpist, society suffers as much as it does under a dictatorship that chokes off the free press.
Bias is bias. It is evident in blatant appeals for approval of whatever a president. I know. I am a voter and I chose Obama for reasons other than an unexisting perfection. I do not find his refusal to utter the words "radical Islam" particularly admirable. I do not find his support of a Rightist regime in Brazil very comfortable, In fact, it makes it a hell of a job to explain to my Brazilian family why I voted for an imperialist. I do not find it admirable that my president engages in verbal fisticuffs with Israel's Bibi Netanyahu. Te Huffington Post seems to think so. A democracy where voters are sufficiently adult to understand that all humans are fallible does not seem to be part of the vision of its editorial board. Yet I labour under the illusion that the US is a place where one does not need to subscribe to the cult of personalities.
As an immigrant who lived under a dictatorship, it grieves me to see workers at American news outlets squander the freedom democracy grants them. My saying this will change nothing.In a democracy. journalists can lie, pander, manipulate and still claim to be objective. One is free to continue to flaunt the best principles of journalism. That is a matter between each one his conscience.But having said, publicly, that honourable journalism admits no pandering, I feel that no one who reads this can claim that he never knew what it is to commit journalism

GOOD FOR YOU

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 26 Mar 2016 17:00:00 +0000

Breakfast or dessert? You decide. These are low-fat, sugar-free oatmeal muffins that are perfect with tea or coffee. Bon appetit!

TROPICAL BLOBBIES

Ingredients

2 eggs
1/2 cup 2% milk
2 ripe plantains (Large bananas are an acceptable substitute)
1 teaspoon almond extract
2 tablespoons coconut oil
1/2 cup almond flour
1/2 cup unbleached flour
2 cups oatmeal
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup grated coconut
1 cup golden raisins
3 apples, peeled and chopped
1 cup crushed pineapple

Preparation Method

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease two one-dozen muffin tins. Place plantains, milk, eggs, coconut oil, and almond extract in blender. Process until smooth. Pour into mixing bowl. Separately, mix almond flour, unbleached flours, and baking power. Add coconut, raisins, crushed pineapple and chopped apples to egg, milk, and plantain mix. Add flour combo. Mix thoroughly. Place half cup batter into each muffin cup. Bake at 350 F for 30 minutes.

A STRANGER IN PARADISE

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 16:31:00 +0000

Pissaro

Marajoara chicken

Geoffrey Holder.

Painting by Geoffrey Holder.

Geoffrey Holder.

Port of Spain, the capital of the Trinidad Tobago island nation, is a blur in my mind. I was there in my early twenties. That was the first time I left Brazil. I was terribly disappointed that rather choosing tMilwaukee, Wisconsin, as base camp, my employer, the Westinghouse Teaching Corporation, decided that the Caribbean as the best place to train prospective Peace Corps Brazil volunteers Fool that I was, I did not think that little islands near small Spanish speaking countries were sufficiently different from coastal northeastern Brazil where I lived the time. I wanted a big change, not another day at the beach. Luckily, the friend with whom I traveled had family in Belem do Para, at the edge of the Amazon. She invited to stay with them for a couple of days before flying to Port of Spain. It was then that I begin to discover my own country. Other discoveries would follow.

In Belem, I saw Native Brazilians for the first time. In my profound ignorance, I assumed they were Asian. It never occurred to me that Marajo Island, where a pre-Columbian civilization flourished between 400 BCE and 1600 CE, was a skip and a hope away. I made no effort to go to the Goeldi Museum which houses splendid Marajoara artifacts. Whatever did I do with myself amid such cultural wealth? I visited with my hosts, walked around in the daily drizzle that falls daily at the edge of the Amazonia. I ate crimson acai juice with manioc flour, tasted a few of the myriad of flavors of ice cream made with tropical fruit and gazed at the glorious examples of the florid architecture made possible by the Rubber Boom .

I must have been singularly unobservant to keep no clear memory of Port of Spain. Tere I was, a stranger in paradise, wondering blindly amid crowds that included descendants of African, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Syrian, Lebanese and Tamil immigrants. All that I remember clearly is having ordered the wrong to go with red snapper. By comparison, the couple of months I spent in Charlotte Amalie left a more lasting impression. I was aware that Blackbeard’s Castle—formerly Skytsborg Tower--and Forth Christians were remnants of a Dutch and Dano-Norwegian past. What I missed entirely, was the Saint Thomas Synagogue, the second-oldest in American soil. I also missed any evidence of Camille Pisarro’s presence in Saint Thomas. Many years later, after I saw his paintings at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, his connection with Charlotte Amalie came as a surprise. It am not sure whether he attended the local synagogue. His father, a Portuguese Jew, broke with Jewish tradition when he married his uncle’s widow. In the ensuing scandal, the Pisarros were banned from worshiping at the synagogue and their four children declared illegitimate. It took twelve years for the Beth Din to relent. By then Camille Pisarro was on his way France where eventually chose art over commerce.

In Charlotte Amalie I saw none of Pisarro’s luscious paintings of food. I frequented no Sephardic households and consequently missed out on an introduction to Sephardic-Caribbean cuisine. The cooking staff hired by Westinghouse was from Guadeloupe. Its repertoire was heavy on French classics. I recall, particularly, the chef’s splendid Canard a l’Orange. Meals I had at a local restaurant were not memorable except for conch, a delicacy previously unknown to me. Many years later, after I moved to Fargo, North Dakota, I discovered Caribbean cuisine through GEOFFREY HOLDER'S CARIBBEAN COOKBOOK. A spicy roast recipe from that cookbook would become one of my dinner party specialties after I moved to West Virginia. My circle of friends included college students from India, Pakistan, Syria, Iran, Morocco, and Paraguay. Few of us ate pork and some did not eat beef. Other than that, we had many recipes in common. When met for monthly for potluck dinners, we astonished each other with dishes that replicated themselves in distant parts of the world. For example, pasteis, meat or cheese turnovers popular at Brazilian celebrations, were identical to Indian samosas and not all that different from Syrian sfiha. Iranians, Pakistani, Paraguayans all made rice dishes not that different than those we Brazilians enjoyed. The world seemed much cozier then, at least around the dinner table.

I've used Geoffrey Holder’s recipes more often after I settled for good in a small town that is only a couple of hours to Washington, DC. That makes the Kennedy Center part of our neighborhood if one thinks in big city terms. That is not too long a distance to travel for capital entertainment. That is how I was able to see Geoffrey Holder dance in a performance of "Kismet." Eartha Kitt was one of the principals, but the enormously tall--6’6” tall—and supremely graceful Holder stole the show. , Today he is better known for his Seven-Up—the Uncola--commercials and his film appearances as Baron Samedi in “Live and Let Die,” as Punjab in “Annie,” and as Nelson in Eddie Murphy’s “Boomerang.” He had many other talents, such as choreography, painting, photography and writing. I remember him as a marvelous presence on the stage and as the author of a wonderful cookbook in which he collected recipes from his native Port of Spain.

Click on link for my version of Geoffrey Holder's roast.
CARIBBEAN PORK ROAST

Note: Leftovers make excellent sandwiches.

A TASTE OF THE DISTANT PAST

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 16:28:00 +0000

There is no telling how halwa made its way from the Middle East to my part of northeast Brazil. Quite possibly it travelled with Sephardic Jews who fled Europe or who were sent into exile. There is also a chance that it arrived with Christian immigrants whose culinary repertoire included dishes from Islamic Iberia. Either way, by my maternal grandmother's time, its Arabic name had been changed to an abbreviated form of the Portuguese word for spices, especie, from especiarias. The original recipe itself underwent a transformation to include manioc flour, the byproduct of the poisonous manioc plant, Manihot esculenta, that African slaves brought to the New World along with the formula to make it edible.

My grandmother needed no recipe to make the Brazilian version of halwa. Most probably she memorised it when she watched former slaves prepare it in her father's kitchen. Quick digression--slavery ended in 1888, in Brazil. My grandmother was born two years later. She neither took part in exploiting Africans nor did she profit from slavery. As for her father, this is neither the time nor place for his story. Well then, back to halwa and its romantic associations with an Islamic Iberia so many ing contemporary historians paint in pretty pastel colors. Allow me to join them in ignoring Moorish rulers' stringent rules for those they conquered. Let me dwell on the fuzzy-wuzzy view of unpleasant events and leave out these rulers' occasional massacres of Christians and Jews, their contempt for women. Rather, let me talk about feasts in the gardens of the Alhambra. Let me envision an assembly of guests dressed in fine brocade--men only except for women musicians and dancers, people too low on the social scale to matter much. But who cares about inequality when the music of the oud harmonizes with the song of water fountains and the perfume of roses and carnations fills the air? Unless the current ruler is a fanatic recently arrived from a goat skin tent city in the desert, there is probably wine to go with pastilla, the chicken and almond pastry that best represents Ibero-Arabian fusion cuisine. Let me focus on that. Let me picture doe-eyed men with falcon profile, listening to such entrancing muwashashat they remain oblivious of the succulent bits of pastilla filling they hold in the perfumed fingers of their right hand. Let see that when slaves--slavery is not a European invention--cleared away the remains of chicken pie, after the men washed their hands in rose water, perhaps it was time for veiled Circassian captives to bring in gold plates heaped with sesame seed halwa. It all sounds like a fragment from a romance novel, doesn't it? Such is the real history of Iberia.

Though she did not know it, my grandmother held much of Islamic Iberia in her memory. Grandmothers often are the transmitters of memories. Their role includes link past and present generations. But my grandmother did not think in such terms, For her, cooking, praying, and singing ancient songs were simply part of her family tradition. I doubt that she ever took the time to question any of them. Past and present merged in her as naturally as the rain falls and the crops mature. There was no symbolism in the halwa she sent me when I was away from home. There was no reminder of who we had been five centuries earlier, in Toledo, Spain. My grandmother did not know that her family whose name she shared had a name in Aramaic. All she knew was a sweet way of comforting a grandchild far from home.
Halwa is a marvelous comfort. Mine arrived in a clear glass jar that made its promise of sweetness a visual experience that expanded to include the familiar scent of clover and cinnamon. To dip a spoon into the rich mix of tahini, sugar and manioc flour was to recall the flavors of childhood--smoky roasted sesame seeds and brown sugar. Sadly, I did not honor the family tradition of memorizing recipes. Many years after I left school, I traveled to another continent. But I did not forsake halwa in my travels. I ate it in Fargo, North Dakota where it was popular with German-Russian immigrants. I ate it in Georgetown, Maryland, where Middle Eastern diplomats shop. I ate at the Rue des Rosiers, in Paris. None of it tasted exactly like my grandmother's. None of it had the taste of home.

HEAVENLY CHOCOLATE

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 16:24:00 +0000

Mexican molinillo, in forefront, is used to stir chocolate.

The name the Europeans gave to the cocoa bean, Theobroma cacao, food of the gods, is a splendid spin on the Nahuatl word used throughout the Aztec empire where Cortez found it, xocolatl. Imagine the frisson that went through the Spanish court when the Conquistadors talked about this seed that was so valuable it served as currency in New World. Imagine the PR person for Amalgamated Spanish Plunderers saying to Queen Isabella,

“It’s as precious as gold, Your Catholic Majesty. Why over there five beans will buy a rabbit, ten will buy a night with a prostitute–begging your pardon, Your Catholic Majesty, they are heathens, but a taste of the Inquisition’s strappado will fix that–and a hundred buys a slave.”

Imagine the queen’s reaction when she sipped the cold bitter drink made with ground up cocoa beans, cornmeal, chili, and cinnamon. I do not know the royal Spanish equivalent of “yuck, this is vile” but I suspect the queen uttered words to that effect. It took twenty years for the Spanish plunderers of Mexico to learn that the Aztecs fermented cocoa beans, to lessen their bitterness and that they often added honey and vanilla to their xocolatl to made it more palatable. This discovery coincided with the arrival in Spain of sugar from the Caribbean. The rest is history.

What intrigues me in the history of chocolate is the relative obscurity to which it relegated the Portuguese Jews who played an important role in bringing it to Europe. It is only recently that the chocolate manufacturers of Bayonne, France decided to highlight the contribution of these Sephardim. Now the Bayonnais talk openly about these Jews who, in flight from the Iberian Inquisition, turned Bayonne into France’s foremost center for chocolate manufacture. Sadly, a century the good Bayonnais had acquired the skills needed to take over the chocolate industry. Encouraged by the anti-Semitic propaganda of members of the chocolatiers guild, they thrw out the Jews. For the latter, it was “deja vu all over again.” .

This historical footnote has a special meaning to me. Sephardim who fled to France early to avoid the Portuguese Inquisition, are among my maternal ancestors.They settled in northeast Brazil some five centuries ago. When the Dutch invaded that part of the world in 1630–a century after my Sephardic ancestors’ arrival in the New World–Jews were able to reestablish contact openly with branches of their European families.They were active participants in the sugar trade. Some of them traded in cocoa beans as well. It is possible that this imagined relative was among those to bring to France and Holland Maya and Aztec stories about the aphrodisiac qualities of the cocoa bean. But that is purely speculative. However, it is a matter of record the belief in chocolate as a sort of proto-Viagra took roots in the European imagination. Casanova is said to have fortified himself with it prior to amatory bouts. Louis XV, the well-loved, relied on a mixture of chocolate bars dissolved in boiling water and thickened with egg yolk to enhance his lovemaking with Mesdames Pompadour and du Barry. He was only one of many westerners to believe a legend that, so far, scientific research has failed to legitimize.

Though chocolate trading is not part of the documented history of my family, I cherish the thought that somewhere in the family tree there lurks a cocoa bean trader. Never mind that my childhood was devoid of chocolate treats. That strikes me as very peculiar. Brazil happens to be the sixth largest producer of cocoa beans in the world. Surely there was plenty to go around when I was little. Did its association with the bad habits of old roues keep it out of my menu? I doubt it. Maybe it was a simply a question of transportation. Roads linking my little town in Ceara to large urban centers were not the best. Consequently, most of the town residents led lives of utter self-sufficiency. Having no cocoa trees meant having no chocolate. Or did it? My parents happened to be economically comfortable. They traveled and shopped in larger places than my hometown. Why did they not bring home chocolate? I have no idea. All I know is that I only became a chocolate eater the year I turned thirteen. That year, I left home to go to school in the cool, verdant Cariri hills, miles away. That was my first solo voyage. At thirteen, I was thought to be capable of handling new privileges, new responsibilities.I took with me a secret Yom Kippur prayer my maternal ancestors had been passing on to their eldest child for five hundred years, school uniforms, and the burden of parental expectations. For the first time in my life, I had enough pocket to spend in candy shops. Was all this pure coincidence? Jewish girls that age become bat Mitzvah, but that is an innovation in terms of Jewish history. Besides, five centuries after Spain expelled its Jews, my family no longer connected with normative, Judaism. Ours is the memory of Jews in hiding. It records through a glass darkly.

Fact–at thirteen, I left home in the dubious company of my family’s driver, a murderer my father had sprung from jail–my father often hired clients from his law practice for jobs he alone thought they were qualified for. Presumably, he thought a murderer was a safe person to drive a sheltered teenager school. But my father and his endearing quirks are material for another post. Chocolate is the allegedly the topic du jour. Chocolate as in Sonho de Valsa, the cashew stuffed bonbons I savored along with Catholic novels of morals such as Henry Sienkiewicz’s QUO VADIS, Florence Barclay’s THE ROSARY, and appallingly sugary romances by M. Delly, such as MAGALI, Only Saint-Exupery and Jacques Prevert stood between me and complete idiocy

Besides halwa–especie, in northeast Brazilian Portuguese–made by maternal grandmother, I do not recall eating sweets other than chocolate while I was away from home. Delightful as my memories of weekends with the relatives who occasionally liberated me from conventual dreariness, I have no recollection of the food we shared. I only remember clearly the chocolate ice cream we would have at a little shop facing the cathedral where my teachers compelled me to attend mass every day. Chocolate then was the last sweet note of freedom from a regimented routine. Ever since no treat matches the nostalgic flavor of semi-sweet cocoa with a top note of vanilla. In my mind, it blends, exquisitely, with the sounds, scent, and sights of a Sunday kermess that brought the largest town square to life–the carousel that blared the Moulin Rouge song, the rustle of freshly starched clothes, the perfume of jasmine and red of tree blossoms, the glow of paper lanterns, the smell of buttered popcorn.

Years later, in the United States, I acquired a more sophisticated taste in chocolate. Thanks a friend whose relatives had a long lasting relationship with Viennese makers of bespoke chocolate, I graduated to artisanal treats. Later, in my food journalism days, I tasted Bolivian, Belgian, British, French, Italian Mexican, Swiss, and Venezuelan chocolate. I ate chocolate made in Vermont by a former White House chef, sampled handmade chocolate truffles in Italy, France, Spain, Switzerland, Hershey, Pennsylvania, and Martinsburg, West Virginia. Could I choose a particular brand over another? Yes. In the United States, I would choose Peter’s chocolate, occasionally available at King Arthur Flour, in Vermont. In Europe, I would choose the Austrian chocolate made for the Hungarian aristocracy, but the friend who used to share it, died a few years ago. I never bothered to find out the name of her Austrian chocolate makers. All in all, I am not one of these folks who swear by Caillebaut, Cote d’Or, or Varlhona. I do not crave truffles made in the light of the new moon is some remote Oaxacan kitchen. Only rarely do I miss the hot chocolate I had in Spain, a concoction so thick one could stand a spoon in it–Spaniards thicken their drinking chocolate with cornstarch. I can live with American hot cocoa. I am OK with British and Swiss imports I can buy in most discount stores in the United States. As a rare treat, I indulge in Brazilian Sonho de Valsa bonbons. Thing is, to me, all chocolate is divine. I am grateful to the Sephardim for helping make it available to mere mortals.

Note: My immediate family has no ancestral recipes for chocolate. I hope someday to duplicate the chocolate halwa I had at the Rue des Rosiers, in Paris, years ago. It was a heavenly mix of Old and New World flavors.

THE SEA, THE SEA

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 16:21:00 +0000

Atlantic cod, Gadus morhua.

Codfish and coconut milk soup.

Look up codfish on the web and you face a deluge of information of astounding similarity. You find out that the Basque were the earliest Europeans to fish for the Atlantic cod, Gadus morhua in late 15th. century Newfoundland. They were soon followed by the Portuguese, whose Catholic faith that forbade meat-eating on Fridays, Lent and other occasions. Dried and salted codfish thus became a staple in Portuguese menus. So much so that it consumers named it fiel amigo, faithful friend. According to folklore, the Portuguese cuisine boasts a codfish recipe for every day of the year. Best known among these are Bacalhau à Gomes de Sá, a cod casserole that includes potatoes, olives, parsley , onions, and fresh lemon slices; Bolinhos de Bacalhau, fritters made with dried cod, mashed potatoes, garlic, onions, and parsley; Sopa de Bacalhau com Tomates e Beldroegas, a soup that includes cod, tomatoes, and purslane.

Thanks to my Brazilian origins, my cooking repertoire includes not only Bolinhos de Bacalhau, but one of my favorite dishes, Bacalhau com Leite de Coco, Cod and Coconut Milk, an Afro-tropical take on the traditional European Portuguese recipe. There are many variations on this theme. Some call for carrots and potatoes while others include green, red, and yellow peppers. Traditionally, Bacalhau com Leite de Coco is made with azeite de dendê, oil from the fruit of an African palm tree, Elaeis guineensis. but I have read recipes that call for olive oil or soy oil. Having moved from Northeastern Brazil to the Eastern United States decades ago, I rarely found dried cod in local markets, let alone azeite de dendê . Enter internet commerce, which makes it possible for me to locate and buy the most recherché food products. That is how I lay my hands on two pounds of deboned salt cod packaged in Brazil.

Portugal is no longer the world's prime purveyor of salt cod. That honor goes to Norway, which exports it wherever there is a demand, such as in Goa, Jamaica, and the Madeira Islands. Thus, the codfish I bought recently was a well-travelled fish. Compared to the cod Portugal exported to Brazil years ago, this deboned, plastic wrapped product was a tame beast, a pallid version of the Iberian product. Nevertheless, I soaked in hot overnight, as one did the extremely salty bacalhau of my childhood. The following day I drained it and added it, plus a cup of diced tomatoes, to an onion and two fat cloves of garlic sauteed in olive oil. Once the resulting sauce thickened, I added a twist of freshly ground black pepper, a sprinkle of oregano, and a tin of coconut milk. I let the mix simmer for twenty minutes prior to throwing in half a cup of whole wheat penne. Finally, I served it over a cup of fresh spinach and garnished it with a handful of chopped fresh coriander.It was a good soup though mild and somewhat characterless dish compared to the food served at my mother's table. I suspect neither my seafaring Iberian ancestors nor my coastal Brazil relatives would not have thought much of it. But I live far from the sea. There are no palms in my adopted hometown. My olive oil comes from Tunisia and coconut milk comes from Sri Lanka. I do what I have been doing since I left my home country--I adapt, adapt then adapt some more. That is what immigrants do. That is, no doubt what my Iberian ancestors did when they reached the New World.I may live in a global village, but longing for the salty taste of the sea is part of my ancestral memory. Soon I will try to duplicate my mother's Bolinhos de Bacalhau. But that is another post.

PIGEONS IN THE PARK

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 16:20:00 +0000

Squab from D'Artagnan.

Supreme de pigeonneau--half a breast and wing of a squab.

Left--Maranhao red rice.

Long before Tom Lehrer sang about poisoning pigeons in the park, Ernest Hemingway stealthily decimated the pigeon population of the Luxemburg Gardens, in Paris. The time was the mid-Twenties when poverty was romantic provided that you were an American writer married to a woman with a trust fund. That was when the budding novelist frequented the Brasserie Lipp, La Closerie des Lilas, Cafe' Flore, Les Deux Magots during the day and sipped liqueur with Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in the evening.Somewhere in between, he wrote and tended his first child whom he would occasionally take to the Medici Fountain at the Luxemburg for an airing. There when no one was looking, he would strangle foolhardy pigeons and stash their carcasses in the baby's pram for future consumption. It is possible--and anything is possible with American literary myths--that the stowaway pigeons inspired him to call his Paris memoirs A MOVEABLE FEAST.

My own pigeon-based repasts had another setting. They happened in a huge double house my parents shared with close relatives in the outskirts of a small town Ceara', Brazil. I must have been six or seven at the time and this house remains in my memory as a place of magical beauty. It was set next to woods where poisonous snakes and free range chickens lived in an entente cordiale and where I hid under a fragrant green dome of velame, Croton campestris, to read my father's copy of LES MISERABLES, of which I understood next to nothing.

All paradises have serpents. Mine had, besides real reptiles, an intractable, somewhat mad second cousin who terrified me with his angry outbursts. He was, however, a passionate hunter who often brought home fat bags of quail and rolinha caldo de feijao, Columbina talparcoti, which he roasted on an open fire.Woe to me if I glanced at him while he drowned his roasted birds in malagueta pepper sauce.

"'Are you spying on me," he'd roar.That was a grave accusation.

That was a grave accusation. Espiar, to spy had a double meaning in my part of Brazil. It could be understood as "ogling someone's food" which hinted at being hungry, therefore poor, something Ibero-Brazilians hated to make known.Only beggars had the right to flaunt their poverty. Everyone else should have the decorum of the bankrupt Spanish grandee so aptlydescribed in the the saying, por cima tanta farofa, por baixo mulambo so' --so much fancy stuff on top and nothing but rags underneath, But for people of means be as undignified as to display their hunger in public was shameful and demeaning. Such behavior in a child my age meant that was mal educada, badly educated, badly brought up, ill-mannered.) An ill-mannered child reflected badly on her parents and to tarnish the parental image was serious stuff. Life was complicated back then. As for the other meaning of espiar, it was to spy. Again, serious stuff for people of the Crypto-Jewish** * persuasion. One's choice of food was an indicator of one's religious practices and throughout centuries, many a Crypto-Jew perished in the flames of the Iberian Inquisition for choosing olive oil instead pork fat or for refusing to mix milk products and meat at the same meal.

Whether my second cousin's paranoid fear of spies had to do with hidden Judaism or not, I do not know. All I know is that his anger often went as suddenly as it came. In his calm moments, he was generous enough to share his food--roasted quail, boiled umari, Poraqueiba cericea nut, wild honey in the comb, and once in a great while, squab from his dovecote.

Maybe one has to be a bit mad to kill four-week-old pigeons. They look so utterly helpless, so unfinished, so vulnerable in their huge-beaked, bright-eyed, sparsely feathered vulnerability. But sympathy for members of the animal kingdom was rare when I was little. As long as they fit into Jewish dietary laws, birds were for eating. In the Middle east, pigeons had been on the menu since Biblical times. I imagine that while they lived in Spain where, allegedly, they were taken by the Romans after the fall of the Second Temple, my ancestors ate b'stilla, the Hispano-Moorish pigeon, almond, cinnamon, and sugar pie the recipe for which exiles from Iberia took to with them to Morocco following the 1492 Expulsion.

My folks did not make b'stilla. After half a millennium in Brazil, their recipe for warka, the translucent, phyllo-like dough that envelops the filling of b'stilla, must have disappeared along with their Hebrew and Judeo-Spanish. Dona Julia, my parents' cook did not have the skill needed to replicate the food of Hispano-Jewish banquets. Even so, what she did with my cousin's squab, was brilliant. She cooked them in an ample quantity of broth to which she added rice--Maranhao red rice, if I can trust my memory of that long-ago meal--to make a casserole.

I do not recall watching the transmutation of squab and rice into a dish similar to the sopa seca of Spanish-speaking countries, but I have a vivid memory of how it looked and smelled when it came to the table--fist-sized, golden birds lay on a bed of red rice spangled with golden coins of fat. A pool of rich broth redolent of annato seeds, garlic, shallots, black pepper, cilantro and chives encircled the rice. It was the food of dreams, infused with the evanescing memory of Judean banquets, Roman feasts, and celebrations in the Moorish-Iberia of my maternal ancestors.

Should I decide to emulate Hemingway, there is a little park near my house where I can push an empty pram. There should be no health concerns. According to James LeRay Morgan, author of CULINARY CREATION, " squab meat is regarded as safer than some other poultry products as it harbors fewer pathogens (than poultry) and may be served between medium and well-done." Trouble is, the local gendarmerie police patrols the park more assiduously than the guards of the Luxemburg Gardens did in Hemingway's time. It would be wiser to order squab from suppliers in California. D'Artagnan, for example, offers the choice of squab with head and feet still attached and the decapitated variety. I would go for the headless and footless bird. As a person twenty-first-century sensitivities, I no longer care to be reminded the appearance of live animals prior to their arrival at my plate. I do not have access to a source of freshly harvested arroz do Maranhao, but I have a stash of red Himalayan rice that should be a good substitute.

Please click here to access the recipe for RECIPE FOR SQUAB AND RED HIMALAYAN RICE CASSERO

DOWN BY THE OLD MILLSTREAM: TEN TIPS FOR JEWELRY MAKERS AND OTHER ARTISANS

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 05 Feb 2016 20:17:00 +0000

DOWN BY THE OLD MILLSTREAM: TEN TIPS FOR JEWELRY MAKERS AND OTHER ARTISANS: Left--Earrings made with freshwater pearls, aventurine, chrysoprase silver and silver plated findings. Right--earrings made with Biwa pear...

TEN TIPS FOR JEWELRY MAKERS AND OTHER ARTISANS

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 05 Feb 2016 20:13:00 +0000

Left--Earrings made with freshwater pearls, aventurine, chrysoprase silver and silver plated findings. Right--earrings made with Biwa pearls, faceted ametrine and sterling silver findings.

NOTES FROM THE RELUCTANT PROFESSIONAL'S LITTLE RED BOOK

Professional silversmiths wear aprons. They do it because it helps them gather silver fragments and dust that result from trimming and polishing. All that can be recycled, sold or traded . Usually the apron is attached to the jeweler's bench. All the silversmith has to do once he sits down is to pull it over his knees where it will collect whatever he cares to keep.
"You'd be amazed how much silver dust you can accumulate in a month," said an artisan who trained at a prestigious design school. "You really should not waste it."

Mine is not a proper jeweler's bench. It is a table made from an recycled grate and a metal stand. A local iron smith put it together for me. It is serviceable, sturdy, stable,and it did not cost much. I have used it for over fifteen years and I am satisfied with it. If there is anything, it lacks the apron that usually comes with a store boiught bench. It would be difficult if not impossible to attache cloth to its sleek metal legs. That may not seem critical because since do not generate that much silver dust or clippings. But it would be useful to contain the shower of beads and finding that falls follows the gravity imperative. It isn't that I am particularly clumsy. It is that that my beads and findings have an abnormal affinity for the floor of my my little studio.They fly from my hands at the oddest moments.They usually do so as I am about to finish assembling a pair of earrings or adding a clasp to a necklace. The more delicate the pieces are, the greater the propensity of their components to end up in inaccessible places beneath the baseboard heater, the built-in bookcases, the old Kazakh carpet that covers the floor.

Fallen findings do not sound like the most serious problem in the world. It it isn't. It is, however, a time consuming inconvenience. Metal is not cheap. I pay my suppluer for every lost crimp tube, crimp cover, and bead cap. Hunting them up once they vanish costs me time and money.A lost crimp might stop me me from finishing a project until my supplier replaces it for me. If the puece has been commissioned, the client might not be happy with the delay. Even though these days I think of jewelry making as a self-indulgent hobby, it is not too late to to give up inefficient habits. I have not participated in a crafts show for several years and I should I do so, I would no longer expect much of a financial reward.. That is one of the most important lessons a crafts person can--don't do it for the money. Do it for love or not at all.That is exactly how most artisans opperate.

In many cases, jewelry making is a fool's errand. At best, the artisan recovers the amount invested in each piece. Forget the cost of labor. American artisans compete with highly skilled Third World people who get next to nothing for their work. Most American consumers are conditioned to judge the monetary value of a piece of jewelry by the price of what he sees in discount stores that feature the work Third World artisans and Chinese political prisoners. Some of the best musueums in the United States stock their gift shops with jewelry, clothes, quilts, metal and woodwork from China and India. Can American artisans hope to to become solvent solvent in face of global ecomic shenanigans. I don't don't know. WhatI do know is that he can take steps to make sure he does not go broke while he pursues his passion.I speak from experience and this is what I would tell myself if I could rewind the clock
1.Be sure that this is what you want to do. Know its risks and rewards. If you want to be a full time crafts person, inform yourself about the economics of your region. Mine is not a rich part of the world. Many local people undervalue handicrafts as the kind of think theat granny did. Many find "store boughten," that is, mass produced stuff far more desirable that local handicrafts. For one thing, mass produced stuff sold at discount store costs less than the work of American artisans.Be aware of this flaw in the system. Talk to local craftspeople. Ask them about the pluses and minuses of being self-employed.Join online forum for artisans, seek out people in your field work.You don't have to despair. But don't be delusional about your market. If locals won't buy, think of other venues.

2. Educate yourself about your target market. Whom do you want to reach--college students, thirty-something professionals, senior citizens? Learn about the buying habits of those you wish to attract as clients. Jewelry often is an impulse buy. Do you know what sort of design is most likely to sell to impulse buyers?Yes, I know know it seems sordid to think about profit when all you want to do is make pretty things, but face it, artisans have to be business people if they do not wish to go bankrupt.
3.Once you decide to take the first steps to set up your jewelry making operation, proceed with caution. Hurrying to set up your studio can lead you to buy cheap equipment you will have to replace. That is expensive.Of course there are Navajo silversmiths who have have no more than a handful of tools and a whole in the ground where they smelt their silver. Yet they make exquisite jewelry. If you come from generations of Navajo silversmiths who started training at age thre, by all means stick to six tools and hole in the the ground. Otherwise prepare to shell out equipment--the bench designed for professionals, the best torch, the best dapping tools, hammers, mandrels, pliers, best safety equipment and much, much more.

2.Once you set up your studio, see whether it included features that will allow you to work efficient. What have you done to .minimise waste, for example?Chances are you will be mail ordering some of your material. Factor in shipping costs.Can you afford to keep losing micro-sized findings and beads? They are the very devil to find once they slide from the bench. Treat them accordingly. Corral those crimps. Keep hold of those 3 mm ruby beads.Never understimate the power of a bench apron.I did and I am sorry.

3.Value your work, value your creativity, value your time.Keep track of how many hours you spend on a piece and see if you can be paid for some of it. In most cases, you cannot, but adding them to the cost will give you a better sense of how much you you donate to the cause

4. Honor what you make. Display it attractively. Invest in jewelry cases that signal to your clients that you are a professional, not a hobbyist playing at jewelry making..If you want to be be taken seriously as a crafts person, begin by taking yourself seriously. That will mean spending money, initially. Decide whether you want to commit a significant part of your budget on a venture that might fail. Every business is a risk, but in a soft economy the business of adornment is one of the riskiest.

5. Be a show-off. Photograph your best piece of jewelry and have it printed on your business cards. photo. Open an online storefront. Use the social media--Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, to publicise your work. Making crafts is not for the timid. I found that out when I got invited to show my jewelry on a television show. Publicity is one of the side jobs of every artisan. Go bold or go go home. Encourage your clients to mention your work to their friends. The worst that they can do is say no, right?
6.Reassess your goals every trimester. Have you met some of them? All of them? None at all? Why?

7. Remind yourself of the primary reason to commit to the craft.Do not be afraid to play devil's advocate. Is jewelry making the only you can find to express yourself? Do you have a discretionary account in a Swiss bank, a rich aunt who will pay your bills?

8.Be realistic. Accept that the work is hard and the profit margin is slim. Can you live with that?

9.Given all the economic minuses of jewelry making, could you be just as happy clerking at a jewelry store? You'd be selling someone else's work, but you would not have to run financial risks.You'd get vactions and insurance.

!0. If jewelry making so enhances the quality of your life, you do not mind working for free, embrace it. But be sensible, Plan to earn enough an income to buy more jewelry making supplies. Sorry to say it, but that might require a second job.

THE DEPTHS OF WINTER

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 22:07:00 +0000

Chicken coops under snow.

Snow capped birdfeeder on the lower left.

Chicken coop that shelters two Australorps, a Speckled Sussex and a Wyandotte.

Paperwhite narcissi and snowdrop on windowsill.

Most residents of the Greater Washington D..C. metropolitan area have little experience with harsh winters. Snow storms that would not faze midwesterners, paralyse the nation's capital. The very mention of a possible storm drives hordes of householders to supermarkets where they fall upon groceries like crazed locusts. Typically, they grab all paper products before they move on to canned goods and perishables. Once they have ended the grocery shopping frenzy, many head to the hardware where, typically, there are never enough snow shovels. Pity the fool who manages to buy and then leaves outside. Enthusiasts of free enterprise liberate it within minutes.

Having lived in the Dakotas during my first three years in the United States, I tend to scoff at this winter madness. After all, hereabouts there is rarely a storm that qualifies as blizzard. I stock my pantry as a matter of course. I hate driving and when I do venture out to the little shopping mall nearby, I buy enough groceries for four or six weeks. If absolutely necessary I make a couple of extra runs for perishables. That is the extent of my hoarding. My snow shovel is tucked safely in my mud room. I have no reason to panic even though Saturday brought a whopping forty inches of snow instead of the predicted twenty-some. I am calm even though by Sunday mornings I was properly marooned. By then, traffic stopped, the university, elementary and high schools closed, and a great silence descended upon the town. Birds stopped singing, There was no sign of the ubiquitous crows that patrol my backyard and the Canada geese that fly by my window at least twice a day, apparently cancelled trips to or from the Potomac river.

I am calm. Prior to Snowmaggedon 2016 a good friend brought me milk, eggs--my chickens rarely lay eggs in winter--and the matches I need in order to start my woodstove.At the advice of my who grew up in Montana, I piled up logs by the front door and covered them with a tarp. I fed the chickens and filled up their water containers. I cooked a large batch of tyrkey-beef kofta and another of brown rice. I deployed four Andrea Camilleri novels around the house. What else can one I possibly need?

I need the internet. It allows me to read newspapers and to catch up with friends and family. I also need cell phone service for emergencies. Luckily, I have both. Better yet, I do not anticipate any emergenciesI ave a clear path to my sidewalk, courtsey of my lovely next door neighbor.. It is good to to know I can make a quick geaway although my major outing is limited to a visit to the chicken coops. .

Now, day five of Snowmaggedon, there is still no traffic on my street. Snow removal crews have been at work since Saturday night ploughing and trucking snow to whatever it is that snow goes to die. Some householders have shovelled their sidewalks and parking spaces. My own sidewalk is impassable and my car remains tucked under a little igloo. I am fine with that. I have been planning my garden, reading, and cooking. A couple of days ago I finished Andrea Camilleri's THE AGE OF DOUBT--review at www.richtexts.blogspot.com and I celebrated with a chicken coconut curry that did not fit in with the Sicilian background of the novel, but which was delicious all the same.

Tonight I will start another Camilleri novel, have some onion soup with homemade whole wheat bread, and dream of all the flowers and veggies I will be growing in spring. I have parperwhite narcissi blooming on my bedside table and an amaryllis growing in a pot on a windowsill. The snow is melting. The birds--wren and crows-- are back. The geese grumble mightily on the way to the river. My cat is snoring at mt feet. I am safe, I am calm, I am warm and for that I am grateful.

TOO YOUNG TO DIE, TOO OLD TO TANGO

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 18 May 2015 00:19:00 +0000

Recently, I embarked in a dubious experiment--I signed up for an online dating service. Thing is, I am not looking for romance. Last year, I lost the love of my life and I think it would be unfair to expect to duplicate the kind of closeness we had. Anything else in the romance department pales by comparison. Then there is the question of age. I am at the end of my sixth decade. At this stage, if one has not learnt to function as a single unit, one is in serious trouble. For the most part, I am OK being on my own. I have several interests that keep me entertained and when I occasionally need help, a few good friends and neighbors come to the rescue. What I miss is the companionshiop of someone with whom I can share a good meal, a visit to the museum, a walk by the river. This does not seem too much to hope for, but the sad reality is that in our society, most people socialise with their coevals. In my village, folks socialise with family embers, fellow church goers, colleagues from work, Rarely do circles of young couples, for example, merge with trhose of single Third Agers.One's companion does not have to be a man, but most of the women I know are too busy with their husbands, their families, book clubs, Elderhostel and who knows what else to add anew friend to their circle.

Many retired people who create opportunities for human contact by plunging into volunteer work. Their primary motive might be altruism, but there is no question that comraderie is a strong incentive. I am not, by nature, a group person. I loved my work as a freelance writer for many reasons. Not being confined to a newsroom, not being part of the politics of the workplace, not being expected to attend the office party, were high on the list of pluses. I had the occasional lunch and dinner with a congenial editor and that was that.

Some retired people are joiners, just as they were when they were at work. No doubt many transition seemlessly from high activity levels to higher ones. Not so with me. I live quietly, I tend a flock of chickens, I write fiction, do some gardening, read, bake all my own bread, publish an occasional book reviews, dabble at watercolor painting, sketching and silversmithing. I like my life. I love my house and its location. Why bother with a largely discredited online dating service in order to find a a platonic companion? Simple, No companions appeared, unbidden, at my door. Some were bidden and tempted with organic fresh eggs, but alas, they had no free room in their agendas.

Hence the Golden Carrot Dating Services experiment. Is it going to work? I doubt it. A sample of my so-called matches is somewhat discouraging. There s a significant number of doctors and lawyers among the offerings proffered by Golden Carrot. Most live in large urban centers. Most claim to make 100k a year. Nearly all claim to be athletic. Most are looking for a twenty something partner " care for. " Many demand an equally athletic partner. I am doomed. Walking the cat downstairs is my idea of strenuous exercise.
Athletic or not, truth is that hardly anyone seems to be looking for a friend unless it is a friend who is willing to be, shall we say, test driven. Why, I ask, at such advanced age, is sex a precondition for a trip to the National Art Gallery? At the moment, only one of the men who looked at my profile has e-mailed me. He lives in the Southwest, he is ten years younger than I and he is and eastern Europen looking for Romance. Methinks he wants to romance a sponsor for American citizenship. That is bad of me, but I know of such cases happening in real life. He sent me his phone number on his third e-mail and my reaction was, "Whoa there, cowboy! It is early days yet."

When I said that Golden Carrot was a dubious experiment I meant that it is a huge gambleto connect with strangers. As reader an writer of crime novels I immediately think of serial murderers lurking online. I think of the expense of checking people's criminal--a gamble in itself if they use a false name--and I wonder what in tarnation I am doing. Push comes to shove I know at least one guy who might go to the museum with me. He is looking for a decorative woman twenty years his junior to keep house, and cook for him, but he knows I know his proclivities. Stay tuned.

GRIN AND BEAR IT

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 18:37:00 +0000

Recently, a newsletter I received from Kitchen Gardeners International included a blog entry from a gardener who had requested and acquired free seeds from GRIN, a section of the United States Department of Agriculture. When I used that information to ask for seeds, I got back a negative response couched in intolerably patronising bureaucratese. This is my message to GRIN. Stay tuned, taxpaying gardeners.

dbmu@grin.barc.usda.gov A copy of your order to the NPGS

Feb 17 at 7:22 PM

dbmu@grin.barc.usda.gov

Today at 1:11 PM

Unfortunately, I accidentally deleted the arch response I received from your office denying this request. Its salient point was the information that GRIN seeds are not available to home gardeners who can (jolly well) buy their seeds from commercial sources. While it is gratifying to see my tax dollars at work, fueling the epistolary efforts of a bureaucrat who seems to think he can patronise a gardener with over forty years of expensive, it is puzzling that GRIN did gave away seeds to a home blogger. Her blog is the source of the obviously erroneous information due to which I send my request. What then is the criteria for choosing recipients? I will forego the pleasure of mentioning all the uses such seeds can have for home gardeners who are also micro-farmers. Apparently the concepts of sustainability and support of existing wildlife have yet to permeate the great minds at GRIN. I will simply blog this and slug the post, GRIN AND BEAR IT.

Your disgruntled tax payer,

SO FAR AWAY

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 30 Jun 2013 19:48:00 +0000

2MNYHBU6NFRY

My next door neighbour and I had one of our occasional chats yesterday.The air was balmy and we sat in the garden, listening to the music from the local Streetfest, four blocks away. We talked of books. That is, I offered her copies of Vargas Llosas THE DREAM OF THE CELT, which I reviewed, recently, on my book blog,Rich Texts and Edna O'Brien's COUNTRY GIRL, which I am about to review. I told her Llosa's book is fictionalized account of the life of Roger Casement's an Irishman who documented human rights abuses in the Congo and in Peru, in the early Twentieth century. He was knighted for his his work, but when he dared to compare the behavior of the British in Ireland to that of the Belgian oppressors of Congolese rubber workers, all hell broke loose. The British government acted swiftly to discredit him. It hired perfidious Norwegian, Adler Christensen to seduce him and it leaked the the Casement's private diary, which detailed homosexual encounters, to the press. Vilified for his sexual preferences, stripped of his knighthood, Casement was jailed and eventually hanged, ostensibly for bringing weapons from Germany to be used in the Easter Uprising of 1916.

2MNYHBU6NFRY I told my neighbor, who is a great reader, that COUNTRY GIRL ties in with DREAM OF THE CELT in that Casement's brother is one of the people O'Brien mentions in her memoirs. Her chapter on The Troubles echoes with the dream Casement had for a free and peaceful Ireland. For Brazilian readers such as I am, I added, both books, I added, are particularly relevant at a time when a protest takes place every hour in 375 Brazilian cities. Were he alive today, Casement, who was once the British Council at Sao Paulo, would probably be interested in investigating human rights abuses in Brazil. He would probably question government-sanctioned actions of the Brazilian Military Police against protesters and the press. He would want to bring to light the reasons why why the police attacked so many journalists--a total of 54 in two weeks. Many of these journalists were wounded by troopswho have a propensity to aim for eye when they shoot rubber bullets. Besides shooting reporters, during the Fortaleza protests, this past week, police used helicopters to bombard the press with tear gas.

Such violence usually outrages well-educated middle class Americans who have the leisure to reflect on civil liberties around the globe.Why did she think, I asked my neighbor, that events of vital importance to Brazilian elicited so little interest from most Americans? She grew thoughtful and said, "Maybe because Brazil seems so remote." My question about the best way to reach Americans hung in the air. My neighbor is a very kind, thoughtful person, but she has little free time. She has job and two children she and her husband parent commendably. It was almost dinner when we talked. The kids were hungry and she had to leave.I thought of her counterpart in Brazil and asked myself how she would respond if the protests were taking place in Washington, DC, Boonsboro, Maryland, Aurora Maine? How would she respond when her own time is equally taken up by her work and parental responsibilities?

How does each of respond to social movements in far away places? What do we do when our government sends troops to Iraq and Afghanistan? How do we respond to abuses from local officials, for that matter? What do we know about our police force and how it acts? Maybe we close our eyes and ears to bad news its onslaught is so intense that to watch television, listen to the radio and read the newspapers can be a form of torture. I don't mean, by this comparison, to trivialize the kind of suffering endured by those who undergo, say, waterboarding. But clearly, reading the news about Syria, Egypt, Turkey can be very painful. It can also induce such a feeling of helplessness we try to disconnect, to push the bad news away, to distance ourselves from madness over which we have no control. Or do we? If we have no control of the madness that leads Brazilian police to exhaust its tear gas supply in less than two weeks, as they did in Rio, recently, why is the press a target in every Brazilian protest? Is that not an indication that whoever yanks the chain of the Military Police--state governor, in this case--does not want bad publicity to mar events such as World Cup games, the Pope's visit and the Olympics?
Given that a real effort is being made to suppress news of police brutality--futile effort, judging from the massive documentation in available in print and digital media--it seems to me that remote as Brazil is, Americans, Asians, Europeans, Middle Easterners, citizens everywhere have the ability to influence events taking place in 375 Brazilian cities. Exactly how that is done, I am not sure. This past week, Amnesty International Brazil mounted an e-mail campaign to let elected officials know that the whole world is watching and that police brutality is unacceptable. Writing an e-mail may seem too simple a gesture to make. But millions of e-mail messages can influence events. What do you say, can you e-mail the governor of Rio, for example? His name is Sergio Cabral and his e-mail address is Sergio Cabral, Governor of Rio

#semviolencia

LATEST NEWS FROM BRAZIL

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 21:51:00 +0000

Munduruku, Para, Brazil.

According to Brazilian media, fifty-five journalist have been attacked by the police since protests against government corruption, lack of adequate social services, inequality, high taxes, and the billions of dollars spent for next year's World Cup soccer tournament and the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, started in mid-June.

Protest plebiscite which could take place in September 2013 could cost up to 500 Reais.

Ceara parliamentarian Ely Aguiar, Ceara, had this to say about Fortaleza protests, "It's at such times that I miss the dictatorship," adding that if he were chief of police should he would beat the living daylights out of protesters. AnistiaOline #semviolencia

Public prosecutor in Fortaleza says that his office is investigating charges of protest movement infiltration of by gangs allegedly paid for by political parties.

According to the Associated Press, President Dilma Roussef's approval rating plummeted in the wake of protests, slipping from 64 to 40 points.

It is unclear whether there will be a general strike in Brazil tomorrow. AP reports that representatives of two of Brazil's largest workers' unions claimed to know nothing about it.

The fate of four Eletrobras biologists taken hostage last week, by Munduruku Indians in the state of Para, is unknown.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL BRAZIL MOBILIZES AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 28 Jun 2013 22:42:00 +0000

Pedro Rocha, from Fortaleza, is the latest journalistpolice hit in the eye with a rubber bullet.

Above two Sao Paulo journalists also injured by olice in June 2013 protests.

In case you have yet to understand why Brazilians are protesting, please note that ”In Fortaleza, more than 1,600 people suffering from kidney disease depend on dialysis in order to survive. But due to non-payment dating back to December 2012, clinics (under contract with public health system, SUS, Sistema Unico de Saude, might make treatment to dialysis patients unavailable at any moment. ” Contrast that with the Bolsa Copa per diem of close to 600 Reais awarded by the government to parliamentarians and military officers who wish to attend World Cup games. Abuse of privilege, corruption, and a host of social problems are among the reasons Fortalezenses protested yesterday. Allegedly, yesterday was the first time police used a sonic canon against the citizenry, something police spokesperson denies though some of the symptoms experienced by some of the demonstrators–vomiting, for example–could be attributed to acoustic trauma.According to Castelao stadium are residents they and their children suffered the effects of mass control weapons used by policemen who invaded their houses searching for protesters. Police also attacked members of the media with rubber bullets and tear gas. So far, 200 people have lodged complaints with the Ceara Public Defenders Office.

“Worried about the growing repression by the police against demonstrations and the authorities’ inability to protect, adequately, the right to peaceful demonstrations,” Amnesty International Brazil,

http://anistia.org.br/direitos-humanos/blog/entre-em-a%C3%A7%C3%A3o-contra-viol%C3%AAncia-policial-nas-manifesta%C3%A7%C3%B5es-no-brasil-2013-06-26
is appealing to the public to act against police violence” by contacting the following people,
- Governador do Estado do Rio de Janeiro
Sérgio Cabral
Palácio Guanabara
Rua Pinheiro Machado s/n – Laranjeiras
CEP: 22238-900 Rio de Janeiro – RJ
E-mail: documentacao@gabgovernador.rj.gov.br
https://twitter.com/SergioCabralRJ
- Governador do Estado de Minas Gerais
Antônio Anastasia
Palácio Tiradentes – Rod. Prefeito Américo Gianetti – S/N
Belo Horizonte – MG
CEP 31630-901
E-mail: governador@governo.mg.gov.br

https://twitter.com/governomg

- Governador do Distrito Federal
Agnello Queiroz
Palacio do Buriti – 1º andar, sala P60
Praça do Buriti
Brasília-DF
CEP 70075-900
E-mail: agenda@buriti.df.gov.br

https://twitter.com/AgneloQueiroz

https://twitter.com/Atendimento_GDF

- Governador do Estado da Bahia
Jaques Wagner
Predio da Governadoria
3ª. AV, 390 – PLATAFORMA IV – CAB
Salvador – BA
CEP 41745-005
E-mail: governador@governadoria.ba.gov.br

https://twitter.com/jaqueswagner

- Governador do Estado de Goiás
Marconi Perillo
Palácio Pedro Ludovico Teixeira
RUA 82, 400
Goiânia-GO
CEP 74015-980
E-mail: gabinete.particular@palacio.go.gov.br

https://twitter.com/marconiperillo

- Governador do Estado de São Paulo
Geraldo Alckmin
Palácio dos Bandeirantes
Av. Morumbi, 4.500 – Portão 2 – Morumbi
São Paulo – SP
CEP 05650-905
E-mail: galckmin@sp.gov.br

https://twitter.com/geraldoalckmin_

https://twitter.com/governosp

- Governador do Estado do Ceará
Cid Gomes
Palácio da Abolição
Av. Barão de Studart, 505 – Meireles
Fortaleza – CE
CEP 60120-013
E-mail: cidgomes@gabgov.ce.gov.br

https://twitter.com/cidfgomes

- Governador do Estado do Pará
Simão Jatene
Palácio de Despachos
Rodovia Augusto Montenegro, KM 9
Belém-PA
CEP 66823-010
E-mail: auxi.neri@gmail.com

https://twitter.com/GovernoPara

https://twitter.com/sjatenePA

Th eorganization asks that participants in the writing campaign mention @AnistiaOnline and the hashtag #semviolencia

*http://diariodonordeste.globo.com/#

"SHATTER, HEART OF PAINTED GLASS!"*

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 25 Jun 2013 22:36:00 +0000

Long ago, in another country, I studied journalism with a man, who introduced me to the poetry of Fernando Pessoa. Though I did not know it at the time, Pessoa was a B'nei Anoussim, a decendant of forcibly baptized Iberian Jews who continued to follow Judaic practices for hundreds of years. Had I known this, I would have read a different meaning into the poems where he exposed again and again, the essential loneliness of the outsider. My teacher was also an outsider, a Leftist at a time and place that punished dissent with prison, torture, extraordinary rendition and death. He knew all this and yet he kept dreaming that he could make a difference, that he and a few others like him could change the country, make it self-reliant and just. He had been to Russia and when he spoke of workers attending ballet performances his eyes would light up, his smile would grow wider and he would add, "It can be done, you see. It can be done."

If my teacher knew of Stalin and gulags, he chose not to bring either into the conversation. He did talk about the evils of imperialism and that grasping monster, Uncle Sam. He carried in pocket, a little pamphlet that described the day of the average citizen in our country as a succession of bows to American imperialism--from the moment he shaved with a Gillette blade to the moment when put on his imported pajamas. His fervor was such one of my classmates, a blue-eyed girl from an upper middle class family, trembled and prayed for him. When he was arrested, as Leftists tended to be back then, she visited and cosseted him, always praying that he would stop being a godless Communist. It did not happen. Eventually, she became a godless communist, married him and together they sought refuge in Paris where all good communists go to refresh their souls.

As someone who believes in equal rights, it pains to say that the women Leftists I knew back then found their way to Marx through some man with whom they were in love. No matter. All roads led to the kolkhoz. Most followed their men into exile and at least one died after being raped and torture by the military. Years and years later, the country found its way back to democracy, the exiles came home to expose the horrors committed during the undemocratic period and to remake the country into a semblance of their cherished dreams. The tired, suffering people elected a Leftist government that thumbed its nose at evil Uncle Sam even if that meant cozying up to dictators of countries where they stone women and gays. This show of independence and national pride buoyed the hope that the huge economic gap between classes would close or in the every least become narrower. A brief period of prosperity followed during which exports to China helped fill the national coffers. Leftist leaders announced spectacular successes in their fight against hunger and poverty. The economy continued to thrive and despite much demagoguery, few people seemed to questions the policies of such a brilliant president, such a dazzling presidential cabinet.

Alas, the bubble burst. Factors such as the Chinese tightening their purse strings, made it harder for spectacular successes to happen. The infrastructure which had been spectacularly neglected, failed to meet the needs of a population that had grown exponentially--one of the tenets of the Left, way back then was that contraception was part of Uncle Sam's plot to depopulate the country thus making it easier to conquer.Go figure. The gap between rich and poor did not close. This seems is the root cause of the dissatisfaction that erupted into protests, recently. News of the unrest in the global media reflected a dismal ignorance of the culture of the country in question. There were linguistic obstacles and that is where I thought I could do a tiny, bit to help get the world out.

Little did I know that as it stumbled toward a participatory democracy, the country in question was fraught with paranoia. Leftists suspected that Uncle Sam hid under every bed, ready to rape and ravage--"...egorger ses filles et sem compagnes...". Everyone was suspect but those who spoke English and lived abroad, much more so. Just as Chico Buarque sang, long ago, the country seethed with "lies and brute force." Machiavellian machinations, disinformation, agitprop abounded.Rumors of a coup, baseless accusations swirled like dirty water in a drain. I was unequipped for this sort of activity. I'd been through the lies and brute force and I'd escaped by skin of my teeth. I am old and I am too much of a realist to believe that the individual makes that much difference. So, I withdrew from the fray. Solutions will come or not. It's their gig, not mine. But I feel very much like good old Fernando Nogueira de Seabra Pessoa,

"I am my own landscape,
I watch myself journey—
Various, mobile, and alone.
Here where I am I can't feel myself."

*Fernando Pessoa

BRAZIL PROTEST MOVEMENT--STAGE II

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 20:09:00 +0000

Brazilians continue to navigate the treacherous waters of political uncertainty. Last week, public indignation at corruption, leading to protests against deficient education, health and transportation systems,billions spent on World Cup facilities, and a host of other problems. Over a million people took to the streets and the Brazilian police responded with disproportional force, firing rubber bullets, tear gas and flash-bang bombs at protesters and members of the media. Media in Brazil and abroad initially focused on vandalism committed by a small fraction of protesters, but as of this past weekend, news stories began to reflect the complex reality of the protests. Clearly, this immense aggregation of families with children, students, senior citizens of all political stripes had goals other than to smash ATM and burn police police cars. The Leftist government was quiet at first. Former president Lula da Silva, mentor president Dilma Roussef, took his sweet time endorsing the protest movement. Roussef, herself, conceded that peaceful protests were legitimate, but emphasized that her government would not tolerate vandalism. Throughout this time, the police–including the mounted police Brazil continues to use as crowd control–was highly visible and often violent.Vandalism escalated, there were at least half a dozen deaths, and number of allegedly arbitrary arrests. Allegedly, a disproportionate number of members of the media was attacked by police and illegally detained, prompting the The society of Protection for Journalists http://www.cpj.org/ to award Brazil the dubious honor of being named one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists.

Following the initial unrest, some state governments walked back the proposed hike on bus and boat fares and part of Movement Passe Livre decided to withdraw from the fray. Stage two of the protest movement began with militants meeting in cities, such as Fortaleza, Ceara, to clarify goals and set an agenda for upcoming protests. At the same time, ABIN, Brazil intel services agency, started monitoring social media, and the police announced that it will use triple strength weapons of crowd control in upcoming protests. A mysterious blogger calling himself Marco Caleb–Google search of his name yielded a picture an infant–started a campaign of disinformation aimed at deligitimising the #changebrazil movement on the internet. The blogger/s hints at a dark conspiracy by English speakers who have suspiciously expensive gadgets with which they make videos pressuring Brazil to submit. Just what Brazil is supposed to submit to is not clear, but the blogger also claims the the Brazilian Right is poised for a military coup, that is creating cells in closed pages of Facebook, and many other allegations that do not hold up to fact checking.In a theater of the absurd moment, the blogger’s hints of a foreign conspiracy made today’s edition of Jornal do Brasil. The story is incredibly fuzzy-wuzzy and it seems to be an attempt to neutralize #changebrazil and to cast doubt on the loyalty of English-speaking Brazilians living abroad.”Why would #changebrazil make videos in English,” it asks By the way, I am an English-speaking independent e-journalist living in the United States. I became an American citizen after a nasty encounter with DOPS, the Brazilian Secret Police in the Sao Paulo airport in 1976. If this makes me suspect, keep in mind that they Brazilian foreign minister speaks accentless English and he makes videos. My answer to the dubious questioner in the JB is, ” We speak English in order to reach the global media, stupid.” I mean, who the hell speaks Portuguese outside Brazil and Portugal? Should we rely on Google translations to get the news out?

Questioning all segments of the protest movement movement is healthy. So is to doubt the press. Journalists, especially citizen journalists need to establish their creds. BUt there is a difference between questioning and lying by implication in order to gag the opposition. Brazilians are not children, The know that violence, agitprop. dubious rumors, divide an conquer moves are as old as dirt. They can ask the big question, who is behind the JB story? Who finances the conspiracy theorists? Who gains from demonizing Brazilians who can read the news in Portuguese and pass it on in English to the free press of the First World? You can agit, but you better be able to prop your accusation with facts, guys. Brazilians are smart. They can see through you.

IS THE BRAZILIAN RIGHT POISED FOR A MILITARY COUP?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 00:19:00 +0000

Journalist Wlado Herzog murdered by Brazilian military during 1964-85 dictatorship.

http://mcaleb.blogspot.com.br/2013/06/relato-de-como-descobri-os-infiltrados.html?spref=fb#.UcPASfntbD

Google the name of the author of the above author and this is what you find the photo of an infant a wee bit too young to blog. Puzzling.

Follow this link http://mcaleb.blogspot.com.br/2013/06/relato-de-como-descobri-os-infiltrados.html?spref=fb#.UcPASfntbD to read allegations that the Brazilian Right is using social media to create cells that will disrupt protests with vandalism violence. This article has links to Brazilian Armed Forces sites and to movie clips by self-described patriots who favor a return to the 1964-85 military dictatorship. Allegedly, the right hides behind the Anonymous Avatar and Change Brazil hash tags to rally useful idiots. Is this a Machiavellian move by the Right or by the Left? Be your own judge. Inform yourself. Journalists, please take note.

BELABOURING THE OBVIOUS

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 22 Jun 2013 21:15:00 +0000

Center. You are going to need balance, cuca fria--cool head--as we say in Portuguese. Do whatever it takes to clear your mind--meditate, take a walk, listen to inspiring music. I like to go outdoors and reassure myself that the the trees are still there, the birds still sing, the turtles still hide under the berry bushes. Sounds simple, right? It is, simple, but when you are super stressed, when you are going from adrenaline highs to lows, the chemical flow does a job on your body and the state of your body affects your mind. Breathe in, breath out, like babies do. Simplest thing to do, but have you tried it when your are tense? So, center.
Remember that it is usually not about you.If society is going through convulsions, it is a collective convulsion. You are important, but you are not the center of the universe. Gazillions of people all over the world are going through all manner of difficulties every day. How would you like to be a little girl trying to go to school in Pakistan? How would you like to be a Jewish woman who wants to pray at the Kotel? The old, old truths are very real--you are not alone. Whatever you experience might be new to you but you have the collective wisdom of many others who preceded you. Rely on it.
Be kind. Do something for others. The smallest gesture I make is to put out slices of fruit for butterflies. The hardest thing I do is to maintain a garden that grows consistently messier. It is however, of great importance for the local fauna--pollinators, birds, turtles, raccoons. It is important for the little children on my block because growing up in a green space with lots of birdsong and flowers makes them happy. I don't need to say that kids should be happy, do I? You can make them happy with other gestures--bake a healthy cake and share it with children and their parents. Offer to take a kid for a walk.Write a real letter to an older person living alone. Surprise someone with produce from your garden. Offer tro do the shopping for a busy mom or a busy father. Do something you do not expected to be reciprocated. If is, why, that's a bonus.
Be gentle with yourself. Last time I went to see my doctor I complained about this ache, lamented my lack of energy and the impact at had on my writing, my housekeeping and gardening. What she told me is so obvious we overlook it all the time, "We can only do so much."That is something I should make into my mantra whenever I demand the impossible from myself.
Have some fun. Read a funny cartoon. Watch the Muppets on Youtube. Talk to a baby. Dance with your cat. Dance by yourself. Wear something outrageous. Spritz on your best perfume. Have an ice cream cone.
Simplify, simplify, simplify. I am saying this to myself but I have a brilliant friend with whom I commiserated just the other because we both have scads of interest and we are both driven to multitasking By all means do something creative--draw, paint, make a song, sew a dress, but refer to number 4 on this list. Yup, we can only do so much. Choose a task and stop fretting.
Seek support. When the market crashes, the government does something stupid, the authorities exceed their brief, gather loving people around you. You don't have to ignore reality, you only have to remember that governments fall. Good friends remain.
Be open to good suggestions.
Indulge yourself. Don't, for heavens sakes, rush to buy a Maseratti. I'm talking little indulgences, guilt free indulgences. I happen to love good chocolate, Lapsong Souchong tea with fresh lemon, good books, flowers, fountain pens and all manner of very pleasing things that do not cost the earth.
Have faith. Trust your strength, your resilience. Have faith in people and their resilience. Imagine what humanity has gone through. We humans are still here, doing some good, making mistakes, correcting them, looking for answers, stating the obvious. Draw strength from that.

CHANGE BRAZIL V

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 22 Jun 2013 18:22:00 +0000

PARA NAO DIZER QUE NAO FALEI EM FLORES

The quality of news coverage of the protest movement in Brazil took a quantum leap this morning when author and National Public Radio icon Scott Simon, made it into one of the lead stories in his Saturday Edition. Simon is one the primary reason for an audience of twenty six million to trust NPR as a reliable source of unbiased, in-depth news and commentary. That he knew the whys and when of Brazilians' discontent is a credit to the press and a victory for Brazilians. That The Washington Post and The New York Times also distanced themselves from the pre-packaged stories about riots, vandalism and looting to focus on the real issues that trouble Brazilian society, is another victory. Corny as this sounds, democracy needs a trustworthy press staffed courageous journalists who care to learn about the places where great social sea changes are in progress. Today, I am proud of having been part, in a very modest way_I worked for several as a freelance reporter and columnist-- of a press that responds to more than the wishes of advertisers.

Normally, mine is a country mouse's life, a life of which a character in Voltaire's Candide would approve. I cultivate my garden. I do it badly now that I am a senior citizen with the physical limitations of my age. I persist because I love the mysterious process of sinking a microscopic seed into to the earth to see it evolve into a plant that produces flowers and fruit, that feeds birds, box turtles and the diverse fauna of my little corner of West Virginia. I bake bread, which is also a mysterious process for me. I make my own sourdough starter with potato broth, pure maple syrup and good, heavy unbleached flour. I am fairly illiterate in chemistry and I don't know exactly how yeast reacts to sugar, how butter and oil change bread worse for the better at times and how it turns it into a heavy lump of unedible guck at other times. I bake bread the way I drive a car which is to say, I stick the key into the ignition without a clue of how the motor works. I go on trust.

Many of us lead equally unexamined lives. We take the press, the government, the weather on trust. We plant seeds and expect them to germinate even though experience teaches us that a certain percentage of them fails to come to life. Others come to only only to succumb to dread molds, too much or too little water, too intense or too weak light. We trust the rain to come and the sun to shine in the right proportions so that we can harvest a sufficiency of flowers, fruit and vegetables.although we know that elemental forces are not always balanced. Last year, for example,it rained so much in Tater Hollow that if I had been planning to make a living as a vegetable gardener, I would have had to rely on government subsidies.

What I am trying to say is that Brazilians have been going on trust and hope for many years. They work, they vote, they cultivate their gardens and they trust their elected representatives to do their the best for the country. In that they are no different from Americans, Egyptians, Laotians, Turks.What is different in the present situation is that Brazilians have finally realized that democracy is not a spectator sport. They know, as we Americans do, that the quality of life does not improve unassisted any more than an untended garden produces optimum crops or flout turns into bread all by itself. They are ready to take to streets to let the government know what needs to be done to make Brazil into the socially just and economically effective country it deserves to be.

The current protest movement did more than awake Brazilians to their proper role as citizens. It yanked me away from my complacency. It displaced gardening, baking, doing book reviews, reading leisurely, writing fiction, as the constants in my life. It made me face fears I had tucked away in distant recesses of my mind.I stayed glued to the news and the phoned. I messaged journalist, young protesters,phone and e-mailed members of my Brazilian family. Every time I saw the image of a policemen beating a protester I went into the fight or flight mode. I knew that the flood of adrenaline and subsequent low was an exhausting thing at any age. Now I know that post sixty it is a major bummer. My gut reaction reaction is due to trauma, says my sister, who shares my feelings as if we were twins. A continent away, she knows exactly how I feel. The trauma of which she speaks is that which every Brazilian my age experienced--that of having had our civil right removed by a military junta.But there have other traumas whose memory lingers almost is as if theywere part of out genetic code. My sister and I come from a family of B'nei Anoussim, Iberian Jews who were forcibly baptised and who fled to Protestant France, the Azores, Holland and eventually, Brazil to escape the Inquisition. Many of our Brazilian ancestors were burnt at the stake in Portugal for practicing Judaism. We learnt to choose carefully those we trust. We almost, but not quite, learnt silence. Due to our religious history, we have always known the cost of being a dissident. That is why we don't take up causes and banner without a certain amount of reflection. But the flag of a participatory democracy is one we embrace without reservations. Gardening and bread baking can wait. Freedom and justice cannot.

CHANGE BRAZIL IV

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 21 Jun 2013 20:25:00 +0000

Brazilian journalist shot in the eye by police during June protests in Sao Paulo.Since then several other journalists have also been targeted by the police.

A journalist's ability to shape public opinion is a fearsome thing. This came home to me with particular force when I asked a friend in the south of the United States if she had heard about the political situation in Brazil
"O, the riots," she said.
My friend is a highly intelligent, well read, well informed person. That she failed to question how the global media has chosen to represent Brazilian protesters is, in my opinion, typical of the trust we place in the media. True, we liberals might question Fox News and extreme Rightists ascribe all sorts of evil motives to the so-called liberal press. Bottom line, a huge number of Americans trust the press to tell them the truth. The problem with the coverage of events in Brazil the disconnect between the First World and a country that does not yet command sufficient respect in the global arena. I mean, would American journalists characterise the events in Tianmen Squareas a riot? I seriously doubt it.But Brazil is a country the global press fails to take seriously. It is a country burdened with an image shaped long ago by the American press. It is the image of dolce far niente, of people who do little more than play samba, wear tiny bikinis and play soccer. While a portion of Brazilian reality might correspond to this depiction, it is a tiny fraction of a greater painful reality. That reality includes powerful social upheavals--states of siege, banditry, revolutions, a brutal military dictatorship that lasted from 1964 to 198. It is a reality that encompasses political corruption, an infrastructure that failed to keep pace with population growth, an atmosphere of police brutality, a vast gap between the haves and have-nots.

Throughout history, Brazilians have shouldered heavy burdens, one of which is the weight of American influence on the political life of the average citizen. Nearly every Brazilian knows who trained the torturers of the military regime. Every Brazilian suspects that some American corporations would find it easier to do business in a country ruled by an oppressive dictatorship than in a democracy where people are free to participate in decision making. One would think that being aware of the somber role their government plays, Americans journalists would feel more inclined to use some objectivity when they write about current protests in approximately 80 Brazilian cities.
The current movement in Brazil is a national movement. It is a legitimate expression of dissatisfaction with a status quo. It is an attempt to change a system no American would tolerate for long. Journalists have a huge responsibility. They can make an intelligent woman in North Carolina assume that what is going on in Brazil is nothing but rioting by a bunch of hooligans.Brazilians begged for understanding during the dictatorship. It did not come from abroad. Today, Brazilians are not begging, they are demanding accountability, transparency, a participatory democracy, a free press, freedom of expression and a better quality of life. To fail to show the world what is really happening, to rely on second hand news from newspapers that answer to advertisers is to betray the trust that comes with the obligation to report the truth.Brazilians want to know who bene

fits from the World Cup. They want to know why billions were spent on stadiums when the country needs schools, hospitals and adequate public transportation. These are legitimate questions. Those asking them have the constitutional right to assemble, to protest, to make their voices heard. It is the media's responsibility to listen and to get the word out.

NEWS FROM THE BRAZILIAN FRONT

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 21 Jun 2013 02:35:00 +0000

Are these thefaces of vandals? These Brazilian kids are going to protest on Sunday, 23 June 2013.The poster says, "We hate rubber bullets."

Chico Alencar reports from the from the barricades in Fortaleza, Brazil,
"1-Movimento pacifico, lindo e emocionante, tudo tranquilo, muita gente subindo a barão, tudo tranquilo, sem vandalismo, e nenhuma tv pra mostrar Peaceful demonstration, beautiful and moving, everything cool, no vandalism no tv crews to show what was going on..
2 - Todos cantando, dançando e gritando palavras de ordem no palácio, enquanto se tentava negociar uma entrada pacifica.Everyone singing, dancing, shouting watchwords (slogans) at the Palace while other tried to gain access peacefully.
3 - Policiais com go pro amarrada na farda, filmando de dentro do palácio.3. Policemen in the palace had Go Pro strapped to their uniforms. They filmed the demonstrators.
4 - Surge das ruas do entorno do palácio um monte de cara encapuzado, empurrando todo mundo. A group of masked people shows up from the streets around the palace.A bunch of masked people shows up suddenly from the streets around the mansion (palace). They push everyone around.
5 - esses vândalos começam a jogar pedras nos pms e a derrubar as barricadas. These vandals start to throw rocks at the police and to demolish barricades.
6 - os manifestantes tentam conter os vândalos e tentam colocar as coisas no lugar, mas são agredidas pelos vândalos que surgiram do nada.Demonstrators try to stop the vandals, try to replace the (barricades, but the vandals, who appeared from nowhere, attack them.
7 - os pms não reagem e vão pra parte de trás do monumento e ficam conversando, escorados na barricada que ainda estava de pé. Policemen do not react to the vandals. They keep talking, leaning on barricades that were still up.
8 - as pessoas do movimento contem os vândalos que tentam quebrar a agencia da caixa e o hospital que fica la em frente, mas acaba desistindo e saindo de la, e recuando pro outro lado da rua Tenente Benévolo.People from the movement try to stop the vandals when those attempedt to smash a savings and loans and the hospital that faces it, but give up and leave, moving back to Tenente Benevolo Street

9 - os caras ficam meia hora jogando pedra no vento pq n tinha mais ninguém pra impedir a entrada, mas não invadiam. These guys did not invade (the palace, buildings.). They spent half an hour throwing rocks because there was no one to deny them access (to the demonstration.)
10 - 30 minutos depois dessa babaquice soltaram algumas bombas de gás e acabaram com a brincadeira, saí de la, já não tinha mais quase ngm, só os vândalos.After thirty minutes of this nonsense the vandals detonated some (tear?) gas bombs and quit playing . I left. There was no one there anymore, just the vandals.
11 - exatamente na hora que isso tudo começa a acontecer logo a VERDES MARES, a mesma que tinha dito que n tinha mais protesto, aparece pra filmar...Exactly when this s was happening VERDES MARES--radio-tv--the same that announced the protests were over, showed up to film.

Tirem suas próprias conclusões.Draw your own conclusions.
assim que eu puder, eu posto os vídeos...I will post videos ASAP." Clara's Note: This is a rough translation. Governor' mansion is called palace in Portuguese. The Itaramaty, the Brasilia equivalent of the White House is called Palacio do Itamaraty.