A free day

oh my god, I had a free day in Portland. A WHOLE DAY. No gigs, no rehearsals (well, to be strictly honest, I skipped a rehearsal), and NO WORK. With shocking abruptness my teaching gig has suddenly flattened out and started cruising (because my intro-bio course is finally through the plants and inverts, which was new for me, and is cruising now through the verts and physiology, which I know cold). The elephant research students are finally all trained up (all 47 of them) and rolling. All the grants that are due are done. No exams coming up. No papers to grade. Shocking.... It seems like I suddenly got my life back.

It was UNBELIEVABLE. It was like magic.

I did my laundry.

I took a long, long shower.

I dug a new vegetable bed and planted my all-time favorite veggie, sugar snap peas. :)

I went for a bike ride, and also a jog. This was my first exercise in a MONTH. Sad but true.

I tried out a new recipe for blueberry scones.

I cooked myself a dinner. Another new recipe just for fun.

I opened my box of presents that I'd received 2 weeks ago and hadn't had time to open.

Do other people get to do this stuff too? Is this how other people live? It sure was nice.

And I PRACTICED.... first time in forever....
- tamborim: This is my big thing for spring since if I go to Bloco X again. If I go hitch-hiking all over Europe again I am determined to be doing it with the SMALLEST POSSIBLE INSTRUMENT this time. So I practiced: Leather Jacket over and over and over, because it was driving me nearly insane at the last Lions rehearsal. Then Mao-morta from Junior, which has a similar motif to the Leather Jacket (skipping the downbeat and starting on the ee). Then fast chatter endlessly using Jay's and Jake's and Junior's drills. My chatter's getting better!!! NOT there yet, definitely not that crisp lovely control that players like Jay have, but it feels like it's within reach. I've got to get it locked in before Bloco X.

- caixa: Mocidade as fast as possible, then Lions fast Brenda funk, then Lions Mocidade-with-buzz, then the new Mangueira sticking. Basically everything that ever made me snag and trip, or even just slowly seize up with fatigue, when I was the sole caixa at Lions rehearsals last month (when John and Sue were gone). I even had time to go through my old Monobloco caixa drills that Freddy taught me.

- an hour on Spiro's fantastic congamasterclass.com website (where I have splurged on a 3-month membership) and spent an hour trying to learn guiro shekere from his online instructional videos. I almost got it! well, except for this annoying extra "shk" whenever I try to do two downs in a row. It was so fun! I know I know, it isn't Brazilian, it's CUBAN, but it all ties together, I swear. And the "fun" is what matters anyway.

- timbal: Brian's new Danca-Voce arrangement; and Zak's tricky entrance on the samba-reggae. But real lightly because my hands are all covered with bruises again from yesterday's Lions rehearsal! Somehow whenever I hang out with those 2 guys too much, I end up all beat up and bruised. :)

It feels damn good to be on the horse again.

The summer choices

ok, so, my hellish job, as hellish as it is, has this one GIGANTIC benefit:
****FIVE MONTHS OFF PER YEAR*****

And we are in the home stretch now. Even the janitor on my hallway is counting down the days - he came into my office tonight singing "Five more weeks! Five more weeks!" Five more weeks and then I am FREE.

So what will I do this summer? Well, I just locked in my 3 part-time jobs, which will be:
(1) Half-time job running elephant research at the Oregon Zoo. But I can be out of town a lot.
(2) At least 10 days radiotracking crossbills (birds) through the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming. Mid July. YAY. I am really psyched to get to go be a real field biologist again, and also to finally learn radio-tracking.
(3) Three weeks doing sea turtle research, split awkwardly between Boston, Maine and Oregon. Late July to mid Aug.

Now I've got to pack all the edges around those jobs with one (or two?) of the following four musical choices:

(1) BLOCO X. The premier samba party of Europe, the weekend party to end all weekend parties. Rumor has it Bloco X is going to be in France in May! Possibly Tours. This is overwhelmingly tempting! I've always wanted to meet the French sambistas, who are reportedly neck-and-neck for worlds-best-nonBrazilian-sambistas (tied with the Japanese), and plus of course I could go hang out in London for a while and catch up on the new incarnation of Verde Vai. Plus I could attempt, and fail, to learn yet another new language to add to my other 8 attempts.

(2) NEW HAMPSHIRE. Brand new East Coast camp this year in NEW HAMPSHIRE! Run by the same marvelous people who do the California camp. This is also overwhelmingly tempting!

(3) CALIFORNIA. Mestre Jonas is coming to California Camp! This is so overwhelmingly tempting that I'm already trying to bribe other Lions players to go with me and just told Brian I was definitely going (temporarily spacing on the other 3 overwhelmingly tempting things on this list). And by the way - O Dia reported last week that Jonas has, at last, left Mocidade. This has been building up for a long time - Mocidade doesn't pay him a thing, and the current president is driving Mocidade into the ground. It's sad; I feel like the Mocidade that I love does not really exist any more. Anyway, Jonas is switching to Cubango of Grupo A. Which is across the water in Niteroi. I've never visited Cubango... but now I will have to.

(4) And then of course there is BRAZIL. Plane ticket prices are shockingly low. And I have a FREE, FREE, FREE place to stay - my very own apartment in Salvador, which I can use freeeeeeeeeeee for 2 months this summer if I want. And in fact, if I vacated my house here in Portland, put all my stuff in storage, and just flew to Brazil for two months, I'd end up saving a couple thousand dollars. And Lisette, my friend and Salvador apartment co-owner, just posted the most wonderful blog entry about Boipeba, one of the magical islands near Salvador...I dare you to read it and not want to buy a plane ticket instantly:

http://www.brazilnutadventures.blogspot.com/

And the sea turtles are there....


I think it is going to come down to Bloco X vs. Boipeba. This is going to be a hard one.

East vs. West

... and in the middle of the stolen-laptop chaos and the flight to the East Coast comes a bombshell, utterly bewildering, decide-now-or-it's-all-over, oh-but-it's-only-maybe job offer for a long-term job as a marine biologist.... based in BOSTON. To start in spring 2010. Dependent on a Navy grant which might not even happen.

I was given 24 hours to decide whether or not I was in. Whether to commit to moving across the country again, for the long term, and abandoning Portland and my wonderful musical community here. The weird thing, of course, being, it's not even a real job offer, only a potential job offer; it's not a grant yet, it's not even a grant proposal yet, it's just a PREproposal - they won't know for months if the grant actually comes through.

How can I say yes or no when it's not even real yet? I gave a verbal yes (how could I not, in this kind of economic climate?), but it doesn't really mean anything yet. So now it's just a waiting game.

It was suddenly utterly heartbreaking to think of leaving Portland, which now seems precious beyond compare; and I am kicking myself for all the time that I HAVEN'T spent in this city; all the time I've spent running away to somewhere else. I know I won't find anything like this musical life in any other American city.

So, pro and con for moving back to the East Coast:

PRO:
Closer to family - in Boston and also in Chicago, Tennessee and Miami.
MUCH closer to Brazil and several hundred dollars cheaper!
Closer to London! Germany! Istanbul!
And MUCH closer to my friends in New York City - just a couple hrs by train - my god, I could do weekend trips!
New summer Brazil music camp has started in New Hampshire!
Lots of Brazilians to learn Portuguese from.
DREAM JOB as a marine biologist studying whales and sea turtles and seabirds.
Honestly, how often does someone say "come out on the boats with us and study whales". Every girl's dream.
About a 1/3 higher salary. This is not trivial since I've been beating my head against a wall trying to survive.
No teaching nightmares any more.
No endless crushing teaching deadlines every single damn day.
Sunshine.
Snow.


CON:
No Lions. No Brian.
No Gatas. No Pauline.
No Bate Livre. No Derek.
No Axe Dide. No Donna. No Jesse. No Andy.
No all my other friends... Jay, Blake, David, Kirin...
.... Dammit, this is positively heartbreaking. I didn't realize what a great circle of friends I have here till I
started counting them all up and imagining leaving.
Not being able to dash up to Seattle to see my friends there. No Jerry... :(
No bike paths, no 100% green energy, no backyard chickens, no Powell's - no Portland. :( :( :(
Higher cost of living.
No more research on Asian elephants.
No students. Because for all the teaching hell... the students are so damn cool.
They really take me out of myself. In every class there are 10 or 12 I get to know who turn out to be such awesome people,
and it is such a pleasure to get to know them & such an honor to be able to help them find their paths.
Lab work. It burned me out once before, and it probably could again.
Snow. ha ha.


I guess I won't know till I try.

The perfect excuse

My musical life has been nearly obliterated for the last six months by a hellish grind at work. And whenever a vacation arrives - Christmas, spring break - I always instantly charge to the airport (the very second my last class is done! Zoom!) - and fly across the whole huge country to Boston, New York or Miami. Then the instant I get back to Portland, I leap in my car and charge off on the 3-hour drive to Seattle (related to some complicated cat-sitting arrangements), zoom back to Portland on the very last Sunday possible, try to squeeze in a Lions rehearsal, then back to work full-time the instant rehearsal ends. As I charged off to Boston on spring break two weeks ago, I felt wistful leaving; I realized I couldn't recall having had a free day in Portland since July 2008.

Then ten days ago my laptop was stolen in Seattle. Along with my driver's license and all my credit card numbers and all my online passwords and all my Lions rehearsal recordings. (The one thing that was spared, thank god: My passport and its Brazil visa! Because I'd just mailed it off to the State Department to get new visa pages, 'cause the whole thing got nearly stamped full on my Bloco X trip last year. Otherwise it definitely would have been in the travel bag that got stolen.)

Well, I really recommend a stolen laptop as an unmissable life experience, purely for the weeks of sympathy and support it engenders. Good god, the waves of sympathy and understanding I got, from colleagues and students alike! The emails of support! The immediate offers to take me off committee work, spare me a terrible grant-writing deadline, let me skip a few rehearsals, forgive my not having finished grading the last batch of exams, forgive my lack of reply to the last 200 emails!

I'm going to ride this excuse as long as I possibly can ("I'm so sorry I didn't reply to your email more promptly - my laptop was stolen 2 years ago.")

Anyway, I did lose virtually all my Lions and Axe Dide rehearsal recordings, but I was glad to get a clean slate. The only recordings spared were the ones that I'd put on a Lions website, and a decent set of Axe Dide recordings that I'd just given to both Donna and Zak; and now I'm spared the burden of feeling like I have to plow through all the hundreds of hours of other backlogged recordings from both those bands and my other two bands too.

Recording has become more trouble than it's worth. Especially when it reaches the point where people start endlessly asking me for copies of my recordings, and then (this is where it reaches the tipping point) start expecting me to record all rehearsals and even post the files on some website or other for them. "Who recorded the last workshop?" one person said at a recent band rehearsal, repeating the question a few times and then saying in an irritated tone "Didn't anybody record the last workshop??" Hey, why didn't YOU record the last workshop if you wanted it recorded? Why didn't you buy your own recorder and do the work yourself? (I'm much more tolerant if the person asking actually did make a good-faith effort to record it, but had a technical glitch)

And, as for being asked for copies, it's a nice idea, and I always WANT to share my recordings, but people don't realize that it takes TWO hours to download them a single hour's recordings, sort them, listen through them, find the thing you asked for, cut it down, convert to an mp3 and email it. (It typically takes 2x the time to process a recording than the live event took.) I just don't have the time.. At every music camp I've been to, people ask for copies of my recordings and give me their emails and each time I think "This time I'll really send them the mp3's!" and I have NEVER, EVER managed to send even ONE mp3 from a music camp to even ONE person.

So I am just relieved to have all the recordings gone. "I'm so sorry, but my laptop was stolen last week," - yay!

A home in 2010

The second fall of Imperio has left me more disillusioned than ever with Grupo Especial, and more convinced than ever that Grupo A is where the real Carnaval of the people lives: the Carnaval that is about community, about honest people working as hard as they can to put on the best show that they can. Every year that I go to Rio, I seem to develop a stronger and stronger respect for one or another magnificent Grupo A escola that is mysteriously trapped in Grupo A - often an escola that, despite regularly winning Grupo A, is always immediately sent back down again. It's one of Grupo Especial's little pacts with the judges: The Grupo A winner one year is always the escola that immediately gets demoted the next year. They're called the "yo-yo escolas".

What that means is, those yo-yo escolas are basically first-class, truly GREAT, escolas that might have fantastic baterias, great designs, great songs, great parade flow, thousands of dedicated people... but they don't have a lot of money. Which means they cannot afford the bribes to get the Liesa judges to take them seriously. They also can't afford to make truly huge million-dollar floats and $10,000 costumes. Instead they have to settle for ever so slightly smaller, but magnificent, $900,000 floats, and ever so slightly smaller, but totally gorgeous, $9000 costumes... but that little difference sinks them in the end.

It's entirely about the money.

Sao Clemente, Estacio de Sa, Uniao da Ilha. And now Imperio Serrano, which till two years ago was one of the original golden children of Grupo Especial, one of the originals, with a bateria that is consistently voted best in all of Rio (meaning, of course, best in the world). But long ago Imperio committed the cardinal sin of deciding to remain an honest escola.

All worked up about it, I sent Vitor a slightly incoherent email - my Portuguese has been getting worse and worse this year - that probably read something like:

****

I saw the parades on TV, and all mine friends, sambistas all, from englands and United States, we all believed that Mocidade or the Mangueira go down this year and, honestly, what happened to Imperio it awfully be a ROBBERY! Honestly! Truth! I no believe in Grupo Especial none more. All I know is I will me be so proud to parade with Imperio in 2010, in Grupo Especial or Grupo A or whatever wherever. If Imperio is parading in Antarctica, I go to Antarctica! kisses, Kathleen

****

... but somehow he made sense of all that and sent me back a kind email saying that my email had cheered him up. (Maybe the grammar made him laugh.) And he also added, mournfully, "It was a whole year's work...."

Whatever the hell happens to my job here, I have a home in Império Serrano in 2010. And honestly, that's where I most want to be. I have to also state here that I still have a very soft spot for Mocidade too. But Imperio's trials and tribulations have really caught my heart... Or as they say in Rio, "I am Império."

Vitor's email

Email from Vitor, my Império Serrano director of the Ala of the Devoted, Monday morning, after the terrible Wednesday when Império Serrano was unjustly and mysteriously sent down to Grupo A.. I print his letter in its entirety, along with most of the letters that Vitor forwarded, to give you a sense of the pain and heartbreaking disillusionment suffered by a good escola that is sent down unjustly. (And, bateria fans, note the long paragraph that builds up to a scream about the injustice of Imperio's fantastic bateria being sent to Grupo A.) (PS I have permission from Vitor to forward his emails to samba blogs & translate them to English, as best I can.)

*******

Subject; The robbery of 2009

Hi my friends of the Devoted.

Since last Wednesday I've been thinking about what I should write to you all. It's already been 5 days and I'm still not sure. I still haven't recovered from the blow.

The ala of the Devoted is 6 years old, and since then we've made great advances in our goal of making a difference with our work. We offer to our people a quality service that is something different. We have prices [for costumes] that are lower than the average, we're more organized, and in place of that we "charge" our members that they must show energy, dedication and quality during the parade.

I am certain that after 6 years, this model is working better and better. Our members are happy with the parades, and the director of the escola loves our work. Therefore, from the point of view of the ala of the Devoted, everything's going very well.

But there's one thing that has been making me very uncomfortable. I just can't face anymore coming to our "virtual space" [email] to ask everybody to be sure they sing the samba, to ask that everybody arrive on time, to ask this or that of you. I have to confess that I have run out of energy, run out of motivation. I know that I shouldn't be passing on this sort of thing to the whole group, but I can't help it, I'm really being sincere, this is how I am. I can't stand any more to be organizing everything. Because it seems useless.

It seems that everything is decided between the robbers' gang of the "animal bankers" [the street-lottery gangsters who illegally fund the rich escolas]. They can't stand to see a strong Império, a great Império. Perhaps they fear this.

The truth is that in 2009, Império had a very good parade. Worthy of being in the Parade of Champions. Everybody who paraded knows this. Anybody who didn't parade could see it in the newspapers and the websites the day after the parade. The possibility that we could be demoted to Grupo A didn't even pass through my mind.

It was one of the great thefts that I have ever witnessed in my 25 years of participating in the parades of Sapucaí. [Sapucaí = the location of the Grupo Especial parades]

I want to thank everybody for the innumerable emails of support that I received in the past few days. This ala has always been a circle of very dear friends. Thanks to [list of names...] and many others who wrote offering support and best wishes for our parade.

Bit by bit, this week, I'll be sending out the photos of our parade. They came out very well... I think you'll like them. There are also photos online. [...]

In this moment of profound sadness and disappointment I can only thank all of you for your dedication and for the help that you have given to the ala.

The people of the back line were perfect - thanks Bernardo, Lenita, Samagaio, Sylvia, Miriam, Ivo, Katya.

I was very glad to get to meet Alex and Carlos, what great guys! The folks of Omar, Claudia, Omara and Marcia, also were just wonderful - thanks for your presence and your dedication. Others new for 2009 were Marcos and Gabriela, it was wonderful to meet you this year, I hope you had a great time! [more thanks to specific people snipped]

I agree very much in the analysis of my friends [names...], much more skillful with words than I am, and therefore I asked them for permission to append below their thoughts on the robbery of 2009.

hugs
vitor


******************
[first appended email - name removed]

When Imperio Serrano fell to Grupo A in 2007, it deserved the fall. This year, much to the contrary, Imperio had a wonderful parade - lovely, happy and animated. It was, without doubt, the escola that most engaged the public (if not the only escola to do so) - and it became victim of a robbery. A terrible robbery, practiced by the celebrated criminals who run the Rio Carnaval. But the crime is only the latest in a long string.

Imperio was one of the best escolas of 2009, according to the spectators of TV Globo, the listeners of Radio Tupo, and the critics on the site Carnavalesco. In the newspapers, the parade was unanimously praised, especially in light of the fact that the escola had managed to put on a good carnaval despite its financial condition. Example: Instead of presenting immense but defective floats, as did Mangueira (the inclusion of Mangueira in the champions is a joke), Imperio brought to the avenue smaller but perfectly constructed floats, and - even more important - floats that made sense in terms of the parade's theme (which did not occur in the majority of parades - the case of Mocidade being the most flagrant).

I won't bother commenting on the faults of the mediocre and unprepared (corrupt?) judges of Liesa. If Carnaval continues in the hands of this current set of thieves, the movie will play over and over: the escola that rises to Grupo Especial, falls again the following year, even if it is better than all the others. [note from KH: This has happened every Carnaval that I've seen, the only exception in the last decade being the very curious case of Vila Isabel, which benefited from a very curious change in the rules that only occurred in the year that Vila rose to Grupo Especial -and then the rules were changed back.]

There are untouchable escolas.

This happens occurs right under the noses of a public power that is saddled with a subservient press - the majority of journalists who were covering the event were not in the least bothered by swapping their critical conscience for an offering of cheese balls, a plate of sushi and a few shots of whiskey.

****
2nd email (name removed)

I saw all the parades with an open mind and I can say truly: only 4 escolas-de-samba had better parades than Imperio SErrano in 2009 - and they placed in the first four places, including Portela.

Imperio was robbed; hit by the gang of bandits that runs the carnaval of Rio de Janeiro.

What happened yesterday (Ash Wednesday) was, unequivocally, was not just the absolute rejection of the type of carnaval practiced by Imperio [an honest carnaval], but in fact the absolute opposite of carnaval. The negation of it.

It is hard, for anyone who took part in this parade, for anyone who was there, for anyone who felt their heart swell and who believed so much, for anyone who felt the reaction of the public in the stands, for anyone who saw the tears runing down the faces of the ladies, it's hard to take - to understand - this death - this assassination.

I would like, sincerely, to say "enough", that I'm tired, that I am done with escolas de samba, that from here on it will just be a memory. But no. I still believe. I don't really know in what; I don't know how; but I still believe. I believe very much in the force of Imperio Serrano - I need Imperio Serrano.

Maybe it would be easy to write here that, in spite of everything, it was worth it; that what matters is what we did, what we built from the ground up, from the asphalt, like a real escola de samba. But this, too, would be egoism. It would be a lie. It would be to ignore, among those that paraded, the feeling that resulted, the extraordinary feeling, that we put there, in the avenida, with every step and smile; with every measure a rare moment. But no; for anybody who was there, for anyone who make Sapucai shake with the song, for anyone who "ladeaou o miudinho" [sorry, don't know what that is - KH], for anyone who saw my Renata, beautiful, radiant with happiness, for anyone who noticed the improbable passista [samba dancer] that Joao turned into, joking and loving every second, for all those who were so happy to see the beautiful flow of the parade, for anyone who was at the parade at Imperio Serrano, whether parading or watchign the parade, whatever the results, it makes you to ask - makes you want to scream: apologies for the twelfth-place finish, to the incredible bateria of our escola. For that is what hurts.

Unlike 2007, in which we deserved the fall, this sending-down of Imperio is a scandalous blow against samba itself - and it was given by the delirious love of dirty money by the filthy bandits in public power, just as I described in the article "Shall we judge the judges?" (see link) [link wasn't included in the forward - KH]

We should not be quiet; we cannot. No more. And this will be, I believe, the official position of Imperio Serrano - to break convention - with the carnaval of the hidden "animal bankers" (bicheiros), with the filth that is called Liesa. Open your mouth to the world; shout it out. Without fear. Imperio is not an escola of thieves - and we will not go on with our head bowed despite the evidence that this carnaval is the whore of the bandits of organized crime. Imperio Serrano won't play a rigged game. Now is the time that we must take the position of pride and greatness is that is historically that of Imperio. It is long overdue. We will demand, without pause, of the mayor, that he take control of this event that is put on, in large part, with public money. The mayor Eduardo Paes, if he doesn't want to be connected to organized crime that was conceived and bought by Cesar Maia [previous mayor of Rio] needs to understand the LIESA, the Independent League of the Escolas de Samba, is immoral and is the enemy of Rio de Janeiro, whose best values insist on justice.

This is not the time to let things lie.

(And that Jorge Castanheira, president of Liesa, with his "pinta de sindico competente" [?] isn't anything more than a puppet of the animal-lottery thieves; the carnaval of Rio de Janeiro, in fact, is commanded by bandits in the control of Capitao Guimaraes, the torturer - it is lamentable that even TV Globo, showing this face, legitimizes this group of thieves as if they were a serious administrative entity.)

I have sympathy for Mangueira and especially for Mocidade - but, in this carnaval, it is quite an open question whether they should have ranked in front of Imperio. Mangueira practically fell apart in the Avenida; Mocidade exercised all the possibilities of bad taste. And what can I saw of Porto da Pedra, Viradouro and Unidos da Tijuca? What did these groups make of their spectacle if not the insolent cultivation of mediocrity?

[paragraph snipped - KH]

It costs me much to believe, naive that I am, but I am at last convinced that the result of Ash Wednesday was established exactly 12 months ago, when Imperio Serrano won Grupo A. Right then, in the moment when we rose from Grupo A, so happy and hopeful, we descended. (The same will happen with Uniao da Ilha in 2010, and escola that, in the end, doesn't deserve the rise; it has benefited this year from the persecution of Estacio de Sa.)

[paragraph snipped - KH]

But Imperio will return. Imperio is the heritage of Rio de Janeiro. And we go to the fight [rise to the challenge]. We go to the fight!

The second fall of Império

I have been too overwhelmed and sick at heart recently to write any blog entries. My job has spiralled into a nightmare of endless 16-hr days (and I don't get paid hourly). I've had terribly bad news about a family member whose metastatic cancer has taken a frightening and deadly turn for the worse, and have been terribly worried about another family member with another health problem. I forgot my sister's birthday... I haven't been able to call her any day since then to apologize, because I never get done working till 1am. I spent most of Sunday miserable over the news that one of my bands had been accused of theft of a valuable leather jacket (!) and stealing of beer (well, frankly, that one's a lot more possible) and had been banned from one of the major venues in town - after a show that we'd really worked our asses off on. (A day later came another email saying oops, sorry, we found the "stolen" jacket behind a chair. By then I'd spent a whole day stressing about it.) I got called into my boss's office today to be reprimanded for the heinous act of asking my TA to help me with the impossible pile of grading that I have - my TA being the only thing that has kept my 16-hr work days from turning into 20 -hr workdays. Apparently they don't allow TAs at this school to help with exam grading... I hadn't known. Yesterday I got a crisp email informing me that one of the classes I am due to teach next fall has been drastically changed without my knowledge (they'd forgotten that was teaching it, forgot to invite me ot any of the meetings about it); this will require another dozen hours per week of prep time per week, and will turn next semester into the same nightmare that this semester has been, and the semester before, and the one before that. The news about the phys lab should have been a minor thing, and I'd shaken it off and was puttering around my room again, and then I just started to cry.

I haven't "just started to cry" like that since my first terrible, miserable, lonely time in Brazil; in Salvador in winter; when the winter gales off the Atlantic were blowing the street signs right off their poles, and I passed out in my host family's living room one day from a bleeding ulcer. The host family could have cared less; but the wonderful, sweet, underpaid, overworked cook put me to bed and made me his mom's special chicken soup.

I've worked 72 hours from Thursday night to Monday night. I had to miss two rehearsals and am on the point of just withdrawing from all of my bands. I hate this. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.

In the middle of all this, Carnaval. I did manage to see some of it at a friend's house (while typing lecture notes on invertebrate biology and plant medicines on my laptop). The only escola that was able to crack me out of my laptop daze was Salgueiro - with an incredible parade with, guess what theme, DRUMS!!! Can you even imagine a better theme?? They had some of the most beautiful floats I've ever seen - gigantic drums with acrobats on bungee cords leaping up and down to hit them - huge drums whose drum heads stretched out into huge, mobile heads of the animals who gave their lives to make the drums - an entire ala of maculele dancers - a float crowded full of actual mestres of baterias, past and present - and a drum that must have been twenty feet across with lifesize cows running across (well, people dressed as cows).

Salgueiro was the only escola that truly grabbed my attention; the only one that made me actually CLOSE my laptop and just watch the parade.

I was also pleased to see that Imperio Serrano, my beloved escola, one of the few "poor but honest" escolas in Grupo Especial, did a beautiful parade. No broken floats like two years ago when they lost! A magnificent song (they won the best song award this year) and the whole stadium singing along. I thought it was good enought that they had a shot at finishing in the top 6 and being in the Parade of Champions. Imperio's one of the few Grupo Especial escolas that does not have the (illegal) backing of major drug cartel, so it would be pretty cool to see them in the Parade of Champions.

Poor Mocidade had a pretty sketchy parade. And Mangueira, horrors, actually had a very bad parade with several float disasters. They've had some budget problems and some of their floats were actually unfinished! This is usually the kiss of death for a Grupo Especial escola. Could it be that the great Mangueira might go down to Grupo A??

Rumors started to fly that if Mangueira or Mocidade ended up last (the escola that is ranked last is demoted to Grupo A), LIESA (the league of samba schools that runs Carnaval) was going to announce that, due to special unforeseen circumstances, no Grupo Especial escola would be sent down last year.

Rumors started to fly particularly intensely that Mangueira, the famous escola of thieves and drug dealers, was pulling strings behind the scenes.

Wednesday the results came out.

SALGUEIRO WON! I was so pleased! Good for Salgueiro - they really earned it. They haven't won in over a decade.

Mangueira finished in the top 6 in the Parade of Champions. What the ... ????

Mocidade finished second to last.

Imperio Serrano was ranked last and will go down to Grupo A.

I have always known that Grupo Especial was rigged, but the fall of Imperio this year, despite Imperio's beautiful parade, with Mangueira mysteriously in the Parade of Champions despite a terrible parade with unfinished floats, confirmed it for me beyond any further doubt. Or another way to put it is - this year it hit me where it really hurt. Carnaval is rigged. Bought and paid for. I am certain that Mangueria bribed the judges to bring Imperio down instead of Mangueira - since Imperio is politically the weakest escola and can offer no bribe money in return.

I'm reminded of the old joke about an "honest" judge in Latin America: An honest judge is one who will consider bribes equally from all offerers and will, fair and honest, take the biggest bribe. (And Imperio couldn't afford to offer anything.)

So I am sick at heart this week.

I have been waiting since then for an email from Vitor, my ala director in Imperio Serrano, Vitor of the endless enthusiastic emails, who has been slaving away all year for this parade. Usually he sends an email out right after Wednesday's results. He even did two years ago, when Imperio had their catastrophic parades with floats falling apart, and was sent down for the first time. But Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday passed... and no word from Vitor. See the next post for the update.