New Year’s Eve

My wife told me she got me something for New Year’s Eve. My heart sank because I know it’s going to be crowded and noisy in Brazil. They say we will be able to see the fireworks from our apartment in the Lakeside complex. Great. Luckily Rusty seems yo have got over his fear of fireworks  

I was a trooper for Christmas being sociable and everything, stuff that stresses me out…so Layne got me a present.

But in order to be old farts tonight yesterday we had to go out and get supplies and shopping in Brazil is always an adventure.

Street life is always colorful in Brazil especially because the daily banalities look exotic to outsiders like us. 

Supermarkets are superficially similar like this Carrefour, a French chain all over Argentina Brazil and French Guyana. Below you see decidedly Brazilian options “ingredients for Feijoada” (“faish-oh-ada”). 

We had fish stew in Manaus and honestly it wasn’t fantastic. This lot has tons of olives, de-boned  Pigs trotters in brine and some pickled peppers. Not a stew for me. Or you can try slabs of salt cod: 

Layne was targeting her list while I was wandering around looking for weird stuff. 

Manioc flour, every Brazilian loves this stuff. 

Avocado potato ketchup and mustard flavor. Sounds like a train wreck in that bag but Layne had no intention of satisfying my curiosity. 

The exotic meat section was a let down unfortunately. One half was banal old duck breast while the other half was frozen ostrich steaks. Yup, that’s exotic. 

And then we had to get some booze. We haven’t been drinking at all lately but tonight is the opportunity for some cultural investigation. Champagne red wine and brandy all from our host country. We shall see how they taste, report to follow. 

Layne has found Whole Foods in Brasilia; really it’s a massive fruit and vegetable store with half a supermarket thrown in. 

Some stuff is easily recognized like ice cream and yoghurt and Brasil nuts (“Pará nuts” here as that apparently is where they grow) but some fruit you study on Google and hope for the best. 

I told Layne I’d found the fountain of youth but she wasn’t amused. 

With all that it probably tastes terrible and Layne will get the last laugh. 

For some reason yoghurt in Brazil is hard to find in pints or quarts and is mostly sold in Toby three ounce containers filled with sugary sweet syrup vaguely reminiscent of yoghurt.  This place had Greek yoghurt at ten  bucks a pint so that wouldn’t work for us. Pack yoghurt in your suitcases if you come to Brazil. We mostly drink kefir as a sort of substitute.  

Whole Foods Brasilia style. 

This must be an upscale neighborhood not least because there was a very complete modern health food store next door. 

Now we are loaded for the holiday the plan is to hunker down walk Rusty and drink. And eat. And nap. Another fine day in retirement. 

May your 2026 be more normal than the year just concluded.

A Surprising Artist

We went into town yesterday and checked out the national art museum we first visited on our city tour.

We got there on the last day of the exhibit and I’m glad we made it. We both saw a bit of Key West here which was quite surprising.

This is the Oscar Niemeyer dome wherein is housed the museum which we first visited on our city tour. Upstairs in the mezzanine there were the woodcuts on display of a rural Brazilian artist. 

It’s not exactly the same but it put us in mind of the artwork of Mario Sanchez in Key West.

Layne mentioned it to me as well so I figured the comparison made sense. 

Like Sanchez, Jose Francisco Borges was born into a working family and did the kind of day labor jobs that did not look like anything artistic was locked away inside him. 

The museum had a biography only in Portuguese which I can read more or less and it said he fathered 16 children and adopted several more for a total of 23 which apparently put pressure on his artistic output. Interestingly he lived a good long life and stayed in his rural small town where he died. 

There wasn’t any explanation of the woodcuts other than brief titles so if they tell stories like the Mario Sanchez artwork I wouldn’t know but I did notice in the collection above one looked unused with no ink on its face. 

I leaned over the white line holding my wide angled lens but I am a rule follower unlike some of my Brazilian neighbors who at least did not actually touch the artwork. The security guard said nothing. 

And of course this exhibit was in the mezzanine of the dome shaped building.

It hangs from the ceiling and I know I’ve posted it here previously but the mezzanine is pretty cool. 

It features the architect Niemeyer’s love of compound curves. 

Then we went to the basement, more curves,

To check out an exhibit of modern Italian art. It’s a mobile exhibit first shown in Milan in 2023. 

And wasn’t I surprised to find a huge mural from my neck of the woods in Umbria. 

It’s called Vallefredda a CB locality near Terni in Italy apparently used as a backdrop for spaghetti westerns hence the cacti in the picture which are not native to Umbria. Next time I go back to visit my sisters I’ll drive by to see if I can find the old man sitting reflecting on his life: 

Out into the sunshine. 

And in the distance you can see the tents across the plaza where we went to buy dinner. 

The plan was to get some skewers to take home. 

In Portuguese “pasteles” are empanadas whereas in Spanish that word means sweet cakes. Just to remind you how confusing similar languages can be. 

For some reason we settled on this vendor who it turned out was Jose a refugee from Venezuela. A Spanish speaker! Praise be. 

He’s lived in Brasilia, in a suburb an hour away actually, for the past three years. His cousin lives in Michigan in an auto assembly plant and he’s been thinking of giving it a try.

I endeavored to dissuade him but the lure of America still burns bright. Then he asked if I thought an invasion of Venezuela was imminent like I have a clue. After weeks of not being able to speak to the locals I got thrown in at the deep end. 

Time to call an Uber. The Christmas fair across the street is open all week. 

Traffic control at the pedestrian crossing. 

Brasilia, fun and peaceful and a good place to be for New Year’s.