Forum Social Pan Amazonico

HOJE TEM CONSCIENCIA ROOTS palco principal no V Fórum Social Pan-Amazônico no parque da cidade de Santarém a partir das 21h.

Vai ser massa!!!!!!

It is rainy season!!

I just heard a small flock os black-bellied tree-ducks flying over the house. Rainy season has officially started!! I better get my roof fixed.

Forum Social Pan Amazonico

It has just started!! representatives of various social movements are gathered on a beach in town to express themselves about various issues e.g. building of dams in the Amazon, agrarian reform, women rights, indigenous and Afro-descendants issues and politics in general. A lot more will be carried through the next days in Santarem city park. Get more info and updates at http://www.forumsocialpanamazonico.org/











pix: Vitor Peroig

Santarem begins the rain

Rainy season in Santarem

Piranhas are...

click to access website

...often neglected by natives, but whoever comes to visit the Amazon have them as a great attraction and never misses the opportunity to taste them, with manioc flour and tucupi of course.

Fishing piranha at maica

fish barbecue

Fabricio, Mike and a black piranha

bone gunting

*featuring Saba, Mike and Fabricio aka Amazon dinosaur bone hunter

Less wind in the Amazon, less water too, less forest

Officially rainy season started today. Well I did not hear yet Black-bellied-tree ducks flying over the river at night, when I do it then it is official!!

The fact is that this dry season I windsurfed a lot less than last year. I remember that my 45th birthday party took 12 days. This year only 8 days. I hated it.
Well, I had a lot less friends asking to help them launch their kitesurf and that is good, no complaints!

Last year my sail was 6.5m. This year 7.5 and now a 8.2m.

There is got to be something wrong in the Amazon. The extremes are getting more extreme and as a windsurfer i paid the price. that is totally unfair.

Amazon River turtles

They are under threat!!((Podocnemis expansa). They used to nest in front of my place and all along the Tapajos River.
Celivaldo Carneiro had to travel for half a day to register this amazing scene.

Many boats have been caught with them. Lots of members of the upper class eat it. We know very little about them and they are driven into extinction. The Tapajos hydro-dams might contribute to it.

"Tempo de Espera" Sebastiao Tapajos

Sebastiao Tapajos just released a new CD. I had a chance to listen to it several times and I do recommend it several times too.
2 my surprise, he chose one of my photographs to illustrate the cover.
Enjoy it

Tempo de Espera

Remanescente de uma geração de violonistas brasileiros de projeção internacional precedido no início da atividade profissional pelos cariocas Luiz Bonfá (1922 - 2001) e Baden Powell (1937 - 2000), deste tendo sido amigo e dos dois tendo merecido elogiosas declarações, o paraense Sebastião Tapajós, 66 anos, criou na música instrumental, como solista, a singularidade dele. Compõe muito, grava muito e frequentemente divide palco e discos com outros instrumentistas. Apesar da preferência pelo instrumental, gosta também de trabalhar com intérpretes vocais.Uma nova safra é o que ele vai lançar em um novo CD e no correspondente show, ambos intitulados "Tempo de Espera", em Belém, quarta-feira (10), no Teatro do Centro Cultural Brasil- Estados Unidos – CCBEU.

No show, como fez para o CD, Sebastião Tapajós tocará sozinho e em formações diversas. Essas formações irão do duo ao quinteto, com os paraenses Ney Conceição, contrabaixista, Márcio Jardim, percussionista, que tocam no CD e, pela primeira vez com Sebastião Tapajós, Diego Xavier, ao cavaquinho, e Patrícia Rabelo, cantando. Ney Conceição é um dos músicos com quem Tapajós mais gosta de tocar, e, como a recíproca é verdadeira, virá do Rio de Janeiro, onde reside, chegando a Belém terça-feira, apenas para se apresentar no dia seguinte com o violonista e parceiro de muitas composições. Márcio Jardim integra o Trio Manari, com o qual Tapajós e Ney terminaram de gravar em Belém, em outubro, um CD, que está em fase de mixagem e masterização no Rio.

No palco, destaque para Patrícia Rabelo

Antes do CD "Tempo de Espera", Márcio já havia gravado o álbum discográfico duplo "Sebastião Tapajós / Cordas do Tapajós". Diego Xavier é neto de Vaíco, um violonista paraense admirado por Sebastião. Herdou do avô o talento para a música. Toca violão, bandolim e cavaquinho, integrando o grupo Charme do Choro. Além de fazer, estuda e leciona música. Foi convidado para tocar na vaga aberta pelo violonista santareno Derek, discípulo de Tapajós, e que no CD toca cavaquinho, mas, motivado pelo mestre, está em Portugal, estudando violão e fazendo shows. A participação de Patrícia Rabelo no espetáculo, igualmente, tem razão de ser nas qualidades dela como cantora. Não por acaso Patrícia vem arrebatando prêmios de melhor intérprete vocal em festivais de música. Com o pianista Paulo José Campos de Melo, ela gravou o primeiro CD, a ser lançado.

O repertório do show "Tempo de Espera", todo de autoria de Tapajós, será tão diversificado quanto o do CD, com chorinhos, sambas de diversos andamentos, baião, canção e até valsa. Patrícia Rabelo cantará entre outras a música título do show e do CD, no qual o intérprete vocal é Pery Ribeiro. "Tempo de Espera" é a única composição gravada no disco que tem letra, criada por um amigo de Tapajós, o empresário José Maria Barale.

http://www.orm.com.br/amazoniajornal/interna/default.asp?modulo=829&codigo=498678

Rubber History

Art: Naldo

M/S Amazonia has got her name in History for a trip she may not wanted to do, but it was not up to her. Linking your name to the first act of bio piracy makes people say bad things about you.

Captain Murray and his three partners on the same vessel never cared.

The year was 1876. Month and day can be got by playing with the same digits.
Rubber was the reason for the greatest economic boom the World would ever come to experience.

The sap that oozed from a sacred tree was in big increasing need and high priced. Iron, steel and rubber made the Triunvirat.

That was one of the reasons my grand-father and his family moved from Morocco and The Wickham from England.

Sails can not be set without the Rubber Barons underwear. The ship had been loaded with whiskey, wine, vodka, champagne and pieces of distinct puzzles from Europe to shape homes, buildings and the atmosphere in Manaus and Belem.

Passengers on and off the vessels were businessmen, musicians, prostitutes and pimps; their luggage: Cigarettes & Alcohol.

During the journey the captain’s party was interrupted by a storm. It is safer on land.
Another party is on!

My grand-parents decided to settle in a site where the rubber barons LOLs could not be heard and rubber trees can grow.

Wickham’s picked Santarem. It is easier to ship bird feathers to supply his mother’s hat shop in London. Good business shipping staffed wildlife stuff too.

His wife Violet can work as a teacher to the septic tanks. Her father was a Londoner publisher. Reading was her cup of tea.

The party was louder and louder and screams of slaves being slashed, raping women, Indians and cabocos cries of pain and anger were part of it.

His illustration about rubber tree worth more than Dali’s, Da Vinci’s and Goethe’s combined.
Hooker, the notorious at Kew did not notice Henry had drawn the seed pod to oval, but he had learn from Spruce the number of seeds in one and he wanted to have 70.000 of them.

At this point the Wickham had a small graveyard where they sometimes pray for family members that had succumbed.
Violet may have thought about hanging out again at Regent Square and make a party.
God saves the Queen!

Piranhas

Illustration: Naldo


Piranhas

Don’t swallow when you are told that piranhas can eat you on a dish.

So far, I saw only one single picture of such horror show and four friends on a small boat played secondary role and the captain was the star.

They had had a happy fishing morning under the humid and hot Amazon climate when they opted for taking a break. On the way, the engine stops! Machines break too!

Another crew member checks damages made by Pink Dolphins and Piranhas on the net at the sounding of a knife in use at the stern that joins melancholic calls of Anis, caracaras and flycatchers.

With the precision of a surgeon the captain makes it run again. He rubs out the black blood from his hand with a piece of cloth previously used in sorts of the same surgery. Meanwhile his new boat mate was just docking at the river bank.

It wasn’t the captain’s favorite spot.
The captain was eager to enjoy a fresh fish meal and a compulsory equatorial siesta. The engine was at rest and between spinning the engine handle again and move the boat with a stick from the hot roof to his favorite tree, he decides for the latter.
With his feet soles literally burning on the tinned top, he moves the boat some five meters up.

The best medicine when you are extremely wet of sweat, your hands dirty of diesel and your feet burning like a match is a deep dip into the Amazon. But the captain never read the prescription fully.

At the bottom, the only side effect listed was: Don’t take it if you have schools of piranhas eating rest of fish below. It may kill you.
The captain was held by the muddy like a steak on a fork. No cure!
The boat’s name was B/M Piranha. Isn’t ironic?

Fordlandia

Sr Eymar and his wife Cecilia

An old man when a boy was stamped three sepia-toned pictures that he carries with today in the safest pocket of his mind, after almost a century has travelled by.

He had to use flash to shoot a king-sized table placed on a dim dining room shouldering many piles of money at the freak of his family.



Although the object of his second picture was ten kilometers away, he did not need to change lens neither use a tripod. Light was good enough.
The subject was 2.5 million acre of forest that those piles of money had bought, except that burning in fire now.
- The picture that made the hell look like a spa will turn out just fine with the 50mm used before to freeze his family, friends and scenic scenes.

Weeks later he was fishing on a canoe. He could see huge palm trees planted by his grand-father blocking view to his home at the sound of a noise he had heard hours before.
He paddled out a few times attempting to anticipate the whole picture without success.

Now, on the ground and scared like never before he clicks the wedding of Lake Ormoc’s vapor and the smoke of the forest he dreamed one day go hunting with his uncle. David Riker* was a witness.

-"Nice couple but no future." Stupefied cabocos thought.
A large barge came into scene, carrying people and prefab parts, many were taking back in caskets.
Fordland was under construction!

At Surucua**, my friends go hunting, farming and fishing. Our cook-book was thick. There were different activities always at hand. Like Piracaia*** under the moonlight with friends.
“Variety is the spice of life”. Shaky said.

At Fordland, tapping different sides of the same tree was quite boring; tapping same side of 500 hundred rubber trees makes your soul struggle; No cook book was needed to print the three recipes. Alcoholic drinks are not allowed and the bar closes at 9pm.
You have to watch what you see and never neglect what you can not.

Dedicated to Dothidella ulei.
* Confederate who led M/S Ormoc up the Tapajos River to Bela Vista, later called Fordlandia.
** Small village up the Tapajos River; my birthplace
*** Party on the beach normally at night

Illustration: Naldo
Pix & tex: Gil Serique

Cock of the rock by Joao Quental

Cock of the rocks are amongst my very favourite species of birds and Joao Quental one of the greatest photographers and nature belovers that I know!!

He is a literature teacher in Rio de Janeiro and uses his time also to share his great knowledge as a photographer and nature enjoyment with Brazilians and visitors from the four corners of the world.
Congrats and thanks you for the great pix Joao!!!

Gil Serique

http://jquental.multiply.com/