My Portuguese teacher asked me to take a break from the Hobsbawm book (she's funny - she doesn't like his ancient face peering out from the cover, but since she saw my copy she says she cannot help but notice it on the promoc?es table at the bookshops). She made the comment that I should be reading more Brazilian literature, or at least Latin American stuff, while I am here.
I don't disagree with this, generally, but I told her that I felt that my Portuguese needs a little work before I can really sit down and enjoy it. And I have read my teacher's most recent book, dictionary to hand. But now she's got me reading a novelette called (in Portuguese) N?o foi nada. It translates from the Spanish No pas? nada, and it means, more or less, "Don't worry about it - it was nothing."
The book is by Antonio Sk?rmeta, a Chilean writer. Things I didn't know - Sk?rmeta wrote the novel that became Il Postino, one of my favourite films.
So far, I'm about 55 pages in, which is more than halfway. It's a story about a boy whose parents leave Chile for exile in Germany when Allende is overthrown. It seems we're just waiting for the action to start, but it starts off painting a picture of the exile life - no language, no money, longings for home.
I'll post again when I finish. Maybe this weekend, even, but it's slower going without my teacher at my side. Think of it this way - it saves you hitting the dictionary on average once per paragraph. People say you won't learn a foreign language unless you have a partner who speaks it fluently. My colleague calls this a "walking dictionary". But with our teacher and two lessons per week, I reckon I'm doing as well as might otherwise be expected.
This year's World Social Forum is taking place this week in Porto Alegre, about 700 km south of here. The WSF is a global gathering of organisations, movements and individuals that, broadly speaking, agitates for social change and opposes market neoliberalism and its vision of globalisation. I heard on the radio yesterday that the President of Brazil would be attending, and that they were expecting 100,000 participants, with at least 30,000 living in a tent city.
From the website:
Central issues of III WSF
Democractic and sustainable development
Principles and values, human rights, diversity and equality
Media, culture and counter-culture
Political power, civil society and democracy
A democratic world order and the anti-war and peace struggle.
When we first came down, I was thinking to attend the conference this year. I have done some work in Porto Alegre, and thought it might be possible to combine the two. But my trips there have stopped for the time being, and, frankly, I feel like I really have no business being there (apart from being educated about things that interest me, which is, I suppose, a good enough reason to go). To me, I just haven't got my "cred" sorted out in my own life. Still, I will be keeping an interested eye on the proceedings, especially as material presented makes its way into "print."
Next year, the WSF will be moving to India.
"Israeli bulldozers have demolished more than 60 Palestinian shops and small businesses near the West Bank town of Tulkarm."
I can't read stuff like this BBC article about Israel bulldozing away in Palestine without getting a sick feeling in my stomach. Yet Sharon complains about Europeans being biased against Israel.
Okay, I am not European, but I can't help but think about how Europeans feel about the failure of Israel to live up to their expectations in the aftermath of the Holocaust and state formation. And it's too complex an issue, I guess, to tackle in a weblog entry. But I reckon the average European is horrified to see the bullying tactics employed by Israel against the civilian population of Palestine. Horrified, yes, of terror attacks from either side, but more horrified by unwarranted acts that aim to destroy the fibre, the economy, of the Palestinian community.
According to these activists who are protesting against the Caterpillar corporation (and whose "facts" I can't confirm):
The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) frequently destroy the homes of already-impoverished Palestinian civilians. Since the beginning of Israel's occupation of Gaza and the West Bank in 1967, Israel has destroyed over 7,000 buildings, leaving 50,000 men, women and children homeless. [...] Since the Intifada began, Israeli troops and settlers using Caterpillar equipment have uprooted an estimated 385,000 olive trees - as well as orchards of dates, prunes, lemons and oranges. The economic hardship this has imposed on thousands of Palestinians comes on top of already dire levels of unemployment and poverty in the Occupied Territories.
Even if you can rebuild a house or a shop, what can you do about an olive tree, possibly centuries old? Fitting we see olive branches as a symbol of peace. The imagery of uprooting olive trees must leave a permanent emotional scar on every Palestinian who witnesses such barbarity. And imagine how many Europeans (Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Greek), whose landscapes and lifestyles also incorporate olive trees, fruit and oil, must have an inborn empathy when witnessing such scenes of arrogant disregard for tradition and history.
Although his assessment rings painfully true, Edward Said's call for the Arab world to unite around the issue of perpetual war against their peoples sounds a bit hollow to me:
Hasn't the time come for us collectively to demand and try to formulate a genuinely Arab alternative to the wreckage about to engulf our world? This is not only a trivial matter of regime change, although God knows that we can do with quite a bit of that. Surely it can't be a return to Oslo, another offer to Israel to please accept our existence and let us live in peace, another cringing crawling inaudible plea for mercy. Will no one come out into the light of day to express a vision for our future that isn't based on a script written by Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, those two symbols of vacant power and overweening arrogance? I hope someone is listening. (Al-Ahram Weekly online, via Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace)
Where are the concrete plans for action, even a first step? Where is the acknowledgement that a "genuinely Arab alternative" would probably be no better than a "genuinely Israeli" or a "genuinely American" alternative? Where is the realisation that a pan-Arab response is already lacking on the Palestinian issue. A concession that, regardless of the public face of unity and a seething hatred amongst their peoples, some governments actually don't mind the status quo all that much. The most powerful leaders in the Middle East (Egypt, Saudi) also are extremely reliant on US support, either financial or military. They too would seem to be complicit in Mr. Said's helplessness.
It is well and good to call for visionary action, but that seems to be no improvement on what has happened in the past. Would it not be better for someone of Mr. Said's reputation to step forward and try to be that someone?
Something unusually undistinguished from "distinguished playwright" Harold Pinter (UK Guardian via Danny Yee)
Here they go again,
The Yanks in their armoured parade
Chanting their ballads of joy
As they gallop across the big world
Praising America's God.
The gutters are clogged with the dead
The ones who couldn't join in
The others refusing to sing
The ones who are losing their voice
The ones who've forgotten the tune.
The riders have whips which cut.
Your head rolls onto the sand
Your head is a pool in the dirt
Your head is a stain in the dust
Your eyes have gone out and your nose
Sniffs only the pong of the dead
And all the dead air is alive
With the smell of America's God.
We finally got our act together and made a large order from Amazon (both US and UK versions). I didn't order all of the books on my list; probably about half. My share of the order was 18 books (so I surely won't get through all of them, let alone the approximately same number of books in English and a handful in Portuguese already on the shelves). Priorities change, or at least the agenda. It's nice actually - I think the list below gives an idea of where my thoughts have been congregating of late.
Why Read the Classics? - Italo Calvino
Mr Palomar - Italo Calvino
Six Memos for the Next Millennium - Italo Calvino
Globalization and Its Discontents - Joseph E. Stiglitz
Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland - Neal Ascherson
El Camino: Walking to Santiago De Compostela - Lee Hoinacki
Stumbling Toward Justice: Stories of Place - Lee Hoinacki
The Sense of Wonder - Rachel Carson, et al
Pakistan - Mary Anne Weaver
Appointment in Samarra - John O'Hara
Silent Spring - Rachel Carson
Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing - Margaret Atwood
A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album - Ashley Kahn, Elvin Jones
The Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing's Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living - Helen Nearing, Scott Nearing
The Brazil Reader: History, Culture, Politics - Robert M. Levine (Editor), John J. Crocitti (Editor)
My Name Is Chellis & I'm in Recovery from Western Civilization - Chellis Glendinning
The Babel Guide to the Fiction of Portugal, Brazil & Africa in English Translation - Ray Keenoy, et al
Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as If People Mattered - E.F. Schumacher
Between the two orders, it totals just under $500 US. That's a lot of pent-up demand!
Three of the books above were not on my list, but were suggested by Amazon (either "buy both of these" or "people who bought this also bought this). Reasonably effective data mining and selling-up, although in fact I knew about all three of these extra books, so it wasn't completely out of the blue - let's still be honest and call them impulse purchases.
What bugs me about Amazon's data mining is that it seems to lack a memory about things you have looked for. Maybe this is good, but maybe not. My suggestions are often books I already own, and they don't seem to change. A couple of years ago I bought a book of Rumi poetry, and I still get recommendations to buy Rumi. But now I look at a lot of titles, often not buying. They know what I've bought, what I look at. I would think their system could be smarter, training on more than just previous purchases. I can see how this could get noisy if you are looking for gifts, but if they would let you opt in the books in the filter (they do somewhere, don't they), it would probably grow very smart very fast. (I guess that confirms that I don't really mind them doing this, despite the obvious privacy issue).
Another thing they haven't reconciled, and this may be for Data Protection reasons, is my UK and US purchases. They know enough to cookie me, to use the same name, address and credit card details, but they don't seem to know which books I've bought from which site.
According to the US site, we should have our order by 11 March. The waiting begins.
"[B]y what right do these 5 get to pick and choose the parts of the constitution to which their principles will apply? "
- Lawrence Lessig
Picking up the pieces of the public domain. Sniff.
CAUSA BELLI
by Andrew Motion
They read good books, and quote, but never learn
a language other than the scream of rocket-burn.
Our straighter talk is drowned but ironclad:
elections, money, empire, oil and Dad.
Battleships are sailing for the Gulf again. Senators are talking about the draft. British reservists are being called up. The very idea of war sinks my spirits. The lack of justification. The old lie. The refusal to use what is good about America to militate for positive change, and instead to rely on force, on the killing of so many young men, as a means to...to what exactly?
I saw in Cringely's predictions for 2003:
I'm sorry to be mysterious about this one, but I seriously doubt that there will be a significant act of high-tech terrorism in 2003, yet I think there will emerge an entirely new way to use the Internet to effect social change. Just as Chinese fax machines made inevitable the events at Tiananmen Square, so the Internet will bring the world's attention in an entirely new way to social issues -- much to the dismay of the status quo.
It seems to me that this must be close to hand. So many inside and outside the US see through the hypocrisy of the American warmongering. If all those advocating social change, if all of those who resent the hegemonic impulses of the current US government, can get their hymnsheets together, couldn't the network designed to survive a war be used to prevent one? It seems to me that the Republicans love this kind of thing. It just sickens me to see flag-waving patriotism used to steer a course (and divert attention) far from the social ills of the US and of the rest of the world. I fear it's going to be a sad world in which to be an American if we insist on bullying the weaker nations with acts of aggression, speaking harshly and wielding our big stick.
I dunno. The whole thing leaves me feeling weak. I just watch, feeling sadly unable to do much of anything about the countdown to perpetual war that the US seems to be initiating. One sad unlinked website. One expat. I wish I'd voted. I can't even convince myself that my vote would have meant nothing. It would have meant something personal.
We were talking about the lousy Brazilian weather this weekend when my wife asked me if I missed anything about the UK (the weather obviously reminded her of home!). "You know, apart from family and friends." I ermed and awwed a bit to find a few things - warm, flat ale, walks in the countryside. But I decided to shelve the question and come back to it when I had a little more time to reflect. And I opened the scope a bit to think about other places I have visited. Places I might be itching to revisit.
I miss English-language bookshops. I am a confessed master of the impulse purchase, stacking up books that I probably will never read because they sound interesting. So when we came out to Brazil, I loaded up with some of these titles. I want to read them...really, I do. Only now I'm itching, with a list full of new titles I am interested in reading, or at least buying. Yes, there's Amazon, and yes, we'll probably use it, but it's not the same as poring over the spines of hundreds of books, studying the titles stacked on the New Releases tables and finally selecting one, or two - the real reason for coming into the shop.
I miss warm, flat English ale. I miss beer with flavour. I miss brewing. I miss nursing a pint or two while reading my book for half an hour after work on my way home from work. I miss quiet country pubs with good food.
I miss walking to quiet country pubs with good food. Working up a sweat or an appetite. Crunching through just-frosty fields on a cold January dawy, earning a seat by the fire and a heavy plate of comfort food - pies, mash, overcooked vegetables, gravy. I dream of my days on the West Highland Way and look forward to a chance to do the Coast-to-Coast someday.
I miss Paris. I miss our annual outing to Paris at Thanksgiving. Walking through the streets of Paris in the chill of autumn. Stopping in little bars for some beaujolais nouveau, cheap, probably poured from a barrel, and lacking the marketing hype of fancy labels overpricing young, simple wine. Seeking out new bistros that Zagat or someone else has given high marks. Walking all day through squares, cemeteries and the Jardin du Luxembourg. Buying cheese.
I miss cheese, too. Good cheese, I mean. You can get some imports - especially hard cheeses. The Brazilians have a go at imitating lots of cheese styles, but the results are no substitute for the real thing. Cellared cheeses, served at room temperature. Old cheddars so sharp they burn. Smooth goats cheeses. Stinky slimy epoisses, my all-time favourite.
I miss Pittsburgh. My home town. If I sat down and started writing about it, I am sure that would be the spark about "writing what you know." And I think about how much about it I don't know, because I know it as a child who grew up within, but without a critical view. I sometimes think about going back, moving our family back. It's possible, but can you go home again?
I miss a few small villages in rural Belgium where I've stopped off for a glass of lambic beer, a huge slice of bread smeared with fresh white cheese and some radishes.
It's interesting, because if I look at what I miss, I think I learn a lot about myself. Books, beers, romantic notions, a longing for the populated and working countryside as a symbol of place. A desire to fill my life with the beauty of nature and culture. A regret, I suppose, that I have absented myself and my family from these things.
If I miss these things, most are as close as a daydream. I can picture them. What I should do is take the time to write about them, and to write until the descriptions I write capture what it is about them that makes them appealing to me. To try to convince another reader of the joys I sense in the fabric of my life. These are the saudades of my life in Brazil.
I had a thought about teaching history in situ. I started thinking that if you took your kids (and, hey, yourself) to the places where the history happened, and you spent a concentrated period of time studying the subject, you would, no doubt, get a better exposure and understanding of the history than you could from a school textbook.
I don't pretend this is an original thought. I have to confess I was very inspired by a couple we met in Dublin. They were from Nashville, Tennessee, and they had taken their two kids, let's say 8 and 10, out of school, and taken them travelling for a year. Dublin was near the end of their circuit. I think a lot of Americans are pretty ignorant about what happens outside of their own country, so I felt it was so positive that they had taken the initiative to teach their children about a bigger world than they themselves had grown up knowing. I can't remember what other work they were doing for homeschooling - presumably something.
I would consider doing the same. In fact, I can't wait for the little one to get big enough to start to remember the places she has been and the people she has met. There's a difference between telling people that you grew up in Brazil and telling them about growing up in Brazil.
My reading in Portuguese continues, although pace is a different story. I am up to about page 45 in the Hobsbawm autobiography. One thing I've noticed about reading in Portuguese is that my reading is much more deliberate. And there's a lot of space in any story, if you take it slow enough, to think about what you have just read. It seems a bit ironic, then, that when you read in University the emphasis seems to be on speed and quantity rather than quality. You have to read so fast that I don't know how you manage to 'close read'. One of my fears about going back to Uni for more education is that it might make me despise the act of reading.
The weekend's lousy weather had us making another visit to the DVD rental place. We watched three films this weekend (well, I watched them all, anyway).
First, The Cup, a cute little film about some Tibetan Buddhist monks that want to watch the World Cup soccer final on television. My wife complained that this film had no story. Or rather, that my sentence above pretty much sums up the story. So, it's a film about going out of your way to watch television. And watching this film on TV makes it kinda meta. I'd agree - there wasn't much to it. A short message about the size of the world, and possibly about the promise of soccer to bring people together. It's beautifully filmed, though.
Next, Three Colours: Red, the last film in the French trilogy (well, Kieslowski was a Pole and the films take place in France, Poland and Switzerland, so "kind of" French films, I guess). At least they are in French.
I have seen all three of the Three Colours films before. We bought a copy of Blue, which is my favourite. I guess I'd say Red is my second favourite. I'm struggling to say why. I like the feel of this film. It deals with intellectual topics, but also politics of the heart. People whose lives are a little bit sad, but at least one who hasn't lost all hope in the
redeeming power of goodness and thus wavers at the signs of temptation. Maybe this film makes me think a bit of Amelie, the latter being a far more saccharine creation (though more fun, and a better film in my book). I bet my wife a dollar that she would fall asleep before the end. I won with 79 minutes to spare.
And finally, Captain Corelli's Mandolin. Strangely cast, but not bad, actually. Could have been worse. I know there are some questions about the
facts of the novel and what happened on Kefalonia, but this film wasn't so much about history as just a good solid love story. And the ending was more satisfying than the book, IMO. I wouldn't watch it again, but it was good for what it was on a crummy Sunday afternoon.
Via Slashdot comes a link to this article in FastCompany entitled, "What Should I Do With My Life?".
The article, by Po Bronson, is about "finding oneself". Funny to see FastCompany heading in that direction. Lots of seekers are fallout from FastCompanies, no doubt. That was Mark Albion's point as well. But still, the issue resonates for me. Finding a job that is your passion. That is "The Question" - What Should I Do With My Life?
Probably the most debilitating obstacle to taking on The Question is the fear that making a choice is a one-way ride, that starting down a path means closing a door forever."
"Keeping your doors open" is a trap. It's an excuse to stay uninvolved."
Sounds a lot like "close your eyes and take a leap of faith." But I've moved jobs now, from that first career-defining job that lasted 11-1/2 years. Once you've broken the ice, I reckon that leap is easier to take.
If you're successful at the wrong thing, the mix of praise and opportunity can lock you in forever.
Helluva good point. You can be lured away by the trappings of "success" from the "faint urge" that tells you there must be something more to life.
The formula for this discovery isn't new. In fact, Bronson acknowledges as much. But it does help, from time to time, to have these points repeated, especially with case studies. His point is, these people aren't necessarily called by altruism...they want to find a niche that is meaningful to them - where the work they are doing fills
their days with something rewarding to them.
Some positive news on the UK farming front. A scheme designed to benefit farmers in the developing world is now being extended to British organic farmers. And why not? While it is a noble idea to make sure that small farmers in developing countries can get a fair outlet for their produce without being crushed by the big international price-makers (supermarkets, food processors) it is surely a better idea to encourage local farmers to produce quality produce closer to home. Fewer food miles makes better environmental sense. And it seems like the price gaps the Fairtrade designation will cover are not that great, especially when translated to the till. A few more pence per pound must be worth it, and probably could come from the fat in the distribution network. Middle-man mark-up in the UK is amazing. Understandable in some cases (high fuel duty), but less so in others (carting produce to central locations for redistribution rather than selling it locally, thus using more fuel).
Another interesting point raised in the article is about food not meeting the market's aesthetic requirements. It's nice to crunch into a beautiful round apple, sure, but it can't be right to reject 50% of farm output because it's not perfect - especially potatoes!
My first finished read of the year is George Soros' very brief essay On Globalization. This book is essentially a very technical prescription for improving the flow of aid to the developing world, wrapped in some observations about the nature of our political and economic structures which Soros has gleaned from his many years of working through his foundations to try to build more "opensocieties", particularly in the former Soviet Union.
Soros's main idea is to use the granting of a special tranche of special drawing rights - SDR's - by the IMF - to bolster the current accounts of more worthy developing countries, allowing them to lessen the burden of maintaining foreign exchange resources. The "worth" of these countries would be assessed by a trust independent of the sponsoring nations (to eliminate favouritism of a particular country's clients) and would effectively establish a market for development projects, using criteria Soros admits could be far from easily measured.
The book seems to have a pretty narrow audience in mind, which is masked by the publishing hype and the generalisation in the title (perhaps I expected more - I would still like to read the Stiglitz book on globalisation). Soros gives globalisation a fairly narrow financial definition, and his proposal is to address one specific aspect of the subject, so I left feeling a bit disappointed. The final chapter is a call for a more universally inclusive society, but Soros begs off of prescribing many cures for the ills of American hegemony, leaving off at a recognition that they exist and that they are growing worse under the Bush administration.
Overall, an interesting read. In just a few pages, I managed to understand a bit better what the alphabet soup of international financial institutions were all about. He points to references - often URLs - to back up some of his facts. He gives enough information to help to explain his point about the SDR proposal, although you don't get a good critical look at it (he does claim to have sent drafts to over 1000 prominent reviewers and to have incorporated their critique into his own work - a clever task in a 180-page book with a lot of white space).
Next up, Eric Hobsbawn's autobiography (not yet published in the US), but I am going to read it in Portuguese. Oh yeah, and continue with my journey through the Pessoa as well.
New Year's Day saw the inauguration of Luis In?cio Lula da Silva, the new president of Brazil. This is big news for Brazil - its first left-leaning president in decades; a working class guy (nicknamed by some "the bearded frog") who didn't even finish high school and doesn't have a firm handle on Portuguese grammar (it's tough!), carried by the will of the millions to the highest office in the land. It's a moment of celebration for Brazil, a country that claims to be the country of the 21st century. A country full of promise, a country full of poverty and broken dreams. A country with the pride of their fifth World Cup victory still in the back of their minds. A country that believes that, given a level playing field, it can be amongst the best in the world.
There have been two really fine articles on Brazil in recent weeks: one in the 5 December 2002 New York Review of Books (electronic subscription required - I have, so I am cookied), and another in the 12 December 2002 London Review of Books (print subscription required to read entire article - I have, so same as above).
The NYR article, by Kenneth Maxwell, deals brilliantly with Lula's reception by Washington. The letter he cites from Henry Hyde really must make you question the people we Americans elect to power.
...Hyde, chairman of the House International Relations Committee, had just written to President Bush, warning him that the president-elect of Brazil was a dangerous "pro-Castro radical who for electoral purposes had posed as a moderate." Lula, moreover, Chairman Hyde wrote, might well form with Fidel Castro and Comandante Hugo Ch?vez of Venezuela "an axis of evil in the Americas," which could potentially have at its disposal a Brazilian "30-kiloton nuclear bomb" as well as the Brazilian "ballistic missiles" to deliver it.
International Relations, hah! Congressman Hyde must have a bunker in his backyard.
The US has a pretty poor track record with democratically elected governments in Latin America. Having lived in Mexico, Argentina and now Brazil, I honestly don't see where the hysteria comes from - why we can't be better neighbours if we insist on being the hemisphere's hegemon. The US isn't nearly so concerned when a European country moves to the left (France, Italy, UK). And surely having stable democratic governments of any stripe, in this day and age, must be viewed as a positive factor in promoting the US's view of the world as it should be. It was encouraging to see that Bush and Lula reckon they can work together, even as Castro toasts Lula at his ceremonies in Brasilia.
The LRB article, by Perry Anderson, talks about the Brazil that Lula has inherited - the crushing legacy of debt and the failures of the Cardoso administration to make any material progress over eight years despite being wedded to the neoliberal Washington consensus that was supposed to lift all boats. Anderson stresses that Cardoso's mismanagement has collared the new government with an economic burden so strong that they may not be able to reverse existing policies without scaring the horses on the international financial markets.
Anderson is scathing about Cardoso's turn from being a well-respected socialist-leaning academic to being an egotistical president who let the safeguards of the constitution be re-written in order to keep him in power a second term. Horses have been traded, corruption tolerated, and failing policies have been maintained to keep a measure of support from Washington. And Lula has committed to staying this course, at least at first, to avoid default - a course that Mark Weisbrot and Dean Baker, reckon Brazil cannot afford to stay. The numbers, they claim, just don't add up. And if Brazil defaults, the contagion will likely be substantial, since Lula agreed to this course only at gunp^^^^the insistence of the Western financial institutions, which will have egg on their face over their policies if it all goes to pot.
I've travelled a bit around Brazil. It's a country of contrasts. People say, "There are two Brazils." They live side-by-side. The challenge is to bring the two closer together while improving the lot of the poorest. It's a huge challenge, and it's not clear that Lula is up to the task, but in the euphoric aftermath of a big win for Brazil, in the spirit of a new year, with a new direction for the government, most people are willing for now to give him the benefit of the doubt. It remains to be seen how long the honeymoon will last.