Palavras lidas #311

My Mother Was a Brilliant Cook
by Maria Mazziotti Gillan

The first time my mother went out
to eat was on her 25th wedding anniversary
at Scordato’s in Paterson, and the second time
was for her 50th anniversary
at the Iron Kettle House in Wyckoff.

My mother said, “I could have cooked
this meal better myself.”
But I knew she was happy,
though she would have never admitted it.

Once my mother came to Paterson
from Italy in steerage,
she was content to stay there.
She was a brilliant cook,
and didn’t need to go to restaurants.
She loved her house, poor as it was,
and never stayed in a motel or took a vacation
or wanted to.

She was content to offer platter after platter
of food to her family gathered
in her basement kitchen, and to watch them
laughing and talking together,
while she stood behind them
and smiled.

Coisas que não mudam #371

(scroll down for English)

Dia 1 e 2 de Novembro são dias de celebração e memória, de Todos os Santos e Fiéis Defuntos. Este ano, as festividades da Igreja tocam mais perto. Na Catedral da Incarnação em Nashville a homilia de hoje centrou-se nos santos sem nome. Para começar o padre foi buscar um cálice a uma mesa lateral e colocou-o sobre o altar ao mesmo tempo que falava sobre Margaret McDonald Murray nascida em Nashville em 1880 numa familia irlandesa que tinha vindo para Nashville a partir de Brooklyn. Disse ainda o local onde nasceu (por nome de rua que, quem vive em Nashville reconhecerá) e a morada para onde se mudou depois de casar e onde veio a morrer de escarlatina com 29 anos depois de ter tido dois filhos. Após a morte de Margaret, o seu marido fez uma doação para aquela que viria a ser a Catedral da Incarnação na forma do cálice que estava hoje sobre o altar. O padre convidou a comunidade a pensar em todos os olhos que já tinham visto aquele cálice desde 1909 e todas as pessoas que tinham tocado nele (maioritariamente padres, mas também membros da comunidade que por ele tomaram o vinho santo)... como Margaret, a grande maioria já tinha partido. Boas pessoas que viveram vidas honestas mas que como tantos, ficaram anónimos na história. Não nos entristeçamos; mesmo que por cá já ninguém se lembre deles, Deus, que de todos cuida, sabe o nome de cada um. 

Antes de dar a missa por terminada o padre convidou a comunidade para subir ao altar depois de terminada a celebração para ver e tocar o cálice que deixou sobre o altar. No pé do cálice pode ler-se a gravação:

Em memória de Margaret McDonald Murray, 1880-1909

The 1st and the 2nd of November are days of celebration and memory, for All Saints and All Souls. This year the Church festivities ring close. At the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Nashville, today's homily focused on the saints with no name. To start, the priest picked up a chalice from a side table and placed it at the altar while he talked about Margaret McDonald Murray born in Nashville in 1880 to an Irish family that had relocated here from Brooklyn. He also named her place of birth (by street name, that anyone living in Nashville would recognize) and the address where she moved to after she married, and where she died of scarlet fever at age 29 after having two children. After Margaret's death, her husband made a donation to the future Cathedral of the Incarnation in the form of the chalice that was standing in full view over the altar today. The priest invited the community to think of all the eyes that beheld that same chalice since 1909, or the hands that touched it (in this case mostly priests, but also members of the community who drank the holy wine from it)... like Margaret, the vast majority had already passed away. Good people that lived honest lives but that, as so many others, remained anonymous in history. Let us not get saddened; even if down here no one remembers them anymore, God, who cares for all, knows each one by their name.

Before finishing the mass, the priest invited the community to come up to the altar after the mass was ended and look at and touch the chalice that remained at the altar. At the base one can read the engraving:

In memory of Margaret McDonald Murray, 1880-1909

Ditto #340

I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better.*

--A. J. Liebling

____________

*I wish...

Foi neste dia #300 (1992)

Foi há 24 anos que João Paulo II emitiu uma declaração reconhecendo os erros cometidos pela Igreja Católica em Abril de 1633 no julgamento de Galileu Galilei pela Inquisição. 

Acusado de heresia por defender a teoria astronómica de Copérnico em que a terra girava em volta do sol, Galileu negou manter quaisquer opiniões condenáveis pela Santa Sé, mas foi persuadido a aceitar que quem lesse o seu Diálogo sobre os Dois Principais Sistemas do Mundo poderia ser levado a acreditar que aquela obra defendia a teoria de Copérnico. Galileu foi condenado em Junho de 1633 sendo a sentença redigida em três partes:

1) Galileu foi veementemente declarado como suspeito de heresia, por ter defendido a opinião de que o sol se encontra imutável no centro do universo e que a terra não está no centro e que se move, mantendo essa opinião como provável depois desta ter sido declarada contrária à das escrituras. Foi por isso obrigado a abjurar, amaldiçoar e detestar essa opinião;

2) foi condenado a prisão formal pela Inquisição, sendo que no dia seguinte a pena foi transferida para prisão em sua casa, onde morreu em 1641;

3) o seu ofensivo Diálogo foi banido.

Embora não anunciado em tribunal, a publicação das suas obras foi proibida incluindo quaisquer obras que Galileu viesse a escrever no futuro.

Retirado do contexto #224

Voltaram os pequenos-almoços

No Times de hoje #172

And after the snub, the nod. Ain't that surprising?!

It is you, babe
yeah, yeah, yeah, it is you, babe
it is you they're lookin' for... babe

Coisas que não mudam #370

Fall mornings at Radnor Lake

Manhãs de outono no lago Radnor

No Times de hoje #171

Today's New York Times brings a neat article on Bob Dylan's refusal to acknowledge the Nobel prize he was awarded two weeks ago. They compare it to Jean-Paul Sartre's formal refusal of the exact same prize in 1964: "the writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution, even if this occurs under the most honorable circumstances." So far Dylan has ignored the committee's phone calls and he's making it blatantly clear he won't attend the award ceremony in Stockholm in December.

The article brings back a 1964 song by Dylan which transmits the attitude... lyrics below. Fits like a glove! 

_________

It Ain't me, babe*

music & lyrics by Bob Dylan

Go away from my window
Leave at your own chosen speed
I'm not the one you want, babe
I'm not the one you need
You say you're lookin' for someone
Who's never weak but always strong
To protect you and defend you
Whether you are right or wrong
Someone to open each and every door.

But it ain't me, babe
No, no, no, it ain't me, babe
It ain't me you're lookin' for, babe.

Go lightly from the ledge, babe
Go lightly on the ground
I'm not the one you want, babe
I'll only let you down

You say you're lookin' for someone
Who'll promise never to part
Someone to close his eyes to you
Someone to close his heart
Someone to die for you and more.

But it ain't me, babe
No, no, no, it ain't me, babe
It ain't me you're lookin' for, babe.

You say you're lookin' for someone
To pick you up each time you fall
To gather flowers constantly
And to come each time you call
And will love you for your life
And nothin' more.

But it ain't me, babe
No, no, no, it ain't me, babe
It ain't me you're lookin' for, babe.

__________

*I first heard the song in the movie Walk the Line (by actors Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Whitherspoon) and thought it an original of Johnny Cash and June Carter, only to realize they were already covering for Dylan's original. Funny how the same song goes from its folk version, into country and then pop (or something close to it). And when I was looking for the versions that I remembered of the song I realized it has been covered extensively, here's a version of two young (Swedish singers) that gave me the chills; just when you think you've heard it all...

No Times de hoje #170

The New York Times today brings an article by Trevor Noah, host of The Daily Show. Noah was born in South Africa in 1984 to a black mother and a white father. He was raised by his single mother in Soweto, a suburb of Johannesburg very aware of the constraints apartheid imposed on mix-raced people, the product of illegal relationships and therefore a crime. Yet, Noah's article focuses less on hardship and more on his mother's role on his upbringing.

"We tell people to follow their dreams, but you can only dream of what you can imagine, and, depending on where you come from, your imagination can be quite limited. The highest rung of what’s possible is far beyond the world you can see. My mother showed me what was possible. The thing that always amazed me about her life is that no one showed her. No one chose her. She did it on her own. She found her way through sheer force of will.

Perhaps even more amazing is the fact that my mother started her little project, me, at a time when she could not have known that apartheid would end. I was nearly 6 when Mandela was released, 10 before democracy finally came, yet she was preparing me to live a life of freedom long before we knew freedom would exist."

Para pensar e agir / To think and to act

(scroll down for English)

Hoje fui assistir a uma palestra inserida na série de palestras que Vanderbilt organiza anualmente sobre o Holocausto há 39 anos (é a mais longa série de palestras sobre o tema continuamente organizada por uma universidade). Falou o padre Patrick Desbois, francês de 61 anos, que há 14 dedica a sua vida a investigar o Holocausto praticado pelas unidades móveis Nazis. Em vez de transportarem judeus para campos de concentração, enviavam unidades militares de atiradores que cercavam localidades na Europa de leste, separavam os judeus, que depois fuzilavam e enterravam em valas comuns de grande escala.

O padre Desbois interessou-se pela matéria por razões de família. O seu avô, soldado francês foi feito prisioneiro de guerra em 1944 e levado para um campo de detenção na Ucrânia. Depois da guerra regressou à França mas recusou-se a falar sobre o assunto. Sob insistência do seu neto apenas disse, visivelmente irritado, que a vida no campo não era fácil, mas era muito mais difícil fora do campo. O padre Desbois tinha 17 anos quando o seu avô morreu, fez-se padre depois, e mais tarde teve a oportunidade de visitar Rawa-Ruska o local do dito campo de detenção. Antes da guerra mais de 10,000 viviam nesta localidade e foram todos mortos. Ainda assim, não encontrou nenhum memorial que o indicasse e ninguém parecia saber do assunto. A questão era pois saber como fora possível matar 10,000 pessoas sem que ninguém soubesse de nada. O padre Desbois regressou a Rawa-Ruska mais tarde, quando um autarca de inclinação menos soviética lhe falou da vala comum daquela localidade, que alguns anciãos ainda conseguiam indicar visto que eram crianças na altura. Desde então a organização do padre Desbois já localizou mais de 1,800 valas comuns na Lituânia, Polónia, Bielorussia, Ucrânia, Moldavia, Roménia e Rússia, que incluem cerca de 1.5 milhões de Judeus. Mais pessoas morreram nesses fuzilamentos que em Auschwitz.

O padre Desbois tem uma dupla missão. Por um lado trazer ao conhecimento geral a face menos conhecida do Holocausto em memória das vítimas quase sempre esquecidas. Por outro, educar acerca das horrorosas práticas de genocídio que não foram abandonadas no início dos anos 40. Para além de equipas a trabalhar na Ucrânia e outras localidades do leste europeu, a organização do padre Desbois tem também equipas no terreno no Iraque onde o daesh pratica o mesmo tipo de horrores contra os yazidis hoje. 

Quem hoje se junta ao daesh é educado (como eram os nazis), usa a internet e vem de vários países ocidentais. Como em 1942, cercam localidades, executam as comunidades yazidis publicamente para reinarem pelo medo, ameaçam o estilo de vida pacífico seja no Mossul ou em Bruxelas. A ONU, a Igreja católica, ou os governos de vários países fazem muito pouco para ajudar as populações desesperadas. Em 1942 também não foram os governos a ajudar os judeus, foram os cidadãos comuns. Quando o padre Desbois perguntou à sua avó, católica fervorosa, se ela alguma vez tinha ajudado judeus na sua remota aldeia francesa a resposta dela foi peremptória "não sei, nunca lhes perguntei se eram judeus... eram pessoas que precisavam de ajuda!" O padre Desbois não tenciona obrigar as organizações internacionais a fazer mais do que fazem neste momento. Com o seu forte sotaque francês diz que não tem tempo para isso. Há pessoas que vão morrer hoje. Só consegue dormir à noite porque se foca mais ao nível (micro) das pessoas que pode ajudar e menos ao nível (macro) geral do problema global dos refugiados.

Jerusalém tem hoje o Jardim dos Justos entre as Nações onde as árvores comemoram cada indivíduo que ajudou judeus durante a segunda guerra mundial (por exemplo Aristides de Sousa Mendes). Todas juntas fazem uma floresta, mas cada árvore representa uma pessoa agindo individualmente. Uma pessoa fez a diferença na altura e uma pessoa pode fazer a diferença hoje. Quer façamos uma doação online, quer eduquemos os jovens, ou doemos o nosso tempo e vida a esta causa, cada um de nós tem um papel a desempenhar.

Depois da palestra hesitei entre aplaudir em reconhecimento do trabalho feito, ou ficar em silêncio por respeito aos que em silêncio ficaram há mais de 70 anos e cujo trágico fim é hoje conhecido devido a pessoas como o padre Desbois. O desconforto surgiu: se eu vivesse em França em 1942 talvez não tivesse ajudado quem precisasse. E o meu estômago revirou-se, embora eu não tivesse comido nada que o provocasse.

____________

Today I attended a lecture, in the context of the Holocaust Lecture series organized by Vanderbilt for the past 39 years (it's the longest lecture series on the theme organized by a University). Catholic priest, father Patrick Desbois, french 61, spoke about his work relating to the Nazi mobile-killing units. Instead of shipping people to concentration camps, the Nazis deployed military units of shooters, that would surround villages in Eastern Europe, round up the Jews, who were then shot and buried in mass graves. 

Father Desbois got interested in the matter for family reasons. As a French soldier, his grandfather was arrested in 1944 and sent to a POW detention camp in the Ukraine. After the end of the war he returned to France but refused to speak of the matter. Upon insistence of his grandson, he got visibly upset and simply said that life in the camp was not easy but outside of the camp it was much worse. Father Desbois was 17 when his grandfather died, he became a priest later, and in 2002 he visited Rawa-Ruska, the location of the said POW camp. Before the war, 10,000 Jews had lived there and they were all killed. Yet there was no local memorial, and no one seemed to know anything about them. The question was therefore, how can 10,000 people be killed in a small village and no one know anything about it? Father Desbois returned to Rawa-Ruska later, when a less soviet-inclined mayor told him about the local mass grave, whose location was still known by some of the village elders, who were children at the time. Ever since, Father Desbois's organization has located more than 1,800 mass graves in Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, and Russia, encompassing an estimate of 1.5 million Jews. More people died in those mass shootings than in Auschwitz. 

Father Desbois mission is double-edged. On the one hand, he brings to light a less known side of the Holocaust in memory of victims that are hardly ever remembered. On the other, he educates about the abhorrent practices of genocide which are by no means locked in the early 1940s. Beyond teams in the Ukraine and other locations in Eastern Europe, Father Desbois organization has teams working on the ground in Iraq where daesh practices the same type of horrors against the Yazidis presently.

People joining daesh today are well educated (as were Nazi Germans), use the internet, and come from various western countries. As in 1942 they surround local villages, execute local Yazidi communities publicly to rule by fear, threaten a peaceful way of life either in Mosul or in Brussels. The UN, the Catholic church, and country governments today do very little to help populations in distress. In 1942 governments did not help Jews either, it was individuals who did. When Father Desbois asked his grandmother, a fervent catholic, if she had ever helped Jews in her remote village in France her answer was clear "I don't know, I never asked them if they were Jews... they were people who needed help!" Father Desbois has no wish to shame international organizations into doing more than they are doing right now. In his heavy French accent he says he has no time for that. People will die today. He can sleep at night only by focusing at the micro level and less on the grand scheme of things.

In Jerusalem today, the trees in the Garden of the Righteous among the Nations commemorate each individual who helped Jews in the World War II (such as Aristides de Sousa Mendes). As a whole, it is a forest but each tree represents one person acting individually. One person made a difference then and one person can make a difference now. Whether we donate online, or we educate others, or we give our time and life to the cause, each of us has a role, and each of us can help.

After the lecture I was unsure if I should clap in appreciation, or remain silent as a sign of respect to the silent ones whose lives come to light now because of people like Father Desbois. The uncomfortable feeling surfaced: if I had lived in France in 1942 I might not have helped. And my stomach was queasy, even though I had not eaten anything that should upset it.

Coisas que não mudam #369

Um mês depois, não há uma

mas várias flores no spathiphyllum 

que também dá pelo nome de lírio da paz.

Numa sala perto de mim #342

Denial (2016) is based on the true story of David Irving, Holocaust denier, who launched a libel suit against Deborah Lipstadt, historian of the Holocaust. According to UK law her work withdrew credibility to his and as such, he sued her for depriving him of his reputation and ability to earn a living. It was on her to prove she was not wrong, that is, to demonstrate the Holocaust did happen. The movie focuses on the legal battle that ensued and the remarkable court strategy mounted point by point by a very skilled team.

Retirado do contexto #223

Last week at Rutgers University campus

I was reminded of the Hong Kong flag

Cores de Outono #39

As cores de Outono podem tardar,

 mas não falham.

Sem título #81

Some warning labels deserve the quote...

Palavras lidas #310

Reading to My Kids
by Kevin Carey

When they were little I read
to them at night until my tongue
got tired. They would poke me
when I started to nod off after twenty pages
of Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket.
I read (to them) to get them to love reading
but I was never sure if it was working
or if it was just what I was supposed to do.
But one day, my daughter (fifteen then)
was finishing Of Mice and Men in the car
on our way to basketball.
She was at the end when I heard her say,
No, in a familiar frightened voice
and I knew right away where she was.
“Let’s do it now,” Lennie begged,
“Let’s get that place now.”
“Sure, right now. I gotta. We gotta,”
and she started crying, then I started crying,
and I think I saw Steinbeck
in the back seat nodding his head,
and it felt right to me,
like I’d done something right,
and I thought to myself, Keep going,
read it to me, please, please, I can take it.

Foi neste dia #299 (1548)

A cidade de La Paz, capital da Bolívia foi fundada por Alonzo de Mendoza (natural de Badajoz) no dia de hoje há 468 anos. Tinha então com o nome de Ciudad de Nuestra Señora de la Paz. Duas curiosidades a propósito: 

1) a cidade de Los Angeles, também tinha um nome comprido aquando da sua fundação em 1781, era então El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula; 

2) de todas as cidades capitais, La Paz situa-se à maior altitude com 3,631 metros... acima só mesmo Lhasa a capital do Tibete (não mais independente desde Outubro de 1950), com 3,684 metros.

Memórias #48

No passado fim de semana num supermercado português em New Jersey encontrei figos secos da Califórnia. É a comida ideal para se ter no gabinete e comer de quando em vez, quando a hora do almoço ainda vem longe, ou quando já lá vai há um tempo e o estômago começa a dar sinais que existe.

Estes figos californianos não são maus, mas sempre que como figos secos vêm-me memórias de infância quando os figos se secavam ao sol nos verões abrasadores e pouco chuvosos da baixa Beira Baixa. Lembro-me da minha avó os dispor muito juntinhos em tabuleiros que cuidadosamente colocava em cima do telhado baixo, e pouco inclinado, da cabana que cobria as alfaias agrícolas. De tempo em tempo, tirava-se o tabuleiro e viravam-se os figos para que secassem totalmente. Quando a secagem estava completa despejavam-se os figos para uma larga bacia de barro onde eram passados por uma mistura de água a ferver com alguma aguardente e certamente algo mais que não recordo... com a idade em dígitos únicos apenas observava o processo, embora, sem me aperceber que o fazia, fosse mentalmente tirando notas.

Também não me lembro do que se fazia depois desta lavagem, se se deixavam secar os figos naturalmente dentro de casa ou se se colocavam novamente ao sol. O que me lembro claramente, é do sabor daqueles figos secos que ficou como padrão de comparação para todos os outros que viesse a provar. Ficavam (e ficam) todos a alguma distância daquela memória com décadas que talvez por isso, ou por trazer outras memórias de uma infância feliz, seja idealizada e não necessariamente exacta. Entendo agora que este processo de produção, laborioso e artesanal, se deve ter mantido sem grandes alterações durante gerações a fio, transmitido de mães para filhas.

E provo outro figo seco da Califórnia depois de todos estes pensamentos que avivam memórias distantes... agora nem me parece nada mau.

Palavras lidas #309

Prayer
by Keetje Kuipers

Perhaps as a child you had the chicken pox
and your mother, to soothe you in your fever
or to help you fall asleep, came into your room
and read to you from some favorite book,
Charlotte’s Web or Little House on the Prairie,
a long story that she quietly took you through
until your eyes became magnets for your shuttering
lids and she saw your breathing go slow. And then
she read on, this time silently and to herself,
not because she didn’t know the story,
it seemed to her that there had never been a time
when she didn’t know this story—the young girl
and her benevolence, the young girl in her sod house—
but because she did not yet want to leave your side
though she knew there was nothing more
she could do for you. And you, not asleep but simply weak,
listened to her turn the pages, still feeling
the lamp warm against one cheek, knowing the shape
of the rocking chair’s shadow as it slid across
your chest. So that now, these many years later,
when you are clenched in the damp fist of a hospital bed,
or signing the papers that say you won’t love him anymore,
when you are bent at your son’s gravesite or haunted
by a war that makes you wake with the gun
cocked in your hand, you would like to believe
that such generosity comes from God, too,
who now, when you have the strength to ask, might begin
the story again, just as your mother would,
from the place where you have both left off.

Ditto #339

One of the greatest problems of our time is that many are schooled but few are educated.

--Thomas Moore