I've missed you, dear petticoat rustlers! For the past week, I've been traveling through the Midwest with my husband and our dog, visiting family and friends and remembering the rusty, gritty beauty of that part of this country. I am delighted to share some highlights from that trip in the form of photos and musings...
From the shores of the Mississippi in Iowa, we watched a decades-old battle take place. Since 1987, the town of Le Claire, Iowa has pit its finest tug-of-war competitors against competitors from Port Byron, Illinois. A giant rope, weighing nearly 700 pounds, is stretched across the Mississippi river where it divides these states. This Twain-esque tug-of-war sends river water splashing into the air as the rope emerges from the Mississippi and gets taut as the teams struggle to win more rope. Eleven teams comprised of twenty strong people battle for three-minutes at a time; the winning state is victorious in at least 6 of these eleven contests. It was thrilling-- I lost my voice from cheering so loudly...
Rope stretching between Iowa and Illinois, pulled taut over the Mississippi river.
In the photo, they look very serene... but I can assure you, they are pulling with all of their might.
An Iowa tugger, feeling strong (and mysterious).
My husband grew up along the Mississippi, in Iowa, and so while we were there we visited landmarks around his hometown that he used to pass all the time as a kid. These landmarks included hand-painted signs, murals, hidden drives, and... the Mississippi itself. I think sometimes it is easy to take for granted the mystery and allure of a major body of water if you grew up next to it. So after touring neighborhoods in the car, we hopped onto a boat and toured a little bit of the mighty river itself...
I also grew up next to a major body of water: Lake Michigan. The lake is so big it can be seen from outer space-- I remember many times looking out over the waves and easily convincing myself it was my own little sea... The waters of Lake Michigan carved their way into the state of Wisconsin, and created some of the most beautiful freshwater beaches right next to my home city, Milwaukee.
Milwaukee is where I grew up, went to college, met my husband, and got married. That city is full of memories and family, rust and bricks, beer and water. We only had about 6 hours to visit Milwaukee, but in that short amount of time, we tried to see as many of those things as possible. The lake, the art museum, the parks, the buildings, the people...
The unbeatable delights of my friend's new restaurant in Milwaukee, Café La Paloma
From Cafe La Paloma
The great big custard in the sky means you've arrived in heaven, otherwise known as Leon's.
We went back to the Midwest with both the fresh eyes of forgetting and the wise eyes of remembering. Quotidian, casual details can be accidentally and easily forgotten when you go away; returning and finding those details, just as you'd left them, can unexpectedly remind you of their significance. Those things that you have etched into your memories, on the other hand, seem changed when you visit them after a long time, and you happily (and a bit melancholically) see evidence of the march of time, despite your absence. It is a relief to know things you love will change-- murals will fade, families will grow, water will recede and swell, buildings will burn, get repainted, tumble down, or get new occupants.
The Midwest is made of the wonderful (and crazy) people that live there, the rust-belt architecture of industry and hard work, and in some small way, the Midwest is made of the people that used to live there and who left behind a tiny mark of their presence. Like Amund Dietzel who, after arriving shipwrecked in Milwaukee's shores, pressed ink into pages and skin and history, forever affecting the legacy of the region and the style of its people.
It is a place in which I will always feel at home, a place I will always feel compelled to return to, a place I will constantly be remembering and forgetting.
Dancing and screaming, they bring the bull back to life...
The brief time I spent in Maranhão was packed full of incredible cultural festivals. As I mentioned in a previous post, I was lucky enough to be there during the junina festivals. From the word junho, meaning "June," the festivals unsurprisingly span the entire month of June every year, as there are such a high concentration of saints' feast days within this one month. The festivities kick-off with the feast of São João (St. John the Baptist) and continue until St. Martial's feast day on the last day of the month.
The tradition of performing bumba meu boi coincides with the junina festivals and, in Maranhão, those performances are more popular and anticipated than carnival celebrations in February. In this northeastern state, there are schools for bumba meu boi-- like there are schools for samba/carnival-- that bring together communities to make costumes, write songs, and choreograph dances. I got the chance to see several different schools perform (there are multiple performances every single night in June in every different neighborhood). There were no two schools who expressed the bumba meu boi tradition in the same way; each school had a unique interpretation of this centuries-old cultural practice.
The basic story stays the same throughout all the performances, however, and is the story of Pai Francisco and his wife, Mai Catirina. Pai Francisco is a slave working on a large hacienda. His very pregnant wife Catirina decides that she wants to eat the tongue of the hacienda's most prized bull. She cajoles and nags and finally convinces Pai Francisco to kill the precious bull so that she can eat his tongue. When the patron of the hacienda discovers that Pai Francisco has killed his favorite bull, he threatens to kill him...unless he can somehow bring the bull back to life. Pai Francisco implores an indigenous tribe ("indios") living nearby to help him by using their magic medicine to revive the bull. They come to his assistance, dancing in elaborate patterns around the bull until he comes magically back to life and joins in the dance.
Pai Francisco always carries a machete as he dances, and Mai Catirina is often (though not always) played by a man in pregnant drag. The rhythm and melody to which this dance is performed is provided by a huge section of people either behind or to the side of the dancers, the majority of them playing matracas (wooden blocks hit together) and large, handheld drums.The lyrics of the songs are written by the singers of each school, and so they tend to reflect current relevant events (my favorite song lyric was "Foi no instagrã que te conheci..." which means, "I met you on Instagram...").
Towards the end of June and the junina festivities, St. Peter's feast day is celebrated, which is a big deal in the state of Maranhão and especially on the island of São Luís, as St. Peter is the patron saint of fisherman. The celebration for this feast day is special, and in fact goes all night. The event is referred to as the encontro dos bois (the meeting of the bulls) in which all of the bumba meu boi schools from all around the state make a pilgrimage to St. Peter's small chapel in São Luís. The chapel sits at the top of a steep hill looking out over the ocean. It's roof is made of sails, stretching out towards the sea, appearing as if at any moment it would sail off, through the sky, down into the sea.
St. Peter in his boat
The open basket sits at the foot of St. Peter's statue and is where people could drop off offerings such as the ex voto arms pictured here. The basket frequently filled up throughout the night and a volunteer would store the offerings in a back room and replace the basket, ready once more to be filled.
Hundreds of bulls and their musicians and their Pai Franciscos and their Mai Catirinas and their "indian" dancers arrive throughout the night and into the morning. They begin by dancing and singing at the foot of the hill, where large stages have been set up. Slowly, each school makes their way up the hundreds of steps towards the chapel, where they dance and sing for the statue of St. Peter, who has been placed in a small boat filled with flowers.
Community members from the surrounding neighborhoods, as well as from the farthest corners of the state, make the pilgrimage. They come to make petitions to the saint in the form of ex votos, they come to fulfill promises (such as dancing all night) as thanks for miracles in their lives that they attribute to the saint, and some even come to shake their fists in anger, shouting at the saint and berating him for not having granted some petition.
Many come, many dance, many weep - from the sheer intensity of the tremendous sound of throbbing drums pulsing through the small chapel, the fervency of the prayer, the neverendingness of the night, the elbow-to-elbow crowds dancing there in the extreme heat of an island two degrees off the equator.
Sunrise from the heights of the ship-like chapel.
From inside the chapel, I saw the sun rise over the ocean. At about 10:30am, four men hoisted the statue of St. Peter in his boat on their shoulders, and slowly made their way down the harrowingly steep stairs. When they reached the street, they loaded the saint onto the top of a big truck which carried him to the shore, where he was placed on a boat, to continue the procession in the water.
Here is a video I made of one of the bumba meu boi performances I saw and the encontro dos bois:
While this event was, without a doubt, the culminating experience of my time there, I was fortunate enough to witness other smaller cultural traditions as well. In São Luís' historic city center, many bumba meu boi performances were celebrated in the streets, alongside music and dance traditions such as tambor crioula and forrô. One could simply walk around that neighborhood, find something delicious to eat at a small stand, purchase a cocktail or a beer from another small stand, and discover a different live music performance waiting for them around almost every corner.
The tambor crioula was beautiful to watch. A group of men sang call-and-response songs and played drums while a circle of women wearing long, floral skirts and head-scarves twirled and danced and improvised steps. This tradition was brought by African slaves to Brazil and continues to be danced today by their decedents. What I didn't know at first about this tradition is that the women dancing the tambor crioula will sometimes pull female bystanders into their circle to dance with them for a little while, greeting them by putting their arms up into the air and bumping bellybutton-to-bellybutton. I saw several women get close to the circle when they were watching and, sure enough, bump-twirl-twirl....
When we arrived at the band playing forrô music, we all started dancing. Forrô is an incredibly fun dance music, native of Brazil's northeast. I love that one of the driving forces behind this music is the triangle- it is such a wonderful (and underused!) percussion instrument.
For some inexplicable reason, there were a couple of clowns hanging out in front of the forrô stage... they weren't singing or dancing really, but there they were in full clown regalia and face paint. Just one of those creepy delightfully unpredictable details of the junina festivities!
Here is a video I made of what it was like walking around the historic center at night, finding tambor crioula and forrô performances, tucked away on each corner...
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What are your favorite yearly festivals?? What new festivals and cultural traditions have you experienced recently? Until next time, fair petticoat rustlers-- keep rustling!
Being a tourist in Brazil was a phenomenal experience. Being a graduate student at an academic conference on social and environmental policy in Brazil's northeastern region was also wonderful- and intense and deeply engaging. The Universidade Federal do Maranhão (UFMA) brought together a diverse array of Brazilian and American scholars in the fields of anthropology, geography, and ecology (and literature, though to a lesser degree) for a four day conference that covered an enormous amount of information.
One of the highlights of the conference for me was a trip to several traditional communities to see firsthand how their local economies worked, what the natural resources of the area were, and what issues were important to the people who've been living there for centuries. The trip to Taim and Rio dos Cachorros made many of the scholarly papers (and the debates surrounding their arguments) become so much more real and immediate.
Here are the photos I took from those communities, who are currently engaged in an effort to protect their traditional way of life, their environment, and to make their local economy flourish as a result of the preservation of these lands (rather than at their expense):
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I've got several more posts on Brazil in the works! Stay tuned-- until next time, dear petticoat rustlers!
From the shores of Livramento, gazing back at Alcântara
During our stay in Alcântara, Tania's husband, Marcelo, met up with us. Together, we took several day trips to the nearby deserted islands. One morning, we walked to the dock and asked a man to take us in his boat to one of the islands so that we could swim and hang out on the beach for the day. He took us in his fishing boat to an island called Livramento, about a 10 minute journey away from Alcântara (see a brief video of the boat ride below). On the way, he told us that the island actually had one inhabitant--a woman, called Dona Mocinha, supposedly lived on the island of Livramento. When we arrived, we weren't sure if that was just a story or if it was true- we couldn't see any houses at all when we got there.
For an hour or two, we floated up to our necks in the sun-warmed salt water. When our bellies started to rumble, we decided to walk around the island and see if Dona Mocinha was real. Before long, we came upon her house, tucked into the shade of the forest. Tania called out, and a woman emerged from the house, eyeing us with caution. Tania explained that we had been told she lived there and sometimes made food for hungry bathers and if it wasn't too much trouble, would she be able to fix something for us... Dona Mocinha was gruff at first, but after seeing we were harmless, decided that we should take a walk on the beach and come back later for a snack. And that's what we did.
On Caboclo the fisherman's boat, headed to Livramento
Guarás on the shore of Livramento
As we walked along the beach, I commented to Tania and Marcelo that it seemed Dona Mocinha must've always been in Livramento, that she sprang out of the ocean when the island had formed, and in fact was the very soul of the island, protecting its shores... but that was just a whimsical fancy, right?
We returned to Dona Mocinha's house to find she had pulled out a table and chairs and was serving the food she'd prepared. We ate right there, under a tree next to her house, on the beach, among her chickens, dogs, and plants. She sat with us and told us about how the trees kept her company, allowing her to tell them her secrets while listening to theirs. She told us how academic researchers from the university in São Luís visited her island to study plants there and how she takes them through the thick tropical forests to find what they're looking for- all the while protecting her island from getting overrun. Then Tania asked her how she came to be the sole inhabitant of the island. She said she received a call, a mystic call in a dream, beckoning her there. ...Maybe my narrative for her was not just a whimsical fancy, after all...
Dona Moçinha's house, built with buriti tree trunks, sitting right where the forest meets the beach
The "roof" under which we had lunch
Tania and Marcelo at Dona Mocinha's house - the blue kayak was used by a man called "Punk" to ferry supplies back and forth from Alcântara to Dona Mocinha
Flowers growing out of the sand, fishing net drying on a branch
One of Dona Mocinha's dogs coming over to say hello
The most delicious farofa I've ever tasted
Fresh eggs provided by the resident chickens, cooked with the most fragrant, delicious combination of spices Dona Mocinha picked from around her house
Me with the soul of Livramento, Dona Mocinha
The next day, we explored another deserted island. This time, a man called Chico rowed us in his canoe to another island, this one completely uninhabited. Chico rowed us through mangrove to a very secluded little break in the branches that grew so near to the level of the water we had to duck our heads several times. (At this point, I was almost certain I had entered a passage from Alejo Carpentier's 1953 novel, Los pasos perdidos.)
A small section of sand fanned out between two mangrove trees and Chico told us this is where we could get out of the boat. I was skeptical at first, because it didn't look like much. But as soon as we crested the little sand dune, I was left utterly breathless. A long beach of pure white sand stretched out in front of crystal-clear water. Of course, by the time we got to this beach, the battery in my camera was completely dead, so you'll just have to take my word for it...
The "dock" we departed from before entering the mangrove
In the yellow shirt is Chico, preparing his canoe
Off to a fictional deserted island that happened to exist (at least for one day!)
Alcântara was enchanting- I feel I could go back there again and again and not ever worry about the magic of the place diminishing for me. And as if to confirm that hunch, Alcântara gave me the most wonderful sendoff possible.
Marcelo, Tania, and I boarded a ferry to return to São Luís in the early afternoon. Along with us boarded and entire bumba meu boi performance group. I got to see, for my first time, all the glorious detail of the embroidery and sequins of their costumes and headdresses. But that was not all I got to see... as soon as the ferry's motor grumbled into gear and the boat separated from the dock, drums, tambourines, shakers and even a trumpet erupted into sound. The performance group burst into samba, dancing all around the ferry's deck. They began passing around 2...3...4...5 bottles of cachaça (the national Brazilian liquor), singing at the tops of their lungs, clapping in time to the music.
The music and dancing continued for the entire hour-long trip back to São Luís, where we docked with everyone still singing as loud as their throats would allow. In the middle of the trip, the boat came up against some rougher seas, with huge waves tossing the boat back and forth. Did this diminish the raucous singing and dancing? No! It just made everyone scream with delighted, adrenaline-filled pleasure as they continued to samba but changed the song to one who's lyrics were about boats tipping over....
With no batteries in the camera, that adventure, too, was only recorded by my eyes (and Marcelo's cell phone), and archived amongst my most vivid, happy memories.
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What fictional places have you traveled to?? What is the most magical place you've ever visited?? Until next time, fair petticoat rustlers... keep rustling!
