It's starting to get hot down here: otherwise entitled the reason (among others) to make friends with one's neighbors

Note my house, circled in red. It seems to be the only one without a pool on my block :)
My neighbors to the right (my landlord) also have a piano. Perhaps they should be first priority.

For the love of....

The Economist.

I finally bit the bullet and shelled out for a renewal of my subscription to The Economist. Unfortunately, my subscription does not take effect until the Nov. 4th edition, and the idea that my wish to read the economist online would be instantly gratified with my Mastercard was not instant enough for my American desire for truly instant gratification.

The Portuguese translation of Tom Sawyer I bought last week (is that sacrilege? buying a copy of a Mark Twain novel that has been intentionally translated out of its language of genius which I can read easily into another language?) sat forlorn on my windowsill all weekend. Because, on Saturday, I spent several hours successfully locating two Oct. editions of the Economist in a bookstore downtown. I have spent much of my time since then catching myself up on the news that the rest of the world has already processed and reacted to. No matter: it is a delightful indulgence. Mark Twain will just have to wait until I make it through the second one.

here are two photos from my trek to find The Economist: the first from the Praça da Liberdade where a teenage couple on a park bench indulged me by taking my photo, the second of some very bright and lovely colonial architecture on the way to Savassi from the Praça.





Other:

Lula does it again! Brazil chooses to keep their president.

Protection for American farmers and....condom manufacturers?
I think I would like to hear some statistics on effectiveness and quality--this would be my primary motivator for product choice, in this case. Job preservation comes second.

Yesterday while walking around the lake I saw a couple of amusing things:

one: a couple using what appeared to be an emergency gas bag to fill the gas tank of their VW beetle. Now, it seems to me, that a plastic bag is not a very safe way to store an emergency gas supply. Even if it were ethanol, wouldn't a plastic bag be corroded by either of these two? Somebody help me out.

two: a group of guys on bikes who had been fishing were leaving with their stock of fish, their nets, and their bamboo poles. Somehow, the net of the guy on the bike in the lead attaches itself to the bike of the guy behind, nearly causing a bike (not to mention the subsequent traffic) collision. Fishing net is not the easiest thing to untangle from the spokes and brake cables of a bike, and five minutes later when I pass again, the whole group is still struggling to untangle bike 1 from bike 2. Sigh, the complications of alternative transportation.....

I have a three-stall organic market on Saturdays that is a block from my house!!!!!! Swwweeetttt.

P.S.--Here I have been thinking that Heineken is the only readily available imported beer in Brazilian grocery stores--then, I read the label. Heineken is tricky--they do some brewing in Brazil. No wonder it is only slightly more expensive than its 'brazilian' counterparts.

A note about my job.

It has been expressed by some of my readers that they would appreciate a note about how I occupy myself, as related to my job. Perhaps they are just envious of my trips to the opera and my jaunts to the zoo--nonetheless, their demands have been noted. Hopefully you will find it amusing as well as informational.

As a consultant for the WHRC, I am mostly responsible to one Frank Merry. Frank was a member of my committee for my master's research, and also works on various projects with Greg Amacher, my major professor from Virginia Tech. Because Frank works directly with Greg, this means that I am also, indirectly, still responsible to Greg. Just to give you a taste of the two fine personalities that I work for, when I mentioned to Frank that I was doing some literature review and reading about cattle markets, he replied by saying that we should get the timber supply model out of the way, and...

"One thing you could do with cattle is go to the super market and learn the cuts."

Right. My job is diverse.

With respect to the timber supply, my job is to do the dirty work in the stats program: we use a program called limdep. The code for a piece of an input file tends to look something like this:

regress; lhs = ltagval; rhs = one, lyrs, lfam, lcapit, credit, lcdis,
lttime, ladco, lhrdry, lhrwet, lhire; hetero; keep=fitlagvl $

reject; fitlagvl=-999 $
dstat; rhs = vmpla, yronl, famsz, valci, , ctydis,
adco, pastar, tvalag, ltp2, wealth, exogin, ASST, BLOT, SQLOT, SQASST, DEFTIT $


?CALCULATING SHADOW WAGE
create; fmvpw=(1.65112579*exp(fitlagvl)/hrdayw) $
create; mvpw=(1.65112579*tvalag/hrdayw) $
dstat; rhs = fmvpw, mvpw $
create; lfmvpw = log(fmvpw) $

create; if(sdefor>0)sdefor=1; (else)sdefor=0 $
create; if(sforst>0)sforst=1; (else)sforst=0 $
create; if(sdefor=1 & sforst=1)newwood=3
;if(sforst=1 & sdefor=0)newwood=2
;if(sdefor=1 & sforst=0)newwood=1
;if(swood=0)newwood=0 $

logit; lhs = newwood; rhs= one, lyrs, lfam, lcapit, lwatr, credit, lexogin,
lcdis, lfor, lpast, lfmvpw, ltagval, ltp2, deftit; hetero; marginal effects;keep=psoldnew $


Basically, I run a bunch of regression models based upon some guidelines from Greg and Frank, and then I send them to Greg for feedback. 'Feedback' takes the following forms:

Greg Amacher, 10-27
1. why are wet and dry labor variables in the ag production function...is wet season labor important to production of crops? If dry season L is negative (not good), then maybe combine all labor into one variable.

2. Value of ag production should not be an explanatory variable in the sold wood equation and is correlated anyway with the shadow wage, which should be present in the sold wood equation. The presence of value of ag production is probably reducing the significance of the shadow wage in the regressions due to the correlation. The same goes for other wood sales regressions.

Greg Amacher (2) 10-27, Maria receives an email entitled:

"P.S. on my previous PS....I like the multinomial model....wow, about to have a heart attack from excitement...more inside"


Yesterday, Greg and Frank and I had an exchange about a diagram of my study area for the paper which we are hoping to publish from my master's thesis.

Frank: "Maria: have him (Paul) take out the communities and include only the surveyed communities, using dots for the icons"
Greg: "Don't agitate the dots damnit! Are you agitating the dots?"
Frank: "it just seems a bit messy at the moment. Did you have caffeine this morning?"
Maria: "That message certainly did sound caffeinated....Hope you haven't crossed back over to using the tools the rest of us need to be productive"
Greg: "Sorry, I thought you both knew about the FEDEX T.V. commericial where the guys are at a computer watching and talking to the "dots" (i.e., FEDEX trucks). Hey, I found it on the web, it's totally funny now given the Tapajos map thing. Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19rVKy_pfFU
So, no caffeine but just a keen sense of humor on my end!"
Greg: "P.S. oh, it is a nextel commerical...."

Up in smoke--but the memories will remain.

A eulogy for poo palace.
For my first two years of college, I spent holiday breaks in the humble abode of my dad and my soon-to-be stepmother, affectionately dubbed "poo palace." The exceedingly old and probably unsafe farmhouse made strange creaking noises in the summer, boasted hiding places in the foundation and under the porch, and had fly strips hung everywhere (many a time I got my hair caught in the one hanging over the toilet in the one functioning bathroom). Cold water showers were a must in the winter, because the hot water pipes would freeze. There was a vintage seventies wardrobe in rotting cardboard boxes, deemed unworthy of removal by the previous owner, and dad and laura could speak to Jared through holes in the wall.

Poo palace is no more--after dad and laura built their new place, they sold that piece of the property. The current owners, with no fond memories, saw only a crumbling old farmhouse, and chose to eliminate it, much to our sadness. These are a few pictures from the weekend, provided by my dad. Jezebel and Bad-Bad (Leroy Brown) would be rolling over in their graves.

You win some, you lose some: other weekend highlights

Praça da Estacão after our fabulous crêpes and drinks on Friday night (yes, I made the taxi driver pull over for a photo....)



Beers by the lake after a ferris wheel ride.


The loss: Magic Flute was sold out. Maria walks away from Palacio das Artes very crestfallen and feeling silly for not having procured a ticket in advance.

Something tells me it's all happening at the zoo...

I do believe it / I do believe it’s true…

Going to the zoo is one of those things that, if you think long enough about, you could easily moralize yourself out of. There are two sides to every coin; in the case of zoos, this means that in order for one to visit the African Savannahs, the argentine pampas, the Gobi desert and the tropical forests of Madagascar all in the span of say…2 hours….all of these animals need be, by definition, confined to a space that one can walk comfortably and leisurely about within this timeframe. This leads one to the apparent—that many of these animals are not in fact well adapted to the dry, mountainous region of the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Not to mention that their ranges in their natural habitat probably exceed their zoo enclosures by at least one order of magnitude. And migration is certainly out of the question.

Given this context, perhaps I should be spending my two hours at the zoo carefully scanning animal gazes and animal coats for the sure signs of psychological and physiological damage these animals are suffering. Distant gazes, matted fur, desperate movements. And sending sideways glances at the children who are squawking at the parrots and working to evoke any sort of reaction from the baboons, politely asking them how they would feel if they were caged and had small children screaming at them. Maybe I should even contemplate engaging in PETA-esque manifestations of my greater commitment to animal well-being. “SHIT there’s a LION loose—ruuuuunnnnnn!”

I could ponder whether the daily visitors to a zoo really take away a nuanced understanding of animal habitats, or, even better yet, I could become someone who designs interpretive materials for zoos. This way I could ensure that if we are going to hold this diverse array of rare animals captive in one place, I will at least be trying my damndest in the name of Education.

My confession to you is that my preference is to check my overly analytical, guilty conscience at the gate with my entry fee—to proceed unencumbered. Having cast off pseudoethicist-Maria and pseudobiologist-Maria, I roam free.

Free to lean as far over the fence as I can to get close to the elephants.

Free to warble at the macaws, hoping they will engage me in dialogue.

Free to giggle with nervous excitement at the volume of a lions roar—to exchange glances with children who laugh with me as we both try and talk to the orangutan.

The foundation of this freedom may be off-base, my premises faulty. But sometimes I find that I must leave the learned opposition behind in order to enjoy a Saturday afternoon at the zoo.

University Jerky makes the News.

http://students.juniata.edu/longbg3/UJ.mov

How cool is it that I have a friend who has started a beef jerky business?

"how many is a brazillion?"

Courtesy of my stepmother, via my uncle Glen--

Donald Rumsfeld was giving President Bush his

daily briefing. He concluded by saying,

"Yesterday, 3 Brazilian soldiers were killed."

The President exclaimed, "OH NO! That's

terrible!"

His staff was stunned at this display of emotion

and nervously watched as the President sat there,

head in hands.

Finally, the President looks up and asks, "How

many is a brazillion?"

A column by a cousin of my friend Jeremy, who left me feeling oh-so-inspired to be a woman and a human being today.

The Opera.

Truth be told, I had never been to a live performance of an Opera until last night. This is rather suprising as I think about it, given my passion for classical music and the passion for music and theatre of my friends and my family. La Serva e L'Ussero was a comic operetta which kept me entertained for a full hour and a half--even if I had not been entertained, I would have been exercising my complete knowledge of romance languages through the duration, listening in italian while reading in Portuguese. Whew!

I can't even contain my excitement for the Magic Flute--either this wknd or the next. If you aren't already aware, Mozart is one of my musical idols---

Below you see depicted, from left to right, my housemate Ehidee, (me) and Ehidee's sister, Adriana. In front of some very large spool-like fixtures made of wood that were part of an art exhibition in the Palacio das Artes in Belo Horizonte. I think the guard thought I was insane, wanting to have my picture taken with two women in front of a large spool----

A few visuals.

I am writing this on Saturday as a thunderstorm is taking place outside—I am watching the trees and bushes in the front garden sway in the wind, and am wondering why my miniature wind chimes which I actually packed and brought with me do not seem to be chiming. Perhaps they need to be relocated for optimal wind-catching.

Serving as a temporary (or perhaps permanent—I rather like it) incense holder in my windowsill is a red brick that has seen better days—a hole angled ‘just so’ supporting my stick of incense makes it extremely functional. In the past 24 hours, I have acquired two bromeliads (see photos), a pink and a red, which are standing-in quite stoically (it’s a trying task) for pets, friends and family. Not at all successfully, but they are quite nice and make me immensely happy.

My small, copper wire bat is on my wall, and my Brazil map and my ‘PACE’ flag (you never knew that it would go everywhere with me, did you Christa?) were fairly jumping at the chance to be hung--this was accomplished with some electrical tape from the local grocery store (no scotch-style tape, but electrical tape--go figure)

I have also, for the first time in my life, bought a new mattress. The cheapest double bed mattress that I encountered at the ‘Shopping del Rey’. I did, however, shell out for some pretty sweet sheets and one down pillow. I decided that a) I absolutely could not sleep in a single bed (even though there is only one of me, I am a sprawler---) and b) that I needed some sweet sheets. One can’t mess around when it comes to basic needs like excellent sleep.

Realization number xvi: buying a dysfunctional corkscrew is worse than having none at all. Rather than beginning the endeavor of getting a cork out of a wine bottle by thinking “damn, this is going to be quite an endeavor”, you are misled into believing that said tool will aid you in getting the cork out of the wine bottle. 15 minutes of a Friday night and three sets of biceps later, I have my wine to put in my chicken and rice and in my wine glass, a grand laugh with my housemates, and a resolution to buy a real corkscrew. One that performs the task it was designed to perform with relative ease.

Other triumphs: I have clean socks and underwear. Though, I went for a long walk along the lake today without socks (which were drying) and now I have some serious blisters to show for my clean socks. C’est la vie. Second major triumph: I successfully cooked chicken. This may seem like a small hurdle for one who enjoys cooking and does it frequently, but as a mostly-vegetarian for the past couple of years, I need a “how to cook meat: for dummies” book. Finally, I ate some oatmeal. Yes, my second-best comfort food of choice in the absence of real, fresh milk for the crunchy goodness that is cereal. A pretty close second.

Oh yes, and the view from my verandah:

This also means that I now have an address at which I can hypothetically receive mail.

Maria S. Bowman
500 Alameda do Ipê Amarelo
São Luiz, Belo Horizonte
Minas Gerais, Brasil
CEP: 31275-090

I really don't know what I must have done in my former life to deserve my incredible good luck with finding roommates. My past few years have continuously surprised me, in this respect. I just acquired some keys to my place--and met the other woman living there, a delightful, sweet Columbian woman. Her sister is in town visiting her, and we already have plans to go to the opera on Sunday, and to do a joint voyage to the Policia Federal for bureaucratic business next week. She likes to cook, watches telenovelas, and burns incense.

They talked my ear off, the two of them, for about an hour--
and I left feeling more fortunate in this life at the moment than I can even express to you.

moving towards a sense of place.

I think I have found myself a place to live. In a house with two other girls. It has a rooftop covered verandah with a hammock that overlooks the lake--what more need be said? Pictures forthcoming once I move in.

on babies.

I would just like to say that, in my 1.5 weeks of absence, four people who are very important to me have had very tangible, living additions to their lives. namely, my cousin Lisa and her husband Brian, and my good friend Jody and his wife Viana. Cheers to the exploration of the world by Holly Lineweaver-Hatleberg, and Lilyana Greene!! Only in an era of fantastic technological advances could Lisa send me a picture in Brazil from her hospital bed from her camera phone via email....(THANKS Lisa) If only I could teleport myself for a visit. :)

Even my employer has partnered with the Clinton Global Initiative....

check out the news article.

a new one.

So, the task for this week is to find a place to live. Anyone who has ever tried to do this in a foreign country before should share insights. I think my first step is to maybe take a walk around the neighborhood that I am staying in (near the university, pretty nice) with pencil and paper, and write down a few phone numbers of things that are written under 'aluga-se' (for rent). I have to say, it is a little bit scary to think about lots of phone calling and setting up appointments to view places in my 3rd language....

incidentally, I am watching some passionate kissing going on in the courtyard between a man who must be about the age of my father and a girl who is probably my age. Not to fault them--it would be a good day to stay in bed and....right.

LBA-ECO

This week I have been participating in the LBA-ECO conference in Brasilia, Brasil. I have been staying with my friend Jennifer, which has vastly improved upon the alternative of staying in a hotel room by oneself.

My presentation took place this morning, and was very well received by the somewhat intimidating group of academic colleagues that were also presenting in my section. I have many reflections about the international research community, but I think it pretty much suffices to say that we are a group of rather odd birds. Some painful presentations that lacked cohesion, some stellar presentations that really make you want to be an academic, and everything in between.

The most important message to take from this posting is that you should rest assured that even though the glaciers may be melting, the oceans warming, and the climate changing, there is a very dedicated group of researchers that are working on saving you from yourselves, at least if you live in Brazil. Since we all know that deforestation in Brazil is the single most important factor responsible for sending the world into a downward spiral ;)

"O que está fazendo uma gatinha como voce na praia solzinha?" (otherwise entitled: the most humorous moment of my wknd)

Ok. So, Saturday, I am sitting alone on a beach without any reading material pondering what the hell I am doing alone in the nation of Brazil. Minding my own business, exposing my (comparatively) extremely white body to the beating rays of the (not-quite) equatorial sun.

A Brazilian man in a speedo power-walks determinedly past me--I pay him no mind. On his way back down the beach, however, he speaks. "O que está fazendo uma gatinha como voce na praia solzinha?" (Translation: "What is a kitten like yourself doing alone on the beach?") If I had had an ounce of wit, I would have responded: "Eu soamente estou esperando até um tigre forte como voce me leva para sua casa" (Translation: "I am but waiting for a strong tiger like yourself to take me home to his house") I am, unfortunately, not witty enough to say this with a straight face, and fortunately not--for he may very well have taken me at my word.

Brazilian man proceeds by offering to sunscreen my back; I allow him this indulgence which he enjoys a bit too much. He then sits down a little too close to me and begins to make conversation--I'm from rio, why are you here by yourself, yadda yadda--and then: "Lhe posso dar um bezinho?" (May I kiss you?) An innocent enough question, to which I respond "Não pode, não" or, NO you may not. He takes the hint, and shortly thereafter leaves me alone with lingering kisses on the cheek. Perhaps I should count it a potential missed opportunity to have ended my latest stint of celibacy---but I think it's better written off as the most amusing moment of my weekend.

Colocando os pés na terra da FLONA Tapajós

On Friday, I had the opportunity to visit several communities from which the data for my master's research were collected. Below, you see our mode of transportation from our bigger boat to the riverbank.....
Ailton, my guide from the IPAM office in Santarém, enjoyed telling the households we visited with that this was my opportunity to "colocar os pés na terra" (get my feet on the ground) and to not just work with numbers, And, indeed, it was.



Here, you see the beaches of the Tapajós river during the dry season.....


And, below---well, self explanatory. They killed it because, well, it is poisonous (supposedly). They were quite proud of the number they did on it.



It was our good luck that brought us upon this family that was fishing on the way to our third village--we subsequently offered to pay them for the fish and we feasted on them for lunch. Below, you see me (unsuccessfully) trying to extricate a very spiny fish from a net.