Making the Desert Bloom

We share the balcony and the view with a few pots of succulents. Going on the logical assumption that cacti live in the desert and don't need much water, we, well, didn't water them. Our neighbor/landlord/friend then told us that they actually do really well if you give them a drink, so we've been adding a few drops of agua every day or two. Practically overnight, this unassuming little pin-cushion of a plant sprouted this enormous appendage, which borders on the obscene. It is actually difficult to capture the true magnitude of this garish growth, but trust us that it's quite a sight. Stay tuned...we'll be posting updates when this thing opens and the little magenta aliens emerge.

* * U P D A T E : THAT SAME NIGHT...

As I was typing about magenta aliens, the darn thing was out there strutting it's stuff to the night lights of POA. Here's a glimpse of this beauty:

I am flower, hear me roar.

* * U P D A T E : THE NEXT DAY...

In what appears to be a sad, evolutionary glitch, it was just a one-day night-bloomer. Why all that effort for one day of glory?


Lucky for us camera-happy, cactus-watchers, it looks like there's another on the way.



Conclusion: drink water and bloom.

Goodnight Moon

Mama was unusually sleepless at 4 a.m. and caught the moonset over the city.

Celebrations of Children

Finally a country that prioritizes children – at least recently. It seems like every weekend is another celebration of children. September 27 was the Catholic day for Saints Cosme and Damion, and then last Friday was Children’s Day. The latter is the kid's equivalent of Hallmark’s Father’s and Mother’s Days, but many people get the day off. Celebrations for Cosme e Damião – as they’re called here – continued well past the 27th, into the weekend and next week.

My playground had an offering of sweets and candles by a tree. But a more festive event for me was the Umbanda ceremony to the Ibeijadas, African spirits of twin children who through Afro-Catholic syncretism are associated with Cosme e Damião, two Arabian brother doctors who helped cure the poor for free in Jesus’s name. When we first arrived I ran into the center of the ritual area, where all the action was; but was quickly removed, unfortunately. So while dad videotaped the ceremony from a fabulous vantage point on the drummer’s platform, mom and I circulated with the other moms and kids – seated around the ritual and eating in the kitchen. It was hard to tell why the ceremony was going to wind up being dedicated to children because for the first hour, adult spirits incorporated the mediums one by one, ushering in a session of rigorous dancing and singing. The Iemanjás were fairly passive, but the Oguns wielded swords and the Xangos and Juremas weren’t holding back either. But all of a sudden, after greeting Ogum again, the music changed and the Ibeijadas took over many of the mediums. They fell to the floor, rolling around, laughing, joking, pushing each other, sucking on pacifiers, handing out candy, playing practical jokes, and generally acting immature. How insulting! That’s not how us, real children behave! We roam around, seemingly aimlessly, hopping from one distraction to the next, making unexpected demands on our parents, all while refusing to eat or drink anything except yogurt and crackers. Nonetheless, it was nice to be recognized.

For the long weekend of Children’s Day, we fled to the coast with our neighbors and their daughter. The coast of Rio Grande do Sul is mostly one long sandy beach – though they say it’s not all that by Brazilian standards because of cold currents and silty water from the Rio Plata. Where we were, in Torres, along the border with Santa Catarina, is apparently the best beach of the state and kicks-off the better beaches to the north. Several high basalt mesas distinguish Torres from beaches to the south. At the top of one were paragliders and a street vendor selling Catholic saints on small boats. At the top of another was an interesting mix of flora, including passion flowers and cactuses.

It was great to get out of town, having been in POA for over a month, and having not yet seen the beach while in Brazil. It also gave me an opportunity to wear my all U.V. protective suit, hat, shoes, and sunglass combo. I may look funny, but, hey, I don’t need to find a Halloween outfit. I’m going as the ol’ kid-of-paranoid-and-gear-happy-North-American- parents. Sadly, this photo was taken minutes before I began shivering and began the painful onslaught of a 103-degree fever. Ah, the benefits of daycare. Nonetheless, the folks enjoyed a Thai shrimp dinner made from mom’s peanut butter, as well as crab, fries, and beer on the beach. Polar is the state’s cheap beer and a favorite of Exu Tiriri – but that’s another story.

Carrossel

Last month I started interacting with Brazilian children on a more formal basis – at nursery school. The playgrounds in the public parks are okay, but I was getting a little bored with the metal and concrete, the ground is often wet, and meeting new kids everyday has its drawbacks. But around the corner from my house is Carrossel, a small preschool that has a class of under-two year-olds, which is unusual in these parts. They play inside, on a covered patio, and in a private back yard, all filled with state-of-the art plastic toys and arts-and-crafts. So I gave it a try.

I go see the "kids" (the word I say every time my folks ask me if I want to go to Carrossel) four mornings a week. It’s actually just four hours a day, but during that time I play and eat both snack and lunch. My Portuguese is improving - my first words were beijos (kisses) and arroz (rice). First we kiss, then we eat. Sounds good to me. Since this is gaúcho territory, once a week we lunch on what they call churrascuria. But by now I’m no fool to the difference. Where are the all-you-can-eat chicken hearts, pork ribs, and beef sirloin, not to mention the “traditional” dance show?

Aside from the inevitable language confusions –- for instance, they call snack “lanche” -- the other big difference from my daycare in the States is that in this class, I’m one of the oldest ones. It’s a bit different being a role model and I miss hanging out exclusively with the big kids. But we often get to play with the older kids outside or in their room which has a cool plastic house. One of the triplets in my class and I played on the first day I was there. I mainly worked the counter, while she cooked up the salgadinhos and feijoada. Aside from the triplets, I tend to play with Julia, Chico, Pedro, Clara and Tiago. The mornings are light there as most parents drop their kids off in the afternoon. But my afternoons are too busy with napping to stay all day.

Peanut Butter Rant from My Mom

I have a whole new appreciation for jarred peanut butter.
It is worth every penny.
Run, don't walk. Stock up before the stores run out. It's gold, people. Pure gold.

Before we left for Brazil, I knew they didn't sell good 'ole American peanut butter in the stores here, and wasn't too concerned. I didn't stock my suitcase with jars of Jiffy, knowing that I could withstand nine months without a PB & J sandwich. But then I saw raw peanuts for sale and learned from Googling homemade peanut butter that it was a cinch to make.

Not.
A.
Cinch.

Turns out it's easy if you have pre-roasted peanuts without their skins. I'll give them that. But I didn't see any naked ones available and I spent an entire afternoon trying to get those persnickety little wrappers off these precious protein packets. It's the kind of task you wouldn't mind doing for the full afternoon if you were chewing on a wheat stalk, sitting on the porch with Maw and Paw and Jimmy Carter, discussing affordable housing and the weather.

But, deeply Southern though we are right now, I had no such afternoon. I tried various techniques for making those blasted skins just "slip right off." (Be warned, dear readers - the freezer technique does not work. I'm just telling you now, so you can use the freezer space in your generous North American freezers for things like Ben & Jerry's Peanut Butter Cup ice cream.) Blanching in boiling water worked better, and the skins came off more easily. But I still had to individually slip each blessed nut from it's slippery jacket.

Each.
Blessed.
Nut.

Luckily a few podcasts of This American Life and The Writers' Almanac kept me from tossing the whole bowl on to the merry people strolling through craft fair downstairs.

The next step, roasting, was easy, and produced a large platter of gleaming nutty gems. Finally, some gratificaiton. I then attempted to blend the nuts with various ingredients to get a consistency even remotely resembling that of store-bought peanut butter. I would have been happy to settle for the hard-as-a-rock, oil-on-top health-store variety that you have to mix yourself, ending up with an oozy mess all over the counter. That would have been dreamy. Instead, I kept adding honey, oil, butter -- anything to make this mixture stick together.

In the end, I got a tub and a half of tasty (hey, it's hard to go too wrong with honey, butter, oil and nuts) but not exactly spread-able peanut...stuff (can't really call it butter).

I have to say, I thought I was pretty media-savvy and had fairly astute judgement about what to trust, and what not to trust, on the internet. I had no idea I'd be led so wrongly astray by peanut stripping techniques and simple recipes that require fewer ingredients than one of my now-withered hands. Furthermore, many of these recipes were on frugal-living web sites.

They.
Are.
Nuts.

Hey, I'm all for DIY as much as the next Readymade mag reader who thinks knitting cozies for coffee cups is cool, but this is simply not a frugal use of time. My time would be better spent on Etrade or busking outside for the 4-ish hours it took to produce a tub of this concoction. And writing the blog about it, of course.

Noa on the POA Art Scene

I have been scoping out the art scene and have been impressed with the variety and quality of the exhibitions here. First, Mama and I went to the Bienal do Mercosul with some other friendly foreigners from Israel, Germany and Denmark. I stopped to examine a few pieces very closely (see left), but otherwise ran around like a chicken without a head. Mama caught a few glimpses of the artwork despite my breakneck speed toward dangerous ledges and my attempts to leap towards the torrential rains outside.

We naturally ended the tour in the gift shop, where I examined the merchandise (at right), including a custom-made flip-flop with the Bienal logo. Only in Brazil.

Since POA is the home of many anti-establishment activities (such as the World Social Forum), there is also, of course, the alt-counterpart to the mainstream art world: Bienal B. True to anarchist form, the BB takes place in sites all over town; to wit, here are two artists (at right) living in a cage in one of POA's fancier malls in a piece entitled "Home Sweet Home."

All three of us went to NO AR at a groovy exhibition space, known as the Usina do Gasometro. Celebrating 50 years of post-war media and technology, there were lots of interactive, multimedia gizmos and one massive screen (about 4 regular movie screens wide) with an impressive montage of footage interacting with footage. Here's a YouTube video I found of the exhibition (it doesn't show the large video projection, sadly).

After seeing all of these stimulating exhibitions, I needed some artistic release of my own. Here's my latest masterpiece.


P.S. If you want to dig deeper into issues that come up when you mix kids and art, check out this movie by our dear friend, Amir: My Kid Could Paint That, opening any day now in NY, LA, DC, SF, Boston, Dallas and elsewhere.