Beijing Sights

To follow up on Blue-eyed Wonder's great Beijing "time peg" idea, I thought I'd put a few photos up from my trip to the city in June of 2005. Unfortunately I'm not going to have the time to write until after our Olympic time peg transpires, so I hope these images tell a story or two in my stead.

My Dilemma With Posting on Mirth & Matter

I hope that all you blog readers won’t hate me for this posting, but the fact is that I don’t think I will ever be able to post anything on this site unless I get this confession off my chest first. So you can call me a little old-fashioned, but I’ve been struggling with this “Mirth & Matter” blog concept.

I like writing and philosophical/ interesting conversations. I enjoy blogging and making various website-postings, so my friends and family can read about my life at their own convenience. Zach has been as inclusive as any blog could be- we all experience tons of “mirth & matter” daily. Additionally he’s been patient and so kindly encouraging- “if the urge ever strikes you to write...”

I’ve been wondering where my hesitations about posting on this blog are coming from? I really feel a little squeamish and guilty at the same time. I’m sure nobody else has noticed my feelings, but the fact is that I have been thinking about posting something for months. I can’t even get myself to COMMENT, let alone post my own writing. What is my problem?!

I think my problem is that I have never met most of the writers who contribute. At least in creating my own websites, I have the illusion that only people I know will visit them, so I don’t feel like I am sharing with complete strangers. I like to know who my audience will be. I feel a little strange about online interactions with people who I’ve never met face-to-face, and I get that creepy “online-stalker feeling.” I’m very visual and I like to picture people’s faces in my head when I communicate with them. Virtual people don’t have faces in my head. It freaks me out a little bit (although I’m sure you all have nice faces). I wonder, “Doesn’t anybody else feel this way?!”

Apparently not because my husband posts thoughtful things on this blog without any internal struggle what-so-ever. He doesn’t feel compelled to meet everybody on the contributor list, and I don’t think he has met anybody except two people- Zach and Chris.

What’s changed this time? Well first of all, I got Google Reader. This is a wonderful little program that allows me to read all my friends’ blog updates in one place. It looks like e-mail with new postings appearing in an “inbox” of sorts. I don’t feel like I am constantly catching up on blog entries because I’m notified whenever I check my e-mail if something new has been posted. So, I’ve acquired a new sense of empowerment.

Second, I decided that this blog needs my perspective. For example, there are only a few female contributors, so it’s a pretty “manly” blog right now- that’s definitely not an insult, and it’s a bit sexist of me to say. But just look at that list- 45 posts about politics and 1 about food (ZERO about chocolate)! And only a few posts in my main areas of interest- 3 about health, and 1 about religion. I like all the other topics too, but maybe I have something different to offer that would be good for the variety of mirth & matter.

Finally, I am pretending that I know you right now. The last few posts have been made by people I really do know. And I discovered that I can see little photos of many of you when I click on your names (AHA!) and read two sentences about who you are (and would the rest of you PLEASE post your photo and show me who you are because the empty box is so disturbing). I’m trying to convince myself that the world is small so maybe someday I’ll meet you and you won’t be virtual people anymore. And besides, you all know Zach somehow, right? So you must be nice people.

St. Petersburg

St. Isaac's Cathedral

Statue of Peter the Great

Canal View

Peterhof, an out-of-town palace for the Tsar, including Peter and Katherine the Great

Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ

Founded at the beginning of the 18th century as Peter the Great's "window onto Europe," St. Petersburg (a.k.a. Petrograd, Leningrad) served as the capital of Russia for the majority of the last 300 years. Today, it is Russia's second largest city and Europe's fourth. Due to its relative youth, St. Pete has a decidedly different feel than ancient Moscow, and it could probably be said that it is Russia's most "continental" city. Like many European capitals, this Baltic metropolis is quite compact and the streets are narrow, making it easily walkable.

We arrived at the city center - a unique mish-mash of stately classical structures and Stalinist monumentalism criss-crossed with canals - at around 11pm, and the sun was just starting to set. St. Pete's "White Nights" (Beliye Nochi) are truly amazing for a middle-latitude dweller like myself - I also found that it greatly exacerbates jet lag (when your body is used to darkness by 8, watching the sun go down in the hours before midnight really throws you off). It is a time of celebration and street festivals for Petersburgers and tourists alike, payback for the long frigid months of winter darkness.

Many large nations have an urban soul that is defined by the dynamic between their two chief cities. In America, for instance, New York and Los Angeles define the two extremes between which most other cities lie; their dissimilarity creates the tension of the American urban imagination, and most people tend to gravitate towards one model over the other. This sort of dynamic also exists in China (Beijing and Shanghai), Brazil (São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro), Japan (Tokyo and Osaka), and Russia. It is fascinating traveling with a local because you are able to get a glimpse of the hidden underbelly of a place. Although she was slow to admit it, Katya has an instinctual dislike of St. Petersburg, or more specifically, the people who live there, citing the city's "inferiority complex" and subsequent meanness towards Muscovites. To her, the city isn't quite "Russian" enough as well - it is rooted in modern Euro-fetishization and designed to a large degree by Italian and German architects and engineers; this is not at all the ancient Rus embodied in the old cities of Novgorod, Kiev, Vladimir, and Pskov. As the Russian city most visited by foreigners (cruise lines frequently stop here), there is also the concern that camera-toting tourists will spend an afternoon strolling through St. Pete's beautiful streets then go home with a false impression of the country. Just as New York and Los Angeles are both simultaneously unrepresentative of America and quintessentially American, the dynamic between Moscow and St. Pete is similarly wrought with this interesting tension.

Being an American well-traveled in the capitals of Europe and not a Muscovite with a keen ear to the spicy schism, St. Petersburg struck me as a beautiful, sophisticated, and lively city. Perhaps the very things that Katya dislikes about it are what makes it such a popular draw with foreigners - it is much more deeply familiar than Moscow and easier to understand. One feels they could be walking through Amsterdam, Brussels, or Prague here; it doesn't feel overwhelmingly "Russian."

Visiting St. Petersburg reinforces to me the importance of seeing both cities while traveling in Russia. Moscow (along with the ancient cities mentioned earlier) is the "Russian" half of the country, and St. Petersburg is the "European" half, but both cities are 100% Russian.

Uncle Banya

Periodically throughout the work week, rural Russians kick back after a long day by sitting in the banya, or sauna. Even the smallest and most run-down houses in the countryside have their own wood-powered hotboxes to ease the muscles after a long day's work, and the cabin in Lohovo is no exception.

In my previous sauna experiences, you sit in a hot steamy room until you can't bear it anymore, then leave. My initial thought when Sasha invited me to join him for an evening in the banya, therefore, was mild and welcoming. Why not sit in a sauna for a few minutes?

Of course, the Russian banya experience bears only a passing resemblance to the saunas I've known. At least in the way I experienced it, it is less of a brief and mild form of relaxation than it is a marathon of manliness: where the sauna aims to relax, the banya aims to exhaust. And, like a marathon or a boxing match, it grows progressively more and more intense as you go. Also like Greek athletics, it is performed entirely in the buff. Little did I know it, but I was in for quite a test.

Round 1: We started out the evening by sitting in the hot but not unbearable (about 170 degrees) wooden banya room and chatting about the Russian economy and about travel in far-flung places that I only know about because of the Risk board (Yakutsk, anyone?). Sitting in these sorts of temperatures, you can actually watch the sweat beading up on your flesh - it's like the normal process of perspiration only in fast-forward. When the temperature and steam got to be too much, we retreated to the deck to stare out across the river and watch the birds dipping and diving over the brown waters. We were both wearing silly felt banya hats (his was a Robin Hood hat; mine a Viking helmet), and the picture of two nearly-naked men (we had on sarongs) staring out into the Russian wilderness must have struck a ridiculous scene. I chugged some water in preparation for the next round. (Amazingly, I never saw Sasha drink even a sip of water during the entire evening. He outmanlyed me on this count for sure.)

Round 2: More of the same, only this time the banya was hotter (about 185 degrees). Maybe I've just never done the sauna properly in the past; I am well-experienced with the bubbling hot onsen of Japan as well so I wouldn't count myself as a wussy, but 185 is INSANELY HOT. You can think of nothing else except the searing heat, and you drift dangerously close to delirium. I could sense that Sasha and I were engaged in a sort of Cold War of our own (or would this be Hot War?): we both waited for the other to suggest leaving, and when the much-desired invitation to leave came, we both sprang up and were out of there in a split second. Both of us wanted to leave, but neither of us wanted to be the one to suggest it. (For the record, we came out even in this little game by the end of the evening.)

Round 3: After some panting and rapid water consumption on my part, we were back in the hotbox again. With each re-entrance into the room, it was a few degrees warmer and steamier than the time before. But this time, we added another element into the mix. From a large wooden barrel, Sasha extracted two large bundles of twigs, branches and leaves (venik). He dipped them in a bowl of cold water laced with an aromatic oil, then demonstrated the process of self-flagellation of himself, whipping his already red skin with the rough plant matter. When it was my turn, I don't know what was the more pungent sensation: getting my entire backside whipped by Sasha or laying my entire frontside down on 185 degree wood. In any case, it was a rush.

Round 4: After the venik, we tossed on our sarongs and raced outside, down a steep embankment, and directly into the frigid headwaters of the Volga (see pictures). True to the extreme nature of the entire evening, there was no time for gradually getting used to the near-freezing water: we tossed off the sarongs and in one heart-stopping moment were totally submerged in the deep and chilling water. For a split second, I didn't know whether or not my heart would restart; then I manned up and embraced the pain.

Round 5: After getting out of the water and just when the shivers were subsiding, we got back into the banya. Compared with the frigid river waters, the banya seemed even hotter than before. We were both eager to leave and spend a few more minutes on the deck, where the outside temperature was a comfortable 50 degrees or so.

Round 6: Without water during the previous break, our last sit in the banya was a slog. I was counting the seconds until I finally broke and suggested we get out. Sasha was happy to oblige.

Round 7: Capping off the evening (the whole process took about two hours), Sasha and I sat down and took three shots of whiskey in quick succession, followed by lemon slices covered in honey. Drinking shots of liquor after sitting in a hot banya is gas on a fire; if the previous rounds had been exhausting, this final step nudged me over into complete pulverization. I slid back in my chair, catatonic and satisfied. The banya had done its job.

Preparing for bed that evening (two hours later and my flesh was still on fire), I got to thinking about American customs and traditions that would involve this degree of intensity. When Katya visits the US, will I be able to give her an experience akin to the one her father had just given me? Going abroad can make us realize how sanitized contemporary American culture is; we are a country of temperate Protestant values and moderation, and it seems that all the physically extreme aspects of our culture (like the Russian banya or the Japanese onsen) have disappeared since the days of the frontier. I struggled to think of something similarly extreme and wonderful that I could expose a visitor to my country to, and I came up with nothing. Have we Americans gone soft? The banya beat me up, but boy am I happy I agreed to Sasha's offer.

Into the Wilderness

For the last week, I've been getting a completely different taste of today's Russia on a long road trip. First, let me say a thing or two about the conduits of our journey: the major highway connecting Moscow with St. Petersburg is essentially a two-lane road with periodic passing lanes. Add to this the fact that the majority of the vehicles on the road are commercial trucks and you begin to understand both the slow-going frustration and the white-knuckle moments of near collisions that a road like this routinely produces. Get off the main highway and into the tiny villages filled with crumbling (but gorgeous) old wooden houses and the roads become a mass of muddy potholes. It's a good thing Katya drives a Honda SUV because it felt like we were off-roading even while driving through towns. This is a sharp distinction from the beautiful, wide - albeit choked with traffic - road system of Moscow. There is a popular proverb that Russia has two main problems today - its roads and its fools, and I can certainly vouch for the first of these.

The first stop on our trek north was the tiny village of Lohovo, about four hours northwest of the capital in a region dense with thick, primeval forests and freckled with a network of lakes. Once my stomach and I got used to the roads and I could sit back and soak in the journey, the quietude and beauty of the place was really overwhelming. Villages are entirely agricultural, with a row or two of old and highly-decorated wooden houses overlooking garden plots. And of course, it seemed like each village, regardless of size, had its own soaring Orthodox church, complete with onion domes and spires. The woods that encircle these tiny rural communities are a mixture of firs and aspen unlike any sort of forest I've explored before.


Katya's family owes a very large plot of land just outside one of these villages that overlooks the headwaters of the Volga. To get there, you must take a bad road off the main "highway" to a small town, then travel another 20 slow kilos on a dirt road. The village itself consists of about ten houses and gardens with no stores or services of any kind (although there is a bus stop that takes villagers on the long journey into town), and the family has a few small but very modern log cabins overlooking the humble infant waters of Europe's biggest river. At night, the silence is absolute and the darkness impenetrable.

The weather had been really unpredictable since I arrived - the first few days were a comfortable and clear 70 degrees, only to be followed by gray skies, rain, and 40 degrees. But on the first morning in Lohovo, we awoke to a dazzlingly beautiful day. We started off the morning by canoing down to the village to walk around and chat with the locals (more on this later); we then jumped back into the canoe and paddled up to a sprawling and totally isolated network of lakes, peat bogs, and old-growth forests.


After getting back from our watery adventure, we enjoyed a big Russian meal. Russian cuisine is delicious, if not the lightest and most health-conscious fare. During my stay in Lohovo, I tried many new and interesting foods and drinks, including salo (pork lard) on toast; aspen juice (just bore a small hole in a tree and you get a tangy juice that is supposedly very good for you and has a lively fizz); kvas (a Russian "soft-drink" made from bread); and plenty of raw milk and yogurt, right from the cow. It's amazing how full of chemicals foods are in the states - I don't think I'd ever tasted raw milk before, and it is completely different from the stuff you buy in supermarkets. Much gamier, like the animal didn't quite leave the liquid. It's a totally unique flavor. As for the other stuff: despite the initial gag reflex, I found myself to be quite a big fan of the pork lard. (Amazingly, there are far fewer overweight people in Russia than the states, in spite of the rich diet. Maybe that salo comes in handy during the harsh winters...)

Katya's father Alexander ("Sasha") is a successful businessman by day and a fanatical blues fan and fisherman in his off-time. My second evening out at the cabin, he took me out to introduce me to the art of fishing on the Volga. After casting, we settled back for what I've always assumed is the main draw of fishing: beer (and kvas) and conversation. But an hour or so in, I felt a slight snag on my line and Sasha rushed over to help me reel in my very first fish (a bream). Katya's bubbly and vivacious mother Olga fried it up that evening and we all sat around the cabin drinking beer, eating fresh fish, and telling stories. A very good day indeed.


(Much more to come...)

Sights from Central Moscow

Despite the immense scale of the city, the center of Moscow is quite compact and walkable, corresponding to the inner-most of the rings that encircled the settlement in ancient times. Parts of the core have a cosmopolitan, European feel to them, with classical architecture, hip boutiques and eateries; other areas, however, are distinctly Russian. In many ways, the history of Russia is a near-constant vacillation between Europeanization and Russification, sometimes pushing towards and sometimes pulling away from the capitals of the West, and this is seen plainly in the designs of the city. Moscow is not quite European: it comes close, but it is something different altogether.

But more than just the two paradigms of Europe and Russia, I'm learning that the idea of "Russianness" is something altogether complex. The first layer to this world is the Tsarist age, with its luxuriant orthodox churches and walled fortresses. This, of course, is the Russia most Westerners think of - the nation of St.Vassily's Church (above) and the stately Kremlin. But all around there are living relics of the Soviet days, from Cold War-era emblems to massive monuments to the working man to huge apartment blocks. There was no attempt to erase this legacy from Russia's cultural memory - although the Soviet days are over, the 80-some years of communist rule have been sublimated into the modern cityscape and the modern Russian society. Unlike the Tsarist age - which was effectively erased from the map by a group of rabble-rousers led by one Vladimir Lenin (see bottom picture of the Lenin mausoleum) in the wake of the world's first communist revolution - the old USSR has never really died. It fell apart, decayed, and disintegrated - but it didn't die.

Jumping over the post-collapse, Yeltsin years, the third Moscow is really only about 8 years old, ever since the economy started booming. Moscow now has more billionaires than any other city in the world, and crossing the streets one is confronted with a wall of BMWs, Mercedes, and Jaguars; there are more chic sushi bars here than in any other area I've been to save Japan. Intruding upon both the Soviet and the Tsarist cultural legacy is the sleek world of moneyed European modernism - these days, the balance seems to be tilting back towards Peter the Great, although this might not be clear from the Western media's coverage of Russia. (more on this in another post)

More to come.. Also, to include more of our readership, we've prepared a brief summary in Russian and Japanese.


Красная площадь. Собор Василия Блаженного. И - самое важное - мавзолей Ленина. А еше толпы народа, жара и супер-обворожительная, сверх-замечательная Катерина. И борщ, конечно.

クラースナヤ　スクアーヤとソボルバシリヤブラズエノボ。でも一番面白い所がレニンの墓だです。この所が本当に込んでいたけど、天気が暖かかったしすばらしかった　ー　でも一番すごいことがカタヤという友達です。後ボルシーというスープもすごいです。

Cooling down south of the border

Most weekends Zeno, my black Lab, and I get to climb up the small mountain range that embraces, with one arm at least, my small town in the interior of Brazil. Zeno takes his weekly bath in one of the ferruginous pools of cascading water, just by diving repeatedly after a tossed tennis ball, and I get to clear my head in such bracingly pure air that bright orange and yellow lichen grows in patches on bare rock faces.

Since moving from the monster city of São Paulo nearly six years ago, I have done without cable or satellite hook-up and my Brazilian t.v. only picks up, its rabbit ears fully splayed, a channel and a half of local fare. Consequently, I have done without television news or newspaper deliveries for longer than I can remember, which is just as well these days, as I get to avoid most of the hothouse humidity of the States during an election year. With my patchy internet connection, I do get to peruse a few web sites, including one from England that reproduces over 700 newspaper front pages, a surfeit of electronic information parading as the real thing which, disturbingly, often dissolves into digital chaos before my eyes. Ditto the primaries.

The range is called Serra do São José and further up has a few ‘slave sidewalks’ or flagstone trails laid down by slaves nearly 300 years ago, in order to help gold-ladden mules get mushed over the passes. No longer. But the stone pathways are still there, complete with cross ridges and other erosion control contrivances, and are in impressive condition considering their age and the violent thunderstorms that sweep over the land – in fact, they appear better engineered than many more contemporary public works. Our hike lifts us up from Tiradentes’s high plain altitude of 900 meters by another 300 or so, and transitions from Atlantic rainforest tucked into the range’s protected foothills through patches of cerrado (the world’s most diverse prairieland and Brazil’s second largest biome) to a sparse, rocky landscape called campo rupestre of stunningly stark beauty. The range is a federally protected environmental area and was recently upgraded to a state Dragonfly reserve (due to over 18 sub-species, encouraged, once again, by the pristine air), but unfortunately this does little to discourage much environmental degradation, caused by the ranchers who shortsightedly burn the high fields, to the weekend joy-riding dirt bikers who cause much trail erosion, including the chipping and breaking of those 300 year old flagstones. The range is composed principally of quarzite bedrock topped by mineral-deficient sandy soils, so continued burning is more likely to create a desert than a sustainable pasture. Such is the price of lack of education, respect of laws or follow-through.

Stretching my legs during the hike up, I stop occasionally to dig out the erosion sluices clogged up by the last storm. The physical labor gives me a chance to reflect on the political donnybrook spreading across North America and I can’t help but believe that many group- and holier-than-thou thinkers are setting themselves up for a fall this autumn as we divide and sub-divide into so many tribes. It’s a pity. Sometimes I feel that the U.S. has turned into another nation than the one I knew.

Zeno is nearly a three-year old Lab, and was given as a gift to me by a kennel up in the mountains outside of Rio after my last Lab, Atlas, died young. I tried various times to pay for Zeno – who in local terms would have cost two monthly minimum salaries – but the unfailing generosity of Brazilians is hard to buck. Today's will be a four hour hike, an hour up to the top, an hour and more along the high ridge, down the far side beyond the Mailman’s Cross (for a colonial letter carrier of ill tidings, who was murdered on the spot – how’s that for blaming the messenger?) to the dipping pools, then an hour and more back over the range’s spinal column, descending finally to my small town of 6,000 souls.

A cool wind dominates that early morning, with screeching caracarás gyrating in the tall escarpment’s updraft. The southern hemisphere’s autumn is pressing up from southern Brazil in rolling gray-bottomed cloud banks. (As usual I am delighted by the always-alive sempre-viva flowers, which looks like a small burst of frozen white fireworks.) Then the sun wins out by mid-morning, such that when I tilt my head upwards the sunlight refracts off the lower edge of my rimless shades, splashing my corneas. Zeno, leashless in a wildlife area, has been taught to pause by my left side for permission before charging ahead on trail or field. He brushes my left hand with his nose and when I look down his brown eyes also fill with the tropical light – just before I say "Go!"

N.B. The doctoral thesis Field Guide to the Orchids of the Serra de São José (1991), by Czech-Brazilian Ruy J. Valká Alves, has always contributed greatly to my geological understanding of the Serra.

One of my favourites

"Proba Pera"

North/South Reflections

The area I live in was originally settled by Tequesta Indians and Bahamian scavengers, hearty individuals who were immune to the constant heat, alligator-choked swamps, and inundating humidity. In fact, it wasn't until 1896 that white folk were crazy enough to stake a claim on this land and attempt to Europeanize it. At the time when all the major industrial northern cities were prospering, Miami was still a swelteringly hot mangrove forest. Unlike the civilized, temperate world, we only have two seasons down here: hot and dry, and monsoon season (which is even hotter).

Just as the automobile transformed the urban landscape of Los Angeles in the 1950s, two inventions are responsible for modern Miami: first was the popularization of the air conditioner in the 1940s-50s. This led many northerners to believe that it's actually bearable down here; with the promise of an air-conditioned paradise in mind, many bored northerners pack the family sedan to shoot down I-95 and homestead their own little piece of the tropics. The next major invention that changed Miami demographics (and this does not count the boats that brought over all of the Cubans) came fifty years later and didn't even dry your skin. It is the reason I can live here and work for a company in San Diego - yes, the internet was pivotal in bringing a new group of people down from the north to try out the tropical life. Miami Beach is composed of many over-educated, young, white professionals just like myself who work for companies in Boston, New York, Charlotte, and Chicago. With fast, reliable internet service, my tribe of wanderers are freed to live wherever we want; and, honestly, why stomp about in the snow up in Minneapolis when you could be laying on the palm-blanketed beach with your laptop and getting paid the same amount?

Right now is Spring Break for universities across the country, and Miami is flooded with young people eager to do stupid things that they will either regret or not remember the next morning. They come from all over the place: Ohio, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Michigan. But the vast majority of people going crazy on the beach right now are from one place - the north. It's true, people in northern climates love warm beaches, palm trees, sunny skies, and scantily-clad people. Canada is not a Spring Break hot spot - Cancun is.

I spent a week up in frigid Boston at the beginning of the month, and it was interesting to see all the posters for tropical paradise vacations spangling travel agency windows and billboards. Down in Miami, we don't have pictures of bleak, cold Boston on our travel advertisements: we have the same things they do, palm trees, hammocks, and pristine beaches.

The south is an alluring, seductive idea to the north. It is hyper-real, and thus the object of fantasy. On my Boston trip, someone told me how they could never live in Florida because it's "not the real world." "Well," I said, "to many folks down there, it's unreal how anyone would actually elect to live in a place that's buried under snow half the year." That seemed to end the discussion. Indeed, to many well-off northerners, the south is synonymous with vacations and retirement. In other words, it is a place where you go when reality - you know, that pesky career, education, family, etc. - doesn't quite apply. It is a place where you go to lose yourself, not to be yourself.

But the rest of the year, when northerners aren't shooting tequila and passing out on the beach, they have a very different relationship with the idea of the south. If the south is not a hyper-real paradise, then it is something far more negative and complicated in the eyes of many people. For hundreds of years, the north has treated the south in a condescending, patronizing (if not outright colonial) manner, and this isn't just true of the US. Northern Italians look down on the industrially late-blooming south; Russians vacation in Crimea but make their fortunes in Moscow; denizens of Tokyo talk about the quaint native life in Okinawa. When northerners aren't partying in warm, southern places (or at least fantasizing about it), many of them are smugly satisfied that they live in more civilized places.

The south represents a fascinating paradox: it is the beckoning smile of warmth, relaxation and fun; it is also the symbol of cultural backwardness, poverty, and danger. If you look at a map of extreme poverty on this planet, it clings pretty closely to the equator. Similarly, heinous diseases and violent crime tend to occur at the highest levels in places with palm trees and only two seasons. In this regard, Miami is to rich, industrialized Boston what Kinshasa is to Koln. All the desire northerners feel towards the south and the southern lifestyle is accompanied by an equal amount of dread. In your dreams (and your vacations), these places represent carefree relaxation; in reality, they are scary.

Nothing underscores this complex dynamic more than the cruising industry (which Alan Biller memorably documented on this blog last month). On cruises, well-to-do northerners make stops at carefully manicured "towns" across the Caribbean to get a sense of the local life and buy cheap bric-a-brac. Tour maps supplied by the cruise lines show the area where it is safe and acceptable for moneyed white people to wander about; they encourage guests to stay only within this area, lest they be confronted with the reality of equatorial poverty and crime. A cruise-loving friend stayed in Haiti for a day. "It was beautiful!", she said. Of course, her experience of Haiti was a small island off the coast of the hemisphere's most impoverished nation that is owned entirely by Carnival Cruises. No doubt she got what she expected: sunny skies, beautiful beaches, and swaying palms. With a little luck, maybe she didn't even have to deal with any real Haitians.

While it's a fact that many tropical locations have crippling problems with their economies, ecologies, and governments, a good deal of the push/pull dynamic at play here has to do with a simple fact: it's nice living where it's warm. People in the north tell themselves that it's not real down here, or that people who live in the southern climes are slow and dimwitted; but fundamentally, this is just masking a deep resentment. I can get up in the morning (after only using a sheet at night), toss on a pair of shorts and flip-flops, and go walk down the street - leisurely, there's no rush - for a nice little cup of Cuban coffee. My body never tenses up because of the cold; I never have to hurry to get out from the biting wind. That's more than people in Chicago can say for over half the year.

It used to be that people lived up north and retired down south because there were more jobs in the big northern cities. But the internet is allowing a whole transient population of people to flow into places like Miami and realize that - it's true - life is a little bit better when your body is happy. Perhaps in another 50 years the old dichotomies between north and south will break down a bit; perhaps chilly places will be the vacation novelties; perhaps everyone will live on the beach (all of this, of course, will be made possible by our accelerating global warming. Thanks for making a warm, southern life possible for everyone, Exxon Mobil!).

I will most probably be leaving Miami soon. Nevertheless, the thrill of writing this post on my balcony at 11:30pm with a t-shirt on has sold me on this whole tropical-life thing. And for all those who can deal with the (messy) reality beyond the hyper-real beaches and palms, it too could be yours.

Pastel Skies

The view from my window last night

Aurora Borealis

The northern lights in Murmansk

Colonial sightings in Brazil's interior

When you leave Tiradentes and head to Caraça, over 400 kilometers away, you hardly ever leave 18th century Brazil. This is not only due to the colonial nature of both places – Tiradentes was founded at the outset of the same century on the back of one of the world’s largest gold rushes, while Caraça started with an 1820 seminary, tucked high up in a mountain bowl – but to the road between. It is the Estrada Real, or Brazil’s equivalent of the Camino Real, the meandering old trading route that transported half the world’s gold production at the time down to the sea, on journeys that took over three months by mule-train, for export to Portugal. It is lovely old road, full of unexpected sightings.

I live most of the year in Tiradentes, a Brazilian Baroque gem of a village with five major churches to service the needs of six or so thousand souls. Fearing the rivalry of the Catholic Church in the interior of its largest colony (the size of all of Europe), the Portuguese Crown decided to exclude the church hierarchy and instead establish Brotherhoods, which soon competed to build the most sumptuous, gold-laden church possible – hence the heavenly over-building. While there is only one Catholic priest in town, Father Ademir, the churches themselves are still run by the Brotherhoods, which today behave like spiritually-minded social clubs.

I took the two day trip to Caraça not long ago, on my way to teach American exchange students at the far end of Minas Gerais state, which is the size of Texas and with many fewer working roads. One of the Estrada Real’s great pleasures is that it no longer links places of economic importance, so it is a bucolic & curvaceous two-laner with precious few of the diesel fume-belching underpowered trucks – the modern day beasts of burden, substituting those mules – that infest most Brazilian highways. Minas is also an endlessly hilly state, up on a high plane defended by a tall inland range, so old roads such as this one tend to follow the ridges, affording frequent views on both sides. All of which means that while traveling from one colonial oasis to another, one’s pressure level doesn’t have to jump forward two extra centuries of stress, and one can make believe that the landscapes, of rolling hills and pastures, haven’t changed at all.

Caraça is now a privately run Nature Reserve (the seminary, after teaching many of Brazil’s future presidents & dictators, closed down in 1911), which may explain why it is in much better shape, with better maintained infrastructure than most of Brazil’s national or state parks. Formally called the Caraça Nature Park & Shrine, you can rent out a spartan yet clean room (formerly for the teachers and priests) with a view over the nature reserve for under $30 a night, three meals included. The tourists are a mix, understandably, of both spiritual and environmental pilgrims. The Our Lady Mother of Man Church, one of the country’s best neo-gothic churches, holds mass every day, and contains a priceless Last Supper by the colonial master Ataíde – here, in the middle of nowhere. There are numerous waterfalls to visit on several trails ranging from several to 8 kilometers in length. Other than the Church, and largely burned down seminary, what surprises during any hike is the lack of any other man-made creations within eyesight.

But my favorite activity is waiting, after nightfall, for a sighting of the rare Maned Wolf. The Fathers partly tamed them by offering leftovers and bones, and if you’re quiet enough they come right up to the church’s front steps to take the easy prey. Most Brazilians avoid fixed schedules, even more so if they’re wildlife, so one night every other visitor had given up by 10:30pm, with the tin tray of offerings gone wanting. I thought I’d enjoy the quiet nightscape by myself for a few more minutes when a young wolf suddenly paid a visit. For me the distinguishing characteristic of the Maned Wolf is the length of its legs which appear encased in black boots. Yet even this young one was surprisingly tall, at nearly three feet taller than almost all dogs, and when he popped out of the night to just ten feet in front of me, I nearly jumped in my skin. Such are the unexpected pleasures of colonial Brazil in the present day.

Permanent Vacation

I enjoy taking long walks on the beach while talking about itching.

- Alan Biller

A Story Involving my Neighbors

Framing up the walkway stands a tree on the right and to the left is the lamppost painted green. It's a slender little tree; like a poplar or a cottonwood. The tree has that bend-don't-break attitude but hunches over nonetheless, nearly to the point of performing both tasks, despite his intent. See, trees aren't used to insomnia. They get their daylight at day and their rest at night. This chap, however, stays out late with his one and only friend, the lamppost painted green. I've heard that plants will grow away from darkness rather than toward light, but perhaps this tree has found something better, something worth growing for. Most trees get over their fear of the dark; they're strong and are adjusted to life at night and day alike. This tree, however, can barely stand on its own. Someday, despite all the happiness they share, the lamppost painted green is going to kill his friend the tree, although not his intent. But for now, while the days are young and the park bench stands nearby to catch them lest they fall, the two friends keep company, the tree trying ever so hard to lean closer and closer to his friend the lamppost painted green and the warm evening light he gives.

And at the wisend age of twenty-seven the tree is still afraid of the dark.

Hanging with the locals

It's always a surreal experience penetrating out of the urban mess of Miami into the Everglades, one of the largest subtropical wilderness areas in the world. First you drive through Little Havana, with its spicy colors and Caribbean spirit; then you plunge through an expansive ring of suburban hell, with every chain store in existence accounted for; then you cross over one major road and you're suddenly in the swamp. All development stops dead and the earthy smell of the bogs fills the air. Five minutes later, and if you drive down a gravel road into the wilds and get out of the car, you won't hear anything but the sweeping of the wind through the grass.

Winter is the season when all the alligator eggs hatch. I stumbled upon this brood of little guys on my hike this weekend. Their mother was close by, submerged in the water and camouflaged under a thicket of weeds, so I didn't get too close.

Saturday Night in South Beach

Out for a stroll this evening and snapped this shot in the art deco district of South Beach.

I encourage all contributors to occasionally post photos that in some way embody the places where you live. There is a lot of geographical diversity amongst us, and it might be fun to share what our environments look like.

Bienvenido a Miami

After working for a few hours this morning I took my customary walk to alleviate editing fatigue and thought I'd bring my camera along, seeing as nobody has posted a picture yet and I wanted to give it a try. It's 80 degrees today and the water is lighting up like a glowbug. This view was shot a few blocks from home looking out across Biscayne Bay at downtown Miami. Estoy creo que es muy linda.