Art&art

You gotta 2 B high...
That is how Gabriel and Tiago primo decided to present their art.. turning Rio de Janeiro into an even more attractive city. Ricardo Moraes had a great chance to practice his photo skills.

Tapajos Hydroeletric Perplexity

According to the environmetalist Pinon Friaes, who carried studies in several other damns built in the Amazon Region, one of the innevitable impact of the platforms will be in the Tapajos river water colour, causing the disapearance of the Meeting of the Waters, one of the most beautiful phenomena in the world.

Maica: a Floodplain paradise under risk

Water buffalos literally destroy an ecossystem that host an amazing array of species, from fish to insects, mammals to birds and insecta.

Bobby Schenk in a visit in the 80's.

It is totally wrong!!!!

The flooplain area east of Santarem is under serious threat!

Actually only a few floodplain areas(they represent no more then 5% pf the entire Amazon basin) are protected in the Amazon, thanks to late Dt. Marcio Ayres(from wcs, former new york zoological socienty).

Inicially heavy explotation had taken place:

An infinite number of insects, birds and mammals were taken to feed museums and private collections all over the world;

Birds feathers to supply hat shops!! Manatee fat to light London and other european cities. Skins for shoes and dresses almost drove Jaguars, Giat Otters, Cayman and an several other mammal species into extinction. In the 30ths the japanese replace huge areas by jute plantations...

Currently, Water Buffalo and cattle are the major threat.

The chinese have reversed their diet previously 2% beef and 90% rice.

The species below and and infinite number of others had a bit time to recover and live and peace, as the water goes down peace is broken again: Buffalos are takne back into pradise and hell takes its place.

The fact is that we should apply the ecological model of thinking, studying and learning more about the environment and create a chance that future generations can interact with it, so far this possibility is quite dicy.

Hydroelectric Inventory for the Tapajós Basin

Report on the Hydroelectric Inventory for the Tapajós Basin

Hydroelectric inventories in Brazil are prepared as the initial step toward construction of series of dams. They identify the "best" sites for damming, initially in engineering terms, and then incorporating cost/benefit analyses, and lastly some environmental indicators.

The Tapajós River is one of the principal tributaries of the Amazon. Inventories have already been carried out for its upper tributaries, the Teles Pires and Juruena Rivers, where multiple dams are also being planned.

1. Seven large dams are being planned for the Tapajós -- São Luiz do Tapajós (6133 MW installed capacity), Jatobá (2338 MW), and Chocorão (3336 MW) on the Tapajós River, and Cachoeira do Caí (802 MW), Jamanxim (881 MW), Cachoeira dos Patos (528 MW), and Jardim do Ouro (227 MW) on its tributary, the Jamanxim River. The total installed capacity would be 14,245 MW (see number two below).

2. The initial plan would be to build the São Luiz Dam just upstream from a series of rapids (near the village of Pimental), diverting most of the river flow via an artificial canal to the power house. The canal would be built within the boundaries of the Amazônia National Park. The objective of this design would be to "preserve" the rapids, but this would be difficult considering the huge scale of the planned construction. The electrical energy regulatory agency, ANEEL requested a study be carried out regarding the alternative of building the dam near the community of São Luiz, downstream from the rapids, which would flood them. It would also mean a greater area of the national park would be affected, but in turn the installed capacity would increase to 6400 MW. In the next step, feasibility studies will be carried out, which will further study the two alternatives.

3. The total area flooded by the seven dams would be 3084.85 km2, an enormous area of the rainforest. The areas flooded by each of the dams would be: São Luiz 784.81 km2; Jatoba 646.3 km2; Chocorão 616.23 km2; Cachoeira do Caí 420 km2; Jamanxim 74.45 km2; Cachoeira dos Patos 116.5 km2; and Jardim do Ouro 426.06 km2.

4. According to the studies, the total number of people directly affected by the dams would be relatively low - 2668 (São Luiz would displace 977 pessoas, Jatoba 1303, Chocorão 18, Cachoeira do Caí 150, and Jardim do Ouro 200). The other dams would supposedly not displace anybody, which is difficult to believe. These numbers do not include impacts, for example, in the community of São Luiz, which being downstream from the dam, is not considered as "affected", even though it would be close to the dam itself. Obviously, if the dam were built downstream from the rapids, the São Luiz community would be displaced.

5. There would be important impacts on indigenous communities - São Luiz would affect the Munduruku and Apiaká communities of Pimental, Akaybãe, e Remédio. The Chocorão Dam would be built within Munduruki indigenous lands, and would flood 121.1 km2 of the Munduruku Reserve, and the Sai Cinza, São Martinho, and Boca do Igarapé Pacu indigenous communities would be within 2.5 km of the dam, and would be severely impacted.

6. There would be other important impacts on conservation units. A total of at least 1,318 km2, or 42.7% of the total area flooded by the dams would be areas guaranteed permanent protection by law:

- São Luiz - even with the design upstream from the rapids, the reservoir would flood 99 km2 of the Amazônia National Park, besides causing additional impacts by the fact that construction and the worksite would be inside the park's limits. The option to build the dam downstream from the rapids would flood an additional 49 km2 of the national park. It would also flood 0.78 km2 of the Itaituba I National Forest and 204 km2 of the Itaituba II National Forest (total protected areas flooded 303.8 km2, or 352.8 km2 if it were built downstream from the rapids.

- Jatoba - 27.5 km2 of the Itaituba I National Forest

- Chacorão - 100.4 km2 of the Juruena National Park

- Cachoeira do Caí - 156.9 km2 of the Jamanxim National Park, 68 km2 of the Itaituba I National Forest, 204.7 km2 of the Itaituba II National Forest.

- Jamanxim - Jamanxim National Park, 85 km2

- Cachoeira dos Patos - Jamanxim National Park, 90 km2; Jamanxim National Forest, 3.6 km2.

- Jardim do Ouro - Jamanxim National Forest, 147 km2, Altamira National Forest, 10 km2.

Protected areas would suffer multiple impacts: The Itaituba I National Forest would be partially flooded by three of the dams (São Luiz, Jatobá, and Cachoeira do Caí, a total of 9,632 ha. The Itaituba II National Forest would be partially flooded by the São Luiz and Cachoeira do Caí Dams, losing 40,836 ha (9,27% of its total size). The Jamanxim National Park would have 24.204 ha flooded by Cachoeira do Caí, Jamanxim and Cachoeira dos Patos dams. And, the Jamanxim National Forest would have 15,060 ha flooded by Cachoeira dos Patos and Jardim do Ouro dams.

7. The total cost of the dams would be US$ 20.76 billion. São Luiz would be the most expensive (US$ 9,2 bi). Jatobá would cost $4 billion, Chocorão $4,3 billion, Cachoeira do Caí $1 billion, Jamanxim $984 million, Cachoeira dos Patos $751 million, and Jardim do Ouro $500 million.

Three Genius, three friends in 3 minds

In one time.

latest trips

CLEAN ALTERNATIVE ELECTRICAL ENERGY VIA MICRO HYDROELECTRIC TURBINES

An AMAZING IDEA!!!!!!!!!!  SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL!!!!

INDALMA, a large family small business arrived on  simultaneously with the environmental and petroleum world crises. Family members invented and patented in 2002 a hydroelectric turbine that supersedes other turbines on the national market by its simple construction, easy operation, low maintenance, low cost and operational capacity in low water sheds (minimum of 4 meters).

INDALMA works out of Santarem, population of 272.000, situated in the Lower Amazon Valley. 89% of the rural population has no access to electrical power. Presently INDALMA is negotiating with a federal government program – Light for All – to offer one phase and three phase electrical energy to isolated communities throughout the whole Amazon Region.

Since the year 2000 INDALMA has installed 80 mini hydroelectric turbines in private farms and in 45 rural communities with complete success, with minimal maintenance costs and environmental impact.

Small earth damns, at most 9 meters high, are constructed near small water supplies forming ponds or small lakes. From a concrete spillway water is supplied to turbines located at the base of the dam, which in turn activate traditional generators. From the powerhouse one phase and three phase stable energy is distributed in all directions to distances of 30 kilometers.

A local community association administers the project. People are trained to keep the spill way clean, to lubricate the turbines, to read the meters for electrical consumption, to bill the people. All profits are reverted back into community projects. Once constructed, there is very little maintenance cost.

In September 2005 the municipality of Santarem entered in partnership with INCRA, a federal land reform institute, to construct 6 mini hydroelectric plants, supplying energy to 1890 families in isolated areas of Santarem.

Elisabeth Bishop

The Fish

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled and barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
--the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly--
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
--It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
--if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels--until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

Song for the Rainy Season by Elizabeth Bishop

Song for the Rainy Season

Hidden, oh hidden
in the high fog
the house we live in,
beneath the magnetic rock,
rain-, rainbow-ridden,
where blood-black
bromelias, lichens,
owls, and the lint
of the waterfalls cling,
familiar, unbidden.
In a dim age
of water
the brook sings loud
from a rib cage
of giant fern; vapor
climbs up the thick growth
effortlessly, turns back,
holding them both,
house and rock,
in a private cloud.
At night, on the roof,
blind drops crawl
and the ordinary brown
owl gives us proof
he can count:
five times--always five--
he stamps and takes off
after the fat frogs that,
shrilling for love,
clamber and mount.
House, open house
to the white dew
and the milk-white sunrise
kind to the eyes,
to membership
of silver fish, mouse,
bookworms,
big moths; with a wall
for the mildew's
ignorant map;
darkened and tarnished
by the warm touch
of the warm breath,
maculate, cherished;
rejoice! For a later
era will differ.
(O difference that kills
or intimidates, much
of all our small shadowy
life!) Without water
the great rock will stare
unmagnetized, bare,
no longer wearing
rainbows or rain,
the forgiving air
and the high fog gone;
the owls will move on
and the several
waterfalls shrivel
in the steady sun.
Elizabeth Bishop

 

By LARRY ROHTER

Published: Saturday, August 3, 2002

Msgr. James M. Ryan, a Roman Catholic missionary from Chicago who was one of the central figures of religious and civic life in the Amazon for more than half a century, died in Chicago on July 12. He was 89 and had lived in Santarém, Brazil, since 1943.

The cause of death was cancer, according to church leaders.

As the bishop of Santarém for more than 25 years, Bishop Ryan administered the largest diocese in the world, a harsh jungle domain that, at more than 125,000 square miles, was larger than many European countries. Known popularly throughout the Amazon as Dom Tiago, he oversaw the building of clinics, schools, churches and a radio station in a part of Brazil that was often neglected by the central government 2,000 miles away.

''In 60 years as a pioneer, he acted with passion and made those who heard his voice and witnessed his commitment also feel a passion for the region,'' recalled Lucio Flávio Pinto, a native of Santarém who is editor of Amazon Agenda, the leading newsletter in the area. ''In that missionary effort, he gave the maximum of himself and respected positions that diverged from his.''

James Ryan was born in an Irish neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago on Nov. 17, 1912. He was ordained a priest in 1938 and initially taught English, speech and drama at a Roman Catholic seminary in Illinois.

But in 1943, he and three other Franciscan friars from the Middle West volunteered to go to Brazil. ''We had no idea where Santarém was,'' he said in an interview last year, ''but it was wartime, we wanted to do something, and it all seemed like a grand adventure.''

At first, he was assigned to Fordlandia, a plantation operated by the Ford Motor Company on the banks of the Tapajós River to supply rubber to the war effort. When the rubber project closed down at the end of World War II, he was asked to stay on by ecclesiastical authorities, who were chronically short of priests willing to minister in the Amazon's exhausting environment.

For more than a decade afterward, he preached and provided the sacraments to Catholics at dozens of remote chapels and churches scattered around the region, often traveling by small motorboat or even canoe. Unusually tall, at 6 foot 4, and with a strong American accent to his Portuguese that he never lost, he became one of the familiar and admired notables in the Amazon.

In 1958, he was made bishop of Santarém. A military dictatorship took power in Brazil in 1964, and in the years that followed, Bishop Ryan, a theological conservative whose views were softened by Vatican II, became known as a staunch defender of human rights and the environment, using the diocese radio station to denounce abuses and corruption even when local army commanders threatened to have him expelled.

After retirement in 1985, Bishop Ryan tried briefly, on the advice of his doctors, to live in a retirement home in Chicago. But the pull of the Amazon proved too strong, and he returned and moved into a small house overlooking the Tapajós River where he could read, write and receive the steady stream of visitors who continued to come his way, ranging from peasants to politicians.

Life in the United States ''just wasn't like here,'' he said last year. ''This is home.''

Bishop Ryan is survived by three brothers, John, Vincent and Elmer, and more than a dozen nieces and nephews. He was buried in the Cathedral of Nossa Senhora da Conceiçao in Santarém, just a block from the Amazon River.

Photo: Bishop James M. Ryan getting a hug from a parishioner last October in Santarém, Brazil, where he chose to live after he retired in 1985. (Larry Rohter/The New York Times)

Don’t Thiago Ryan

Santarém Journal; Chicago Boy Makes Good (as Amazon's Bishop)

By LARRY ROHTER

Published: Tuesday, October 9, 2001

During the 27 years he served as the Roman Catholic bishop here, James M. Ryan had to visit Rome periodically on church business. Reporting to Pope Paul VI one day in the early 1970's, he spread out a map of the 125,000 square miles of Amazon jungle under his jurisdiction and said, ''Holy Father, this is my diocese, the largest in the world.''

''Mamma mia!'' he remembers the Pope exclaiming in amazement. ''That's bigger than all of Italy.''

About to turn 89, Bishop Ryan uses a cane and a hearing aid these days and has been retired since 1985, so he does not get around that inhospitable domain as much as he once did. But after his nearly 60 years in the region, there is hardly a bend in the river that he does not know or a settlement that does not know him.

''He is a legendary personage in these parts, the last and perhaps greatest of the classic Amazon missionaries and the personification of a whole era in the region that has come to an end,'' said Manuel Dutra, a professor at the Federal University of Pará in Belém and the author of a book and numerous articles about life in the Amazon.

In his first years here, before motorboats were common or regular air service an alternative, Bishop Ryan, then a young American friar, had to paddle up the Amazon and its tributaries in a canoe. He had ten bouts with malaria in as many years, but dismisses them, saying ''around here, getting malaria is like coming down with a cold.''

Bishop Ryan recalls traveling a lot by boat to visit as many as 50 far-flung chapels. Most places could only be visited five times a year, with the result that when he arrived, he not only had to celebrate Mass, but also had to preside over weddings, baptisms and confirmations.

The bishop is the subject of innumerable stories, many stemming from his quick and sometimes salty tongue. There was the time during the military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985, for example, that Gen. Ernesto Geisel, then the president of Brazil, visited Santarém and asked him, ''Reverend, how is your flock?''

''My flock is fine,'' Bishop Ryan replied, paused, and then pointedly asked, ''What about yours?''

General Geisel took the remark with good humor, but other military officers regarded Bishop Ryan as a threat. When an army colonel stationed here accused him of being at the service of a foreign power and hinted he should be expelled, Bishop Ryan's supporters circulated a petition, signed by 32,000 people, demanding that he be allowed to stay.

Hundreds of grateful doctors, judges, writers and engineers here got their start as altar boys or catechists under his tutelage. Bishop Ryan, universally known here as Dom Tiago, using the Portuguese title of respect, oversaw the building of clinics, churches, a seminary, a radio station and radio schools for remote communities in the interior, all of which added to his popularity.

''For decades, he was even the psychologist for the whole town,'' said Lúcio Flávio Pinto, editor of Amazon Agenda, the region's leading newsletter. ''People went to see him about every kind of problem, from personal to political.''

He was born in an Irish neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago and was teaching speech at a seminary in Illinois in 1943 when he and several other Franciscans from the Midwest were given the chance to come to Brazil. It took them a month to get here, and when they arrived, unable to speak Portuguese, they tried to make themselves understood in Latin.

Initially, he was assigned to Fordlandia, the Ford Company's rubber plantation on the Tapajós River. But the plantation managers would not allow him on the grounds, he said, arguing that it was private property. It took considerable ecclesiastical diplomacy back in Detroit to get them to relent.

He won over his parishioners when he preached in favor of their right to drink cachaça, a fiery sugar cane liquor that had been prohibited on the plantation. ''The Americans could have their Scotch,'' he said, ''but they wanted to legislate morality for those who could only afford to drink cachaça.

''That's Puritanism, and we had enough of that in the States.''

Ford left when the war ended, and over the years Bishop Ryan has seen one huge industrial or development project after another come to his diocese and fall short of expectations, including a proposed highway across the Amazon. That has left him skeptical of the outsize dreams and ambitions that the region seems to inspire.

''Everything takes a long time in the Amazon, and the first thing you have to learn is patience,'' he said. ''But everybody wants to get rich all of a sudden.''

Bishop Ryan, now the bishop emeritus here, tried briefly, on the advice of doctors, to live in a Chicago retirement home. But he discovered there that his heart and his home were irrevocably tied to the Amazon. Despite his weakening health, Bishop Ryan still broadcasts a weekly radio program here, offers family counseling, advises young seminarians and priests, drives a 1984 Volkswagen and tries to say Mass daily. His following is dwindling as the years pass, but it remains loyal.

''I try to attend Dom Tiago's Masses as often as I can because he is playful and warmhearted,'' said Maria Vivina da Silva Delgado, 77. In the simple room at the seminary where he now lives, Bishop Ryan has photographs of himself in full bishop's regalia with Pope John Paul II, taken about 20 years ago.

''Nobody in Santarém has ever seen me in those clothes,'' he said. ''I always liked to use a simple white cassock that you could just dip into the river if you got stuck out in the jungle, hang up to dry and in 20 minutes put back on again.''

''I've already told the people here that when I die, that is the outfit I want to be buried in,'' he added. ''I always loved it out in the interior, so it seems only right.''

Photos: James M. Ryan, bishop emeritus of Santarém, Brazil, gets a hug, above, from a 77-year-old parishioner, Maria Vivina da Silva Delgado. In the early 1980's he wore full bishop's regalia meeting with John Paul II. (Larry Rohter/The New York Times) Map of Brazil highlighting Santarém: The pope called the Santarém diocese bigger than all of Italy.

Elizabeth Bishop

 

Elizabeth Bishop,
Modernism, and the Left

Betsy Erkkila

Even if one were tempted
to literary interpretations
such as: lifeldeath, rightlwrong, malelfemale
—such notions would have resolved, dissolved, straight off
in that watery, dazzling dialectic.

Elizabeth Bishop, "Santarém"

Every new tendency in art has begun with a rebellion.

Leon Trotsky, "Art and Politics"

Given the critical construction of Elizabeth Bishop as a sub
sidiary in the school of Marianne Moore, "a modest expert"
(Moore 354), an "unassuming," "pleasant," "charming" poet of
"restraint, calm, and proportion" (Jarrell 498-99), a soft and
dreamy poet who is "not likely" to be hailed as "a giant among
the moderns" (Lowell 497), an "utterly feminine" poet of "mild
and affectionate brooding over what she has seen" (Alvarez 325),
"a poet's poet's poet" (John Ashbery), and an essentially "pri
vate" poet (Millier 67), to talk about Bishop in a political context
at all is to challenge traditional—and gendered—readings not
only of Bishop but of literary modernism itself. Adrienne Rich's
important 1983 essay "The Eye of the Outsider:Elizabeth Bish
op's Complete Poems, 1927-1979, which argues that Bishop's
"experience of outsiderhood . . . linked with the essential outsid
erhood of a lesbian identity" enabled her "to perceive other kinds
of outsiders and to identify, or try to identify, with them" (127),
has triggered a new interest in the sexual "politics" of Bishop's
writing. As in Brett C. Millier's 1993 biography of Bishop, how
ever, recent critics have continued to emphasize the essentially
formal, aesthetic, private, and psychological dimensions of her
work. ¹ Perhaps attempting to wrest Bishop from earlier "objec