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Brazil 2018
Visit to a Favela
The featured image is of an exhibit currently in the downtown Rio Bank of Brazil. The artist is Austrian. Using shoeshine boxes, he shows in this massive sculpture his impression of the Favela: impenetrable, forbidding, and imprisioning. Well portrayed in the film, City of God, the first Favelas in Rio were a scramble to…
January 25, 20180Comments
Brazil 2018
Rio
If only Rio looked as pretty as it does from the top of Sugarloaf mountain as shown in the featured image. When I arrived on Sunday afternoon and stepped out of a taxi in front of my hotel, all I could think of was the line made famous by Bette Davis: What a dump.…
January 25, 20180Comments
Brazil 2018
At Pousada da Mangueira
In the film, The Sheltering Sky, actress Debra Winger has a conversation with someone in a rail station and says, “we are not tourists, we are travelers.”  There is a difference. When I went on formal tours to Machu Picchu and Patagonia, I was a tourist. All energy was devoted in getting from one attraction…
January 20, 20180Comments
Brazil 2018
Immersion in Candomble
Until I arrived in Salvador de Bahia, I had never heard of the Candomble religion, which has 5000 year old roots in Africa. As best I have learned, it is an anamistic  faith and respectful of the forces of nature.  Then Portuguese  sent Jesuits to Brazil to convert the locals.  When the Africans were imported…
January 18, 20180Comments
Brazil 2018
Bette Davis Eyes
American music rules here in São Paulo- until it doesn’t.  Early this afternoon I went to a flea market close by my hotel and a loud speaker was blasting away the Kim Carnes classic, Bette Davis Eyes, followed by The Doors  hit, Love Me Two Times.  Everyone was happy and dancing around, helped somewhat  by…
January 13, 20180Comments
Brazil 2018
Skin Tones
Okay, so I have not seen this putty  skin tone paired with gray eyes yet but it could happen! How happy I am to have taken a college history course on the Colonial History of Latin America last fall.  I notice things here in Brazil I might not have otherwise.  One is the lingering legacy…
January 12, 20180Comments
Brazil 2018
S’PAW low
The featured image shows a pay telephone. These appear on nearly every corner in São Paulo, Brazil. Cell phone service is by no means  in the hands of the majority in this city of 12 million. Perhaps this is why having your cell phone swiped by a drive by bicyclist is always a threat. Knowing the…
January 11, 20180Comments

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