FSO - Remembrance

I didn’t think I had a shoot out this week – my 52nd weekly post and I was going to skip it. Then looking back of my past year, reflecting on my 60th year I re-read this post and decided that even though you may have read it before posting again was good for me. So A Final Salute to Luisa -

Monday, August 10, 2009

A Final Salute :

Luisa Mannchen - January 26, 1922 to August 4, 2009

My last entry the day after Luisa died was pretty emotional. I appreciate and thank those who left me messages of comfort.

I have spent the past 5 days since then helping her sons go through all the things a person leaves around their home, in the closets, the dressers and throughout the cupboards. Things that at one time or the other seems important, but to us doing the sorting is hard to see why? or what? or when it could have been important.

My first thought was, Oh-my-Gawd! but by the time I had washed and folded and bagged just her cloths, I had regained my respect for her. The white shirts where with the white shirts, the bright colors with bright colors, tee shirts were separate of satin shirts, winter was separate of summer and night wear of day wear. I would never be able to find anything to wear if my cloths were that organized but now I know how she could go back to her room and emerge 30 minutes later in complete makeup, all dressed up with color coordinated earrings, wrist watch and handbag. (She came to despair that she would never be able to get me out of my blue jeans and tennis shoes, with my one watch and always brown handbag that my camera fits into.)

I have met Luisa’s two sons, one almost 2 years older and one a little less than 2 years younger than I, only a few times over the past 20 years. One lives in Florida has been in Houston maybe 5 times that I know of in those years and the younger one lives here in Houston and has been to my home with his mother 4 or five times for Thanksgiving dinners and a few other occasions, but I wouldn’t say we knew each other just have mutual relationships to Luisa.  But this week we have talked and laughed and compared notes on what we each know of her life. We sat and looked through shoe box after shoe box of photos of her and her mother, and aunts and pictures of the boys as children.  I finally went to her computer and began to scan in some photos. (Which you are now enjoying)

Raised by a single mother and aunt, Luisa was very modern in her thinking. She was one class short of a degree in biology from the U of H, drove at 17, owned her own car while at university (a woman in university in the 40s), loved to dance and during WWII drove to Galveston to meet the soldiers on leave from Ellington AFB to “dance all night” and finally met Howard while he was stationed there for a short time.

Their marriage took place over a year later, children were not for 4 and 7 more years, “… so we had time to know one another first …”. Knowing who she was and what she wanted.   Often finding it difficult to accept less. Former beauty queen, demanding the most from her friends, from her children, disappointed at not having any grandchildren, lover of books, and music, and lately internet searches.

 

 

       

87 years of life, of loving, questioning, traveling, fighting the norm, and just being true always to Luisa.

It doesn’t happen often …

In this life, out of a 52 week year I have maybe 6 weeks that are really busy. It happens the most often when I am traveling or getting ready to travel and this week was no exception. In the past – when I had a life – the spring was always this busy. When I worked I was always the company’s ‘mother’s march against birth defects’  instigator / coordinator – I was always taking a class at the university – I was in the accounting departments so we were closing the books which meant long hours – I was doing my own taxes (first husband owned a business in which I kept the books and did the taxes)  –  in a later time I also started playing soccer in the spring – I was an office manager so there were attorney retreats – and a completely separate list of extra to-dos.  So by the time mid-April came and went I was one tired and happy puppy …. you see I love being busy, the more I have to do the more I get done.

When we moved here and my ‘retirement’ became official, my list of things to do shrank and shrank again as I put taking Portuguese classes, then the post-grad course was finished and behind me, and time - in the best of descriptions – DRAGS. This year I can’t believe it is already March. I have been unusually busy. In January the computer crashed then crashed again, throwing my life into chaos; new operating systems, finding and reloading programs, doing it all over again on the second crash and I then deciding to go to windows 7 and trying to make programs work that haven’t yet caught up to 7.  I am still not in full recovery but today I am caught up with two months of my little accounting job, I have sent emails to a few friends that haven’t heard from me in months (have to tell them I will be in Houston and available for laughing lunches). I have cleaned out my closets and drawers making ready for my new cloths (anticipated shopping).

We had 40 people for a cookout (churrasco) on Saturday (happy birthday to me) and 4 family members stayed over for breakfast on Sunday – I cooked for both occasions along with a churrasceiro who cooked the meat.  Last week was shopping for dishes – we threw out the plastic ones - 20 years old. I needed more table cloths for the outside tables – fabric. I needed to shop here for what I take there as presents – and there I will shop for what I bring back – just a fact of life for an expat. So along with the party on Saturday this week was wonderful.

Camillo left for Rio to get some rest – he worked like a dog putting up tents because it finally decided to rain this week and balloons and cleaning the wine cellar – I will join him on Wednesday, then travel on Sunday and will hit Houston running on Monday morning….. can’t wait.

Silent readers and shots in the dark

I suppose I could say that it takes a lot of courage to post a blog. To put your thoughts and feelings right out there in cyberspace to be read by thousands of unknowns, strangers, thousands of possible readers that don’t know me.  I say thousands because my stat counter is a ways over 15K hits – but lets just for the sake of argument say that only half are actual hits…. the others represent my postings, readers going to the slide shows or other links then coming back to go to another link, one hit being counted many times. A good percentage of these 7k or so readers are unfamiliar to me. They read and move on, looking for who knows what, rarely leaving anything behind to mark their passing except a number on the stat counter and a place in line on the live feed.

The majority of the comments I received are from regular visitors and when they do leave a comment it is positive, encouraging, and you can follow their link back to their blog and see who it is that is making a comment, say something to them in the way of thanks – sort of a blog world courtesy stop. I always post the comments I receive, (well they are positive so why not) except when from a commercial blog site, or there is no open link to tell me who is commenting.

Today I received one of the later types. Before going to lunch I read the comment which caused a slight lurch in my stomach because I so hate to be disliked by even a stranger, I tried to follow the link to see who this was – a blank profile page was all I found – so I deleted the comment and went  to lunch with family (Brazilians all, that I love and admire). During lunch I brought this up for discussion – we wont go into that – it is beside the point. But this gave me opportunity to think out loud about the content of the comment, and what I said that offended him so greatly.

In Response to my ‘My Town’ post on February 18, this shot in the dark was made …..”Picture a Brazilian visiting New York, and in the subway he noticed that the station name is Franklin D. Roosevelt. He never heard of this guy, and after some research he finds out that Roosevelt, as US President, declared war to Japan. He concluded that Americans must be dumb to elect and honor a war loving guy. Your "research" on Getulio Vargas lead you to as absurd conclusions as of the Brazilian in New York…..”

So here I am putting my thought and feelings back out into cyberspace, risking further humiliation and ridicule because I have something to say about my blogging.

1. I do not profess to be an intellectual - As I explain in my profile, I am someone far from home. I have limited ability to share my thoughts in the town in which I live. So I write my thoughts out for strangers. This is the sad truth.
2. I do not make my living nor am I in any way a research guru – add one and two together and you are likely to get surface information only – if you want to know more do your own research.  I will say here that I sited the page for this ‘research’ so if anyone wanted to read the whole thing it was easily available – this site was pretty basic. It has 1 or two paragraphs on the election history and also a small paragraph or two about the social good – the train system for one and the unions to protect labor for another, that Vargas pushed through.
3. From the mouth of a Brazilian, “Brazilians have a love - hate relationship with this President. Some love him for the good he did and some hate his methods”
4. From Camillo who loves Brazil unconditionally says - (and I think him right and would go into this with a 50 page fully sited dissertation if I weren’t just writing a blog) – he says that this is no different than those that vote for Chaves, or Silvio Berlusconi or for GW Bush…. or many, many of our political leaders of today (ours’ as in the world’s) whose true character is there, staring us in the face before the election and that let us down, kicking us in the teeth with the truth, once elected.
5. And not to prolong this argument but FDR – Kept the American people out of the war from 1939 until we were attached by Japan in late ‘41 – the comments made are by the shot in the dark reader are valid but to equate FDR or Vargas is a stretch – Maybe using GW or Nixon would have worked better.

To be really fair though – I normally talk about my feeling – in this there can be no right or wrong – I don’t write about religion, or abortion or other culturally sensitive issues and if I were going to change this, to make any political type statement, I should have taken the time to write one more line in the fun-loving FSO and given a list of good Vargas did in his years in power. So after a day of thought and reflection I don’t have any problem with the comment and am now sorry I deleted it…. but do still feel that if a reader feels strongly about something I’ve said and wants to add to, or contradict, to help me in understanding my new home, then I would like very much to be given their name and an email address so I can respond….. not just feel I’ve been - shot in the dark.

Friday Shoot-Outs / The Garden - texture and color

This week the ‘My Town’ Friday Shoot out gang celebrates its 52nd week. There is a little debate about which week it actually started but I know for sure this is my 50th FSO post. So we celebrate. For this week’s topic we get to choose our favorite topic from the past year…. I loved textures and circles and gardens and …. With a blog title of ‘Flowers and More’ what choice do I really have? I wanted texture, I wanted color and by showing flowers in my garden I think I got both. All of these photos are from the garden at one time or the other throughout the year. I hope you enjoy the show as much as I do the colors in my garden.

My town Friday Shoot-out / A Town Plaza

The Praça Presidente Getúilo Vargas – as you can tell right away a plaza is Praça in Portuguese – is in the central part of Nova Friburgo. I found the name of the Praça by enlarging my Google Map on the left side-panel of ‘Flowers’, then out of curiosity did a web search to see just who Getúilo Vargas was that he was honored to have the plaza named after him. (does that sentence sound right?) –

Wait until you hear this. “... Vargas was the governor of Rio Grande do Sul in 1928…. he ran for president in 1930 and lost…. then started a revolution to get into office. …. upon becoming ‘president’ he eliminated constitutional checks on the executive power, deprived the once-dominant state parties of public function, and gained control over political …. Vargas had made himself a dictator over Brazil….” and now get this, “in 1932 another revolution took him out of office but in 1934 he was elected by a ‘Constituent assembly’ for a four year term…. in 1937 he proclaimed the ESTADO Novo (new state) which was like a European fascist dictatorship. ‘It imposed censorship and relied on a powerful secret police apparatus….” (http://www.thenagain.info)

I am not sure why but I have this credulous feeling in the back of my mind that he is still honored in Brazil. What is this that Brazilians are thinking…. or don’t they know who this man was?

Boy I got way off track…. the Praça is on the location of the old railroad station (1873-1960) and if you look at the photos you can see how the two tracks ran on either side of what is now the ‘north’ bus station that services only local Friburgo busses. The plaza is well maintained by the city. There are benches for sitting under the old trees, paths for strolling, play area for the younger children, on Saturday and some holidays there is a street market with locally made crafts, there is a water fountain, a cabana, statues of famous people (yep Vargas) an area for concerts, the tourist information center and, most important, an ice cream store right across the street. Enjoy the photos.