New York, New York

The lights of Time Square, NYC

I am finally back HOME in Rio and find myself just as happy to be here as I am when I go HOME to Houston - a mystery that applies to my 'between two worlds' blog of several months ago.

On our way back to Brasil Camillo and I spent 4 days, 3 nights in New York City. When we made our trip reservations nearly 4 months ago there were no seats available on the direct Houston - Rio Continental flights, and would have to fly via New York in order to get home - so we decided to make a three day stop. We were in the very expensive tourist center of NYC but enjoyed it anyway. Museums, Broadway shows (Chorus Line) and more people than taxis. In our three days of tourist-ing, we saw the museum of modern art (MoMA), the Met, the Guggenheim, Rockefeller Center including the observation deck on the ROCK, took a tour on the Hudson River around southern Manhattan, TIME square, ate some very bad food, got taken by one taxi driver, ate one very good dinner, got taken by the GRAY LINE City Tours, and almost froze our tooshes off.

One evening it was -6c. I bought a red hat.... but that's another story.

I decided I like the warmth big city Rio better than the cold of big city NY.

Prescott, Arizona - history preserved

From ice on the car every morning to a walk in the clear, bright sunlight of the desert this area in northwest Arizona is a delight in contrasts.
The Sharlot Hall Historical Museum celebrating the time when Arizona was a territory, showing a mix of how the pioneer and the native Americans lived - very often not in harmony.
The Rose, a modern resturant set in a house from the late 1800s with its excellent wine list, serving roasted lamb and homemade vanilia bean ice cream with carmel sauce that brought a look of utter delight to my mother's face, the Apple Pan, a cute and cozy hambergur joint full of colorful locals and friendly service.
Historic buildings, many on the national register and the starkly beautiful landscapes with fishing, kayaking and hiking, is enough contrast for all the family to enjoy.

I am back in Houston but for many reasons I will remember this time in Prescott with my mother for a very long time. GingerV

the familiar and unfamiliar

When I lived in Houston I never paid much attention to the Bromeliads in the garden centers, for all I remember there were not any. Now I am seeing them everywhere - garden centers, Target, and Wal Mart, all have had a wide variety of colors - perfect for brightening cold winter days.

Speaking of which, our readers in Brasil will love this, the day before yesterday we had a snow storm - if my knees had not hurt so much I would have run up and down the street like we did as kids, arms spread and mouths open - enjoying the novelty, the beauty of a fresh snow fall.

Mom and I had to leave an hour early to go get Camillo in Phoenix for fear that the roads would get icy

but by our return in late afternoon the roads out of phoenix were a big parking lot - no one seems to know how to drive in the rain but there was no ice. As we began the drive up the mountain on 69, we were rewarded with a typical Arizona sunset. A day to fill the senses with pleasure.

"Home, Home on the Range"

"where the deer and the antelope roam" can you remember this song sung by Gene Autry? The day before yesterday while Mom and I drove east out into the countryside this song from my grade school days kept running through my head - and to both our sorrow I finally broke into song. "where seldom is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day ...."

This high plane (5000+ feet) outside of Prescott and just west of the foothills of Mingus mountain, even with the trees stripped of leaves and the grasses bleached white from the cold dry air, is beyond beautiful. The sky is a clear bright blue that now I can remember running free under as a child. The sky is a big blue inverted bowl stretching from where you stand to the horizen - it is the feeling of freedom, oneness with the land.

Below is the complete poem on which the song was based.
"TraditionalWritten By: Brewster Higley
Music By: Daniel Kelley
Copyright Unknown

Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day
Home, home on the range
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day
How often at night when the heavens are bright
With the light from the glittering stars
Have I stood there amazed and asked as I gazed
If their glory exceeds that of ours
Home, home on the range
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day
Where the air is so pure, the zephyrs so free
The breezes so balmy and light
That I would not exchange my home on the range
For all of the cities so bright
Home, home on the range
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day
Oh, I love those wild flow'rs in this dear land of ours
The curlew, I love to hear scream
And I love the white rocks and the antelope flocks
That graze on the mountaintops green
Home, home on the rangeWhere the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day"

This is what holds me to the States, making me feel small and 'compressed' when in Rio. Rio with its smog filled skies, and streets running through tall buildings, fracturing the sky into small pieces and leaving one starved to feel a part of anything.

GingerV

American Peanut Butter: A Minor Miracle in Rio

Until now you had to have a willing friend traveling from the US to have peanut butter delivered here. What is available is an anaemic concoction so highly sweetened you can crunch on the sugar. No wonder most Brazilians say they would never eat it!

Yesterday I resolved to make my own by roasting tiny Brazilian peanuts in the oven at 300 degrees F for around 10 minutes. I then ground them with a bit of salt in my blender. The more I ground the oilier it became until it was the smooth, roasted, delightfully salted mess we love to spread on toast or make peanut butter cookies with.

Try this recipe. I've been using it for years.

PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES
1 cup sifted brown sugar, (remove the beads of molasses and put them in your morning oatmeal)
1/2 cup butter
1 egg
1 cup peanut butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1-1/2 cups of flour
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Beat it up, roll it into balls and bake at 350 degrees F

They are crumbly and most deserving of the title "biscuit" the British love to use. note: A Brazilian made blender is not strong enough for making peanut butter

"Ma'am, I'm just a cowboy"

I am in Prescott, Arizona visiting my mother. Walking about the town in the early morning light yesterday, I realized that I feel at home here. The buildings, highways, hills and tree lined river beds remind me so much of Cottonwood, where we lived until I was 14. I suspect that no matter how far we go, or how much we think we have changed, where we first put down roots defines us in ways that never change. I am sure that these two towns have also changed in ways that can't be counted, cable TV, Internet service, five lane main streets, but there also remains a simpleness reminicent of the time when I was growing up, a time when children could run freely along the streets and men were gentlemen. On Sunday, coming in from Phoenix on highway 17, driving east on 69, I had to stop for a soda and a walk to clear my head. The man at the counter of the market had one of those handlebar mustaches. Just to make conversation, I ask him if he rode motorcycles, and he laughed softly and in a gentle softspoken way said, "ma'am I am just a cowboy". No need to be more, no regret at being who he is - understanding of what values defines him - this feeling is what makes us at home in our own skin - then the place - the space - where we live is no longer important.

This little house although not the same shape or color, reminded me of the house the seven of us grew up in - small and poor - and after all these years still representing home.

'more' bigger

A trip to the local garden center took Patty and I 1 hour and 35 minutes - a 5 minute drive and an hour & 1/2 to walk around. We walked up and down all the rows enjoying the fresh air, moderate morning temperatures and a complete selection of spring flowers, trees and bushes that are best planted now, before the heat of summer.

I bought some bulbs to plant in Friburgo and, of course, more seeds. The seeds I take back never grow into viable plants, but I get warm feelings starting them in the greenhouse. I have started to give the baby plants to Lucia and Manuel to take home. They live down the hill from us and seem to be able to get a vegie or two from the plants - mine grow just enough to allow me to walk around the garden and eat a handfull of peas, green beans or cherry tomatoes, pulled straight from the "vine". This Houston Garden center is another example of the 'bigger' in the States. One that I can't help but fully enjoy -

Rio de Janeiro - 1936 City of Splendor

Don't expect to find this city in 2008. It was wiped out long ago by dictatorships, military governments, modern unchecked violence, widespread banality, pervasive drug traffikkkking and profound political corruption.

BiG!

I am now at five years in Brasil. In those five years or 60 months, I have probably spent 6 months here in Houston. This visit, I have started to notice that I now have a different perspective of the States. BIG, and BIGGER. The doctor's office where my daughter works with its long halls, high ceilings, and soft lighing accenting the feeling of space, the new house of a friend - Rhonda and her hustband Terry (no children at home/one very small dog) just purchased this last December has a kitchen the size of our Rio apartment (somewhat exagerated to make the point), the parking garage under the Galeria that has long open drives and parking spots that are easy in and easy out - everything Big! Part of this perception of BIG, is the wide open spaces of Texas, its wide flat plains that are now filled with people, 14 lane hishways, and three story stores that have only one story of showroom floors. BIG! Every shopping center is surrounded with parking spaces - Bigger! Restaurants Big! and the serving sizes Bigger!
It has occured to me that the well publicized weight problems of the North Americans are rooted in the world of BIGGER! In order to not feel small in this world of BIG - they feel the need to be BIGGER!.