Brazil Dispatch 13

August 5, 2007

Before I begin to catch you up on life on Cotovelo Beach, I must issue a general invitation to all of you represented in Dispatch 12 on behalf of my dear friend, Ack - Tom Ackley. He was quoted in that dispatch about his move to Costa Rica. He knows he would love to sit and yack with any of you after reading Dispatch 12, and I guarantee that all of you would love to sit and yack with Ack! Well, you're invited to visit him in Costa Rica!! His e-mail is: mailto:mtom@vistavalverde.com .

I am more in love than ever with our tranquil house, our unspoilt beach, and my very graceful husband! I continue to resist driving off to run errands (no choice - need groceries) in favor of yoga, reading, writing, painting the new mail box, sewing the new curtain to hide the defunct shower in the downstairs bathroom, etc. We watch downloads of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" to bring laughter to the outrage (the funniest show ever is the July 30th), and are catching the last season of "The Sopranos" on our slightly behind satellite HBO (don't tell me what happens!!).

Well, we've managed a few good discoveries recently:

We called to confirm that the symphony was performing on the last Tuesday of the month as Fidel (the man selling us the house) had mentioned. They responded that this month it was the ballet company performing. A ballet company in Natal? Who knew, and if they knew, how did they know? Off we went. It was superb!! Choreography, very sophisticated; orchestra, completely professional; and the dancers, female and male, fantastic! Who knew? It was one of those oddities here: something exceptionally refined in the midst of what one might expect - an unruly audience. Once the conductor raised his baton (at the appointed hour, I must add), there was no change in the level of chatter throughout the theater! It did subside when the dancing began, except for outside the rear lobby door, which remained open. Still, the ballet gave me a whole new impression of our city.

Then we found the Blues, complete with mad harmonica. One night while Newt and I were gabbing away in English at our neighborhood bar, Jumanji, hopefully not saying anything rude since no one in tiny Pium speaks a word of English, this guy at the next table says, "It's good to hear that American English." After we picked our jaws up, we met Leo, a Brazilian from Minas Gerais who lived in New England for five years. Leo is a musician (along with his wife). We went to one gig where he played bass and she sang lovely bossa nova, then this week he had a gig playing bass with an amazing Brazilian blues band who can sing mo' and chile just right. Except for the nearly unbearable smoke and the 11:15 starting time for the 10:00 show, we were willingly immersed in the blues till past 2:00 on a school night.

And that set the mood for meeting my first Americans (besides the missionaries). So I arrived at the fields where the man cuts lettuce, arrugula, parsley, watercress, spinach and basil out of the ground (all of the above for $2), and another car was there with a group of Brazilian guys buying greens. I spoke to them a bit, and one asked if I was American. I told him I didn't know any Americans here and he said his neighbor in the next beach town, Pirangi, was Carlos from Florida. Then Carl called: yes he's from Tampa, but was born in...Tulsa!! Couldn't believe it! He got us invited to a party at Sinara's, a woman who was a Brazilian vice consul in Washinton D.C. and LA. It was a beautiful, relaxed dinner party by her gorpeous pool. We met other American men and an Aussie, mostly retired with Brazilian wives, plus there are two more American women for me to meet in Pirangi who couldn't come. Carl and his wife, who is from Manaus in Amazonas and is visiting there now, spend about half the year here and half in Tampa. He has a couple of patents, a business in Florida, fishes three hours a day, speaks Japanese and Portuguese, stands straight as an arrow and seems much younger than he is. I was very taken by his unassuming and kind Okie ways and crystal intelligence.

We also discovered the next city down the coast, João Pessoa, in the state of Paraíba. This city has the official easternmost point in the Americas. It is a little smaller than Natal and has less mix of elegance-next-to-slum (i.e. elegance-next-to-elegance). We drove for two hours from here and found a hotel on the impressive Tambaú beach - impressive because of its vast expanse so fittingly planned for a rich community life. The Friday and Saturday night life along the string of barracas (beach restaurants) and more formal restaurants

was vitalized by crowds of middleclass locals of all ages. We are not sure if the city has less poor people or if the poor frequent other beaches, but beggars were at a minimum and clientele at a maximum. There was an underlying calm to the whole scene, as the music was live in one place or another - not too loud - and the deafening push-cart CD vendors were absent! Our Saturday at the beach was highlighted by two 'hot dog' kite-surfers doing multiple 360's twenty feet in the air. A delicious dinner at a fancy outdoor restaurant featured a large screen with the Pan-

American Games' men's volleyball final between Brazil and the USA (sorry, USA), followed by a live band on a stage playing jazz, samba, and pop favorites with a vocalist reminiscent of Phoebe Snow. It was divine. Sunday we explored and landed on Tabatinga Beach, hanging out all day at the rustic barraca in the photo. We like João Pessoa very much and will return, but it doesn't have our house, and I strangely like the poverty/wealth mix that one finds in most places in Brazil.

The rainy season has just rather suddenly relented to the windy season of August and September. The sea is getting more aqua again, the sky bluer, and the lettuce blows off our plates at lunch! We had a series of visiting birds passing through the last couple of months, adding their new voices to the sound of surf and balmy palms (and obnoxious rooster). One day there were black magpies in our tree. Unfortunately the stray feral cats do not move on and are partial to the reliability of our garbage in the absence of year-round neighbors. Our yelling and clapping only scatter them temporarily. Excuse me, an iguana just ran into our kitchen! Can you find it in this picture?

Newt and I finally figured out how to get the new yellow umbrella to stay put on the beach in the wind, so on the weekends we love to traipse the two-minutes to Cotovelo with the beer cooler, books, umbrella and chairs. Even though this beach is never crowded, there is plenty of entertainment: the occasional heavy gust with smarting sand and beer-protecting postures; a fabulous kite-surfer blowing by; the intriguing velocity of a plastic coke bottle rolling mesmerizingly down the beach as far as we could see; the industriousness of a small white crab, arriving in a rapid lateral maneuver, black eyes divulging its presence as it digs out its tunnel; the local poor kids trying to fly their plastic bag kites on old unwound cassette tape.

I am between books. A couple of books from the current fare didn't hold up well after Ulysses, but then I tackled the incredible Underworld by Don DeLillo. He made me believe I was really in the middle of so many scenes from the second half of the twentieth century. The themes are so haunting - I cannot move on to another book without simply mentally savoring this one a little while. Every time I head for the hammock with a book after lunch, I hear my Mother's after-lunch voice from my childhood summers saying, "You don't have to go to sleep, you just have to lie down with a book.

Special feel better wishes to Steve, Dick and Neil.

Love,

Sandy

Brazil Dispatch 12

July 20, 2007

I want each and every one of you to know that my writing of these dispatches is my only personal record of these experiences - I don't keep a separate diary - so besides just reporting, it is my chance to record my middle-aged woman's musings. You are quite a varied group that receives this, including some of Newton's soccer buddies, my nephew's daughter, friends since grade school, friends since last April, etc. I thank you for your indulgence and your kind responses and encouragement. You always make my day with reports from your lives. They are as much a part of my life here in Brazil as the very ocean out the window, so I thank you, as well, for keeping your stories comin'.

Here are some of the fascinating and funny reports I've received from your 'everyday lives:'

>My grade school, jr. high and high school friend, April Tayman, reported from the Tulsa Central High 40th reunion, after I had commented about all the strangers in the e-mailed photos (we had a graduating class of over 800): "I was THERE and don't know who all those people were, plus I made most of the nametags."

>Tulsa Central friend, Bob Garrett, who runs a bakery in Lawrence, Kansas, takes a road trip with his buddies every year and keeps a travelogue: "This year we chose (mainly) backroads Arkansas. Highlights included breaking into a defunct tourist attraction called Dinosaur World and wandering around the decaying cement monstrosities. We went to some great caverns, lakes, mountains, etc. We also hit the Clinton Presidential Library and the "factory" where they make my favorite pottery (Dryden). My very favorite event was going over into Clarksdale, Mississippi on Saturday night to hear Big George Brock play the blues on his 75th birthday. About as funky as it gets."

>My dear Tulsa Central friend, Tom Ackley, bought land and moved to Costa Rica around the same time we moved here: "We are in what we hope are the last throws of permit gathering. It’s a bitch. Senses of adventure and humor are prerequisites here, as they are there. On one hand I am glad that I can know the efficient side of getting things done...on the other, where does one find the balance between “pushing” to get something done, and the “Pura Vida”-ness of going with the flow? Yi Yi Yi."

>My best friend from my whole life, Lenna Kottke, Boulder, went to Boston for her son's wedding: 'Minister to Chris: "Do you take Kaylan to be your wife, to live together in holy matrimony? Do you promise to love and cherish her, comfort her, honor her and keep her, in sickness and in health, so long as you both shall live?" Chris: "You bet I do!" Minister to Kaylan: "Do you take Chris to be your husband, to live together in holy matrimony? Do you promise to love and cherish him, comfort him, honor him and keep him, in sickness and in health, so long as you both shall live?" Kaylan: "Longer than that."

>Tulsa friend Barbara Dow, now of Bella Vista, Arkansas and in her 80's, is a confessed 'espanofila' after living in Venezuela years ago. She is also an incredible athlete: "I played in a golf tournament last week and our combined foursome ages was 316 years. Not bad huh? And we got 2nd prize for the mixed foursome division. They also gave out a "geezer" prize which we won: it was a "Depens." It brought the house down as you can imagine."

>Among my Northwestern U. friends, Monica Postell, Delray Beach, Florida, visited Cairo and Malaysia, training new corporate employees: “I go to my classroom window and peek out of the ugly vertical blinds to say good morning to THE PYRAMIDS."

>Linda Calder, also from Northwestern, of Westhampton on Long Island, is preparing herself for her daughter's departure to college in August: "So I will meddle this one last time. Oh, hell, I'll probably do it every chance I get for the rest of my life. I will just try to be more and more subtle."

>Marie Arana, another Northwestern friend, editor of The Washington Post's Book World and author of American Chica and Cellophane, went to Lima, Peru to write her second novel: "It's very different coming back as an adult to a place that was so familiar as a child. Especially, when you're introducing your husband to a whole, extended (and curious) family!"

>Northwesterner Babette Bean of Edina, Minnesota, reminisced after my dispatch from Nice: "Yes, I did spend my summers in Nice. Both of my Grandmothers actually had condos right on the Promenade des Anglais. Needless to say, I had a blast being that I was in high school and college during those last summers so I fell in love many times and partied a lot."

>My Rio friend, Maria Candida Velloso, went off to Indochina and sent incomparable photos: "I am not so good in writing as you Sandy, the pictures speak for me!"

>My Nyack and Blue Rock School friend, Lucia Gratch, another photographer, went off to Tibet to help with an orphanage opened by Tashi, everyone's favorite Tibetan doctor and masseuse in Nyack: "My Tibet memories are receding so fast. I get to go through the thousands of photos I took now and try to edit them down to a more manageable size, which I am sure will refresh my memory."

>Joan Cornachio, the former Blue Rock school music teacher, also moved away this year to a town near Amherst, Massachusetts. She and her family are in the midst of adjustment to new schools and new jobs: "My problem is I keep waiting for a moment to have a nice long chat with you, hang, drink martinis, bitch, moan and laugh. I've lots to tell you. Just know that I'm simply storing it all up. What a year we both are having, and I dare say at polar opposites of life experience. All part of the continuum, I know."

>My former chiropractor, Carolyn Honey Friedman of Nyack, was about to head out in her new camper 3 years ago when, the day before leaving, she met the love of her life in the driveway (he was painting the house next door). No trip ensued. They are making plans for the future: "Someone is coming to look at my camper today, with the idea of buying it. I've decided...that it's time to let it go."

>My textile industry buddy, Jean Cristobal in the Netherlands, who is half Japanese, wrote hauntingly about a two day scroll-making workshop with a Japanese master, after which she attended a modern dance performance where a dancer coincidentally unrolled a huge roll of brown paper: "So after spending a day trying to cut and paste a scroll together with utmost precision, we saw another scroll unfold in a curious, spontaneous dance."

>Another very close textile buddy, Carolyn McMonegal, had hip-replacement surgery in Manhattan: "Hot and sticky humid here...glad to be indoors! Off to a brit mystery on tv and some blueberries...ummmm."

>One of my favorite (former) textile designers, Helen Webb, who is married to another one of my favorite textile designers and lives in Fairfield, Connecticut, later became one of my favorite interior designers: "I need to live near the (filthy) rich in order to make a living. Which by the way is going great, I'm going to be doing Jack Parr's former residence in Greenwich for an old client."

>Longtime NY friends Dick and Nancy Taylor and their dog, Troisieme, exchanged their New York apartment to return to Paris for another of several 3-month stints: "Wonderful new neighborhood to explore. Montparnasse. Really lively and, unlike the 6th, no tourists."

>Longtime Cleveland/New York friend, Joe Warren, inquired about the Dutch after I reported on Amsterdam: "Did you find the Dutch TALL? Their mission to the U.N. is on the top three floors of my office building, and no one in it is under six-feet-five-and-a half!"

>Meredith Luckewicz, who is with Newton's company, took off for the Jersey Shore from her home in Basking Ridge: "I’m down in Long Beach Island in a rented house with my kids for 6 weeks. My husband Mike comes down for 3 day weekends. It’s nice having a change of pace and I love the shore. However I miss my 2 dogs terribly."

>My oldest sister, Janet Kohler, went through the Americana of her step-granddaughter's dance recital in Denver: "What a rip-off!!! You had to buy tickets; the programs were for sale; they had bouquets for sale to present to the participants...and then there were the t-shirts and other stuff that any "good" parent or grandparent must have! OR NOT!! I was totally disgusted before the recital even started. I wanted so much to see...a glimmer of how poised and beautiful dance can be. Not to be, but we did survive."

>My next oldest sister, Dorothy Tarpley, hosted an amusing and entertaining Russian linguist who was visiting Durango as the translator for a group of Russian accountants: "I was only the least bit miffed when he informed us after he arrived that he was not a meat eater, not a true vegetarian, but not a meat eater. This after spending $250 at the grocery store and planning meals with meat at each one! I'll get over it."

>My other sister, Donna Wilder, is the assistant to the principal in a Lawrenceville, New Jersey elementary school. The principal decided to make special needs 5th grader, Nasir, vice-principal for the day: "He then gave him a badge that said "Deputy Assistant Principal." Nasir went on to his class, but he wore the badge all day with a big smile. Later in the day, some student tripped and fell on the playground and had the air knocked out of him. Several students were standing around him, and Nasir was shaking him pretty hard, saying "Come on, Cody, you'll be all right!" The gym teacher said to Nasir, "Nasir, I don't think you want to shake Cody so hard." Nasir just said, "Mr. Boggs," and pointed to his badge. Thankfully the student who fell was okay."

>My niece Sara Wilder and her boyfriend have a new dog, Grady, in Freehold, New Jersey: "Grady and I were at Home Depot a few hours ago to purchase a new litter box for him. We currently have the Petco version made for big dogs, but Grady is so tall and when he lifts his leg, he often goes outside the box. No, that is not fun at all for us. So I got a huge rubbermaid container, bought a hacksaw and a utility knife and am now taking a break from cutting out one of the sides so Grady has a nice entrance."

>My Venezuelan/Nyack friend, Sonia Berah, actually replied to me in Bloomspeak after my corny parody of Ulysses: "So, remember, September, remember, memory, ideas, thoughts, reflections of yesteryear, yesterday, day, night, day, sight, what a bang, or universe under my skin and nails and softly closing eyelids, with the memory of Nyack gardens flowers, roses, peonies, daffodils, clymantis, green, emerald, lime lawns and Sandy meeting me at the Runcible Spoon."

>My nephew, Todd Tarpley, sends YouTube videos of his family in Manhattan, but also had this reply to my parody: "The fact that it takes me 20 days to read and reply to an email underscores the reason I have not read James Joyce. Your parody is quite good, although if you're not reading closely it looks like one of those spam emails that are automatically generated from random lines of text. One of my down-time projects will be reading the Cliff Notes for Ulysses. (No, just the Cliff Notes.)"

>Todd's wife, Jenny, describes their upcoming trip with sons Sam and Ethan: "We're getting ready for our spring break. We promised to take the boys to Great Wolf Lodge in the Poconos to celebrate their birthdays. It's an indoor waterpark, hotel and has an interactive game that you can play throughout the hotel."

>My niece, April Atwell, runs a horse stable in Topanga, California. She wrote about the dangerous fire season: "We just had a Fire meeting at our barn last week discussing our procedure to all of our boarders. In the event of a fire, we'd have to try to evacuate about 45 horses out of the canyon. Fortunately, the property we lease is 32 acres of mostly cleared land, so if there wasn't time to evacuate, we would be in what's considered "the neighborhood survival area," which is the place the surrounding homeowners will run to as their house is being engulfed. It's really quite scary to think about, especially the safety of all my customers and their horses. It would be devastating to lose my business as well."

>My nephew, Brad Tarpley, a percussionist from Durango (who just sent his new jazz CD all the way to Brazil) wrote: "Visiting my pianist-long-time-friend Steve for a week (he was the pianist at our family reunion in Grand Lake, CO all those years ago); we're playing jazz every night I'm here in San Francisco thanks to his booking efforts."

>My grandniece, Lainey Tanner, an eighth grader in Tulsa, took a Spanish class trip to Mexico: "Right outside of the museum were a group of men called flyers. Each man climbed to the top of a tall pole and tied a long rope to his ankle. Then after all of the men were on the pole, one older man played a flute-like instrument while the others swung around the pole by their ankle. Each man went around fifteen times, until they reached the ground."

>My niece Amy Sweeney and husband Sean have a baby daughter in Gaithersburg, Maryland: "I try to keep your message about spontaneity and enjoying the moment at heart but I agree that it's a challenge! I think Sean is at one end (totally spontaneous and never worried about what needs to be done) and I'm on the other (forever planning, cleaning up and thinking about the next task). We've helped each other come a bit more toward the middle though."

>My sister-in-law in Sao Paulo, Lilian de Souza, sent the recipe her husband David had used to make whole fish for us: "He told me he used a lot of lime (3 or 4), Italian seasoning (he bought) and salt if you wish. You should punch the fish with a fork so that the seasoning penetrates on it. Leave it in this mixture for an hour or more before putting it in the oven. Cover it with aluminum paper (and later remove) until it’s cooked."

>My Mother, Laurene Needham of Tulsa, does not exactly do e-mail, although she has a new gadget attached to her phone that receives and prints out e-mails and photos. She is such an active 92-year-old that she always has a story for me when I call. Typically, the stories reflect her card shark status for which she is appropriately dressed in this photo, or the many fans that bask in her love and love her back, for which she is also appropriately dressed in this photo!

>I admit to having a favorite response to my plea for stories from your lives. This was from Tom Rose, a former colleague and longtime soccer buddy of Newton's who has a two-year-old daughter (and now a new month-old daughter) in West Milford, New Jersey: 'Today we had French toast and bacon for breakfast while watching "Little Einsteins." Then we went to Toys R Us and bought Reilly a red plastic sandbox shaped like a crab. Now it’s naptime for Reilly and time for me to go mow my “lawn.”

Thank you all for letting me quote you without permission! I will write again soon with more observations from our tropical life here in Brazil. In the meantime, I will savor your stories...how there is no such thing as ordinary. Keep them coming!

Love,
Sandy

Brazil Dispatch 11

June 29, 2007

Elise and Jake and Jake's girl friend, Larissa, made it to Natal! Elise arrived first from NY via São Paulo on one of those (common) middle of the night flights to Natal which are (commonly) late. It was just about 24 hours door to door. Jake put us in a temporary panic when he and Larissa missed their flight from Milan to Lisbon (from where they were flying to Natal). The reservation had been for the previous day - whoops. Newton and I tried to race against the clock on both of our computers to find out what other flights might be available last minute or if trains would work. Oddly enough, the internet hit an excruciatingly slow phase right then and info was almost beyond our reach. In the meantime, Jake and Larissa found a flight at the airport going out the next morning that would arrive in Lisbon in time for their flight to Natal.

Elise schlepped a TV with a DVD player all the way here as a gift from both kids. Unfortunately, TV's from the US have a different system for color, so you only get a black and white picture here. We had just bought a TV for downstairs so we had the two sets sitting side by side, one for DVD's, which do show in color, and the Brazilian set for satellite fare in color. The TV will stay in Newt's office now for black & white soccer matches and Formula 1 races. Elise also schlepped a large extra suitcase full of our requests that she was valiant to shop for and pack! I'm thrilled with my Splenda and spray olive oil!

Our caretaker, Marcos, climbed up a ladder their first morning here to cut down 20 coconuts from our trees. Elise drank the coconut water through a straw every morning!

The kids' visit included beach time when the sun was out, and elaborate beer-drinking games, big rounds of Hearts and DVD's when the rains came, with hammock time in between. Newton took Elise and Larissa, the water-babies, to a snorkeling place around an ocean reef via boat, and I got to have lunch with Jake at the restaurant at the end of our beach. Newton also took the three of them on the dune buggy excursion we had already taken with Jake last December. He is the dune-baby. I was able to forgo a second chance for thrills in the dunes to allow space for everyone in one buggy. The driver asks if you want the “emotional” version, which includes heading straight down tall dunes and roaring up the sides in ellipses. “Emotional” doesn't describe my reaction...more like "years off my lifespan." The excursion also includes sandboarding down a dune, 'bunda-ski:’ sitting on a small sled down a dune, and 'aero-bunda:’ riding down a cable into a lake. The excursion allowed time for running and jumping or rolling down the dunes – my favorite.

Watch:

Elise, Jake and Larissa joined the mob of revelers in the nightlife neighborhood, Alta de Ponta Negra (‘Ponta Negra Heights’). They caught near-dawn cabs home, once in sluicing rain with the walk to the house through a mid-calf 'street' river. They actually met two American girls - the only American siting I know of in Natal besides the missionaries.

We had a day at Ponta Negra beach, which means more people, more venders, and umbrellas that don't blow away. This is a very slow season for Europeans with the unpredictable rain, so the beach was the emptiest we had seen it, while still more active than our Cotovelo. Vendors swarmed around us like flies around a caipirinha. The locals are celebrating June festivities, 'Festa Junina' for St. John and St. Peter. People dress up in country attire and straw hats, burn small fires in front of their houses and hold dances under many small fluttering flags. A charming traditional version of farró music, typified by the rhythmic triangle and the accordian, pops up live all over the place, including the supermarket! July is the vacation month in Brazil, where children have the month off in the middle of their school year. We expect the vacation houses around us to come to life and Brazilians from the south to populate the beaches soon.

Jake and Larissa returned to Lisbon, with a week in Amsterdam and three days in London to go before heading back to the states. Jake actually ran into classmates from Nyack High School two times on this trip to Europe, plus a guy who recognized his online poker name! He will have a new address in Boston the first of August when he will share a house with a friend and pursue his poker passion.

On Elise's last day we hiked to the colorful falesias (cliffs of sand) at the far end of our beach, had a fancy shrimp dinner out and movie before her 2:00am flight to São Paulo. She has returned to her waitressing job at Havana Central near Harlem, but has a break till fall semester from the many demanding design projects at FIT. She brought her exquisite design assignment for an entire season at a non-profit theater to Brazil to show us - so many hours of work, and brilliant design. We take pride in the intelligence, ingenuity and independence both of our children embody.

It is very quiet around here now. We return to our lovely, tranquil routines with a pang of sadness that the kids have gone. We will see them in the US this fall. We are sleeping through the night again!

More soon -

Love,

Sandy