I’ve just heard a philosopher (“Philosophize this”, on Spotify, I reccomend) that says that writing a diary is just like talking to myself. I went to a demonstration of solidarity with the state of Israel but couldn’t feel much, just a lot of sadness and despair. I knew a few people at this rally but didn’t find anyone. Just saw their posts from the same place where I was. Lonely amongst over 1 thousand people. How to connect? It’s hard to grasp why people prefer to stay in ingnorance and the default is to support whoever attacks the jews. Most people don’t but it’s hard to trust them. This attack in the south of Israel seems irrational. What is behind this? Are they just prepping for a next step?… or just fedup of nothing happening and decided for a suicide mission, that ended up (for their surprise) being “successful”? Hard to tell.
I was chocked at the incompetence of the Israeli govt in protecting its citizens. Are they getting too soft? Too corrupt? Detached from reality? Too much wokeism? It’s destroying the US moral and should do the same worldwide. Part of the re-set? Maybe. Brazil, being a country with low morals and lots of corruption will probably go in the direction that pays more. It has always been like this. Hard to be optimistic, in spite of the fact that most people are decent but not active in the political arena. It’s changing but too little too late. Learning a bit of Polish and French. Who knows where the future will take us to? Just moved to an old apartment and living by myself. Just the fact that I don’t need to deal with a depressive and aggressive person every day is already a great plus. Very confused right now but there are a few lights in the future… hoping something will come true. Hoping that the kids find a good place in our crazy world. All kids. Such wonderful people! I believe that, in spite of what is being said, the next generation will be able to build a better world, if they use their brains and trust their intuition. I confess this worried me a bit. I mostly see them not doing that! Well, enough jibberish.
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In this day and age, we look for solutions to our problems, sometimes not connected to reality.
The crazy search for happiness or a sense of completion may lead us to mistaken paths.
Sometimes happiness is over-rated producing a false sense of what really matters in life.
Truthfulness, Kindness and Spirituality have been throughout history the main factors that help us lead a good life. Fast solutions, such as separation, divorce, change of jobs, professionals etc., sometimes are not the real solution and only bring us more anxiety, reproducing the same mistakes we made in our previous experiences.
I strongly recommend reading or watching Anna Karenina, a great work of literature, still very valid in spite of its age (Leon Tolstoi, 1877). I regret not having read it before but not sure if I’d understand it so much when I was younger.
It’s not a Classic by chance.
Carpe diem!
Lately we’ve been in some bids to build/re-do designs from other professionals.
One of them is a design from a foreign Architect. On our field visits we saw so many absurdities that I wonder why Brazilians insist on hiring international Golf Course Architects.
Ridiculous solutions and plain bad design aren’t rare in these courses. Construction practices are even worse, rendering good and rational maintenance practically impossible, not to mention playability.
I hope some day our investors realize there are good professionals within the Brazilian population and that we reduce our admiration for an architect just because his/her name is a brand.
Another intelligent analysis about Brazilian almost democratic system.
Sejamos curtos e grossos. Só tem uma alternativa: democracia existe quando o povo manda no governo e não existe quando o governo manda no povo; estado democrático de direito existe quando a lei é igual pra todo mundo e o privilégio é crime e não existe quando é ela que cria e faz do privilégio “cláusula pétrea”. Todo o resto da vasta literatura e, mais ainda, da torrente de discursos construídos para “beiradear” essas verdades elementares é tapeação.
É esse o problema dos 3os NOMES que não emplacam para nos tirar da sinuca eleitoral de 2022 porque 3a VIA mesmo nunca houve. Só ha duas e nenhum dos 3os nomes quer mudar o poder de mãos, para as do povo como é da democracia sem aspas. Todos só querem ser eles a presidir o estupro legalizado do favelão nacional.
É a mesma gente para a qual reduzir privilégios da privilegiatura…
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Reaching 58 after living so many lives doesn’t seem such a great feat.
Not having so many years to live as I’ve lived till now, brings a certain sense of despair and discontinuity.
It also makes me look back and analyze decisions, choices, attitudes and how these have influenced my destiny and my personality.
I guess it’s pretty common to meditate over such existential issues by year’s end. Nevertheless, it’s an enjoyable endeavor.
Having children under my responsibility has changed the way I behave and look at life. A caring wife also plays into this change. Obviousness.
The main change is related to being able to bring enough resources to keep a stable and nourishing home. Before that, search for knowledge and improvement was the main priority. Not so much now, although still an important part of life.
The realization that we are alone in the Universe although surrounded by loving beings, in one hand, and a part of an environment that takes good care of us, mostly.
Keep doing stuff as though you still can is essential. Especially sports and physical activities that keep our mind and soul healthy. A recent incursion in the martial arts world has brought me much well being and also a perception of my laziness. Funny contradiction.
Opportunities.
Old loves and contradictory memories. A better perception of self… and others…
Volver a los diecisiete
Después de vivir un siglo
Es como descifrar signos
Sin ser sabio competente
Volver a ser de repente
Tan frágil como un segundo
Volver a sentir profundo
Como un niño frente a Dios
Eso es lo que siento yo
En este instante fecundo
Se va enredando, enredando
Como en el muro la hiedra
Y va brotando, brotando
Como el musguito en la piedra
Ay sí sí sí
Mi paso retrocedido
Cuando el de ustedes avanza
El arco de las alianzas
Ha penetrado en mi nido
Con todo su colorido
Se ha paseado por mis venas
Y hasta las duras cadenas
Con que nos ata el destino
Es como un diamante fino
Que alumbra mi alma serena
Lo que puede el sentimiento
No lo ha podido el saber
Ni el más claro proceder
Ni el más ancho pensamiento
Todo lo cambia el momento
Cual mago condescendiente
Nos aleja dulcemente
De rencores y violencias
Solo el amor con su ciencia
Nos vuelve tan inocentes
El amor es torbellino
De pureza original
Hasta el feroz animal
Susurra su dulce trino
Detiene a los peregrinos
Libera a los prisioneros
El amor con sus esmeros
Al viejo lo vuelve niño
Y al malo solo el cariño
Lo vuelve puro y sincero
De par en par en la ventana
Se abrió como por encanto
Entró el amor con su manto
Como una tibia mañana
Al son de su bella diana
Hizo brotar el jazmín
Volando cual serafín
Al cielo le puso aretes
Y mis años en diecisiete
Los convirtió el querubín
Fonte: LyricFind
Compositores: Violeta Parra Sandoval
Today, Oct 5th, 2018, we are on the verge to elect our next President, State Governors and Chamber Representatives.
This time a new Party came along, founded in December 2015, that caught my attention. I wanted to participate.
I went to a candidate`s committee and started voluntary work. Along the last few weeks I was transferred from a communications aide to the campaign treasurer. From 1 hour per day to 8 hours per day and very happy about it.
I was surrounded by energetic people, young and not-so-young, all with a glare in their eyes, certain that they were doing something bigger than themselves for the common good. I became part of a communitarian body of well intentioned volunteers as well as a few paid participants.
Political campaign laws have become very strict in Brazil, in response to the common situation where wealthy people were mostly the only ones capable of getting enough exposure to become elected officials.
What a wonderful change that when added to Social Media, allows anyone willing and with a good platform, to get elected.
I met a local municipal councilor elected in 2016, Janaina Lima (NOVO Party), a very active and serious young lady who is now helping a project I’ve been involved in since 2010: LOSOL, It`s funny how networking is so fundamental to human success in different endeavors.
Our goal is to promote citizenship, education and professional training for derelict communities around Sao Paulo city. This NGO is only now becoming official, starting with a couple of dozen contributing members, although we have been assisting several families for the last 8 years in an unofficial manner. Bureaucracy in Brazil costs a lot and to become official it is costly and there are several hurdles to be superseded.
We now have a local President and I`m the vice-president organizing the whole deal. Each person needs to participate to make our community a better place!
Back to our elections, Brazil has become a very divided country, mostly an artificial construction of the previous executives and legislators. So, arguments are strong and emotions arise in a very raw shape, when ideas are put on the table for discussion. It seems that a rightist leader will be elected, carrying a message of rebuilding the country and reuniting it.
Lets hope that, in case he becomes elected, these good intentions come to term and we live again in a prosperous nation. Time will tell!
We live in a society that values social status, appearances and professional success. Success in most situations is measured by number of works done, no matter the quality or by the amount of financial resources one accumulates over time, no matter how.
Even saintly beings, like Divaldo Franco, are depicted showing the huge work they have accomplished with very little attention to the content of his endearing messages.
These yardsticks produce a skewed set of values where we make our kids grow and feed a sick society full of social, economical and psychological problems, to mention a few. This conducts us towards more corruption, more crime and less integration with “thy neighbor”.
Here in Brazil the consequences are dear. Destruction of natural habitats, killings for the possession of land, abandoned kids on the streets left to their own luck. A broth that will show its violent face, suddenly at an unexpected corner anywhere, by a human being whose values are so distorted away from humanism that the behavior of not even hunting wild animals could be used as comparison.
A model that values production of “exportable” commodities leaves the exposed human beings involved in a limbo, making them migrate to nearby towns and, if they survive, to big centers, bloated day by day. A collective murder of local culture, pushed aside by the greed of big and small corporations.
Young souls are then drawn towards drugs that sell the illusion of nirvana within hell, producing a vicious cycle that is swallowing families and good values that allow us to live peacefully in a society, the very definition of civilization. The older souls are also drawn towards drugs, the legal ones, that will lengthen their suffering while destroying families and draining their feeble financial resources. Afterwards they are thrown in the common ditch of oblivion.
Fortunately some enlightened souls have noticed these trends (not hard to do, I must confess) and are creating movements towards enhancing the value of human beings, the environment and life in society. They are fighting this madness of self destruction that has dominated our western culture and hopefully will be able to overcome this suicidal route society has taken.
With proposals that seem a little “cuco” for our distorted values, they are showing that the agricultural model of exporting resources is unsustainable and that it’s possible to produce a healthier model to live by. Smaller scale farming, preservation of the environment and appropriate valuation of resources will eventually start a trend that may save our souls.
Let’s hope it’s not too late!
Designing a golf course isn`t a small task, to say the least.
A challenging endeavour we faced a few years ago was to integrate golf and second residence in a paradisiac site in the state of Ceara, Brazil.
This small village, named Aquiraz, already has an 18 hole official golf course built in a Dunes environment. Beautiful setting with wonderful sites of the seashore.
Our effort integrates 99 small 3 stories buildings with a 9 hole, par 3 course, we have written about in another blog.
When work is in progress we visit the site every 45 to 60 days.
This last visit brought us some nice views of a part of the course that has been ready, but not open to players yet, and another part that is being built.
Never enough to emphasize the quality of a hired contractor, their honesty and their capability of reading golf designs, plans and comments. Not paying attention to this can bring undesirable delays to the job as a whole and frustrate everyone.
In any case, results will suffer little if we diligently dedicate efforts towards fidelity to the plans, to design principles and quality.
We include here some photos for record and appreciation.
Since 2011 a group of landscapers (as a free translation would go here in Brazil for Landscape Architecture – Paisagismo), has started a move towards the legalization of the profession of Landscapers in Brazil. This effort is being commanded by our Associacao Nacional de Paisagismo.
A Bill was drafted and has been in transit at the House of Reps for the last 4-5 years. A couple of Representatives at the lower chamber have adopted this bill and are carrying it from office to office trying to get support for it within the house.
The Brazilian president has just vetoed a similar Bill for the legalization of the profession of Interior Decorators, a sign that unfavorable times are to come in our direction. Not to worry. We`ll keep fighting and hopefully she`ll be out of office before she can veto it.
Support to this initiative has come from many national and international bodies, ASLA, IFLA etc. We`ve got explicit support from the University of New Mexico (thanks Alf) and are hoping to get more from other important schools around the world.
Hopefully in the near future we`ll start promoting specific courses and exchange of professionals, teachers and knowledge will become more intense.
Last week an amendment was made to our proposal. Instead of proving that one has worked for over 2 years to be licensed, the demand has grown to 5 years minimum. Probably a wise move.
Lots of work ahead of us now!
Wish us luck and, if you`d like to contribute, send me a letter of support. We need them!
The feeble belief that the Worker`s Party in Brazil (PT) is a leftist one has led many well intentioned people to become their supporters.
Brazilian intellectuals who sympathize with communism are now in a Catch 22 situation. They don`t know where to go.
A great amount of social injustice has survived PT`s 13 years of government showing that only being a leftist isn’t enough to lead a society, based on a social justice agenda, into a feasible and just economy for all, distributing wealth and providing a better society for all. In many aspects the country is much worse off than it was at the beginning of this adventure.
This term (communism) is so complex that even Marx had a hard time understanding it. He obviously didn’t, which is very unfortunate.
It leaves us “only” with Democracy to deal with. Unfortunately Democracy isn’t just a political direction, it`s also an ever changing process. An ever evolving process. It actually isn’t possible if the people aren’t well educated and institutions aren’t fairly and solidly established. It’s also an utopia if the economic difference between social classes is so big as it is in Brazil. Worse yet, when there is so much distance between socioeconomic groups, not only money wise.
Initial intentions of PT, which they concealed pretty well from the more distracted voters (50% of our population) who have elected them at least twice (there is serious doubt about fraud in the last elections in 2014), were pretty lame.
Just like in Venezuela, PT started to intimidate and persecute the few voices who started to broadcast their opinions and question PT’s real intentions. PT officials were doing anything they could to bring money into their campaigns, especially jeopardizing one of the few companies that were still under our government’s control: Petrobras (the Brazilian Oil Company). They were so incompetent running this company that they ended up telling on themselves. The fact that an Oil Company like Petrobras could swallow losses in a completely favorable market woke our society up. It took long, but finally a federal judge, Sergio Moro, in Parana (a state in the south region of Brazil) decided to act. See the Pasadena Refinery scandal and the Port of Cuba.
Mr. Moro had already worked on another corruption case, where politicians were selling their votes, bought with corruption money (including Petrobras as a source). At that time, about 4 or 5 years ago, he made a few mistakes and the whole process ended up in a huge pizza (a term Brazilians use to denote that no punishment results from certain crimes, usually committed by white-collar criminals).
This time Mr Moro is being very careful and has succeeded in putting in prison top executives from many big contractors’ firms. Even some owners! These companies paid huge bribes (added to over 800 million dollars, perhaps much more) to be able to get government contracts which in turn were overpriced so that they could get the corruption money back. A simple but intricate process that Mr. Moro went to great pains to dismantle, collecting evidence in the quiet of the night for months, until he had enough to line these executives and some politicians into prison.
The pivot of all this mess has been PT, mostly in the person of Brazilian ex-president, Lula. He’s just a few days from getting arrested but many sectors of our society are afraid that there will be a huge turmoil when that eventually happens. I don’t share this fear. There will be some localized paid protests and that will be it.
I myself was very surprised to see that Mr. Moro hasn’t met the same destiny that Mr. Nuzmann did in Argentina (another whole mess in our neighboring country). Recently I found out why that is the case. Wisely counseled, Mr. Moro cut a pact with the former military intelligence agency as well as with the leadership at the Federal Police Dept. As weak as this protection may seem it is still working and Mr. Moro is being regarded as a hero! We do still live in the far west down here.
Needless to say, foreign and Brazilian investors have become very shy and have taken billions of dollars away into safer places (is there such a thing?), leaving our economic activity in a mere inertia, bringing back inflation (over 10% per year so far), unemployment and deterioration of all infrastructure (hospitals, schools, roads, electricity, water, sewage etc.). Once again we are paying for our ignorance and lack of interest in politics.
I’ve come to realize we cannot afford the luxury of not getting involved in politics. As our present history shows it can have dire consequences on everyone’s lives.
Fortunately it seems that we are finally getting the grips of our country again and leaving politicians to their own demise. I’m still not confident it will happen. Even if it does, we are left with a corrupt society whose culture is to not work and get benefits from the government. Perhaps Brazil will continue to be, forever, the country of the future.
Our only hope is to invest heavily in education, research and technology. But this is a long road and I don’t know if I’m willing to give up my life before I see something good happening around me. I don’t have Trotsky’s selflessness and I’m sure no hero. All I want is a good future for our children!
latebloomerla 