calvisson-leblon

  In this fateful morning, they didn’t find Easter Eggs in the family garden but the lifeless body of Sam.   Sam had broken limbs; the events of that day will remain unknown.  Sam was the cherished cat belonging to the G family.   I am a friend of this family and Sam’s passing makes me very sad.                                                                                                 SAM Sam was always the first family member to greet me at the G home.   Upon my arrival, I would drop my bag on the kitchen table, he would jump on the table, with difficulties as he was very corpulent, and at a cuddle distance he would request strokes and rubs.   This was our routine.   I suspect that snuggle-loving Sam was the ...

  Since moving to Brazil in 2003, I've had mixed feelings, it has become a love-hate relationship . I love the country most of the time, except for three months a year, from March to May, when I must file my taxes.  Lion is the nickname of the Brazilian internal revenue service, the tax man in other words, and t he lion's greed has massively grown over time.  Globally, paying taxes is disliked, but in Brazil, it infuriates scores of taxpayers, including me, it is an existential concern.   I keep wondering who is benefiting from my big cheque to the lion .  My funds have little chance to go to a countryside school, a rural hospital, let alone to a needy teacher.  On the contrary, my money may end up wasted on pink elephant projects, the election campaigns of shady politicians, the super salaries of judges I have never heard of or, and in a worst-case scenario, be embezzled. Because of the growing costs of the parliamentary amendments, Brazil may be unique ...

At John Kennedy Airport in New York City, I was detained, shackled and sent back to Brazil.   This was a nightmare I had, a couple of days before flying to NYC.   I experienced insomnia and grew concerned over reports of individuals having their US visas revoked, others being denied entry to the country, and some even placed in detention centers.   All had expressed criticisms of Trump's policies.   American immigration officers have revived the rarely used practice of searching electronic devices of international visitors.   I self-censored by hurriedly cleaning my inbox of all messages and comments relative to Trump.   Welcome to free speech in Trump land! On March 20, I spent a restless night on my American Airlines flight flatbed seat.   A lousy airline which even treats its business class passengers badly.   Tickets are astronomically expensive, and the service is poor.   This time, slippers were missing from the amenity set, but passe...

This is a quote from Augusto Roa Bastos, a Paraguayan writer.   I could add surrounded by unfriendly lands. I thought of an alternative title for this blog: “Paraguay, the land of hard soup”.   The famed hard soup resulted from a kitchen misstep: the cook put too much corn flour, and the soup hardened into a cake.   It conveys the country’s toils and struggles. A friend and I, decided to escape the rowdy Carnival of Rio de Janeiro and travel to Paraguay, Brazil’s most unassuming and little-known neighbor.   We spent five days in the capital Asunción sweating under temperature hovering round 40º, hot even by Asunción summer standards.   Less than 7 million people live in the land-lock country about the size of California.   95% are of mixed European and Guarani Indian descent.   We stayed in the Palmaroga Hilton, the House of Palm hotel in Guarani, the second official language with Spanish.   80% of the population speaks Guarani according to Helm...

  I am transfixed by the political upheaval which is taking place in a great western country.    A large segment of the political establishment comforted by an equally large section of the population is watching in a state of ecstasy bordering giddiness their leader’s indiscriminate assault on core democratic institutions.    Make America Great Again, MAGA is morphing into a monstruous scavenger which feeds on the dismembered federal institutions, world trade, foreign alliances and basic moral values.   In parallel, under the guise of curbing the “woke” ideology, the leader and his tech goons have launched a free speech crusade, aims of which is to suppress diverging viewpoints, fact checking and to fire dissenters.     The leader’s illiberal hegemony is based on a zero-sum game thinking. One cannot resist drawing parallels with past European events.   Respectively in 1923 and 1933, two charismatic strong men, Benito Mussolini and Adolph...

  In Rio these days, one must watch one’s mouth because many Cariocas can overreact when the Hollywood Oscar race is mentioned.   The unexpected, best film nomination of Ainda estou aqui ( I am Still Here) unleashed media and social media delirium and a novel and unusual patriotic storm.   When speaking of the Oscar nominees, one must choose one’s words carefully.   To date, four million people have seen the film.   It is quite extraordinary that a serious-minded film could surpass popular mass media fares.    For a reason that does not make much sense to me, some Brazilian (toxic) fans have targeted the French movies Emilia Peréz as the mortal rival to their Oscar success and have trashed the performance of its leading “lady” Karla Sofia Gascón. I’m still here is about a happy middle-class family broken by the military dictatorship which ruled Brazil for twenty years (1964-85).   In 1971, the father Rubens Paiva, a former left-wing politici...

  I have writer´s block! Well, I have no inspiration to write anything.   Usually, after returning from a trip, I am eager to share my experience.   Over the Christmas period, I spent five enjoyable days in Siena, Tuscany.   The city is a UNESCO World Heritage site, renowned for its preserved Medieval architecture, its vibrant 13, 14 & 15th centuries school of painting, its horse races, the Palio, and its tasty food. I am facing two stumbling blocks.   First, my feeling of mediocrity after reading One Month in Siena by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hisham Matar.   In 2018, he explored the city and sought distraction and solace in the company of the Sienese painters (from the above-mentioned period).   Matar was captivated by the knowledge of the human body that the painters tried to convey through their art.   I bought the book in November 2024, when browsing the shelves of Barnes & Noble bookshop, in Manhattan.   To better apprec...