Me and two TVA goddesses.
Aurora, Momo and Mr. Man, reunited after a close call the week before Christmas with a motor vehicle for Ms. Momo.
I’m fairly certain that Brazilians are some of the friendliest and most open people I have yet to live among.
Several things about my day today (Sunday) inspired this posting.
1) While standing at the bus stop at 7:30AM, it starts to rain. Two other people are standing at the bus stop: an older man, and a teenage girl in a dress…perhaps on her way to church. As it begins to drizzle, the older man puts up his umbrella—he watches me put up my hood on my rain shell, and glances to the girl, who has long, dark hair…and no umbrella. Without a second thought, he moves towards her and covers her with his umbrella—they engage each other in conversation as if this were the most natural thing in the world until the bus arrives.
2) I arrive at the enormous Sunday handicraft market downtown feeling a little hungover and not so excited about the sea of people I am about to dive into. After passing stall upon stall of similar arrays of jewelry, I finally stop to start making Christmas purchases at one that struck my fancy, tired of stepping on people and sweating, en masse. I’m standing there, deliberating, and this woman comes up to me and says, in Portuguese, “Excuse me, but where are you from?” (Yes, I am still really white and I still have blue eyes. Occasionally I sport sunglasses and this helps a little and people don’t notice as much). I tell her I’m from the states, and she switches to English. “Oh good…because I’m going for an exchange to
She airs some of her apprehension to me about her study grant (something about social elements of governance in
3) This evening I’m at the Carrefour, our neighborhood grocery chain. I’m stocking up on bottled water—the idea of waking up thirsty in the middle of the night without bottled water makes me extremely anxious and has made me always keep at least a one-bottle reserve. Because, knowing myself, I am aware that if presented with the choice between drinking tap water in the middle of the night and going thirsty, I would readily gulp down a liter of tap water and all the potential impurities contained therein. So I’ve tried my best to be intentional about keeping bottle water reserves to continue the excellent intestinal health I have thus far enjoyed. Right. I’m buying water; young, attractive Brazilian man passes me in the beer isle and says “what’s up?” in English.
(By this point I’m wondering if it is readily apparent to everyone in the world that I am foreign today. I guess at this point I did have on my Carrharts, a tanktop and a pair of Chacos—not exactly average Brazilian woman grocery store-going attire.)
I wind up in line behind him, and he asks me in good English where I am from. I tell him I’m from the states, and he tells me that he studied and worked in
I did get spit on by a man out a bus window today with such excellent (or terrible) aim that I nearly shouted at him. But I suppose I am willing to put up with a lack of inhibition with respect to public urination and spitting for the related lack of inhibition that is manifested in Brazilian curiosity and friendliness.
Answer: 6. Two Germans, Three Brazilians, an Austrian, a Guatemalteca, an American, and the Colombian Birthday Girl.
From left to right: Graça, Suzie, Ehidee
On Saturday evening we celebrated Ehidee’s birthday in a diverse array of Portuguese accents over some Birthday beers, and some traditional Brazilian guitar music which then transitioned into eighties covers when they ran out of Brazilian favorites. The group was quite an interesting mix: The Brazilian-born son-of-two-Germans spent most of the evening trying to elicit some sort of reaction from Carmen, the Guatemalteca. In addition to taking advantage of every opportunity to have his picture taken with the two of us (see below).
The Austrian owner of a Brazilian microbrewery was quite happy-go-lucky, and I learned much about the .5% of the Brazilian beer market which is comprised of microbreweries. He confirmed my assessment of the fact that there are, in practicality, no imported beers in
The younger German spent some time complaining about his headache, but seemed to be enjoying texting enthusiastically (rather more than conversing with the diverse array of female company). At one point Ehidee turned to me and said: “¡Me encantan los hombres que prefieran jugar con sus celulares que conversar con la gente!” (“Don’t you just love men that prefer playing with their cellphones to actually talking to people?”) I promptly burst into laughter and responded “¡Como no!”(“How could you not?”) He did not look up.
Ehidee had already informed me about Suzie’s same-sex preferences, but Suzie also decided to inform me herself. The conversation went as follows (a rough translation from Portuguese).
Suzie: “I want to tell you something…..I’m a lesbian.”
Me: “I know. No big deal—she (Ehidee) told me.”
Suzie: “At first when I saw the rainbow flag in your room, I thought….”
Me: (laughter)
Suzie: “But then I figured out it was just a peace flag.”
(laughter)
Suzie: “It’s ok: I’ve already been with an American.”
Me: “And?”
Suzie: “It was boring. The only thing she knew how to say in Portuguese was “você e muito bela—“it got old.”
Lessons of the evening:
Don’t hand your camera to a drunk German/Brazilian unless you are willing to relinquish it for a while.
If you’re going to try to seduce someone of either sex, you’d best learn how to tell them something in their native tongue other than that they are attractive.
Do not be fooled. The fruit below may appear to be pear-like, but it is a Goiaba, or Guava. It is one of the most delightful fruits ever, at least in my humble opinion. There are red and white varieties in the grocery store here, and they are both fantastic. The red variety provides for a lovely aesthetic experience while munching, but the white is tastier, I think. I especially like the crunchy seeds surrounded by sweet inner core of goodnes, with a tart, granny-smith-like exterior 'mantle'. If you do not already feel good about Guavas, note that they are high in fiber and in Vitamin C!
(This one is for my Dad—who I fear, if he didn’t know me as well as he does, might be convinced that I really believe that everything in life is economically quantifiable.)
It is 2015: a sunny October Saturday in an urban neighborhood of
They are meandering down a path in a picturesque wooded area. They all yell for the dog as he bounds off after a rabbit—the children play tag and roll in the leaves. The father summons the children (ages 8 and 10) over to talk to them about the stately, historic red oak that borders the path (with a small plaque designed by a Virginia Tech student), saying: “Come here and let me tell you about this tree!” The boy, age 8, pipes up knowingly: “Dad, that’s not a tree! It’s a CARBON stock!” Confusion flickers across the father’s face as his mind takes him back to freshman biology lecture, most of which he realized then that he had slept through. He rumples his child’s hair and says: “Well, I guess you are right, son. It is a carbon stock.”
Return to the present with me. This weekend I have been translating a document into English by a colleague here at the University for the Woods Hole people to take to the global conference on climate change taking place soon in
But indeed, what are our options for visualizing something as vast as a forest resource? Our new technologies and incredible amount of knowledge allow us to predict and quantify the movement of something so intangible as Carbon—something that escapes into the atmosphere when we set fire to it, gets tied up in trees, powers our vehicles, and somehow contributes to the warming of our planet over time.
I suppose, at a personal level, I question our ability to balance this view of quantification of the earth’s services while still retaining the wonder that we experience when we walk in the forest, and the rich historical tradition of peoples that have, for centuries, been dependent on the forest.
Ecologists and economists both think in green, at least with respect to forests. As an economist, the idea that I could go walk around in the forest if I wanted to is worth something to me. As is the idea that there are people still running around with bones in their noses and hunting still-present monkeys with poison blow darts. And what I would or have actually paid to do these things is probably the best measure that we have for what they are worth, in terms of their ‘use value’. But is that really all there is to it?
How do we keep humanity seeing green, feeling green and doing green? And I don’t mean merely appreciating the fact that the rainforest ties up carbon that would otherwise be contributing to global warming (and threatening the long-term viability of our race). Not just realizing, with a warm sense of satisfaction, that our annual contribution to the Nature Conservancy gives us a 10% discount if we should ever want to go fly fishing in
When I am able detach myself from economic valuation mode, if you will, I am able to think about my own experience and how it has led me to thinking in green (economic terms) in a belief that this will leave us with the prospect of being able to see green, feel green, and do green well into the future. I find that my wanting to learn to think in green is a direct result of my taking part in, for many years, the more tangible, perceptual and emotional greens (seeing, feeling, and doing).
As a child, I would climb the hill behind my house to watch the sunset from the top of a red cedar tree. I would wander the ridge, wondering what the enormous piles of stone were that were covered in leaves—I used to think they were Indian burials until someone wiser informed me that they were the stones that had been removed during the plowing of the fields, which I found a very practical explanation. I remember wondering what I was going to tell my parents after I wrapped our family canoe around a tree in the
Insect and leaf collecting in Mary Ann Angleberger's Biology class. Riding my horse alone in fields full of cows. Hiking down the
I could go on—but here is my simple point: there is a history and a future associated with every landscape. A history of natural evolution which is enough to inspire belief in God among cultures everywhere. A human history that shaped and was shaped by the landscape. A personal history—the history created as a result of the time that I took to interact with my landscape—to let it shape who I am.
I have chosen to embrace economic logic, to believe in the power of thinking in green. I have not, however, had to relinquish seeing, feeling, or doing green to embrace this economic paradigm. I will even argue that there is a mysterious element of synergy—that because I allow myself to explore the limits of economic paradigms through my own experience, I am forced to continually challenge myself to think critically and creatively about the ways in which we can think, in green, for the welfare of our own and for that of future generations.
The fact is, a hypothetical ability to visit a national park, memorization of statistics about global carbon, or how much I might be willing to pay (or have paid in actuality) to see an endangered species, are only peripherally related to what inspires me to see, feel, or do, in green. Only an actual visit—a visit to the classroom of the outdoors—will open me to being drenched by a thunderstorm or startled by a rattlesnake, to being moved to tears by a sunrise. And only this openness to change the ways in which I interact with the world through the lessons of my own experience has inspired—will inspire—these three things in me. And this, my friends, is a process that even the most creative of economists would find difficult to model or quantify.
