Author: admin

Posted on

Instituto Geográfico e Histórico do Pará

We were nominating the Instituto Geográfico e Histórico do Pará for a grant to renew & restore their document collection, so due diligence required that we go there in person to look around. Things often look different on a paper proposal than they do when you see them in person. The need and the utility are there, as is the potential to make things better. They have a large collection of paper documents describing all sorts of transactions as well miscellaneous documents such as the sorts of notices they used to post for the general public, some centuries old. They are not in a terrible condition, but also not good and threatened. This is a very humid climate. Many of the documents look good, but it would not be good to handle them too much. The Institute will file, restore and most importantly make electronic copies of the documents. Documents that you cannot access are not more useful than documents that don’t exist.

The documents are not the only things that need restoring. The Institute is housed in a building that is still very elegant but in a “seen better days” way. The location is great as you can see from the picture above.The place used to be owned by a rich and influential local citizen and the Institute used to be the go-to place for records and research in Pará. The rich guy died; universities and other institutions took up most of the research work. But it remains one of those places that good cities revere and protect. It has a board of directors of influential local citizens and will one day – probably soon – again be a very pleasant local center. Restoration is being done on the building and the furniture inside, as you can see below.

All this made me think of how buildings and institutions work. Sometimes we would just like to preserve them and there is a school of thought that we should set these sorts of places aside, museum like, protected.  I disagree. IMO historical buildings are like Stradivarius violins. They have to be used or else they decay and lose their value. This means renewing, restoring and to some extent changing rather than preserving like a fly in amber. That fly is dead. It is important that cities be full of life. Homage to the past doesn’t mean giving up the future. Things must be constantly renewed and protected against the forces of destruction. Below you can see the evidence of one of those big agents of destruction – termites.

Cultural place often supplement their incomes by housing restaurants and cafes. This provides not only some needed cash, but also brings people into the venue and since people appreciate and value what they know and what is familiar, it builds a constituency for culture. The institute has plans for such a project and I encouraged them to pursue it with determination and vigor. We don’t nominate those sorts of commercial projects for grants; there is a kind of prejudice against the profitable, but in the long run a successful operation like that will be worth more than the kindness of strangers as embodied in a grant.

Posted on

Belém: Teatro da Paz & the BNC

We visited the Teatro da Paz in Belém to see if it would work for a visit by the Battery Dance Company, which we hope to bring to Belém in April.  It does.  This will be a great venue for the dancers.  Now my only worry is that they will really come.  I am reasonably sure that they will, but it depends on a decision by ECA.  

The Teatro is similar to the Amazonas Theater in Manaus, but it was built about twenty years earlier.  It is in the same tradition of bringing opera to the Amazon.  Both are beautiful theaters and both are a bit of a folly. They tried so hard to be part of the cultured world of the time.  Well, I suppose it was like building a stadium might be today. They figured that every important town needed one.

You can see the view from the stage of the theater in the top picture.  The others are the curtains and the rehearsal area.

We visited the BNC in Belém in time to see the investiture of the new president.  The Belém BNC is well established and prosperous.  They have six branches, including one in Santarem, which is very far away up the Amazon.  I wonder if they could open a branch in Macapá, which is actually a bit closer, although in a different state.

The BNC has a really great facility with its own theater, which you see above and an exhibit space, which you see below.  BNCs face serious completion from schools that just teach English and English is the way they make their money.  But BNCs are much more.  They do the educational advising, sponsor art and give lots of free scholarships.  I am trying to support BNCs in any way we can for that reason.

Posted on

Amapá & a Little Piece of America

One of the senators from the state of Amapá has been asking us to visit the site of a World War II American airbase, so we did. According the locals, we are the first official Americans to visit the base since we vacated it after World War II. There is not much left except a rusting tower where they use to tie up blimps, some decaying buildings and the remains of the runway. But the visit was certainly worth the effort as it made the senator very happy and seemed to delight the local population. The mayor came along on this visit as did a couple dozen others.

We were also told that there was wreckage of a World War II American plane in the jungle of Amapá and that the bodies of American airmen killed in the crash were buried nearby by the people that found them many years ago. This is something we will investigate. If it is true, we will certainly want to bring those men home.  We need to know if this is just a story or the truth.

It took us more than three hours to get from the capital city of Macapá to the municipality of Amapá. Amapá gave its name to the state, but it is no longer the capital. It is really not much more than a village, connected to the world only by a dirt road.  The airbase is nine kilometers beyond that on an even worse dirt road. Inaccessible is the word you would use to describe it. One of the vehicles in our convoy hit a slippery patch and went into the ditch. Nobody was hurt, but it made us late for our next appointments and provided a spectacular picture that you can see above. Below is the municipal building.

Nevertheless, the drive was interesting. As the senator described and as we saw, Amapá has five distinct biomes. There is dry forest, wet forest, cerrado, marsh & campo (grassland). The state is not that big, so it is surprising to see that much diversity.

Much of the cerrado near the road is given over to eucalyptus plantations; I understand there are 135,000 acres. They were once owned by international paper, but were sold to a alliance of  two Japanese firms  – Marubeni Corp. and Nippon Papers Industries. I was told that there are no eucalyptus plantations not owned by them in the state. They chip the trees and sell the chips but do not process them further. The eucalyptus are ready to harvest in six years. Amazing.

Posted on

Up the River

This entry is out of order.  I will write up my stories from Amapa and post soon.

I am going up the Amazon with the Semester at Sea, a university sponsored by the University of Virginia course aboard a boat.  About 600 students take a semester of credit courses, while the boat sails around the world. Among the places it goes in Manaus. The Amazon is navigable by ocean ship to Manaus. This is a very fast ship, but it still takes two days and nights to arrive. Gives an idea of the size of the Amazon.

The courses are like ordinary university courses, but with emphasis on the places they visit. The students all have to read the book “1493” which I read as part of my routine reading list, but now I can claim to have done as homework. Sweet. I get to go for free. Well I have to pay for my trip by giving lectures, which I like to do so it is better than free. I have a good job. 

The job is a big part of the lectures.  I am trying to get these smart kids interested in careers in the FS or in the Federal government in general.  This is not hard to do. I just tell them what I have been doing for the last couple of days and everybody wants to sign up.  This is not entirely representative.  My job is more fun than most and the last few days have been more eventful than usual, but I think the overall picture is right.  There are a couple of my more junior colleagues who fill them in about life nearer the beginning of the careers, still very good.   I am also trying to create awareness of the Brazilian Science w/o Borders program and also President Obama’s 100,000 Strong initiatives to encourage Americans to study in South America.  All I care about is Brazil, so I try to encourage Portuguese language study and Brazilian specialization.  We need more Americans who know this place.

The ship is very comfortable. It is like a floating hotel, different from most of the U.S. Navy vessels I have visited, not gray for one thing. Food is good on the ship. It is much like that on a big Navy ship or my Anbar chow hall, which I know does sound like it should be good to those who have not had it, but actually is.  I like cafeteria type food. My cabin is very nice. They are treating me very well. The ship rocks a little, but not much and is generally very smooth.   

It is very cool to watch the Amazon forest from out of the windows or off the decks, but it gets to be a lot like a long flight.  The scenery does not change much that you can really tell from the distance.  It is an unbroken green. When you go around a bend in the river, there is more of the same.  Sometimes the river widens out and there is a marshy area.  Other times the forest comes right to the shore.  I sat on my little balcony (yes I have one) last night for a long time, looking at the moon and thinking about the vastness. If I jumped off the boat and could swim to the shore, I would be in that proverbial middle of nowhere. There is no way I could get back.  It would be like one of those episodes of “I survived” except that I wouldn’t.  I don’t recall ever being in a place like this before, so empty, vast & hostile to survival.  It would be scary, if I was not aboard a luxury boat, bringing civilization with me up the river.

Posted on

Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi

We visted the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi mostly just to keep contact.  We sometimes have short fuse offers of exchange programs and it is important to have connection before you need them.  The museum is also a place to get some background on local history and environment. 

The museum is named after Emílio Goeldi, a Swiss anthropologist who organized the collections and did a lot of anthropological studies in Pará and what became the state of Amapá.  We talked about the native people of the area.  Ancient people of Amapá produced the urns you see above.  They contained to bones of the dead.  The people who made them are now extinct and not much is known about them, but the urns and related items were used to show the continuity of cultures of Pará and Amapá. 

The region was more healthful in pre-Columbian times before the introduction of malaria & yellow fever and could support a larger population using simple agriculture, hunting, gathering and fishing.  I mentioned “1493,” the book I have been reading.  The author says that malaria had a decisive impact on the history of the Americas. Among other things, it transformed the Amazon from a relatively healthy place to live, in terms of diseases, to a very unhealthy one.  The author speculates that malaria came over from Africa with slaves.  African populations have some immunity to malaria; natives of the Americas did not.

Much of the archeological and anthropological research in Pará and Amapá was carried out by German or Swiss-German scientist and German influence in general was strong in this region. As you look at the exhibits, it is one German after another. There was a darker side to this in the 1930s. The Nazis encouraged anthropological research as an adjunct to their general race-based theories. I remembered that from my studies in anthropology so many years ago after I was reminded when one of our Brazilian friends mentioned that one of the anthropologists left Brazil to serve as an officer in the Wehrmacht.  

Also part of the museum is a zoo and botanical gardens. It is in many ways the old – and IMO good – model of an integrated scholarship. The zoo is mostly a rescue of animals, i.e. they don’t go out and capture them for the zoo. They had lots of sloths and some anteaters. Evidently these slow-moving animals are often victims of traffic accidents.

Posted on

Beautiful Belém

Belém is the kind of place I expected it should be. When I was in Manaus, I didn’t especially feel like I was in the Amazon. It was like another big city. In Belém, in contrast, you can actually  see the Amazon. 

I will be writing more about what we did in Belém.  We were very busy.  But I am also very busy today, so writing the history will have to wait.  In the meantime here are a few pictures.  You will notice at the top that his is just really pretty.  As usual, the picture doesn’t capture all the beauty. The reddish dust you see on the path are pedals from flowers falling from the trees. 

Above is a local poet Ruy Guilherme Paranatinga Barata.  It is a nice memorial to get to sit for eternity in a beautiful garden.  

Posted on

Belém First Contact

Flying into Belém you see a kind of water world.  The Amazon splits into many rivers, with lots of islands. Streets are lined with very big mango trees, some planted a century ago.  I was told that that drivers here have to buy special mango insurance, since the heavy fruit so often fall on cars, denting the hoods. But the trees are beautiful & worth the trouble.  They make the city feel much more comfortable and lower the overall temperature.  

Since we (Justen and I) got into town late, we didn’t have time to do too much. BTW, my picture is not good because of the late hour. It was dark. But those trees were really impressive and I wanted to get a picture for today’s post.  We did find time to visit the offices of one of the major media firms, that owns newspapers, webpages and RBA (Rede Brasil Amazônia de Televisão)  Rede Bandeirantes in Belém.  We spoke to the boss, who is a good contact of some of my Embassy colleagues, but who I had never met.  He was a very nice guy who spoke to us in English, explaining that he had family in Charlotte, NC and had lots of connections with the U.S.  

He explained that Pará was getting more prosperous.  The initial impetus was the vast mineral wealth.  Vale (Compania Vale do Rio Doce) has mountains of iron, enough to supply the world for decades,  and Alcoa has similar amounts of bauxite. There is also the wealth from forestry and agriculture.  But Pará has now moved beyond simple resource based economics.  At first this was because services had by necessity followed firms like Vale or Alcoa, but now the economics is self-sustaining.  

A small but important help to Belém would be regular direct flights to Miami. Belém is closer to Florida than it is to some other parts of Brazil in terms of easy of access.  This may soon happen, as firms add flights in response to growing demand.

We talked about educations, a subject always important in Brazil and making sure Pará was included in initiatives, since all the economic growth will require a more sophisticated labor force.  Not everyone is as aware of the opportunities as might be desired, nor are people aware how easy it is to study in the U.S.  We discussed doing webchats on the study in the U.S. and the Science w/o borders program. The beauty of the web format is that we can do it from Brasília or anywhere else and still tap into the network in Pará. This is something worth following and perhaps using in other places.  The Amazônia site gets about two million visitors a month.   

We had supper with five alumni YA and English immersion students.  These are all smart kids.  The older ones are completing their university studies.  We talked in about the program and about things in general. One of the participants was planning to apply to Science w/o Borders and another said that he would after we explained it to him. He had been unaware of the opportunity.  

I have never met a YA who was not wildly enthusiastic about the experience.  Their challenge is staying in touch with colleagues, which they all want to do.  This is something we should be more active in helping. These networks will prove extremely valuable to participants.   As they move up in Brazilian society, and they certainly will, they can network with participants from all over Brazil.  It is a great program and we need to make sure it keeps on paying dividends. 

Posted on

Time Enough

Unless I am working or traveling, I spend my weekends and holidays home alone. The big events are walking to the grocery store and running along the lake. This is not as sad as it sounds. I am alone but not unconnected. I talk to Chrissy every day and get lots of internet connections.  And I have things to do.  I actually like the work I do, for example, and I like to do background research and writing at home w/o interruptions.

I have found that I have to make lists of things to do to keep the day on track and make sure that one day doesn’t just melt into another. I have to put my house cleaning & laundry duties on the list; otherwise I put them off. The weather in Brasília helps create a feeling of timelessness. We have a wet and a dry season but the days are similar. You don’t get that changing seasons feeling.

BTW – the list system works well in other timeless activates, such as long airplane trips.  I make a list of things I want to accomplish on the plane.  I never get them done. I procrastinate.  But the act procrastinating and avoiding work makes the time pass much faster. 

On weekends I can catch up on my sleep.  I really don’t like to go to be before midnight, often 1am, but I still have to wake up at 630. By the end of the workweek, I am tired physically.  I also have lots of books to read. I put them on the list and tend to get at them on weekends. I have written before about audiobooks. Audiobooks go with walking.  I find that if I sit while listening I fall asleep. 

My biggest weekend activity is gardening.  I dispensed with the services of the gardener and bought a push mower.  You have to mow the lawn more often but it doesn’t make all that noise.  I planted corn, tomatoes, beans, lettuce and cauliflower.  I planted the corn with the beans.  The beans will fix nitrogen to help the corn grow and the beans will be able to grow up the corn stalks.  The corn just spouted, so I put in the bean seeds.  My plan is that the corn will be ready in March-April when the dry season starts and it gets hot enough to finish the corn.

My watermelon experiment is failing. I got really big vines but I had only one melon. That one was attacked by some kind of animal and subsequently invested by pests. It takes me a week and a half to eat one watermelon.  It probably just is not worth it to grow them, even if I could. Tomatoes and corn, on the other hand will be cost effective and worth the effort. I should have planted them earlier, but I went with the flowers first.  I have a banana tree, but I don’t know when/if it will get any bananas. I had lots of mangoes, but I don’t much like mangoes.  The birds tended to get at them anyway. Mangoes are very productive and I can see that they would be good to have if you liked the fruit.  

What I need is a Coke Zero tree.

I know this is a boring entry and it might seem to indicate a boring existence, but I don’t see it that way. The books are giving me a lot to think about and the gardening, growing the plants from seed in what is for me a strange soil and climate, is pretty interesting for me. Maybe I am just a boring guy, but these are things I find interesting.

Of course, my work can be interesting in the more active sense.  Next weekend, for example, I get to take a boat up the Amazon.  It will be part of a “semester at sea” program. I have to give a few lectures and in return I get to do what not many people can. That weekend will be more eventful than usual.  I will take pictures and post some entries. 

Above are some guys washing windows on one of the new buildings. I thought it was an interesting picture. 

Posted on

Illegal Logging

This is a draft of what I will send for my quarterly article in “Virginia Forest” magazine.

Illegal loggers steal from us in many ways. Sometimes they are literally stealing our trees, but it goes way beyond that. Illegal logging is rarely done according to good procedures that protect the environment and preserve the forest for future generations. The public views the scenes of destruction left by illegal loggers and jumps to conclusion that this is how logging is done. That means that illegal loggers also steal the reputations of honest loggers and landowners who are good stewards of their land and often have been for many generations.

Addressing the problem of illegal logging, however, is not as simple as enacting stronger laws and harsher penalties. In fact, worldwide it is often the theoretically strong laws that are the problem. Of course, in Virginia we still have timber theft. This is a type of illegal logging but at the levels and ways it is done, it is more akin to ordinary crime like burglary or grand theft auto. There are no cases of widespread deforestation caused by illegal logging in the Old Dominion.  Unfortunately, this is not the case everywhere.  In some countries the illegal timber harvest can reach as high a 60-70% of the total.  What accounts for the difference?

The easy answer is that countries where illegal logging is rampant simply lack strict laws or the ability to enforce them. The first part of this statement is often not true. Many developing countries have – on the books – much stricter preservation laws than we have in Virginia. In some places it is just plain illegal to cut down native forests on a wide range of land types. These are often the places most likely to be deforested, as illegal logging targets them first. They understand that government authorities probably cannot protect them and that the off limits status has removed the incentives for local people to pay much attention. The second part of the statement – that they lack the ability to enforce the good laws – is true in areas of deforestation but it is not as remarkable at it seems because it is true everywhere.

Logging is almost always done in relatively out of the way places. Laws are never enough. Even the most active authorities cannot effectively police large areas of forest land.  In Virginia, they really don’t have to.  Landowners, loggers and foresters have incentives to preserve and enhance the forests on their land because they can use and benefit from them. They also know that everyone around suffers if forests, soils, animals and water are wantonly destroyed.  It is obviously true that the authorities protect my forest land in Brunswick County.  But the first lines of defense are my neighbors, friends and even strangers who know that we are all in this together. Virginians protect their own land and those of others because they own the land. We have centuries old traditions of protecting property rights and we all are in the same boat. We protect each other’s stuff.

We also enjoy the use of our land with fewer restrictions than in most other places. We can harvest trees and other forest products within reasonable rules. We can hunt that animals that inhabit our forests and, again within reasonable limits, we can change the way we use our lands. In the final analysis, what most protects the forests of Virginia is the effort of thousands of Virginians who have a stake in the management and use of the forests and the products they produce. In Virginia, hunters, loggers and landowners are preserving and enhancing our forests. Laws work when they are reasonable and when people see the benefits. If you want to preserve and improve forests, you have to let people cut some trees and kill some animals. You have to let them have a stake.

Places that suffer widespread deforestation because of illegal logging often find themselves in this unhappy situation not in spite of but because of strong laws, albeit misapplied. Laws and regulations meant to preserve forests often end up destroying them if they make it difficult or impossible for the people who live in or near the forests to make an honest living from them. If strict rules make it impossible to make an honest profit, some people will make dishonest ones. Even worse, as honest people leave the business and dishonest ones take their place, the whole respect for law as well as the whole idea of stewardship disappears.  The field divides between preservers and destroyers.  Neither is the right way to go.  We need stewards.

If I can be permitted a little immodesty, in America we got it right. That is not to say challenges have disappeared. There is no perfect system and everything must always adapt. But we should never make the quest for the perfect the enemy of the good. The methods of stewardship that have grown up in the United States during the twentieth century work well. The American Tree Farm System and other independent certification systems are doing their jobs.

Most landowners want to do the right thing on their land. People I talk to not only want to take care of the land during their own lifetimes. A major motivation is to leave the land in better shape for future generations.  People are willing.  We need information and guidance both to do the right things and to do things right.  What we don’t need is strict, sometimes incomprehensible, rules that make it difficult for honest people to make honest profits.  We have created a wonderful and sustainable system of forestry in Virginia.  We can be proud of it and we should all work to protect it and try to spread the word as far as we can.

Posted on

Youth Week

Last week was our youth and education week.  Our posts in Brasília, São Paulo, Rio and Recife processed almost 600 program participants (37 Youth Ambassadors, 20 Student Leaders, and 540 Public School English Teachers, CAPL).   This launch is a big step in a continuing success in connection the American and the Brazilian nations and an investment in the future.

The biggest group was the 540 teachers of English. Minister of Education Mercadante and Ambassador Shannon gave the high profile send off in Brasília as did teams in São Paulo, Rio, and Recife.  Our Brazilian friends recognize the need for English and they are encouraging progress with a six week capacity building programs at eighteen higher education institutions throughout the U.S.  The picture above is from that event.  We also signed an agreement to keep the program going with another 540 teachers going out in July.

Our part of the program is identifying programs in the U.S. as well has helping with visas and logistics.  Our Brazilian friends are doing the heavy lifting and supporting the teachers.  I love this program and I am proud of the input we had in helping shape it.  Participants are all public school teachers representing all twenty-six states in Brazil plus the Federal District.  We all think that spreading the benefits to all corners of the country is an important goal.  I got to meet a lot of the teachers.  For many, this was their first time travelling outside Brazil and many had not even travelled much within Brazil. This will be a life changing experience for them and I hope they will be able to change and improve the lives of countless students when they get back.  This is a big deal and being part of the aspirations of so many people is a fantastic privilege.

I have written about Youth Ambassadors before.  The Youth Ambassadors are also chosen from public schools with special care taken to make sure that every Brazilian state is represented.  This is “our” program in that we organize it, but it also has become a shared success with our Brazilian partners.  We had almost 17,000 applicants for the thirty-seven available slots.  Our partners throughout Brazil winnow this number down to a manageable number (about 200).  After that, my colleagues read through all applications and make the final choices.  It is a tough job. We could easily send 500 w/o diminishing quality, but I don’t have the staff or the cash to make it happen.  I am trying to think of ways to get somebody else to take up some of the slack. 

This year we are partnering with EMBRATUR for the first time. EMBRATUR is the Brazilian tourist agency.   One of the reasons why Youth Ambassadors is so well accepted here is that it truly is a partnership.  We are not just explaining America to Brazilians but also helping Americans understand Brazilians.  EMBRATUR helped with materials and information, helping our Youth Ambassadors know their own country.  Many of the Youth Ambassadors have not traveled much in Brazil and it is great to have a partner like EMBRATUR.

This week we also launched this year’s Student Leaders.  Twenty of them will go to University of Tennessee in Knoxville.  The Student Leaders are older than the Youth Ambassadors and different from the SwB students because they are studying subjects such as political science and history. I think we generally do a good job with youth in Brazil because we have such great youth to work with.  I am inspired when I talk to them and glad that they want to learn about the U.S.

We held a big pizza party at Casa Thomas Jefferson to honor all the groups that were leaving from Brasília.  Similar events were held in Rio, São Paulo and Recife, but I can best describe ours.  141 “youth” showed up for the party.  I put youth in quotation marks because the teachers are youth in comparison to me but maybe not all are youth in comparison to … very young people.  One of our staff acted as MC and did a wonderful job.   Everyone seemed to have a good time, but it was a little loud for me. The Youth Ambassadors seemed to love Gangham style.  I didn’t know what that was until a few weeks ago and I can see why kids like it.  They all got up and danced frenetically when it came on.  I didn’t dance.

Pictures show some of the groups, plus the pizza makers and CTJ Southwest.