BrandNewDay (NorthSouthConnect)

in bits

2009-01-13T13:38:00.001-08:00

in bits
Originally uploaded by John Fogarty

From Rutherford to Bauru to You. SendRipples aka John Fogarty aka Indeed does it again.

What.

before the shot

2009-01-02T11:32:00.001-08:00

before the shot
Originally uploaded by daddydan

I took this shot a few days ago in my backyard in Bauru. This is my younger son, Dylan. He, at the ripe age of 1 year and three months, ahs taken a serious liking to balls. However, unlike Philip, my older son, he does not like kicking them. Dylan prefers to hold them, and the bigger the better. Since he is a bit short for the time being, I help him dunk the ball in the yard.

start again

2008-12-29T14:23:00.001-08:00

start again
Originally uploaded by John Fogarty

I love this new collage by my brother. It pretty much sums up war, power, and fear, in one shot. great stuff.

Chico Mendes

2008-12-26T04:03:00.000-08:00

This week, twenty years ago, one of the Amazon's protectors and a leader of epic proportions, was murdered in the state of Acre, Brazil. I have translated the article by Marina Silva, brazil's former Minister of the Environment, who grew up in the same state as Chico Mendes.

Twenty years without Chico Mendes, assassinated in Xapuri on December 22, 1988, at 44. The country, still excited about the recently-signed Constitution, the first to recognize the protection of the environment as a responsibility of the State and a right and duty of citizens, would reverberate with the news of the death of the rubbertapper who dared to lead a movement to avoid the destruction of the Amazon.

In these twenty years, the space given to environmental concerns has expanded greatly. Today, Chico Mendes would be one among many to confront the resistance of those who stubbornly refuse to make the necessary changes to the still-dominant predatory style of development. And why was Chico so special? Because he was ahead of his time and gave directions, with clarity and simplicity, in the hope of an era a greater convergence between economic growth, social justice and respect for the limits in the use of natural resources. Because he was a profoundly commited leader with values and originality in action.

There are those who are so far ahead, by intuition, through wisdom, through skill in seeing themselves in many, who sweep through time and reach the future in the present. And those that are ahead of the times never do things without paying for it. Mandela, Ghandi, Luther King paid the price. Chico Mendes also paid it. It seems as if this skill of prescience always has a ripple effect, from provoking incomprehension to pricking consciences, or even to shortening the life of those who transform themselves into an antenna of the world and humanity.

Chico lived all that his circumstances permitted and his ideals asked for. He had a horizontal vision, inclusive and almost feminine, of politics. He preferred negotiation to dispute, conversation to conflict, alliances to exclusivist protagonism, but he radically assumed every confrontation necessary, until the end, with his so famous death. And he won, surviving it.

As Lacan said, the meaning only arrives later. In Chico's case, it appeared plainly after his death, because prescience can only be perceived after. People like him are makers of dereams, of hope, catalyzers of new processes. If "all that is solid breaks up in the air," they say to us that all that is solid sustains our dreams.

When he was alive, they accused him of being against the development of Amazonia, of playing "the American game." Today, his words are the sustenance for all, sincere and insincere, who try to folllow a political career, make investments or implant projects in the region.

Madonna em Sao Paulo - Like a Virgin - Brasil - 18/12/2008 Request song

2008-12-22T12:27:00.001-08:00

I have never seen the Queen of Pop live, and don't plan to. However, when Madonna comes to town, and that town is either Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo, things get wacky. The news covers it like it was the Second Coming, rumors including reasons why Lula didn't meet her start swirling, and her after-show activities are stalked by the entire media. Oh, and the show itself gets some coverage.

Brazil loves Madonna, and this past week, she came to the aforementioned cities for the first time...ever.

coruja azul

2008-12-22T11:31:00.001-08:00

coruja azul
Originally uploaded by chamarelli

The artist who did this, whose tag (and name) is chamarelli, graduated from São Paulo State University, Bauru campus, last year. He has exhibited in New York, Miami, and LA, as well as around Brazil. His work seems to mix folk design, naturalistic themes, and the street. He has done illustrations for the Brazilian edition of Rolling Stone, as well as painting "interventions," as he calls his street art. If you go to his name on Flickr, you can see more of this serious talent.

peggy, bobby, and hank

2008-12-15T10:58:00.001-08:00

peggy, bobby, and hank
Originally uploaded by John Fogarty

My brother strikes again. On a recent trip to New York, he brought along his camera, and, among many other great finds on the streets of Manhattan, found this. I believe this was taken in SoHo.

Philip Graduates!

2008-12-13T16:14:00.000-08:00

Phil, my oldest son, at his end of the year party, after his first year of pre-school.

Ronaldo is back in Brazil

2008-12-13T14:59:00.000-08:00

Ronaldo, former striker at AC Milan, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Internazionale, PSV, Cruzeiro, is back where he started. One of the most popular teams in the country, Corinthians, has just signed him to a one-year contract, and the dividends are already paying off.

Not on the field, however. But in the team store, even before he was officially announced, the all-time World Cup record holder in goals had his name on official team jerseys, and 300 of those, at $80 a pop, or R$169, were sold. His presentation was attended by 6,000 fans.

The only problem is that the formerly best in the world has not played a game since last February. That is right. He will earn R$400,000 a month, or almost $200,000 a month, and no one, including Ronaldo himself, knows if he will be able to fully recover from last year's most recent knee surgery.

But one thing is for certain: Ronaldo is back in the spotlight, and this time it's for the sport he played...and hopes to play again. Stay tuned.

space invader

2008-12-09T06:30:00.001-08:00

space invader
Originally uploaded by John Fogarty

My brother, John, took this photo is New York last week, and I had to put it up. So cool. I want one of these on my front wall. My two sons would go crazy. So would I. What an amazing thing to come home to every day.

Nação Zumbi - Bossa Nostra

2008-12-03T12:20:00.001-08:00

This blog attempts to connect you, the reader, to what gets my attention here in Brazil. This band, Naçao Zumbi, is one thing that has gotten my attention since 2004, when I arrived. They are amazing live, mixing folk sounds with amazing guitar and freaky lyrics. Check out this, their latest single and video.

Broken Glass

2008-12-03T09:14:00.000-08:00

I was reading Monday's online version of the New York Times, and came across a great piece in the Arts section about a new exhibit at The Museum of the City of New York. It is entitled, Broken Glass and is a photography collection of shots of 1980s South Bronx. The photographer, Ray Mortenson, who is from New Jersey, started chronicling urban decay around Passaic, and then decided to move to New York, taking the 5 train up to the Bronx.

His work is eerily empty of life, and he never shot people in his Bronx photography. As the article alludes to, his photos stand as a kind of testament to an abandoned time, place and setting. The bronx, in many of the parts that he went to, is light years different these days, and Mortenson hasn't been back in years. From the article:

Mr. Mortenson said he had not returned to those blocks since he stopped taking photographs in the Bronx in 1984. “I’m ambivalent about it,” he said. “There was something about being there alone, about that time, that I guess I want to keep.”

“It was kind of like being in a horror movie,” he added. “But that was all part of it.”

The title of the exhibit refers to a line from the Grandmaster Flash classic, "The Message."

As Sean Corcoran, curator of prints and photography at The Museum asks in the article, when he looks at the shots of these otherwordly places, he can't help thinking: “How could things get to this point? What political, economic and cultural shifts could lead to such a collapse?”

This is a great question to ask at a time when all over the U.S., as the article notes, peoples' homes, towns and lives look and feel likewise abandoned.

Around Me

2008-11-21T07:56:00.000-08:00

A while back, I tried to chronicle my environs through photos entitled Bits of Bauru. I thought this month to come, I would try something different, and write short pieces about strange, curious or just funny things, scenes, people, I see in Bauru.

Here goes:

Today, as I was driving with my son, Philip, to pick up a book at the bookstore, I saw something I had never seen in my life, and may never see again.

On the corner of a major street in this city of 350,000, in front of a major supermarket chain, was a man holding a golden gramaphone. One the funnel, or speaker, or whatever you call the part that emits sound, was a sign: for sale.

The man had hoisted the gaudy antique-like intrument on his shoulder for all passing cars, pedestrians, etc. to see. I was, to say the least, surprised to see such an item for sale...on a street corner. It just didn't seem to me to be a very high-demand choice for selling to passing cars. How could the potential buyer ever know if it worked. Don't you have to plug those things in, and if you don't, did he have a record to test drive the thing right there in front of the supermarket?

This example of entrepreneurial grandeur is only one of a million examples of how Brazil is, well, Brazil.

Worldwide Hope

2008-11-12T08:46:00.000-08:00

Every magazine cover in Brazil has this guy on the cover. Hope has gone international, and here is to hoping that change follows soon. My brother took this in SoHo last week.

Personal Jesus?

2008-11-07T18:27:00.001-08:00

Unbelieveable

2008-11-07T14:12:00.001-08:00

I just read in Folha de Sao Paulo that FOX news of all places released the following information about Sarah Palin. According to interviews with former Palin staffers, and this is not from MSNBC or anything even more liberal like Huffington Post or DailyKos:

Sarah Palin could not identify the members of NAFTA.

Sarah Palin understood Africa to be a single country, and did not know it was a continent.

This information, I repeat, was announced on FOX News.

Back on My Blog: Barack in Brasil

2008-11-03T02:39:00.000-08:00

For the five or six people that regularly read, or at least open, my blog BND, I am back today. After three weeks of unfortunate silence (or fortunate), I am back on the day before one of the most important days in recent American history.

And I am in Brazil. I have been, as some of you may know, and for almost five years. My wife, who is Brazilian, and I have been taking care of our two sons here in Bauru, in the state of Sao Paulo, and beofre that lived in the very poor city of Nova Iguacu, outside of the crazy and famous Rio de Janeiro.

For the last year and a half, I have been able to witness another country, namely, Brazil, size up the American race for the White House. I have read in Brazilian newspapers, watched Brazilian reports from the US about how the vote might go, and all the varied candidates. And I have seen some amazing things in a country that has been neglected, overall, by the US, since the military dictatorship finished in 1985.

To give the reader a little example of how big the election has gotten down here in Brazil, or at least in the state of Sao Paulo, the richest and most advanced in the country, in downtown Sao Paulo, Obama T-shirts are all the rage. To the point that Folha de Sao Paulo, Brazil's biggest and best daily newspaper, ran a piece about how popular the shirts are, and how impossible they are to find, after selling out in a matter of days.

Even going back to Hillary v. Obama, the primaries were hugely covered down here. It got to thepoint where letters to the editor were asking why the American process was getting more coverage than the lead-up to mayoral elections around the country. And things have only heated up since.

For the last two weeks especially, my classes have been increasingly interrupted, or started by the question: 'Who will you vote for?" When I tell my English students that I've already voted, by absentee ballot, most are a little amazed and confused, since I tell them I voted a month ago. Here the process is completely uniform throughout the country, and completely automated. The same machine in every single voting venue. U.S. voting seems so antiquated to Brazilians, who look at the U.S., for all its faults, as a relative beacon of technology. Paper voting is just so old-fashioned to your average Brazilian.

I don't know who is going to win tomorrow night, but I do know that it has been really interesting and enlightening to see things from afar, and through the eyes of another american country, far to the south, but in the midst of the madness, too. It has been hard for Brazilians to not get at least a little caght up in the whole circus, and I sure have. I wish I could have done more to help the cause, but it was great to see how this election has galvanized and woken up so many in so many far-flung places, like Bauru.

Ballast Trailer

2008-10-11T13:08:00.001-07:00

Indie-filmmaking takes the viewer to Mississippi, and to real people. Check it out: Ballast. Good stuff from Sundance. In NYC today. What.

Robot Camel Jockeys

2008-10-03T14:35:00.001-07:00

Originally uploaded by John Fogarty

My brother is at it again, with a really great collage that I entitled Robot Camel Jockeys, since he used the words in the piece. But really it is Untitled. And great.

More Bits and Pieces of Brazil

2008-09-24T12:23:00.000-07:00

Bits of Bauru and Brazil... Continues

2008-09-22T19:13:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, my wife, Fabiana, and my two sons, Philip and Dylan, and I went to the Bauru Zoo. Every time I go to any zoo, I feel conflicted. On the one hand, I am happy that I and moreover my two sons can see amazing animals up close. However, these great beasts, like the tiger above, are caged, and seemingly, if not literally, sedated by their captivity. They watch us as we watch them.

Bauru Zoo is getting better. From what I have seen in the last 2 1/2 years living here, I can tell that Bauru is getting better-of because the zoo looks better. In other words, there is cash to throw around, and so the conditions for the animals are getting better...the cages are getting a little less cage-like.

A zoo is not the Kenya plain, or Chinese backlands. It is never going to replace the Greenland tundra for a caribou, and seeing a condor in an enclosure is altogether depressing when I think about it. Its huge wings are useless. I guess I go there to feel a little closer to something natural, and then leave feeling like I am somehow an accomplice in the suffocation of that same nature I came looking for.

A Healthy Economy? Or An Addicted One?

2008-09-17T11:12:00.000-07:00

Gnarls Barkley - Reckoner (Live Radiohead Cover)

2008-09-16T06:59:00.001-07:00

This cover by Gnarls is inspiring. If Cee-lo can, and does, cover Reckoner by Radiohead, what can I do?

The Streets of Brazil Part 3

2008-09-15T20:06:00.000-07:00

New York Style graffitti in the middle of Brazil. The world grows, and shrinks.

The Streets of Brazil Part 2

2008-09-15T19:39:00.000-07:00

Bauru. Represent.

The Streets of Brazil

2008-09-15T19:29:00.000-07:00

This is on the level of stuff you see in books. Crazy, sci-fi, tribal figures jump out at you as you whiz by in your Volkwagen down the streets of a city of 350,000 in the middle of the economic powerhouse state of Brazil, São Paulo. I have lived in Bauru for almost 3 years, and never really paid attention to the walls and streets. I got a camera this past July, and started looking around.

I started to walk and drive differently. I didn't just walk and drive to get somewhere, but to see as much as possible. To look left and right, and not just ahead.

yellow neck stretch

2008-09-15T19:22:00.001-07:00

yellow neck stretch
Originally uploaded by John Fogarty

From the mind of a Fogarty. Collage art from 98 Mountain Way to Bauru, Brazil, and into your home wherever you are.

More Bits and Pieces

2008-09-15T19:09:00.000-07:00

I loved this piece the second I saw it. And it isnt hard to see, due to the fact that it, along with a bunch of other commissioned work, can be found on a wall that runs for about 200 yards parallel to the biggest street in Bauru, Avenida Naçoes Unidas. The work on this wall, according to yesterday's Jornal da Cidade, Bauru's newspaper, is being retouched to improve and maintain the bright colors. Pretty cool. Keeping street art looking good, instead of tagging over it or the city painting over it.

Brazil, in so many ways, is such a different world. The streets are full of those stark variations. Street art is one that jumps out. It's there, and you just have to slow your car down for a minute to see it silent, changing, like the guard.

What Better Time Than Now?

2008-09-07T05:14:00.001-07:00

Say what you want about Rage Against the Machine. Call them commercial hypocrites, Sony fakers, and a bunch of opportunists. Call their fans a bunch of drunken frat-boys.

That is fine. We all have our opinions, but reality comes calling when the New York Times, in yesterday's edition, entitles an article: "At Both Conventions, a Band Salutes Anarchy."

The article, if you hadn't guessed, is about recent shows in Denver and Minneapolis, and the fan reaction, as well as, and moreover, the police reaction, to the mere presence of the L.A. band members, who covered, on one of their four major albums, the Rolling Stones, "Street Fighting Man."

After breaking up in 2000, and regrouping last year, Rage is back. They still haven't put out a new album, but they do get themselves in trouble.

This from the article:

ST. PAUL — On Wednesday night, Republican delegates fresh off Gov. Sarah Palin’s vice presidential nomination speech at the Xcel Energy Center here formed a conga line of taxis, buses and private cars to Minneapolis, where post-convention parties were firing up. At almost the same time, a huge crowd was emptying out of the Target Center after a political show of a different sort — a concert by the band Rage Against the Machine.

A small fraction of those people, perhaps 200, decided to take over the intersection of First Avenue North and Seventh Street. Traffic snarled, and delegates watched in waiting traffic as riot-clad police pushed the spontaneous, vocal protest up Seventh Street. A delegate from Texas said, “Those guys, again?”

One More Bit of Bauru

2008-09-05T21:15:00.000-07:00

Art on the streets of Bauru. Finding culture, and not needing museums.

Bits of Bauru and Brazil... Continues

2008-09-05T21:09:00.001-07:00

This from the same wall as the previous mural. I have to head back and try to find out the name of the artist.

Another Bit of Bauru

2008-09-01T07:53:00.000-07:00

Surrealist graffitti art in Bauru. Great stuff.

Bits of Bauru and Brazil... Continued

2008-08-31T20:36:00.000-07:00

The Bauru is the aptly named sandwich, invented in the city of Bauru, which consists of roast beef, pickles, tomato and provolone cheese. This year, to celebrate the city's birthday, the above statue was made to celebrate one of Bauru's most famous celebrities. A sandwich.

the mind's edges?

2008-08-30T18:19:00.001-07:00

Originally uploaded by John Fogarty

New art from Rutherford, NJ. John Fogarty takes on the collage and wins. Makes me want to visit the MOMA and just go straight to surrealism.

A Winning Take on Change

2008-08-25T12:31:00.000-07:00

Here is my favorite of the winners of the MoveOn Barack art contest, to decide which pieces of art would go up today in Denver at the Democratic National Convention. There are five of them, all on display tonight. This, by Shel Starkman of Los Angeles, sums it up for me.

One of the Winners

2008-08-25T12:25:00.000-07:00

This is one of MoveOn.org's winners of their art contest. This really great painting was done by Nicholas Rock from Providence, RI. It will be displayed in Denver tonight at the Democratic National Convention.

Bits of Bauru and Brazil: Day 8

2008-08-22T09:36:00.001-07:00

Black on Gray on a Sunny Day. Bauru, August, 2008.

Bits of Bauru and Brazil: Day 7

2008-08-22T09:22:00.000-07:00

Bauru use to be something special in the universe of locomotion. Until the 1920s, the city was a hub of cargo trains, passenger locomotives, passing day and night. Its station was famous throughout the country, and its location in the exact center of the stateof São Paulo helped to make it all the more important. Today, that is all history, but this engine, in the city park I like to take Phil to, is a great reminder of how things were.

Bits of Bauru and Brazil: Day 6

2008-08-22T09:14:00.000-07:00

Fruit. You can find it everywhere and anywhere in Brazil, and as I was taking a walk in a park not far from home in Bauru, I thought I would take a photo of this van that I see every day, selling pineapples, strawberries, oranges, etc. Right on the corner. The sign in front of the van reads: 2 packages of strawberries for 3 reais. Not bad at all.

Corner

2008-08-21T14:28:00.001-07:00

Corner
Originally uploaded by John Fogarty

I love this flowing piece. I wish I could walk around this corner, or slide down this tunnel. John Fogarty does it again.

Bits of Bauru and Brazil: Day 5

2008-08-20T11:40:00.000-07:00

Urban Sprawl is no uniquely American invention. It is coming to Bauru, and it has come to cities like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro for years, some planned, some taken as favelas. I took this picture today, two blocks from where I live. The houses in the background were not there ten years ago. Most are part of closed condominium setups. They are surrounded by huge walls concrete and foreboding. Just another reminder of the fear that comes with money in a country that is still one of the most economically imbalanced. 80% of Brazilians could never even think of living in a house like the ones that spread out across my horizon.

Camp Generations

2008-08-20T10:30:00.001-07:00

IMG_0241
Originally uploaded by daddydan

I just got back from a great trip to see family and friends in the States. My son Phil and I went up alone (without Fabiana and Dylan) and in this photo, we are at Camp in the Adirondacks, and Phil is helping my dad to take in the hay.

an artist's house

2008-08-19T19:42:00.001-07:00

an artist's house
Originally uploaded by John Fogarty

My brother took this shot of the across-the-street neighbor of my mom's cousin Paul's house. The guy is an artist, and his home is one great piece of art, with his studio up in the attic. I love looking at his place when I go with my family to Poughkeepsie. The blue is so amazing.

Bits of Bauru and Brazil: Day 4

2008-08-18T13:06:00.000-07:00

Unlike the current and well-documented case in the US, Brazil is on the move. Growth over the last year was about 6%, and construction is everywhere. People here in Brazil are actually buying and building houses, like the one in the picture above. This behemoth is on my block, and will, it looks like, be a residential home...and a big one. Obviously, the economic growth has affected some more than others, but over the entire socioeconomic scale, people seem to have a good deal more to work with.

Bits of Bauru and Brazil: Day 3

2008-08-15T18:05:00.000-07:00

The motorcycle. In Brazil, and all over Bauru, it is omnipresent. With gas prices twice what the US pays (even today), and payment plans that almost anyone with a steady job can pay, the two-wheeler is everywhere. And that means beware. In 2006 alone, 300 motorcyclists died. Bikes are used for every kind of delivery, from McDonalds to the above. I guess that is why a man is driving with two lawn chairs as his passenger.

Crazy Over Cars

2008-08-14T11:28:00.000-07:00

That is the title of a piece in yesterday's Folha de S. Paulo. The title refers to the Chinese, the hosts of this year's Olympics. A great look into the Chinese personality, it is fascinating reading.

Here is my attempt at translation:

In the next ten years, about 100 million cars will probably be sold in China. This motorization has pushed up oil prices throughout the world and polluted even more this Asian country, but these worries fall flat and far away from any Chinese car dealership.

Doomed to ride their old bicycles for decades, the Chines dream of having your own car is recent. Even with car ownership permitted since 1978, only in 1994 did the government start pushing their purchase.

In 1990, China produced only 40,000 vehicles yearly. In 2008, the number will be 10 million -- the second largest market in the world. Tehre are 50 million vehicles in the country of 1.3 billion inhabitants, which just goes to show how much growth is still possible.

80% of buyers are are on their first go-around. No one in their family has driven before, with the exception of the few and fortunate. Beware. Drivers go slowly and many refuse to talk while at the wheel, on their way.

With the exception of dealerships in fancy neighborhoods in Beijing, the norm is that a buyer pays in cash, carrying bags of money with hundreds of bills. Compact cars are sold at the equivalent of $6,000, but the sale of luxury cars is on the rise. Last year, 18,000 Mercedes and 50,000 Audis were sold, the latter being the favorite of Communist Party leaders.

In a society crazy about status, after decades of egalitarianism and forced misery, owning a car means privileges.

Avenues with twelve lanes are opened regularly and woe is the pedestrian who tries to get across one. The laws of transit don't stick even during the Games. Cars and busses stop on top of crosswalks, turn left and right, block intersections, park on sidewalks, and, most of all, push bicyclists and pedestrians, the losers in the new China, out of their way.

Bits of Bauru and Brazil: Day 2

2008-08-14T11:08:00.001-07:00

Above is a typical example of a residential building in downtown Bauru. Notice the bars on everything. Downtown Bauru at night is not exactly bustling, and home invasions are frequent. My neighborhood, more upscale, is "secured" by much more than bars: electrified fencing, motion sensors, private security firms, and even security guards (who sit outside on lawn chairs) are all-too-common sights.

Bronx Beauty

2008-08-14T10:41:00.000-07:00

I went to College in the Bronx. Fordham University, on 187th and Fordham Road. I ate pizza for four years in Belmont, at some of the best pizza places in the world. I went to the greatest zoo in the world, The Bronx Zoo. I would go to see the greatest team in the world, the New York Yankees. What I wouldn't see much of in the Bronx was beautiful subway stations.

If I went down to 81st Street, or Chelsea, or maybe Brooklyn Heights, I could see aesthetically pleasing subway stops, with murals, mosaic art and such. But not my Grand Concourse stop on the D train. It was, and is, grungy and kinda scary.

Things are changing. Art has come to the Bronx subway stations. In an article I just read in the New York Times, "Set in Glass, Artist’s Ode to Bronx Life Is Acclaimed," the story starts with these words:

The Freeman Street subway station, a few blocks south of Crotona Park in the south-central Bronx, could not seem farther from the art gallery precincts of Chelsea, SoHo and Dumbo. So New Yorkers might be surprised to know that a series of colored-glass panels on the elevated subway station has been acclaimed as an exemplary work of public art.

The work, known as “The El,” involves six scenes made of thousands of pieces of faceted glass, which are about an inch thick — far thicker than stained glass — and is held together by epoxy, for durability in harsh outdoor environments. The artist, Daniel Hauben, 52, created the work as a commission for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Arts for Transit project, which has placed artworks throughout the nation’s busiest transit system.

In June, “The El” was one of 40 works of art selected by Americans for the Arts, a nonprofit organization that promotes arts in the United States, for recognition in its annual Year in Review overview of exemplary contemporary public art installations.

This makes me realy, really happy. And even though I am sitting in a chair thousands of miles away, in the south of Brazil, I feel a little closer to home when I read about beauty in Bronx subway stations.

Bits of Bauru and Brazil: Day 1

2008-08-13T19:48:00.000-07:00

I had this idea today: put up a photo of Bauru, Brazil, where I have lived for the last two and a half years, with a little explanation, each day. I started today with a shot of a building in downtown Bauru, about two blocks from where I work, at the language school CNA.

Back in Jersey

2008-08-13T19:41:00.000-07:00

I just got back from visiting the folks in NJ. I also was in Brooklyn and the Adirondacks, as well as the City of Manhattan. I flew up with Philip, my eldest protege. Here is a shot from the trip.

What We Don't Hear About Cuba

2008-08-13T13:21:00.000-07:00

Fidel and goodwill toward the US. Seems like a joke, right? Well, not really. While reading Jornal da Cidade, the largest newspaper in the interior of the state of São Paulo, I read a very interesting article entitled, "Cuba gives medical diplomas to scholarchip students from the USA." That is right. Here is my translation:

"More than eight North-Americans graduated in medicine last weekend in Cuba, after studying with scholarships from ex-President Fidel Castro for low-income young foreigners.

Some of the young people, mainly black and latino, said that after six years in Cuba they will go back to the US to try to change a health system there based solely on profit. 'We will go thre to see if we can change something,' said Erika Melendez, 28, in a press conference in Havana.

The daughter of El Salvadoran immigrants in the US, she said that she learned about the Cuban grants when she worked as a receptionist in Intensive Care in a hospital in Los Angeles. Now, she plans to specialize in gynecology.

Fidel Castro decided to offer, in 1999, scholarships to needy youth from more than 20 countries, if they committed to return to their communities of origin after graduating. So far, nine American doctors have graduated in Cuba. Only one succeeeded in validating their diploma and currently is doing their residency in a hospital in New York.

Melendez and her seven colleagues still have to take three exams in the US to validate their diploma. Only then can they start residency and practice medicine.

Cuba considers its educational and health systems among the biggest victories of the revolution led by Fidel in 1959. Even though he stepped down from power two years ago, the ex-president continues making frequent criticisms of the private university and hospital system in vigor in the US.

'Fidel offered us 500 grants, but the program is growing bit by bit,' says Ellen Bernstein, spokesperson for the Protestant Shepherds for Peace, which selects the American students.

An estimated 10,000 Latin Americans and Africans currently study at the Latin-American Medical School, established by Fidel on the outskirts of Havana. Around 100 of them are from the US.

Cuba claims that the scholarships are part of the same 'tradition of solidarity' that led the country to send thousands of doctors to some of the most distressed places on the planet. Critics claim that this is nothing more than a marketing ploy. 'It's not propoganda. They are giving me the opportunity that I needed.'

In the last years, the work that Cuban doctors have done outside of Cuba has become an important source of revenue for the country. Around 40,000 doctors work in 80 countries, half of them in Venezuela, which pays with subsidized gasoline.

Nowa Aigbogun, son of Nigerian immigrants from Harlem, says that his parents never could have paid for college in the US. 'When I heard that in Cuba you could study medicine without worrying about money, I couldn't beleive it,' said the graduate, 30.

'I want to thank Fidel, Raul Castro and the leaders of the revolution,' he added. Aigbogun told how he was leaving Cuba satified. Beside having gotten his medical diploma, he learned how to dance salsa.

All You See is Crime In the City

2008-07-15T11:52:00.000-07:00

I remember going to the Phun Phactory in Long Island City with the Paterson VISTA program, to take a few teens from Paterson to do a mural on the side of the former factory a block down from the much-swankier P.S. 1. The owner, Pat, who met with my boss and I, was quite a talker, and not a little combative. He felt he was reducing graffitti crime by providing a place for NY kids, and pros from around the world. He let our kids put up a mural that paled in comparison to the rest of the talent on display.

Pat told us about the NYPD who would wait outside the place, taking photos of artists as they worked. He noted that tagging in the immediate area was practically nil.

Aerosol Art, as it is known by those who are into it, is still quite controversial. NPR, on yesterday's All Things Considered, interviewed the owner of Alphabeta, a new graf art supply store/gallery space in Brooklyn. They also interviewed Peter Vallone, a dogged opponent of street art. He claimed, in the interview, that only 5% of graffitti can be qualified as having any artistic talent.

Brazil, home of OsGemeos, is one of the current meccas for aerosol art, as well as tagging. The difference is obvious. There is quite a lot more of tagging, with no aesthetics, but driving through São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro is like passing through an open-air gallery. Amazing murals can be seen under any bridge, or on the side of any abandoned building.

As the owner noted in the NPR piece, when the Tate Modern has OsGemeos on its walls, graffitti has officially gone legit. No matter how much people may still want to marginalize it.

Josh Hamilton, Charles Bukowski, and Perspective

2008-07-14T21:35:00.000-07:00

I just got done watching the Home Run Derby. This year, being the end of the greatest stadium in the world, Yankee Stadium, it was held in New York, the greatest city in the world. And Josh Hamilton didn't win.In the first round, the former drug addict and first-round pick for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, and now Texas Ranger, showed why he leads the majors with 95 RBIs. He proved that he is, by far, the best story in baseball. A man who did not play at all from 2003-2005, after getting sucked into drugs, hit 28 first-round homers. In my living room in Brazil, I stood up and cheered. I almost cried. When interviewed, he deferred to his friend and coach of 71 years, who had just pitched almost a gamesworth of pitches to the man of the hour.Josh, obviously fatigued, could only put up three home runs in the final round, and bowed out to Justin Morneau, another amazing hitter from the American League.I was talking to my sister Sarah about another talent who went through hell, Charles Bukowski. The man, who, after writing prodigiously, stopped publishing for almost 20 years, was "re-discovered" at the age of 45, and put out some of the greatest poetry I have ever read. He wrote about people whose lives were not the stuff of Masterpiece Theatre, or Sense and Sensibility. They lived in flophouses, drank Olde English and bet on horses. They loved women who knoew they were failures. Bukowski had sat in dark rooms, and stared at walls that were peeling.And I guarentee that Josh Hamilton has, too. After his amazing first round, he answered a question from a perfect-bottled blonde interviewer from ESPN by saying that he was just happy to be alive. He got a standing ovation in Yankee Stadium. And he reminded me of another guy who I just recently got into: Bukowski. Here is The Night I Was Going to Die. I'd like to dedicate it to Josh Hamilton and everyone who looks themselves in the eye and doesn't turn away at the ugliness.

the night I was going to die
I was sweating on the bed
and I could hear the crickets and there was a cat fight outside
and I could feel my soul dropping down through themattress
and just before it hit the floor
I jumped up
I was almost too weak to walk
but I walked around and turned on all the lights
and then I went back to bed
and dropped it down again
andI was up
turning on all the lights
I had a 7-year-old daughter and I felt sure she wouldn't want me dead
otherwise it wouldn't have mattered
but all that nightnobody phoned
nobody came by with a beer
my girlfriend didn't phone
all I could hear were the crickets
and it was hot
and I kept working at it
getting up and down
until the first of the sun came through the window
through the bushes
and then I got on the bed
and the soul stayed inside at lastandI slept.
now people come by
beating on the doors and windows
the phone ringsthe phone rings again and again
I get great letters in the mail
hate letters and love letters.
everything is the same again.

Not Worried

2008-07-14T15:13:00.001-07:00

Santogold - L.E.S. Artistes [Official Music Video]

2008-07-14T05:13:00.001-07:00

If you haven't heard of this woman yet, get out of the cave and get her CD. The future of music. This video smacks the shit outta you, and makes you ask for more.

Fear is Your Only God

2008-07-13T12:21:00.000-07:00

I have been living in Brazil for over 4 years, and I never once was made, by the news media or the reigning political powers, that this country, rich in so many things, grwoing at a rate of almost 6% a year, was being overrun by illegal immigrants, or any type of immigrant. Now, of course, Brazil is a developing country, and does not have the "land of milk and honey myth" that the US has held onto, whether it wanted to or not, for so long. But Brazil does have immigrants, like me, and thousands of illegal aliens, like the majority of Bolivians. Some of them work in Bauru, the city I live in these days. I work with an Argentinian, who may or may not be legal, and a woman from Uruguay, as well as an Equadoran, who teached me Spanish.

They have never had it esy, what with doceuments, red tape, and headaches, but they don't seem to live in fear.

After another humiliating example of "justice" for illegal immigrants in the land of the free, Postville, Iowa found its way into the news in May for the arrest of 400 undocumented workers at the Agriprocessors plant.

Erik Caymad-Freixas, Spanish professor and translator, witnessed the procedures, and could not stay quiet about what he saw. Today's New York Times op-ed page, with the article, The Shame of Postville, Iowa, discusses what he saw, and the excesses that have been carried out by the Federal government, specifially, ICE, in the name of the law.

Here is an excerpt:

The essay chillingly describes what Dr. Camayd-Freixas saw and heard as he translated for some of the nearly 400 undocumented workers who were seized by federal agents at the Agriprocessors kosher plant in Postville in May.

Under the old way of doing things, the workers, nearly all Guatemalans, would have been simply and swiftly deported. But in a twist of Dickensian cruelty, more than 260 were charged as serious criminals for using false Social Security numbers or residency papers, and most were sentenced to five months in prison.

What is worse, Dr. Camayd-Freixas wrote, is that the system was clearly rigged for the wholesale imposition of mass guilt. He said the court-appointed lawyers had little time in the raids’ hectic aftermath to meet with the workers, many of whom ended up waiving their rights and seemed not to understand the complicated charges against them.

Dr. Camayd-Freixas’s essay describes “the saddest procession I have ever witnessed, which the public would never see” — because cameras were forbidden.

“Driven single-file in groups of 10, shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles, chains dragging as they shuffled through, the slaughterhouse workers were brought in for arraignment, sat and listened through headsets to the interpreted initial appearance, before marching out again to be bused to different county jails, only to make room for the next row of 10.”

He wrote that they had waived their rights in hopes of being quickly deported, “since they had families to support back home.” He said that they did not understand the charges they faced, adding, “and, frankly, neither could I.”

The American populace, frightened by the Mexican worker on the corner, the local politician stumping about the end of jobs for "Americans," and the reality of recession and $145 a gallon gas, has become easily influenced. Fear sells, whether that fear is of Al-Qeada or hordes of poor immigrants running rampant through "our economy." These workers in Iowa were not identity thieves, or hackers. They were not coyotes, trafficking in lives. They were not Mexican mafia, or El Salvadorean gangbangers. They were poor family breadwinners, who risked everything to make some cash to send back to Guatemala.

As the Times wrote:

No one is denying that the workers were on the wrong side of the law. But there is a profound difference between stealing people’s identities to rob them of money and property, and using false papers to merely get a job. It is a distinction that the Bush administration, goaded by immigration extremists, has willfully ignored. Deporting unauthorized workers is one thing; sending desperate breadwinners to prison, and their families deeper into poverty, is another.

A Voice of the Yankees Passes On

2008-07-13T11:54:00.000-07:00

I grew up, literally, on the Yankees. some of the first things I remember listening to were Yankee games. I loved driving up to Poughkeepsie, NY, and listening with my parents to Phil Rizzuto on the car radio. Time seemed to stop when I hear that someone like Steve Balboni, who struck out way more than anything else, had hit a homer.

Bobby Murcer, to me, became a Yankee on the radio. I wasn't old enough to remember his playing days, where, at one time, he was being compared to Mickey Mantle. But I will never forget his great Oklahoma accent, which just reeked of baseball. When I heard Bobby broadcast, I felt as if I were at Yankee stadium, and I could almost hear the crack of the bat.

Listening to Murcer was like eating Cracker Jacks at the park. Whether you loved the Bronx Bombers or hated them, Bobby Murcer was someone to be proud of in the baseball world.

As a Yankee, he went to the All-Star game five time, and almost won a batting title. In 1973, according to the New York Times, he had the highest salary in the history of the Yankees: $120,000 a year. Not exactly Alex Rodriguez cash, but a big deal in 1973.

Bobby Murcer died of brain cancer at 62. A once and forever Yankee.

029 Granada Butterfly Reserve #2 06.07.08

2008-07-11T14:05:00.001-07:00

029 Granada Butterfly Reserve #2 06.07.08
Originally uploaded by nicamerican

From my cousin Ron, in Nicaragua to my blog in Bauru, to you, wherever.

IMG_0054

2008-07-10T12:56:00.001-07:00

IMG_0054
Originally uploaded by David Fogarty

My Dad took this while down here in Bauru visiting with Mom. Dylan shows his potential as a future b-ball star.

IMG_0151

2008-07-08T13:45:00.001-07:00

IMG_0151
Originally uploaded by daddydan

The newest generation of Fogarty. Ready to divide and conquer, but for the time being, just relaxin on the couch on Dylan's baptism Sunday, two days ago.

A Tree on Fire

2008-07-07T14:09:00.000-07:00

The photo attached to this post was taken by my brother, John, in my family's side yard in Rutherford, NJ. When I saw it today, I went him the comment that it looks like the branches are on fire, and that the edges are lit up in orange.

The tree is a huge elm that has stood in our sideyard for much longer than I have been on this planet. For much longer than we have lived in the 100 year-old house on Mountain Way. The tree, if all goes well, will stand there for many more years, offering shelter to squirrels and birds, and shade for whoever stops beneath its limbs.

I have not been living in Rutherford since 2001. I have been living in Brazil since 2004, in a country which has been in the news for trees themselves. Big, big trees, that are being cut down at alarming rates. Yeterday's Folha de S. Paulo, Brazil's best daily, reported yesterday that two times the area of Monaco are cut down in the Amazon every day. That is correct. And truly depressing.

Unlike what many in the eco-world would report, none of that is for ethanol. Most of it is done to make space for cattle grazing, contruction, and charcoal. Some of it, especially in the ground zero state of Mato Grosso, is soy. And a huge, huge part of the lumbering, legal and illegal, is done by foreign companies. Just in Mato Grosso, over 160 non-Brazilian comanies operate.

So, Brazil, today's largest beef exporter, is lighting up and cutting down trees for your next steak. The huge majority of the cattle in the Amazon is shipped out of the country to the US, Japan and Europe. The price you pay for a hamburger, of course, does not include the destruction of the world's most important forest.

The Yellow House (the back)

2008-07-07T13:46:00.001-07:00

The Yellow House (the back)
Originally uploaded by John Fogarty

My brother took this in Massachusetts, when he was visiting his friend Wilder last week. I love how the place seems shrouded in mystery, with the clouds seeming to close in behind the building, and the mountains give the house such a remote feeling.

Some Serious Mother Nature

2008-06-26T14:40:00.000-07:00

Found this on Current TV. I love that site. You find all sorts of wacky news and interesting stuff. I don't know where the photographer took this shot, but it reminds me of Ghostbusters. If I had been walking around that place when those clouds were overhead, I would probably have cried, or pinched myself. Probably both.

You just don't see this sort of thing every day.

Just Another Reason to Miss NYC

2008-06-26T14:34:00.000-07:00

I just read about this very cool art installation/environmental project on Current TV. I am very glad that I will be up to check this out in July. If you have a chance, head over to the Brooklyn Bridge to behold a waterfall in New York. Here is what the article had to say:

Danish Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson has unveiled his latest project in NYC. With all spigots finally a-go, this $15 million dollar environmental installation project is cascading water on the banks of NYC’s East River and NY Harbor.

The four waterfalls are located on Governor's Island, under the Brooklyn Bridge, and on two piers. They are visible by day through October 13 from both the Manhattan and Brooklyn sides of the East River.

Louis Theroux Weird Weekends: Battle of the Rappers

2008-06-25T08:28:00.001-07:00

Big up to my brother John for putting me onto this really, really funny guy Louie Theroux.

El-P -

2008-06-22T17:04:00.001-07:00

One of the best ways to criticize...music. El-P takes it to the new world order which proposes that only through torture can we make the world safer from terrorism...and torture.

From Bahia to the New York Times

2008-06-18T15:10:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite things to do is page through the monthly magazine Piaui. Written in São Paulo, it combines the best of investigative journalism, satire, personal stories, and plain old wackiness. Stuff you will not find anywhere else, you find in Piaui. This month's issue includes the story of Fernanda Santos. She is the only Brazilian working for the New York Times. And her story is, to put it simply, remarkable.

Here is my translation:

"I am positive: I am going to heaven. Just today I talked to a rabbi and a monsignor!", jokes tee reporter Fernanda Santos, 34. If she were religious, this Baiana from Salvador could give the credit for her job at the most prestigious newspaper in the world, The New York Times, to Oxala, Iansa or Obaluaie (gods of Candomble, the Bahian religion). Who knows, she could give the credit to all three: for such luck, they would need to work together. But she got the much-touted spot, in September of 2005, without needing Orixas.

Fernanda writes for the Metropolitan section of the paper. It was there that she wrote the two interviews, The rabbi became the central character of an article about the town of Monsey, in New York State, where the Orthodox Jewish community was able to put a stop to the opening of a Wal-Mart, the biggest department store in the world. The monsignor, the subject of the other piece, commented on the expansion of his church in the city of LaGrangeville, against the current ebb of Catholicism throughout the US.

In a blue-green printed dress over a long and thin body, rose-colored glasses and long, wavy hair kept back in a loop, Fernanda is a full-time Brazilian. With a wide and spontaneous smile, she greets everyone on her way to the cafeteria in the new headquarters of the NYT (and she seems close friends with everyone). Crossing the lobby, she takes the elevator and sits at a desk. She is fourteen floors above Eight Avenue, between 40th and 41st streets, in the newly-inaugurated tower of sttel and glass designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano.

There are no Brazilian journalists at the NYT. Fernanda is the exception among the approximately one thousand company professionals: journalists, photographers, secretaries, and Internet technicians. There are other foreign reporters, but most grew up in the United States. The German, Latino, Indian or Chinese last names that write for the paper almost all are children of immigrants. Fernanda is the only that came when she was over 30, originating in a counry whos native language is not English. Her daily rounds take her leagues from the comfort of the gigantic main floor of the paper, which takes up the third and fourth floors of the building. At the wheel of a company car, she travels the state in search of facts that could make the news. Her specialty are the extravagances and madness of daily life, in off-the-radar communities for the mainstream press.

With or without trying to, her articles awaken the moral consciences of her readers, who, to a great degree, get out their wallets. One of them, about siamese twins connected at the head, ended up raising $30,000 for the family to pay for separation surgery. Another, more recent and for a more dubious cause, told the story of a goat that meandered god-knows-where in New York City. With one of its hooves parcially amputated, the creature needed a prosthetic leg. No one knows how, but the fact is that the goat made it to an animal hospital in Michigan, There, it underwent a $5,000 surgery and soon will receive a high-tech, $20,000 prosthetic leg. Fernanda is also good at obituaries. Through them, New York learned about the woman who fell on train tracks and the family who died in a housefire.

Fernanda arrived in the States in 1998, to get her Master's in Journalism at Boston University, and never returned to live in Brazil again. And it is with pride that her eyes slide to the top of the page that she writes for which have the four most important little words in journalism. "One time, I participated in a newpaper program, Ask a Reporter, in which we answer questions from high school students," she says. "An English teacher from Mogi das Cruzes (on the São Paulo coast) found out and asked me to write a message to her students, about the importance of studying English." Fernanda received 50 emails from the students. Many hadn't beleived that she existed, while others were suprised and admiring of her success.

In her first journalistic experience, working for a magazine owned by the Bahian company Odebrecht, she fell in love with the job of covering far-flung corners of Brazil, like Bom Jesus da Lapa, in the interior of Bahia, almost 500 miles from Salvador. Her American career took off right after she got her master's, at two Massachusetts' newspapers. At the second one, Fernanda received the blessings of an attentive editor, who gave her a hand in overcoming the inevitable grammatical failings of a non-native speaker. "You have to be really humble. I compete with people who were bor speaking English." She confesses to a persistent problem confusing the prepositions in and on. "My fear is that someone will say: 'Sorry, you don't know the difference between an on and an in.' But I realized that Americans also get tripped up."

She arrived in New York on the coattails of a drama. Under the srupulous eyes of her mentor, she wrote the obituary of Susie Forrest, American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. Unemployed for five months, Forrest offered herself as a volunteer helping with victims of 9/11 -- and then committed suicide. The story was Fernanda's golden ticket. Thanks to the article, she was offered a job at the Daily News. The New York Times was now a little closer.

Fernanda didn't feel comfortable with the sensationalistic journalism of the Daily News. Even so, she put together a portfolio of good stories. She chose the least bomobastic ones, corssed her fingers and sent them to NYT. She insisted. Fought. Months later, she finally got the job. her life isn't easy: "A number of times, I got home crying, but I chose this. Now it's up to me to keep fighting and prove to those who ignored my resume that they were wrong, " says Fernanda, with a bit of bitterness in her tone of voice.

In Brazil, she has three last names: Lacerda Saraiva Santos. Her family always used the middle one. Americans didn't understand the abundance of names and only used the last one. "I brought back to life the Santos dynasty, my grandfather's family on my dad's side," she explains, who even added another name, Saucier, after getting married eight years ago to an American journalist. "When they call me Ms. Santos, i ask that they call me Fernanda, but they say: Fernaaanda. I correct them: Fernãããnda!" When she is speaking Portuguese, she lets out a couple local expressions like: Oxe! The interjection is infectious, and her husband, who is learning Portuguese, has laready adopted it. A publicist for City Hall, he told her that he would have no problem packing his bags with her and happily let out oxes! in her beloved Salvador.

Banksy is Back

2008-06-17T15:43:00.000-07:00

My brother found this on http://flickr.com/. Thought I would pass it on to whoever has a chance to stop in at BND.

Banksy CCTV

2008-06-17T15:39:00.000-07:00

Banksy, guerrilla artist, strikes again. London is the most surveilled city in the world. Is that the price we pay for 'civilization?'

Hope

2008-06-14T14:19:00.001-07:00

I just finished reading Al Gore's The Assault on Reason. One of the most interesting aspects of the book was his linkage of past leaders to the severe lack of leadership today. He quotes many great people, including the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.

From the end, here is a message of hope from King:

"Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us."

The Incredible Hulk, Rio de Janeiro, and the Illusion of Reality

2008-06-14T14:16:00.000-07:00

As you may or may not know, The Incredible Hulk, Part 2, opens today worldwide. Including in Brazil, where many of the scenes were filmed. The director of the movie, who is French, "fell in love with the amazing slums of Rio" when he saw a picture of Rocinha, one of the biggest in South America, at about 300,000. So he decided to take his Hollywood stars, Edward Norton, William Hurt, and Liv Tyler, down there to film...the exterior shots. He did not film anything beside some chase scenes and a few sces in a "factory" where Bruce Banner works and hides out.

But here's the catch: the director, in love with Brazil and its "amazing" favelas, was not interested in using any Brazilian actors, except for one woman who works in the factory with Bruce, and the Jiu-Jitsu star, Rickson Gracie, who plays his fighting instructor. Louis Leterrier, in his attempt to make the Hulk frachise a success after the total failure of Ang Lee's attempt at it, used only Canadian actors, who spoke, or tried to speak Portuguese.

As Leterrier explains, when interviewed by a journalist for Jornal da Cidade, Bauru's local paper: "I wanted to use more Brazilian actors, but it was too expensive to take them to canada, where we spent three months filming the interior (of the shacks and the factory). I understand, because I don't like it when American productions film in France and only use half a dozen french actors. I can only apologize."

The movie also shows Edward Norton hiding out in Rocinha, which is also not the case. The drug traffickers of Rocinha did not give permission to film, so the actual exterior shots are filmed in oone of the few favelas has no drug trade, Tavares Bastos. And when Bruce goes to 'Guatemala' in the movie, he is actually in the forest preserve of Tijuca, in Rio.

The reality is that he could have worked with the government of Rio de Janeiro to actually film interiors in Brazil. With real Brazilians, speaking actual Portuguese. But that didn't happen. Movies are about suspending disbelief, but the excuse that you had to film the interiors in Canada, and couldn't bring along Brazilians, does not hold water.

So, if you take the time and want to waste, I mean, spend your money on this new version of the failed Hulk movie, just realize that you are not watching what you think you are watching, and I don't mean a green monster.

An amazing country to film in, but not really. That is Brazil, it seems, for Hollywood. Great shots, but work with the actual people there...forget it.

Gold Digger (Diplo Remix)

2008-06-13T19:39:00.001-07:00

Diplo does it again. Whether he's remixing Funk Carioca from Rio, electro from NYC, crunk from Houston, or Soul from Ray Charles, he has the Midas Touch. If interested, check out his very tight "Florida."

Into The Wild O.S.T - Eddie Vedder - Hard Sun - Music Video

2008-06-13T07:49:00.001-07:00

Watch this if you have not already. I guarentee you won't regret it. A movie about how much we need each other, even when we do so much to make living in society revolting.

Tate Street Art

2008-06-12T20:18:00.001-07:00

Os Gemeos are an amazing art duo from São Paulo, as is Nunca, and both honored the Tate Modern with their amazing stuff. check out this video of their truly eyecatching work.

A Historical Night?

2008-06-03T18:23:00.000-07:00

I was sitting at my computer when it happened. Obama passed the 2118 mark. He is now, barring something absurd, the Democratic Party presidential nominee.

I had, earlier this evening, between rocking my 8-month old son to sleep, and typing out a post about the sad state of identity in the US, watched an old man try to convince America that he is the voice of the "right" change for the country. John MacCain is not a convincing speaker, and the crowd, in New Orleans, the site of the Republican party's greatest embarrassment, Katrina, and the Bush administrations darkest hour in race relations, seemed unsure of whether to cheer, stay quiet and wait for another fake smile from the candidate, or just wave their green posters.

I went back to the computer, and when returning to check out the boob tube, saw a big read check next to Obama's name on CNN. He was there, with the 9% of the votes in from South Dakota, he had gotten the four remaining delegates he needed.

I thought I would be more excited. Maybe it was because I had read an article from my cousin Ron, in Nicaragua, who is quite the progressive, and who had been grappling with the question of voting for a Democrat, or staying Green (as in the Party). He sent me a pretty cynical piece from a site called Znet. The writer, writing from across the pond, went through a litany of reasons why Obama and MacCain are not at all that different. They both have corporate sponsors, both would be open to attacking Iran, both this and both that.

But I have to believe that Obama will be a truly refreshing breath of fresh air. He ma not change a corrupt system, of which he is a part, but he may do one thing: get people back into politics, back into the mix.

Doing that is a great start.

Who Are We?

2008-06-03T18:09:00.000-07:00

I grew up in Rutherford, NJ, but I first lived in Weehawken and North Bergen. I was born in New York Hospital, so technically, I am a New Yorker. Each of those places is made up of recent immigrants. My mom used to tell me that the neighbors used to stare at my blond hair and blue eyes. I was a minority in Weehawken. When I came to Rutherford, some of my first friends were recent immigrants, from Japan. I used to watch my Puerto Rican neighbors breakdancing on cardboard down the block. I used to go over to my friend Abdul's house to hang out. His parents were just over from India.

I live these days in Bauru, Brazil. I have to go to the US Consulate more than I would like, and every time, I mean every time, there are huge, snaking lines, of people trying to get a visa to go the States. Every one of them will get questioned, maybe rejected, maybe accepted, and almost never smiled at. They are nothing more than a number, and they will feel that from the minute they get on that line.

But, after reading an editorial in the New York Times this evening, I started thinking about something...and it was really a question: why?

Why do so many people still fight through red tape, across Mexican deserts, hidden in cargo containers, or in the backs of trailers, to get to the US? Why do they save up thousands to pay coyotes to get to a country which has so easily forgotten that it is made up of immigrants. The New York City subway, one of the greates engineering feats in the world, was completely built by immigrants.

But then I remembered a friend, born and bred in the suburbs of Jersey, just like me, who summed up the mentality of so many Americans when he told me why he hated going into Manhattan: "Because it's full of so many types of people."

This is the crux of things: fear. Fear of change, fear of dissolution, fear of your neighborhood starting to get different names on the mailboxes. But we try to cover it up by saying we are only against illegal aliens, and not immigrants. That the raids in New Jersey at 5 in the morning that rip parents out of their beds, are not symptomatic of a much larger problem, spreading all over the world, and infecting every country that calls itself 'first world': a fear of what is written on that slab the Statue of Liberty holds..."give me your dirty, your tattered masses..."

Did America ever want them?

Read the article if you have two minutes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/opinion/03tue1.html?th&emc=th

A Long Race that Needs to End

2008-06-02T14:52:00.000-07:00

The Bush Administration Summed Up

2008-05-30T14:07:00.000-07:00

It is so funny to me that the word 'corruption' is something that, in Brazil, and most of the world, is simply equated with the funneling of money out of social programs and into offshore tax shelters, or the bribing of public officials. The whole 7 years of the Bush administration is a textbook into what has become legalized corruption, or "staying on message."

Whether it is leaking Valerie Plame, lying about weapons, spying on Americans, torturing Afghanis, Iraqis, and anyone else we get our hands on, or fucking over the entire world with the corrupt and sick housing market, or putting the Halliburtons of the world in the real driversseat, corruption is what runs shit these days. But most of what they do can legally be gotten away with.

Drugs, the Army and Mexico

2008-05-29T14:41:00.000-07:00

Brazil has a drug problem. Last night, in one of my Conversation ESL classes, the topic was the international drug situation. We talked about Rio de Janeiro, the US, the Netherlands, etc. We even spoke a little about a country that is almost never discussed in the Brazilian news: Mexico. This is a shame, Clovis Rossi, of Folha de S. Paulo, writes. Here is what he had to say.

" It is a shame that neither the Brazilian public nor its authorities pay attention to what is happening in Mexico.

Mexico is living through a situation that is not all that different from that of Brazil. Summing things up, through headlines and bylines taken from El Pais, which does a great job covering Latin America: 'The "narcos" (narcotraffickers) defy the Mexica government; gangs send death threats to the entire city of Ciudad Juarez, by email; confrontations lead to 25 deaths in three days, even with the police on high alert.'

Beside the numbers being more or less and the drama more or less intense, the headlines could be published by the Brazilian press at times.

What should bring the authorities to at least keep more of an eye on the Mexican scene is the following: President Felipe Calderon put the Army on the streets to go after the drug-traffickers. In the state of Chihuahua alone, in which Ciudad Juarez is located, there are 3,000 soldiers on duty. In Brazil, the discussion of using the Army to fight organized crime comes and goes, without anyone arriving at any sort of conclusion.

When some action is taken, such as the arrival of the National Force (Brazilian National Guard) in Rio, the statistics are comparatively irrelevant.

Another reason to pay attention: according to an important Mexican executive (whose name I will withhold, since our conversation was off-the-record), the entrance of the military in Mexico was done to give the government time to "clean up" the Police, notoriously infamous for corruption and incompetence. Would any similarity with Brazil be just a coincidence?

Dying on the Road... Continued

2008-05-29T08:02:00.000-07:00

Once again, bad driving on the roads of Brazil is in the news. Ruy Castro, one of Brazil's most renowned syndicated journalists, writes for Follha de S. Paulo. Here is my humble attempt at a translation of the piece, entitled: More Sinister Cars.

Rio de Janeiro:

Last Friday, in Rio, a man at the wheel of a Fiat Uno, with a blonde woman at his side, ran a stop sign in the neighborhood of Tijuca and almost ran over a pedestrian who was crossing the street with his children of 13 and 14. The pedestrian protested. After hearing the man's complaint, the man turned the car around, and, this time purposefully, tried to run him over again.

The walker got out of the way. So the man got out of his car and smashed the other man over the head with a crowbar. He then got back in the Fiat and left the scene of the crime, taking the blonde with him. The police identified the man as someone who suffered from psychological problems and who should not have been driving. The pedestrian remains in critical condition.

On the same Friday night, in Jabaquara, in São Paulo, a man in a Chevrolet Montana braked sharply when passing over a speed bump and his car was hit by a Corsa that was directly behind him, causing no damage to either car. The drivers got out to argue. The man in the Montana took a gun from the woman who was traveling with him and shot at the man from the Corsa. But he missed and hit a friend of the other man, 20 years old, killing him; After, he fled the scene, as well.

The danger in driving in our cities is not only that we could be ran over or shot. It is that, beside the aforementioned, if we protest against the imprudence of another driver, we may run the risk of getting shot, or bludgeoned by a crowbar. Drivers today are much too overconfident--and no one lets anyone else criticize them.

The car, it seems, has gone to our collective head. Early yesterday morning, a woman drove her Volkswagen Polo for almost 4 miles the wrong way of an North-South avenue in São Paulo. A tank-carrying truck almost flipped over while trying to get out of the way.

Thomas Jefferson had it right: the horse was already a mistake.

School For the Poor: Does Anyone Care?

2008-05-26T16:24:00.000-07:00

The title of my blog, obviously, is not the most uplifiting. But, neither is the problem in Brazil, and in the US. Brazil, a developing nation with financial resources that pale in comparison to America's, has just started a ranking system for quality of education, and in the richest state in the country, São Paulo, the average ranking (from 1 to 10) for the major subjects of math, science, reading and Portuguese was less than 3 in all public schools. This is sad, but not a surprise when you factor in the average class size in Brazilian public schools, which is 45. That is correct. That coupled witha lack of books, an average salary of about $500 a month, and almost no time for teachers to get together with teachers from other schools to help each other, leads to terribly disappointing numbers throughout the country.

Today, when I opened up my emailed version of The New York Times, I read in an op-ed piece by Thomas Friedman, about a charter boarding school in Maryland called SEED where a lottery was held, open to the public, for the first 80 students to go to this innovation in education. Friedman was there on the day of the selection, and witnessed the joy and disappointment of the crowd there.

A school program like SEED is not a cure-all for anything. It is not going to turn around the dismal reality of so many public schools in the US. It will not magically reduce total dropout rates in cities like Balitimore, New York and New Orleans. There is no magic bullet, but it is an attempt to face up to the reality that the problem is not just money, but real ideas. The solution is not privatizing schools, or testing the hell out of schools to decide which ones to shut down. the solution is not cutting music and art classes.

The shortcuts are easy. They are easy in a country like Brazil, where quotas have engendered more outrage than the US has ever seen. The affirmative action plans of both the US and Brazil only band-aid a problem that needs to be attacked at the root, which is elementary school. If ideas like SEED can take off in school systems throughout the US, there is no real reason why they cannot be adapted, not necessarily copied, in Brazil.

Something must be done, and steps must be taken. A first step is looking at the reality of things, and not being blinded by ideals.

To read Friedman's op-ed piece, entitled Hope in the Unseen, go to:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/opinion/25friedman.html?scp=2&sq=SEED+Maryland&st=nyt

George Orwell and Al Gore

2008-05-23T14:12:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite writers is George Orwell. Since reading 1984 and Animal Farm in high school, to reading Down and Out in Paris and London last month, I have always been fascinated by his razor-sharp commentary on class and control throughout this troubled world of ours. In Al Gore's The Assault on Reason, Gore quotes him, and the quotation is so fitting in a world where rhetoric has become reality, and leaders, especially American ones, truly believe that repeating something a thousand times will magically make it true.

Here are the words of Orwell:

" We are capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."

Like Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, so on and so on.

Hate has Roots

2008-05-23T13:56:00.000-07:00

As you can see on my blog, I am in the middle of reading Al Gore's The Assault on Reason. He makes a great number of fascinating, if not common-sensical points. One of those is about the roots of hate: fundamentalism. Here, I have included a short excerpt from the book on that all-too-little discussed topic.

"Fear, however, can disrupt the easy balance between reason and faith--especially irrational fear of a kind less readily dispelled by reason. When fear crowds out reason, many people feel a greater need for the comforting certainty of absolute faith. And they become more vulnerable to the appeals of secular leaders who profess absolute certainty in simplistic explanations portraying all probelms as manifestations of the struggle betweeen god and evil.

It may well be that the global epidemic of fundamentalism--Muslim, Christian, Hindu and Jewish, among others--has been partly caused by the dizzying pace of technologically driven change. This unprecedented globalizing tsunami has disrupted many age-old traditional patterns in families, communities, markets, environments, and cultures all around the world.

To brace themselves and their families against the disturbing and disorienting changes, people instinctively reach for the strongest tree they can find--which is often the one that seems to have the deepest roots. As people cling ever more firmly to their religious traditions, they can become more vulnerable to ideas and infuences that reason might filter out in less fearful times.

If dogma and blind faith rush in to fill the vacuum left by reason's departure, they allow for the exercise of new forms of power more arbitrary and less derived from the consent of the governed. In simple terms, when fear and anxiety play a larger role in our society, logic and reason play a diminished role in our collective decsion making.

Manda Bala Trailer

2008-05-19T20:54:00.001-07:00

John, my brother, told me about this documentary, which was filmed in São Paulo, but, according to my brother, has been banned here.

Notícias de uma guerra particular. WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLE

2008-05-19T20:46:00.001-07:00

Flight of the Conchords - Ladies of the World

2008-05-19T20:14:00.001-07:00

Watch this and tell me, please, if these acrobatic skills are digitally-inputed. Are the Conchords that good?

Dying on the Road

2008-05-16T09:45:00.000-07:00

According to the organization, Make Roads Safe, and reported by The New York Times' Minute Waltz, every 6 seconds someone is killed on the roads of the world.

This got me to thinking. And I just read in today's local Bauru daily newspaper, that, on one of the highways that runs from Bauru to another city called Iacanga, someone dies every 10 days.

Now, this is a disturbing fact, just on the surface, but when combined with the fact that this statistic is fatal accidents, it becomes truly frightening when you think about how many total accidents must occur daily on that particularly small, two-lane road.

I have written in the past about my experiences driving in Bauru in particular, and this week, in one of my Conversation classes at CNA Language School, where I teach ESL, I tried to get to the roots of the problem.

The consensus was that individuality, and the belief that one's life is so stressful that everyone is just getting in the way when you are driving, leads to so many of the accidents on today's roads.

In the textbook we use, the writer notes some instances in Philadelphia, in which one driver, cut off, shot another driver in the head. Another, in the same city, was over a parking spot.

As I drive to work today, I am certain that I will feel the adrenaline rush when someone cuts me off, or runs a red light, and I try not to blow my horn at them. Then, I am sure I will let my mind wander for a moment, longing for a city where I don't need to drive to work, because I have the greatest subway system in the world: New York.

The face of Brazil?

2008-05-15T08:25:00.000-07:00

Here is a shocking and disturbing shot taken by BBC photojournalists in Mato Grosso, ground zero in the battle between agrobusiness, especially ranching and soy farms, and Amazon preservation.

A Green and Bloody War

2008-05-15T08:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, in Brasilia, Brazil's capitol, Marina Silva, Minister of the Environment, resigned. She had worked for Lula's PT (Worker's Party) for over five years, but had battled recently with senior aides, as well as governor's of some of the most controversial states in the battle between agrobusiness interests and Amazon rainforest protection. While not exactly saying that she felt stepped-on, she did say that this time, unlike in the past, her decision was permanent. As Folha de S. Paulo noted, this is seen as a victory for the soy and ranching business, and especially the governor of Mato Grosso, who has called for an increase in deforestation, as a solution for the inflation of food prices. Silva, an ardent advocate for the different tribes in the area, as well as increased protection and penalties against illegal lumbering, was publicly at odds with the governor, one of the most powerful in Brazil.

BBC, as I just read in Folha de S. Paulo, is on top of things in the Amazon, as well as Indonesia, another literal hotspot for the burning and destruction of rainforests worldwide. The photo attached to this post is from yesterday's issue of BBC online, and shows the drastic demarkation between farmland (mainly soy) and the Amazon, in the state of Mato Grosso. This report, combined with the numerous reports both nationally and internationally regarding the acquittal of Bida, accused of ordering the death of Dorothy Stang, who tirelessly defended natives and the rainforest in the state of Para, has put the focus back on what has become today's Wild West, and one of the most important battlegrounds in the fight to control climate change while feeding a world increasingly dependent on Brazil for food. Numerous reports here in Brazilian periodicals have noted that areas with high levels of illegal lumbering also have the highest numbers of homicide per capita. With the aforementioned acquittal of a powerful farmer in the death of Stang, many fear that it is open season on dissidents an voices for the Amazon.

To check out the fascinating slideshow on BBC, complete with shocking captions and stories about those who make up the Amazon reality today, go to: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7399991.stm

Do not miss this revealing and disturbing look at one of the most important places in the world.

Network

2008-05-10T16:38:00.001-07:00

Since I started reading Assault on Reason, TV has become even more obviously repulsive. I cannot say that I don't enjoy watching a soccer game, or a good documentary, or a rerun of the Simpsons, but this clip from Network pretty much sums up what is wrong with TV, thirty years ago.

The Constant Assault on Reason

2008-05-10T15:21:00.000-07:00

I have been reading, or at least started reading, at long last, The Assault on Reason by Al Gore. In it, he quotes the American journalist and political comentator Walter Lippman, who I hadn't heard of until reading this. He quotes him discussing what may be the most lasting legacy of TV.

Here is the quote:

'The manufacture of consent...was supposed to have died out with the appearance of democracy...but it has not died out. It has, in fact, improved enormously in technique...under the influence of propaganda, it is no longer plausible to believe in the originaldogma of democracy.'

This may seem bleak, and it is. However, Gore goes on to note a disturbing recent example of the censoring of real public discourse by network TV.

'And what if an individual citizen or group of citizens wants to enter the public debate by expressing their views on television? Since they cannot simply join the conversation, some of them have resorted to raising money in order to buy thirty seconds in which to express their poinion. But too often they are not allowed to do even that. MoveOn.org tried to buy an ad for the 2004 Super Bowl broadcast to express opposition to Bush's economic policy, which was then being debated by Congress. CBS tod MoveOn that "issue advocacy" was not permissible. Then, CBS, having refused the MoveOn ad, began running advertisements by the White House in favor of one of the president's controversial policies. so MoveOn complained, and the White House ad was temporarily removed. By temporarily, I mean it was removed until the White House complained, and CBS immediately put the ad back on, yet sill refused to present the MoveOn ad.

growing

2008-05-10T14:42:00.001-07:00

growing
Originally uploaded by John Fogarty

Amazing.

Why Waiters Don't Start Unions

2008-04-27T11:47:00.000-07:00

I have been reading Down and Out in Paris and London, by George Orwell, and while not his most famous work, by a long shot, it is amazing. This afternoon, reflecting on class, Presidential elections and the inequality that is rampant down here in Brazil, and becomes more and more common in the richest country in the world (our beloved US and A), I thought I would share a tiny bit of this phenomenal book with you, my cherished reader.

"The moral is, never be sorry for a waiter. Sometimes when you sit in a restaurant, still stuffing yourself half an hour after closing time, you feel that the tired waiter at your side must surely be despising you. But he is not. He is not thinking as he looks at you, 'What an overfed lout'; he is thinking, 'One day, when I have saved enough money, I shall be able to imitate that man.' He is ministering to a kind of pleasure he thoroughly understands and admires. And that is why waiters are seldom Socialists, have no effective trade unions, and will work twelve hours a day--they work fifteen hours, seven days a week, in many cafes. They are snobs, and they find the servile nature of their work congenial."

I worked at the Central Park Boathouse restaurant for a month, and it was one of the worst jobs of my life. Orwell is completely right.

Please Go Now!

2008-04-24T18:37:00.000-07:00

Maureen Dowd, writer for the New York Times, has never been known to mince words. Writing in yesterday's op-ed pages about the results of Tuesday's win for Hillary Clinton, she echoed the immortal words of Dr. Seuss, and the thoughts of so, so many, who are sick to death of seeing Hillary still. As Tom Hayden, writing for http://thehuffingtonpost.com/, wrote, under the title "Why Hillary Makes My Wife Scream," "she is running against what she might have become. Too much politics dries out the soul of an idealist."

Dowd's column, entitled: "Wilting over Waffles," begins with these words:

"He’s never going to shake her off.
Not all by himself."

She then brings up the very valid point about the all-too-little power of the Democratic National Committee, run by Howard Dean.

"Now that Hillary has won Pennsylvania, it will take a village to help Obama escape from the suffocating embrace of his rival. Certainly Howard Dean will be of no use steering her to the exit. It’s like Micronesia telling Russia to denuke."

She does not have any plans to go away, and has no qualms about tipping to shreds any last vestiges of unity in a Democratic party that should, as Dowd notes, have no problem beating the Republicans.

"The Democrats are growing ever more desperate about the Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. With gas prices out of control, with the comically oblivious President Bush shimmying around New Orleans — the city he let drown — and Condi sneaking into Baghdad as rockets and mortars hail down on the Green Zone, beating the Republicans should be a cinch.

But the Democrats watch in horror as Hillary continues to scratch up the once silvery sheen on Obama, and as John McCain not only consolidates his own party but encroaches on theirs by boldly venturing into Selma, Ala., on Monday to woo black voters."

And here is where she alludes to the king of children's' literature. I echo her thoughts:

Before they devour themselves once more, perhaps the Democrats will take a cue from Dr. Seuss’s “Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!” (The writer once mischievously redid it for his friend Art Buchwald as “Richard M. Nixon Will You Please Go Now!”)

They could sing:

“The time has come. The time has come. The time is now. Just go. ... I don’t care how. You can go by foot. You can go by cow. Hillary R. Clinton, will you please go now! You can go on skates. You can go on skis. ... You can go in an old blue shoe.

Just go, go, GO!”

A Culture of Waste

2008-04-19T21:25:00.000-07:00

I like to read a monthly from São Paulo called Piaui. It has some pretty crazy reports, satire and political commentary. One story in this month's issue is entitled: "Trash is Relative."

Here it is, translated to the best of my abilities:

"The United States? In a recession? This country is blessed! They have no idea what poverty is."For the Ghanan Desmond Antubam, maintenance man at Port Authority Bus Terminal, or New York's bus station, the best thermometer of American society is not Wall Street, but garbage.

Antubam works at the largest bus terminal in the US and the busiest in the world.

In operation since 1950, Port Authority takes up two Manhattan city blocks. Every day, 200,000 passengers pass through it. People come and go, and almost every one leaves a trail, generally found in the trash cans. It could be a crumpled up piece of paper, but it also could be clothes, toys, newspapers, magazines, shoes, bicycles, radios, TVs--and all in good condition.For eighteen years, from Wednesday to Sunday, from 3 in the afternoon until 10 at night, Desmond Antubam empties the cans in the terminal.

Between unhurried sips of tea at a Starbucks, he gave us a taste of his experiences.Last Christmas, at the entrance to the station, Antubam noted a young woman who was talking on her cell phone with her boyfriend. She held a giant wrapped present and a bouquet of flowers, but, from the sound of things, had been forgotten there by the guy on the other end of the line. The conversation heated up, and Wham!, she hung up on the bastard. And, without thinking twice, she threw everything into the can-- the present, flowers, and the phone. Antubam, a good-natured, calm and soft-spoken guy, waited until the end of the tantrum and, slowly approached the woman: "Miss, your cell phone went into the trash.""Fuck off, you and that asshole! He bought the phone and I'm not going to get it! If he wants to, he can buy another!" And, thus said, she left in a huff.With extreme serenity, Antubam, fished the cell phone out of the trash and stuffed it in his pocket. The device, which was worth more than $200, wouldn't stop ringing. He ended up answering it, but didn't want to talk to the boyfriend, who kept shouting on the phone. He let it ring for a day, until her decided to return it to the owner, for a reward. He told the guy: 'I saved your cell phone; the flowers and the present are gone.'

For Antubam, waste has its limits. he was born in Accra, the capitol of Ghana, in a family with 9 siblings. His father died when he was 10 years old, which led to the beginning of a life full of hardship. Later on, Antubam would study graphic design and move to Nigeria, a better-off country than Ghana. There, he obtained an American visa, but the intermediary, as if it want't enough that he had been paid $ 1,700 commission, stole his passport. He was able to arrive on American soil via the Bahamas, in 1985.

Antubam married for the first time with an American and got his green card. After two years, they separated and he traveled to Africa, where he met his present wife, today 27 years old. The couple have three children, ranging in age from 10, 4, and 2. The middle child remained in Africa, with his grandparents, due to a technical problem with registration. Due to this problem, Antubam must prove that he is the father and for this has not been able to bring his son to the US. 'Immigration here is very complicated.'

As far as his eldest daughter, he says: "She took a bite out of her bread and threw the rest away. Times like these, I remind her that I paid almost $3,000 to get her out of Africa, and not to see her waste bread." The girl retorts like a good American: at school she it told to throw away any leftovers. This public health rule extends to restaurants in the bus terminal.

After 9:30 pm, it is Antubam who takes away the hundreds of bags of fresh food discarded by 16 eateries in the station. All of it gets thrown away.Since the workers are authorized to hold onto anything that's thrown away, he has co-workers who send entire containers full of unused food to Africa.

During the summer, sweaty T-shirts go into the trash. Unneeded coats, the same. When it rains, umbrellas get their turn. sneakers that don't fit in the suitcase? Garbage. A bicycle that can't be taken on the bus? Trash. Parents that give up on carrying the baby stroller leave the burden right there, in the garbage can. At the time of lockers, before 9/11, the harvest was even more plentiful. Bags and bags were forgotten way past the three-month pickup deadline. After this point, it became trash. One co-worker found a gold necklace that earned him $2,000.

Antubam finishes the tea. Before saying farewell, he takes a moment to give his two cents on today's big issue: 'I would really be happy if a democratic candidate won these elections.' In the New York primaries, his vote went for Obama, but if Hillary survives the Obama wave and gets nominated, he'll vote for her, even though he didn't like seeing her crying on TV: 'Leaders that lead don't cry."

Blu in São Paulo

2008-04-19T14:11:00.001-07:00

Blu in Managua

2008-04-19T14:02:00.000-07:00

My brother sent me a link to this guy's website, Blu, who is from Italy and does some really out there stuff. I just checke out his site, http://blublu.org/, and found some great work, including this piece, done in Managua, Nicaragua on his Megunica Tour. He has work on the Palestinian wall, as well as London, Spain, and São Paulo.

The World is for Sale

2008-04-17T19:25:00.000-07:00

An NGO worker in Haiti, Yolette Etienne, is quoted in Planet of Slums:

"Now everything is for sale. The woman used to receive you with hospitality, give you coffee, share all that she had in her home. I could go get a plate of food at a neighbor's house; a child could get a coconut at her godmother's, two mangoes at another aunt's. But these acts of solidarity are disappearing with the growth of poverty. Now when you arrive somewhere, either the woman offers to sell you a cup of coffee or she has no coffee at all; The tradition of mutual giving that allowed us to help each other and survive-- this is all being lost."

There Will Be Oil: Brazil

2008-04-15T19:15:00.000-07:00

Today's news: Petrobras, Brazil's largest energy company, discovers third-largest oil field in the world. That is right. It was discovered of the coast of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, the oil field, called 'Pão de Açucar' may be, if confirmed, the third-biggest oil field in the world and contain 33 million barrels.

This brings up my question: If Brazil, now the world's champion of ethanol, starts pumping huge amounts of oil in 5 or 6 years, what is going to happen to the Brazilian government's much-touted green energy?

And how will a city like São Paulo, already a traffic and pollution nightmare, not come to a complete standstill when gasoline is absurdly cheap, since it will be domestic and not OPEC?

And what is to stop Brazil from helping China to become the polluter of all polluters?

Dengue and Negligence

2008-04-15T18:48:00.000-07:00

This is my translation of an op-ed piece in Bauru's leading daily, Jornal da Cidade. The writer, a lieutenant in the Military Police and the Director of the Association of Social Assistance of the Military Police, Dirceu Cardoso Gonçalves, levels a scathing critique at the government that let dengue creep back and attack, and kill again in Brazil.

"Eighty-five years after its eradication, dengue has returned to kill as many or more than in the times when Brazil was a rural country and technologically-backwards. Rio's population is living through the terror of the attack of the disease and a lack of assistance. The wealthy state of São Paulo has cities where cases of dengue have spread dangerously and residents feel scared and cornered. Brazil had epidemics in the middle of the 19th century and then only during 1916 in Rio and 1923 in São Paulo. History shows that the efficient control of the carrier-mosquito rid us of the disease for decades. Nevertheless, the insect reappeared in 1967 and the sickness in 1981. Starting from this moment, the rampant negligence by our government leaders, health authorities, and the population itself, brought us to the suffering and death now found in Rio and latent in other parts of the country."

"The deaths from dengue constitute a libel against the incompetence and imprudence of successive governments and their health departments. Today, notwithstanding all the economic and technological advances, we have a situation bordering on the uncontrollable. The present situation is proof that no technology or funding is effective when the government and man himself are in relapse or are neglectful.'