Espantos #654

3 milhões em 2 dias + 3 milhões em 1 ano

3 million in 2 days + 3 million in one year, and counting

Primavera #164

Spring now in bloom, though not full yet

Primavera em flor, mas ainda não plena

Num país a fingir #65

Perante a escassez de tomates, pimentos e outros vegetais, o governo aconselha a que se comam nabos, num país que de facto tem vantagem comparativa na produção de tubérculos. Afinal o brexit serviu para tomar conta do destino deles e valorizar o que é deles... deixe-se por isso de querer o que vem de fora e não se produz por cá. Já para a escassez de ovos não sei o que sugerirá o governo...

Sem título #298

Hugs and more hugs will take care of whatever it is...

Coisas que mudaram #25

Yesterday in front of the Russian embassy in London

Ontem, frente à embaixada da Rússia em Londres

Parece que estou a ouvir #395

Eu já não sei

Roberta de Sá e António Zambujo

Eu já não sei
Se fiz bem ou se fiz mal
Em pôr um ponto final
Na minha paixão ardente

Eu já não sei
Porque quem sofre de amor
A cantar sofre melhor
As mágoas que o peito sente

Quando te vejo
E em sonhos sigo os teus passos
Sinto o desejo
De me lançar nos teus braços

Tenho vontade
De te dizer frente a frente
Quanta saudade
Há do teu amor ausente

Num louco anseio
Lembrando o que já chorei
Se te amo ou se te odeio
Eu já não sei

Eu já não sei
Sorrir como então sorria
Quando em lindos sonhos via
A tua adorada imagem

Eu já não sei
Se deva ou não deva querer-te
Pois quero às vezes esquecer-te
Quero, mas não tenho coragem

Quando te vejo
E em sonhos sigo os teus passos
Sinto o desejo
De me lançar nos teus braços

Tenho vontade
De te dizer frente a frente
Quanta saudade
Há do teu amor ausente

Num louco anseio
Lembrando o que já chorei
Se te amo ou se te odeio
Eu já não sei

Num louco anseio
Lembrando o que já chorei
Se te amo ou se te odeio
Eu já não sei

Espantos #653

Flaco, a coruja livre do Central Park, antes reclusa do Jardim Zoológico de Nova Iorque de onde escapou a 2 de Fevereiro após um acto de vandalismo na sua cela. O Jardim Zoológico desdobrou-se em esforços para a capturar, mas a esperta coruja tem mostrado que se consegue desenvencilhar muito bem "lá fora" apesar de ter nascido e crescido em cativeiro. No domingo o Jardim Zoológico desistiu da captura do animal que entretanto se tornou na mais recente atracção turística da cidade.

Flaco, the free owl of Central Park, previously an inmate at the New York City Zoo from where it escaped on February 2nd after its vandalized enclosure. The Zoo multiplied efforts to capture it, but the smart owl has shown to be able to hold its own "out there" even though it has been born and raised in captivity. On Zunday the Zoo gave up its effort to capture the animal that has become the city's most resent tourist attraction.

Palavras lidas #541

Advice from a Raindrop
by Kim Stafford

You think you’re too small
to make a difference? Tell me
about it. You think you’re
helpless, at the mercy of forces
beyond your control? Been there.

Think you’re doomed to disappear,
just one small voice among millions?
That’s no weakness, trust me. That’s
your wild card, your trick, your
implement. They won’t see you coming

until you’re there, in their faces, shining,
festive, expendable, eternal. Sure you’re
small, just one small part of a storm that
changes everything. That’s how you win,
my friend, again and again and again.

Ditto #540

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

--Bertrand Russell

Parece que estou a ouvi #394

Se me deixasses ser

por Tiago Betterncourt

Se me deixasses ser
O sítio onde podes voltar
Depois do dia entardecer
Quando a noite te agarrar
Corpo forte de ficar
Casa de permanecer
Casa para regressar

Se me deixasses ser
Seja onde for
Se o filme fosse meu
Em luta contra o mal
Tudo o que te faz doer
Morria no final
Quando o escuro não passar
E te cega como uma prisão

Vou-te resgatar
Lavar o coração
Se me deixasses ser
Se fosse eu a mandar
Fazia-te ver

Frente ao precipício
Juntos pela mão
Se hoje queres saltar
Eu quero ser razão
Se hoje queres saltar
Eu quero ser razão

Se me fizesses crer
O sítio onde posso voltar
Pra um dia entardecer
Quando a noite descansar
Na casa de permanecer
A pedra que fazemos chão

Para me rever
Lavar o coração
Se me fizesses crer
Se fosse eu a mandar
Fazia-te ver

Frente ao precipício
Juntos pela mão
Se hoje queres saltar
Eu quero ser razão

Se hoje queres saltar
Eu quero ser razão

Se hoje queres saltar
Eu quero ser razão

Se hoje queres saltar
Eu quero ser razão

Caprichos #406

Delicious thali @My Dhabba

Sem título #297

For sure!

Coisas bonitas #121

Taking flight

Coisas que não mudam #617

End of life, beginning of life

Coisas bonitas #120

New beginnings

Retirado do contexto #414

Bare

Caprichos #405

Sunday roast @Artisan

Sem título #296

Tadaa!!!

Palavras lidas #540

House
by Billy Collins

I lie in a bedroom of a house
that was built in 1862, we were told—
the two windows still facing east
into the bright daily reveille of the sun.

The early birds are chirping,
and I think of those who have slept here before,
the family we bought the house from—
the five Critchlows—

and the engineer they told us about
who lived here alone before them,
the one who built onto the back
of the house a large glassy room with wood beams.

I have an old photograph of the house
in black and white, a few small trees,
and a curved dirt driveway,
but I do not know who lived here then.

So I go back to the Civil War
and to the farmer who built the house
and the rough stone walls
that encompass the house and run up into the woods,

he who mounted his thin wife in this room,
while the war raged to the south,
with the strength of a dairyman
or with the tenderness of a dairyman

or with both, alternating back and forth
so as to give his wife much pleasure
and to call down a son to earth
to take over the cows and the farm

when he no longer had the strength
after all the days and nights of toil and prayer—
the sun breaking over the same horizon
into these same windows,

lighting the same bed-space where I lie
having nothing to farm, and no son,
the dead farmer and his dead wife for company,
feeling better and worse by turns.

Ditto #539

Be a good steward of your gifts. Protect your time. Feed your inner life. Avoid too much noise. Read good books, have good sentences in your ears. Be by yourself as often as you can. Walk. Take the phone off the hook. Work regular hours.

--Jane Kenyon

Espantos #652

From The Economist
_____________

A television show about Jesus Christ has become an unlikely hit

“The Chosen”, created by an evangelical film-maker, is made with the help of devoted fans

Feb 8th 2023

One sunny afternoon last summer, Jesus walked onto a field near Dallas, Texas, and with just a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish, fed a crowd of 5,000. In truth, the miraculous meal had been rustled up by television producers: the pita bread came from local grocery stores and the croaker, a silvery fish abundant in the Atlantic Ocean, was supplied by Asian-American supermarkets. But none of these earthly details mattered once the cameras started rolling and Jesus, played by Jonathan Roumie, lifted his eyes to heaven and blessed the meal.

The miracle of the loaves and fishes, first recorded in the Gospels, is dramatised in “The Chosen”, a tv show about Jesus Christ and his followers. It is produced by a fledgling studio. The director had not previously been blessed with success. The actors were unknown. Yet it has become a hit, and recently released its third season.

The show’s success is revealing. It attests to the popularity and profitability of Christian entertainment. It also highlights how film-makers of faith can circumvent Hollywood’s godless gatekeepers.

Neal Harmon, head of Angel Studios, the distributor of the show, says almost 110m people have watched it on their free apps; many more have seen it on streaming platforms including Amazon Prime, Netflix and YouTube, where certain seasons of “The Chosen” are available. Angel Studios released the first two episodes of the new season in American cinemas in November. The double-bill made nearly $9m in its opening weekend and ranked third in the box-office charts, ahead of “Black Adam”, a superhero movie, and “Ticket to Paradise”, a rom-com starring George Clooney and Julia Roberts.

Most depictions of the life of Jesus dwell on his divinity, but “The Chosen” focuses on his ordinariness. “We have put Jesus on stained-glass windows,” says Dallas Jenkins, the show’s creator and director, yet “what makes the story of the Gospels so powerful is, in fact, his humanity.” Viewers watch Jesus cooking, playing with children or brushing his teeth. He cracks jokes, too. Asked at a wedding if he can help one of his acolytes improve his dance moves, he quips: “Some things even I cannot do.”

The disciples, meanwhile, lead unhappy lives. When they meet Jesus for the first time, they are seeking deliverance from worldly woes, not salvation after death. Simon is a debt-ridden gambler with a dodgy marriage. Mary Magdalene’s struggle with otherworldly demons has driven her to alcoholism and thoughts of suicide. Matthew, a taxman, is caught between the Roman authorities and his countrymen.

Mr Jenkins uses creative licence when weaving characters’ stories together. Matthew, for example, is responsible for making Simon pay his debts. Thomas, another disciple, runs a wine business which Jesus saves from ruin thanks to his ability to transmogrify water. Nicodemus, a Pharisee, meets Jesus through Mary Magdalene, on whom he had tried to perform an exorcism. None of this material can be found in the Gospels, but Mr Jenkins and the show’s writers have consulted with three Bible teachers—a Catholic priest, an evangelical professor and a Messianic Jew—to determine whether their plots are plausible.

Faith is not a prerequisite for enjoying “The Chosen”, Mr Jenkins argues: non-Christian viewers “can appreciate these stories in the same way that, if you don’t believe in the Force, you can still appreciate ‘Star Wars’.” Some may find his approach too playful, or insufficiently faithful to scripture. Indeed, some evangelicals have taken to YouTube to decry scenes in which Jesus rehearses his sermons or makes light of his divinity. Mr Jenkins, himself a devout evangelical Christian, maintains that the show is reverent of the man from Nazareth. Jesus’s humanity “doesn’t detract from his divinity. In many ways, it makes it even more awe-inspiring,” he says. “The creator of the universe actually lived among us.”

The film-maker believes in miracles, and some might see a minor one in the way he made the show. After Mr Jenkins’s first major theatrical project, “The Resurrection of Gavin Stone” (2017), flopped at the box office, he was not sure if he “had a future in the business any more”. “The Chosen” revived his career and Mr Roumie’s. The actor was on the verge of quitting the industry. Now, when millions of Christians think of Jesus, they may picture his face.

“The Chosen” also saved Angel Studios’ predecessor, VidAngel. Before the show took off, the company was facing bankruptcy when several Hollywood studios sued it for copyright violations. (VidAngel allowed users to filter out disagreeable scenes of nudity or violence from films and tv shows; it reached a settlement with the studios in 2020.)

Film and television executives, a secular bunch, have long shunned religious projects. But there are ways to bring pious plots to the screen without their say-so. Studios did not see much commercial potential in “The Passion of the Christ”, a blood-spattered biblical drama of 2004, and Mel Gibson, the director, ended up footing the bill himself. (The film went on to gross more than $600m worldwide.) In contrast, the producers of “The Chosen” have persuaded fans of devotional drama to chip in. To make the first season, they collected $10m via crowd-funding—at the time setting a record for a media project. In the main the show is still financed in this way; its website indicates how many episodes have been bankrolled.

The fundraising model creates a bond with fans and they get rewards for digging into their pockets, such as the opportunity to appear on the show. More than 9,000 flocked to Texas to be extras in the scene where Jesus feeds the crowd. Mr Jenkins regularly posts updates and behind-the-scenes looks for fans.

Nearly four years after the show had its premiere, the success of “The Chosen” baffles Mr Jenkins. It doesn’t “make much sense,” he says. Then again, “neither does the story of the feeding of the 5,000.”

Foi neste dia #385 (2023)

Zelensky in London,

11 months after his first virtual address to the British parliament

now in person at Westminster Hall. Quick stop at Buckingham

before heading to Paris to meet Macron and Scholz. Tomorrow, Brussels.

Numa sala perto de mim #442

The Fabelmans (2022) tells the story of a movie director in the making, seeing characters and plots all around.

Coisas bonitas #119

Beautiful pink skies at sunset

Sem título #295

At times stupid, at times the only thing you can do...

... that burning flame you cannot see...

Parece que estou a ouvir #393

Original from 1935!

I wanna be a cowboy's sweetheart

by Patsy Montana

I want to be a cowboy's sweetheart
I want to learn to rope and to ride
I want to ride o'er the plains and the desert
Out west of the great divide
I want to hear the coyotes howlin'
While the sun sets in the West
I want to be a cowboy's sweetheart
That's the life that I love best

I want to ride Old Paint, goin' at a run
I wanna feel the wind in my face
A thousand miles from all the city lights
Goin' cowhand's pace
I want to pillow my head near the sleeping herd
While the moon shines down from above
I want to strum my guitar and odo-lay-eee-hee
Oh, that's the life that I love

I want to be a cowboy's sweetheart
I want to learn to rope and to ride
I want to ride o'er the plains and the desert
Out west of the great divide
I want to hear the coyotes howlin'
While the sun sinks in the West
I wanna be a cowboy's sweetheart
That's the life that I love best

Palavras lidas #539

A Peaceful Day
by Rozel Hunt

A Peaceful Day on a Shaded Porch
As a couple dozen Holstein cows
Swaying their great udders march
To the barn behind this house.
We rock in the chairs, drinking tea,
Thinking of the ones who died,
Working this farm before you and me,
Singing, “Fast falls the eventide,”
Thinking of all they must do
Before the end and the deep abyss,
They took great comfort from this view
On just such a peaceful day as this.
     Which says: our time is short, no time to waste.
     Let us improve today before we are replaced.

Ditto #538

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

--Joseph Brodsky