from Sandy Needham

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Manhattan Dispatch 1

November 29, 2007

For some reason the bus from Boston could not follow the normal route to Port Authority terminal in Manhattan from the Bronx, so gave me a wonderful scenic tour past so many lovely memories in the city! I met my beautiful daughter Elise over at FIT just after her Thursday classes finished. We caught the formidable 'A' train up to Harlem and were walking in her door at 126th street - 100 blocks north - in about 15 minutes! Here is her '07 Halloween costume:






Elise's apartment, like every room she's ever called her own, is a true signature piece of her unstoppable creativity. I even had to record her solution to the landlord's silly peeling porcelain paint in her kitchen sink!



















Our evening out together was a testament to the dynamic range of colors and ages that is the current, vibrant Harlem. After dinner in a rollicking little restaurant, we walked over to Broadway to the huge Dinosaur Barbeque where our friend Rob works at the bar. Two aging bikers in their Harley gear, probably the two sweetest guys on earth, bought us a drink! The crowd was a beaming, booming mix of everything, only more so, which spilled onto the dance floor once the brassy, 'Blood, Sweat & Tears' - type band kicked in. In my single days in midtown Manhattan everybody was too cool to be that happy.

During Elise's Friday classes I had lunch with one of my oldest and dearest buddies, David Barrow. He has one of the last remaining jobs in the decimated New York home furnishings textile print industry, being the exquisite English textile designer that he is. He and his now-interior designer-former-textile designer wife, Helen, and their 6-year-old, Amelia - both also among my favorite friends - are anticipating possibilities down south for when there are, in fact, no more textile jobs at all. We had just received the news that our dear friend, Dick Taylor, had just died after a truly valiant battle with lung cancer. I will talk more about this later. Walking back from the restaurant to 261 Fifth Avenue with David - after scurrying into a Korean deli to buy umbrellas for the sudden shower - was truly a disorienting stroll down memory lane. That was my first textile building in Manhattan in 1977, and where David joined our studio, followed over the next 23 years by several other buildings in the neighborhood that we both occupied in various industry jobs. The gold leaf deco lobby had just been restored to a new breathtaking luster.

As I wondered along 28th Street across town to meet Elise at FIT again, I shopped at a couple of the Indian wholesale stores that indicated special sales inside for passers-by, just like old times. Elise had a bite to eat and I had dessert while we decided our Friday afternoon plans. The clear winner was the free Friday evening at MOMA - the Museum of Modern Art. When we arrived around 4pm there was a line out the door, down the block and snaking through eight files in a parking lot. We entered in no time, as the line flowed steadily inside, and were witness to the wonders of modern art amidst a throng who brought the museum thoroughly to life. For Elise and me this was a joyfully shared revisiting of the many museum trips we had as she was growing up. The newest inventions and the old favorite paintings kept us oohhing and ahhhing for hours. Her gift from me was two books for her personal graphic design library, for which we spent additional mesmerized hours scouring the shelves in the museum store. I also bought a Mark Rothko poster for my living room wall which was a yard wide rolled up and stood out of my carry-on bag above my head for the rest of the trip.

We wandered west on 53rd Street, rather dazed, and decided to have martinis. A big, gorgeous Greek restaurant called Molyvos appeared with an amber glow and a distinguished looking bar. The thoroughly dashing bartender served up martinis with REAL Greek olives - a raison d'être as far as we were concerned, especially after being on our feet for centuries. We ended up staying there for a dinner of Greek cheeses, ouzo-cured smoked salmon, bread and more divine olives. After we got to her apartment we put on our favorite old Disney video, Alice in Wonderland. We eventually stopped rhapsodizing over favorite parts - so sophisticated compared to most children's fare - and gabbed away alongside Alice's shrinkages and expansions. I have associated Elise with Alice in Wonderland ever since she improvised her way as Alice through every scene in her sixth grade production at Blue Rock School.

In the meantime, poor Newton's ears would recover from being stopped up briefly, then stop up again on the subsequent flights to Hong Kong, Shanghai and Seoul. His cough was worsening.

Saturday morning was good-bye to my darling girl till Christmas in São Paulo, which will crown a demanding senior semester. Elise carried my suitcase down her four flights before heading back to sleep. I caught the subway to Penn Station to catch a train to my sister's in New Jersey.

Love,
Sandy

Monday, November 26, 2007

Boston Dispatch

November 26, 2007

My flight from Paris connected through Newark to Boston. Newton had put a SIM card for the US in my cell phone, but once I had arrived at the end of the green "T" train line in Boston near our son Jake's house, I discovered the phone didn't work. I remembered I had a Google map of Jake's neighborhood in my suitcase, so had to open it on the street and dig the map out. I set out to find his house, pulling my suitcase uphill for several blocks. By the time I was approaching his steeply inclined address, I huffed and puffed out "Jaakke!" from the sidewalk and he answered back from inside, "I tried to call you!" Luckily he materialized and lugged the suitcase up the front stoop and the steep staircase to their door inside.

Jake moved to Boston last summer from San Diego to be a professional Texas Hold'em player. He lives with three other guys - Jeremy from Nyack, whom he's known for many years and who just left Northeastern University to also be a professional poker player, and two other Northeastern students. They have a very nice, roomy four-bedroom apartment in a large house just beyond the charming part of Boston.

Jake negotiated a deal for the largest, lightest room. He did a great job furnishing it at Ikea and had just the right space left for his 21st birthday present - a Yamaha keyboard. We went out for his belated birthday sushi dinner, then I crashed rather suddenly (having flown all night) on the truly comfortable air mattress a high school friend of Jake's had forgotten on a recent visit, thank God!

I had an interesting stab at trying not to touch any surface during my turn in the bathroom.

Jake and I met Chris and Larisa Kottke, the two children of my lifelong best friend, Lenna, for lunch at a nice restaurant in the charming part of Boston. Larisa just graduated from BU and is waitressing while she decides on her next move, and Chris is in graduate school at MIT. Jake and I found my beloved Trader Joe's grocery nearby and schlepped four bags of goodies - many to bring back to Brazil - home on the "T." Sadly (for me), we had to pass up the Boston Museum of Fine Art stop on the way home as there were frozen items in the bags. I never managed to get back there - darn.

It was lots of fun watching 'Jeopardy' with all the roomies, they shouting out answers for the contemporary stuff, I shouting out for the old stuff! Jake has become an accomplished pasta-dish-creator, and stood at the stove like Art Carney, throwing in a fabulous combination of ingredients with a flourish for our dinner. The four-guy frig was its own trip:

Next morning, I used the rubber gloves I had bought and an entire roll of paper towels to clean the bathroom within an inch of its life. It was a sort of self-serving gift to the boys! Then it was fall hike day. I had brought maps and trail information from the internet for the nearby town of Wellesley. I visited Wellesley in the 80's with my parents, who actually lived there for my father's naval officer's training at the women's college in WWII. My father always loved joking that he graduated from Wellesley! It was a perfect day for a hike, other than a little early for the height of fall color. I had a pair of socks on with my flip-flops - that Japanese geta look - but I don't recommend flip-flops for hiking on bumpy terrain! We hiked around a beautiful pond and back around again, as it was only 1.8 miles circumference, then we settled at a picnic table right in front of the pond. We had brought a picnic and a bottle of wine and, by luck, two tall plastic opaque glasses, as the sign said no alcoholic beverages were allowed. At least we were not a gang of teenagers in the middle of the night. I finally got to eat my favorite Trader Joe's concoction: goat cheese with a layer of pesto sauce and a layer of red pepper sauce on top, plus we had smoked salmon and other cheeses. As if all of that were not perfect enough, there was a flock of mallards swimming around, iridescent heads catching the afternoon light. After a dog barked at two geese that had wandered onto the shore, they did a quick landing in the water and immediately squawked orders for the entire group of mallards to head for the side of the pond. What followed was the miraculous kabuki of a Japanese screen in motion as the shifting formations with V-shaped wakes behind each duck maintained a perfect visual composition second-to second. The moment offered a stunning balance to the day that began with cleaning that bathroom!

After 'Jeopardy' on TV again and the '90's Trivial Pursuit' game with the roommates, we ordered-in Chinese. I repeated another jet-lag crash on the air mattress. Next morning I was off to catch the bus to Manhattan to see our daughter. I had to bid farewell to my adorable son till mid-December, when he arrives in Natal for the Christmas holidays. The bus driver had that deadpan, dry humor and laid down the rules as we pulled out of the bus station: "You'll need to turn your cell phones off or to 'vibrate.' We won't be having any of those little tunes, those little jingles they play or any loud conversations or popping of gum." It was a bit disconcerting to look out the bus window eye-to-eye with drivers of the longest trucks I've ever seen - all gabbing on cell phones. Watch out! The best fall colors of the trip were along the highway en route to New York.

Meanwhile Newton was suffering in Japan with stopped up ears and a terrible cough. He had to present a seminar, luckily with a translator so he didn't have to project his voice. The two CAST distributors in Japan are in Yokohama, near Tokyo, and Osaka, near Kyoto, but they do not operate regionally; therefore, Newton had to travel by bullet train to Kyoto while he was in Yokohama and to Tokyo while he was in Osaka, just to make life easy when sick! He still had China and Korea to go.

Love,
Sandy

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Montpellier '07 Dispatch

November 18, 2007

We found more lovely weather in the south of France in mid-October. The Saturday evening of our arrival was the day of the semi-final rugby match between England and France. The gigantic Place de La Comedie was wall-to-wall spectators for the mega-screen erected there to air the match. We all made our way through the crowd, then onto side streets equally packed with spectators at outdoor bars and restaurants with TV screens. Led by members of the French partner company, we wound our way to a small, elegant French restaurant.

After our party of eight was seated, Hal studied the wine list. The single tiny waiter who can only be described as Roberto Benigni in a serious, officious role, informed us that we must order our food before we could order the wine, as monsieur le chef would need to start preparing it. After studying the menu and having Meredith, who lived in Paris for 7 years, explain some of the dishes, we continued to deliberate while Hal tried again, unsuccessfully, to order some wine. The little man briskly took our orders. Now we wanted to order the wine. He did not return for some time, but eventually took our wine order. Now he reappeared many times, to serve food and wine to other tables, to collect our place-setting plates, to store clean glasses in a cabinet...I was sure he would return with a feather duster soon and clean the room to further postpone serving us. But he would not bring us our wine! Finally he ran out of busy work and brought the wine. After pouring, he put the white wine in a bucket across the room. Now Hal, who is about 6'4" and 250 pounds, was ready for more wine, but the waiter was not around, so Hal got up and went across the room to pick up the bottle. The waiter appeared and began to admonish him in no uncertain terms from mid-torso height that ze waiter does ze pouring. Of course, now that we had our wine, we found it all hilarious. The truly gourmet food made up for most everything, but the waiter had the last word by not replenishing ice in the bucket and letting our second bottle of white get warm.

While the business partners met, I returned to the Sunday morning street market I had discovered here last fall and bought a pancake of chopped greens and bacon for breakfast . The rest of the day I wandered through the vast open public plazas, past a fountain with a copy of the 'Zeus or Poseidon' statue from Greece, stopped for an outdoor curry lunch since Newton doesn't like Indian food and there is none in Natal, read my book on a bench along the esplanade.

As I was reading, I recognized a familiar distant rhythm, and followed my ears. There in the large Place de La Comedie in this small world was a circle of people watching capoeira - the marshal art/dance created by African slaves in Brazil, who were not allowed to fight. My Afro-Brazilian dance teacher of 8 years in Manhattan, Loremil, was a capoeirista from Bahia - the state where slaves disembarked from Africa. He taught us a little capoeira in class, but mostly samba and dances from the African candomblé religion. I loved to go see him perform capoeira at my favorite Brazilian night club or in Central Park on a Sunday afternoon in those NY days. I stayed with his very poor family in Salvador, Bahia when I visited in '83 and sent his mother some money after he died of AIDS some years later. It is common to find these circles of capoeira in Brazil. Recently we were watching a group on the Ponta Negra Beach sidewalk. One of the performers had only one foot, we discovered, when during his formidable acrobatic feats the sneaker on one leg was turned all the way around backwards. He was amazing. This group in France consisted of locals studying capoeira and some Brazilian instructors and musicians. The music is a combination of chanting, the strumming of a berimbau - a gourd with a thudding, long string, percussion, and clapping of the rhythm. It was a funny sensation to watch this against a backdrop of 18th century French architecture!

Newton and I flew to Paris for a very short night before embarking on our separate trips to Asia and the US. I had to emerge from the hotel pre-dawn, alone, pulling my suitcase under the street lamps to the Metro station to ride to the airport. I missed Newton already! Nine flights to go for Newton and eight for me, now off to Boston. Newton had time to visit the Musée de l'Orangerie with Monet's 360º painting of water lilies, but was coming down with a horrible cold and felt lousy when he flew to Tokyo.

Love,
Sandy

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Nea Makri Dispatch

November 14, 2007

We arrived in Athens in the middle of the night. We were staying in a hotel outside of Athens this year, is all we knew. It was all dark at 4:00am when we closed the curtains and conked out. Next morning when I awoke, Newton had already gone to the meeting with CAST's Greek partner company. I opened the curtains and gasped. Out our third floor balcony was the pool AND the Aegean Sea! There was a hiking trail along the low rise above the shore. It was 85 degrees and sunny (unlike the cloudy photos above I took later). I needed a bathing suit.

Too bad I assumed a fall trip to Europe meant no swimming, but then trying to buy a suit in October gave a certain definition to the next two days. I hoped to find a well-engineered one like the one I found on the Riviera last April - as in civil engineering with gravity-defying lift. The nearest village of Nea Makri was five kilometers away. I started out with lunch at a nearby taverna with a view of the water...a TRUE Greek salad! I thought I'd just walk to the village (in flip-flops!), but then when I asked directions, this blond, sophisticated woman who had come into the restaurant and sat down with the owner told me she was going that direction and would give me a lift. We jumped into her car and had a great ten-minutes of getting acquainted. 'Poli' is recently married to the handsome restaurant owner and was on her way to teach Chinese! Her mother is Egyptian and her father Greek; she speaks perfect English, as well as Greek, Arabic, Turkish and three dialects of Chinese. Her first trip to China will be to interpret at the Olympics. I told her my weird story, and by then we had arrived at the gorgeous town on the seashore.

A paved boardwalk allowed me to hike a couple of miles along the water, passing loads of restaurants, bars and cafes. I had a decaf espresso and chocolate ice cream before heading towards the center of town to shop. Unfortunately, 85 degrees or not, bathing suits were almost non-existent. The closest possibility did not fit and cost $150, thanks to the weak dollar.

I got picked up in the town square by Newton and company, including the great Meredith and the adorable guys of the Greek firm. We went to dinner at one of the restaurants I had passed by the water. This was to be a fish dinner with the local accompaniment: ouzo and water with ice. Most of our troupe don't like the anise taste of ouzo, so declined, but I found it does go beautifully with seafood. We had a feast of whitebait, grilled fish, yogurt cheese with garlic, feta, olives like you can't believe, etc.

The next morning I left with the whole group in order to get a ride to the 'suburban' train into Athens. It was a little freaky, as I had to descend into the iron skeletal innards under a highway cloverleaf, alone. Amidst the roar of the traffic, I tried to buy a ticket on the machine. Now, I'm still pretty stupid when it comes to screens. This one was in Greek! I had no idea what station to touch, but started trying out the Greek alphabet I had learned by way of math and my sorority (...I know, but we were all anti-war). I was feeling disoriented there trying out 'th's' and 'ph's' when I suddenly eyed a tiny British flag on the corner of the screen. English! At that moment a young woman arrived and told me that Larissa station (same name as my son's girlfriend) would be the one to connect to the city. Whew.


My day in Athens was immersed in the chic Kolonaki neighborhood of shops and cafes and the National Archeological Museum. No go on a bathing suit, other than another possibility that did not fit and cost $150. The Archeological Museum is a treasure, better suited to the archaic and early severe classical style of Greek sculpture than the pure classical, as most of the classical sculptures are later Roman copies. The pre-Greek and Hellenistic collections are also good. I was thrilled to see the famous early classical bronze of "Zeus or Poseidon posed to throw a lightning bolt or a trident," from 460 B.C., though nothing in the museum could compare with the original classical torso from a Parthenon frieze I saw last year at the Parthenon museum, whose perfection touched my soul as well as my art history head.

The next day was my favorite. I was determined to hike along the Aegean shore and figure out a way to swim in my black underwear. I just didn't know how to anticipate what it would do when wet, so needed cover. This was provided by my tank dress, a huge towel from the front desk, and a little stone cove that was invisible to the balconies of the hotel above it. Off I hiked to the end of the trail, about two miles, hot and ready for a swim in my carefully selected spot. The trail passes by a hotel where apparently a film was being shot by the pool behind a clear lucite wall. Cameras and microphones were hovering upon a crowd of smartly dressed, cavorting bathers while the main characters rather overacted comedic roles in a way reminiscent of comedies on Brazilian TV. Several other people were watching beside me. Once I had slipped into the water around the little corner and saw that my underwear did not suddenly sag to my knees, I took off swimming. It felt great. I could safely round the bend and watch more filming while basking in the salty, buoyant water. I felt that I was in a European film at that moment! Later that afternoon I was flipping TV channels and suddenly recognized the character in a maid's outfit from the set. They were filming a TV comedy series.

The young president of the partner company had us all to dinner at his home, which is in Nea Makri. His mother, mother-in-law, and wife (an air traffic controller with two shifts that day!) all contributed scrumptious dishes of mousaka, lamb, stuffed grape leaves, etc. to the feast. Fudgey flourless chocolate cake finished us off!

Montpellier with a connection through Paris was next - 10 flights to go.

Love,
Sandy

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Krakow '07 Dispatch

November 13, 2007

We flew into the beautiful city of Krakow late on a Friday night, hungry. We wandered around the gigantic Market Square in the cold in time to see all the restaurants closing up. The weather reports had been mild, so there I was in my flip-flops from the plane (blistered toes), freezing in my light jacket. We missed our chance to buy some sauerkraut and pork, steaming from an open tent in the square with a pungently mouth-watering aroma, believing we would find a warmer place to sit and eat. Then we stepped inside an elaborate restaurant filled with fancy people, our sneakers and flip-flops screaming, "Don't look down here," but the kitchen was closed. 'Zone' bars for dinner.

We had come to Poland for the fall meeting with the partner company of CAST (Newton's company). A special feature this year was the Polish wedding of the owner's daughter! We were being picked up at noon by a driver to take us, along with two of Newton's partners, Hal and Bill, to the town of Bielsko-Biala two hours away for the 4:00 wedding When the driver had not arrived by 1:00, we decided to call a cab for the trip. After appearing quickly, the cab driver lost 20 minutes of our precious time trying several times to give Hal's credit card number to the dispatcher over the crackling speaker. Once we were on our way, we discovered that we had one of the world's few slow taxi drivers. He was sure to change into the more crowded lane at every stop light and drive way behind any car in front of us, allowing everyone in. He did not speak a word of English. Once we realized how tight the timing would be, I pointed to my wrist like a watch and started humming "Here Comes the Bride!" He laughed and continued to mosey down the road. We eventually got the hotel desk clerk on Newt's phone to give the driver directions to the hotel, and arrived in our room to get dressed at 3:25pm. Another taxi was coming to take us to the church at 3:45. Wrinkled dress it was for me, and Newton without a shave.


We arrived at the church at 4:02 and found the wedding party seated in two rows of chairs in front of the alter, the priest already speaking. I cannot, therefore report on how the processional is done in Poland, only that it is more than prompt. There were no bridesmaids, just bride, groom, bride's brother and best man. The service was pretty short, then a small group of young people rushed out. The wedding party followed out of the church into a shower of rice. The bride and groom stood in front while the wedding guests filed out of the church to present them with flowers, some wrapped gifts, and the envelope from CAST that Hal had expected a chance to prepare before the reception, but scurried for a pen to do so then. We were all off to a very traditional Polish restaurant for the reception. The crowd had gathered around the assigned tables and was instructed to wait for the entrance of the bride and groom, who eventually arrived in "over the threshold" style. Toasts ensued with champagne, wine and various types of vodka on the tables. Huge platters of food were served along with the traditional sauerkraut soup, while the recorded music began. The impression of extremely spry old people jumping up to waltz all over the room in circling swirls will never leave me! I got to join in with Wojtek, the father of the bride, fulfilling a lifelong dream of mine to really waltz around a room (with a partner). Newton's waltz is much tamer than his jitterbug. Here's a brief clip:




The bride made the rounds of tables for vodka toasts. Apparently, sipping rather than draining is tolerated for all foreigners except Russians! She also endured wild swing dancing in her antebellum skirt with the super agile old men, the farthest-flingling of which was her grandfather! More platters of food arrived (pork, potatoes, salmon, etc.,etc.) and the dancing continued. After the cutting of the wedding cake, I had another lifelong dream fulfilled: doing a wild polka around a room (with a partner). Wojtek obliged again - look out, Yul Bryner! We left at 2:00am, as food continued to be served. We were told that the last guests left at 5:00am. Wojtek explained that a wedding used to last a whole weekend, and the older tradition was a whole week!

The original driver (who had been stuck in traffic Saturday) picked us up on Sunday and returned us to Krakow, shaving more than an hour off the trip! Another CAST member, Meredith, arrived from the US, and we all had lunch and wandered around the famous square. Here is the interesting St. Mary's Basilica with its unmatched towers:


I ruled that everyone HAD to see the famous salt mine I had visited last year in nearby Wieliczka. Even though we had a sort of Bela Lugosi tour guide, 25% of whose English was unintelligible, I was able to share more info that my very sharp guide had imparted last year. I"ll repeat what I reported in '06: "The crux of the matter is that miners have hand-dug (and later dynamited) these chambers and sculpted the salt into chapels (for praying that they wouldn't die each day from methane explosions or mine collapse) and even a huge cathedral with architecture, statuary, bas reliefs, and chandeliers (out of crystal salt)...As you move down through the mine, the history of Poland travels with you. Copernicus was here; Goethe was here. There is even a chamber with a stocky, muscular Soviet sculpture. Underground lakes with the salt concentration of the Dead Sea render the air very pure and healing, hence the existence of the allergy/asthma clinic for two-week underground cures."






We then had a couple of days of business meetings in the town of Gliwice, where the partner company has its offices. I was free to wander - painfully in closed shoes - shop, have good lunches, and find hints about how small the world is. The white wine was my favorite Argentine chardonnay we buy in Natal (aren't Germany and Italy a little closer to Poland?). The featured cocktail in this rather small town: countless versions of the caipirinha, the national, originally rustic drink of Brazil ('caipira' is a country bumpkin). Little do happy hour celebrants in the northern hemisphere suspect at those cocktail prices that cachaça (white sugar cane rum) costs only $2 a bottle in Brazil!

Twelve flights to go! Greece next.

Love,
Sandy



Saturday, November 10, 2007

Sulmona Dispatch

November 10, 2007

Newton and I rode the train from Rome due east for three hours. Our destination was the town of Sulmona in Abruzzo, nestled in the mountains 73 kilometers from the Adriatic shore. This was Newton's third attempt since 2004 to get Italian citizenship, possible by way of his great-grandfather from Sardinia. The same Brazilian-Italian, Gelson, who orchestrated the other two attempts, was meeting us there. Citizenship had eluded Newton thus far due to Gelson's own disorganization, time simply running out previously up north in the Veneto, and then Gelson's trouble with the law (he was arrested for falsifying Brazilian soccer players' Italian heritages for EU citizenship, and the police had held all of our legitimate documents for a year. No trial yet).

The passing vista of mountains and valleys with beautiful little towns tucked here and there was gorgeous as darkness fell. Some towns featured huge old fortresses and churches. We just threw up our hands and said, "Is there any region of Italy that is not beautiful?"


We went out to a late dinner with Gelson and Tomasso, the local official who performs the newly streamlined citizenship process. Afterwards we stopped at a tiny bar/cafe for espesso. Here I conversed with a young man who loves to play Brazilian bossa nova guitar and some middle aged guy with a wild look in his eye. When Gelson, Tomasso and Newton were walking out the door and I was saying good-bye, the wild-eyed one actually picked me up off the floor by grabbing my butt with both hands. I was yelling 'Newtonnn" and fighting to get down, but Newt didn't hear. Finally I got my feet on the ground, slapped the guy across the face, and ran out. It was shocking. I don't know if I'm supposed to feel flattered at my age, but I would have selected the younger guy, at least!

Sulmona is the Roman birthplace of the famous 1st century poet, Ovid, and the capital of "confetti" since the 15th century. We assumed this meant confetti, but it refers to sugared almonds fashioned into little nosegays of flowers that look as if they are made of smooth, bright-colored plastic. The town is great for exploring, with charming piazzas and parks and beautiful walks towards the surrounding mountains. I kept buying a pistachio gelato to take along that I will never forget! I was doomed to wear 'closed' shoes here for the first time since January, so I hobbled around like a Beverly Hillbilly, developing blisters on most of my toes.

After simple preliminaries at the post office, Newton and Gelson endured a late night with Tomasso that turned out to be the magic trick for citizenship. They waited an hour for a tipsy Tomasso to leave a party, then went to the closed prefecture hoping for a fax to arrive from Brazil confirming the formality that Newton had never before renounced Italian citizenship. It didn't arrive, but Tomasso trusted it would and put all in place for the following morning. He then drove them around to further carouse until the wee hours. Bright and early at the open prefecture, Newton actually received his Italian I.D., although the fax did not arrive till evening. The card looks like something from the '50's typed on an old crooked typewriter, but it is authentic and served for travel all over the European Union! Newton will get an Italian passport through the consulate in Brazil - some day.

Poland next!

Love,
Sandy

Thursday, November 8, 2007

São Paulo '07 Dispatch

November 9, 2007

Our first stop on the 5-week marathon fall trip was São Paulo for Newton's Mother's 70th surprise birthday party.

Jannice (Jan-EE-see), Newton's Mother, was not expecting us. We were able to spirit ourselves into Newton's grandmother's apartment in the same building where his parents live at 6:00am, without fear that Jannice would spot us from their 16th floor window. We had to disguise our heads and slink a bit to leave the building later for lunch with Newton's sister, Lilian, and her husband, David, just in case Jannice might be looking out!


After lunch Lilian and David took us for capuccino at Kopenhagen, a Brazilian chocolate company that puts big chunks of chocolate in the capuccino, which then melts into the coffee. A spoon is needed, as well as a well-ventilated room to keep one from fainting from the fabulousness!

Alfredo, Newton's father, had everything in place for the surprise fest, including a fake call earlier in the day from the custodians about a mess a tenant left in the party room that Alfredo, as a member of the building board, needed to address. Once the 80 guests were all assembled in the party room and Jannice thought she was going out to a theater on a typical Saturday night, Alfredo mentioned to her that he wanted to check if the tenant had taken care of the problem in the party room, so they stopped there on the way to the garage. SURPRISE!! It helped that this was a week before her birthday.

These very smart guys have a crepe catering business, complete with five portable flat griddles and all the fixings for both dinner and dessert crepes. Offerings included four-cheese, chicken, salmon, etc. plus apple cinnamon, chocolate, etc. with ice cream to precede the birthday cake. Divine! I say 'etc.' often because my memory is SO BAD.





Besides recorded music, live contributions were made by relatives on cavaquinho (sort of a ukulele) and tambourine. Here is an action clip with dancing participants:






I got to see all of my very fun and darling Brazilian nieces and nephews with girlfriends and boyfriends, plus many relatives and old friends from the beach resort we've visited for years. Newton's second cousin Tatiana is married to a Californian who teaches in the American school in São Paulo; Newton's sister teaches English, plus the son of old friends travels to the US on business now, so I could gab and joke in English as well as fracture the Portuguese language throughout the evening.




On Sunday afternoon we took off for Madrid/Rome. Since I had nabbed the last reservation on Iberia airlines to Rome, Newton had to catch a different airline for the connection. Alas, the new terminal in Madrid is as oversized as it is lovely, and there was not enough time for Newt to get to his flight. I had a nice caprese and chocolate gelato lunch in the Rome airport waiting for Newt to arrive on a later flight. Then we caught the train...more to come.

A connection through Rio to São Paulo from Natal, and the two flights to Madrid and Rome crossed four flights off our lists, with 13 flights remaining!

Love,
Sandy


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