Impressions

After a long absence, I can finally do the MacArthur thing on this blog ("I have returned."), not least because I'm also now sitting in another nation where the people don't initially speak my language and some of them wonder why I'm here. We have made the move to Portugal and my first impressions are that, long-term, we probably made the right choice, even if short-term frustrations and confusion have made the opening week less exhilarating than it otherwise might have been. Moving is always a disruption and a trans-Atlantic move to another culture is moving². We gave up a lot of comfortable and familiar things and people to come here and the upside is that almost all of the people that we've met have been so welcoming that it gives the initial sensation of comfort. And the word "things" doesn't really embody the material stuff. We're still waiting on a couple pallets full of those "things" so this temporary absence is very far from a crisis, albeit sleeping without a mattress has been getting less and less thrilling with each day that goes by. I'm all about camping but generally when I plan to do so.

The most interesting aspect to all of it has been, of course, those welcoming people. The vast majority of Portuguese that we've encountered speak English and often do so without prompting as soon as they see the likely "American" blank face when either they speak or I'm about to ask a question that I don't know how to properly produce without sounding like Twoflower (i.e. somehow if I speak LOUDLY AND SLOWLY they'll understand me.) But they're quite used to both tourists and ex-pats here and the typical pidgin sign language of "Want this?" and "Yes" gets everyone by. It's just always amusing when we walk in with our American-accented "Ola!" and they immediately respond with perfect English, like in the interesting Italian restaurant we stopped into the other day, where we started saying the Portuguese on the menu and the operator immediately stopped and said: "English? Yeah, that's no problem." Said restaurant was interesting because it seemed to be set up on a "fast food" model where you could get fresh pasta, like gnocchi carbonara, but didn't present the American fast food "vibe", as it were. It also wasn't a chain, but is instead just one outlet in Santa Clara (across the Mondego River from Coimbra) doing its own thing.

One of the other upsides was coming to a football-mad culture, where game nights are distinct outings for a lot of the population. We were out during a Monday evening that happened to be when the Primeira Liga was staging all of their games as the season nears its end. Coimbra is heavily-populated by Benfica and Sporting fans, albeit Porto wasn't playing that evening, so there's no way to tell the real ratio. We sat in a local joint, known as The Sports Bar (Portuguese humor may be underrated), to watch the second half of their match as they tried to stay in consideration for the title they've won more than any other club and the anguish of their supporters was evident when the result did not go their way. I know those feelings intimately and they don't change across cultures or locations. Meanwhile, the local semi-pro club, Académica, is playing for promotion into the second division (i.e. the fully pro ranks) this Saturday. We have tickets. If you're not going to support the locals, then why are you there? (Besides, it might be more appealing to watch than Liverpool, at the moment.)

And it's the locals that are of the highest concern in many ways. We went to a concert the other night and were greeted by a couple walking around the facade of the building like we were. They recognized Americans (blank face?) and asked why we were visiting. We said: "We just moved here." The reaction was obvious: "Ahhh...." (slight pause) "Well, welcome!" There are a lot of people like us here and it's an open question as to whether that's a positive thing for the local environment. I'd like to think it is, since adding more to the mix is the same essential element that has made the United States and modern American culture what it is, despite the efforts of the idiots to deny it. Indeed, that modern American culture is evident everywhere here, as you'll often see people walking around wearing clothing with slogans in American English and the aforementioned fast food has also permeated the environment, as one of our neighbors tried to explain our mutual address to someone else by starting with: "Do you know where the Burger King is? We're just up the street from that." That "just up the street" concept is a huge upside, as well, eager as I was to get away from our dependency on a car to do much of anything outside the house. We are a few minutes walk from two major shopping malls (they still have them here), both of them with grocery stores and a smaller one of the latter is one block away. We've been here 8 days and have already walked home with groceries a half-dozen times, which is a wholly unAmerican thing for much of our suburbanized, car-oriented situation in the States in recent decades.

It's also a popular sentiment amongst the expat group that we met up with yesterday. It was an interesting mix of people who'd been here for years or had only recently arrived, like us, many of them chatting about all the cool things within walking distance of their homes. It was also another subtle reaction moment, when one of them asked if I was law enforcement, since they'd briefly seen the word "Justice" tattooed on my arm. I smiled and showed the full piece, which is a Diego Rivera-like rendition of a fist crushing a dollar sign, with the raised fists of  red and black others within it and the words "Equality" and "Justice" basing and capping it, respectively: "No, I'm a Marxist." was my response. I could read the surprise and then wariness in the faces of a couple of them, which is a pretty typical reaction for average Americans, most of whom don't really know what that political philosophy is other than "bad." But a couple of them saw the humor in it and we moved on. It was encouraging to hear later from another of our expat compatriots describing Michigan (his birthplace, as well as mine) as: "Well, there's Detroit and then Ann Arbor and then it's all Republicans until you get to Chicago." That's pretty accurate and another sign of the detachment that modern groups of Americans feel for each other. We'll have to see how we fit in with all of these new groups here and if I can shake the "invader complex" after a while.

Unbridled outrage and the lack of conclusions

Since we're no longer members of the Michigan Theater, we've been seeing fewer films, as you might expect. So when the Oscar nominations were announced the other day, I decided I/we should try to catch up on a few things. We've seen four of the ten Best Picture nominees but had seen none of the documentary feature films, so I figured we'd start there. I'll cover the first four (The Perfect Neighbor, The Alabama Solution, Mr. Nobody Against Putin and Come See Me in the Good Light) here. The fifth, Cutting Through Rocks, is only available on the Sundance Channel so I'm not sure when we might get a chance to see that.

The Perfect Neighbor- This one was about the killing of Ajike Owens in Ocala, FL in 2023. Susan Lorincz was Owens' neighbor who complained constantly about Owens' children and the children of other neighbors playing near her apartment. Those complaints included repeated calls to the Marion County sheriff. On June 2, 2023, Lorincz allegedly assaulted some of the children by hurling objects at them and calling them names. When Owens came across the street and knocked on her door to protest that behavior, Lorincz shot her through the locked door, killing her. Lorincz later cited Florida's "stand your ground" law as an explanation for her behavior. Public protests followed swiftly and Lorincz was eventually convicted of manslaughter, among other charges, and given 25 years. The film is yet another tragic example of basic racism and the idiocy of these so-called "self-defense" laws that allow our gun-happy society to exercise their "rights" to kill other people. But the fascinating thing about the presentation is that the vast majority of the film is comprised of the sheriff's officers' bodycam footage, as well as internal cameras at their HQ. Those bodycams give us insight as to their views on the absurdity of the situation (frequently walking away from visits to the neighborhood muttering about how the only one causing problems is Lorincz) but also to how they're basically unable to do anything about a person who is clearly not stable (she's arrested during the film for destroying the gate of a local business that had been closed on the area where she'd illegally parked her truck) but isn't doing anything that would enable them to either act directly or, at the very least, find some mental health resources for her that might help her situation (if those even exist at that level in the state of Florida.) It's on Netflix.

The Alabama Solution- should leave any decent person with a fine sense of outrage (similar to what you should be feeling over events in Minnesota these days.) It's about the systematic mistreatment within and injustice of the correctional system in Alabama, which basically serves as those of many states do, which is the perpetuation of slavery under another name (i.e. unpaid labor by prisoners who are systematically denied any genuine case review for release.) What makes that worse are the number of deaths that take place in that state's system that are simply waved away by the public (there are a couple great moments when the local shock jocks are heard dismissing an inmate being beaten to death by guards with essentially: "Shouldn't'a been there in the first place!") and which leaves families no recourse as to accountability or even explanations as to why their loved ones end up never returning from behind bars. It's infuriating, but really well done, since most of the footage comes from cell phone recordings from devices smuggled into the prisons (by guards, so they can make more money, as they are also systematically underpaid and abused by the system.) Some of the best parts are in recorded conversations with Robert Earl Council and Melvin Ray, two prisoners who are the leaders of the Free Alabama Movement, which the Alabama dept. of corrections despises because it exposes their perfidy in the most basic of ways. It's on HBO. 

Mr. Nobody Against Putin- This one starts out far more lighthearted than the first two, as it's initially presented as the story of a young man, Pavel Talankin, who is the videographer and event coordinator for the largest school in Karabash, a town of 15,000 people in the Ural mountains, once solely famous for being the most polluted town in all of Russia, thanks to the local copper mining and smelting operation. (See Mark Twain's Roughing It for a detailed description of just how awful copper mining- and mining, in general -really is.) Pavel loves his job... until the invasion of Ukraine begins and his job and that of the teachers becomes one of spoon-feeding propaganda to their students to encourage them not just to support the invasion, but also to indoctrinate them to the idea of fighting for Russia being their highest possible mission in life. It becomes an hour-and-a-half excursion into the concept of "patriotism being the last refuge of a scoundrel." It's also told entirely through Pavel's equipment, both at the school and his home and reveals not only his personal misgivings, but also how he starts to translate those objections into actions at the school (At one point, where the school is now required to start each day with a march through the hallway to the Russian national anthem, he replaces it with The Star-Spangled Banner.) Eventually, his actions attract the attention of higher-ups and things begin to get really dark in this small town. Once again, the primary emotional reaction of most watching should be some level of outrage, followed by shaking one's head at the stupidity of it all. It's on Apple TV.

Come See Me in the Good Light- And, finally, what is easily the most personal of those presented and what may be the best of them, as well. This film is the story of Colorado's poet laureate, Andrea Gibson and their wife, Megan Falley, as they struggle with Andrea's cancer. It follows them through treatment, the changing tides of their progress and regression and how it changes Andrea's outlook on their work, their relationships, and their life. Having grown up in a strict Baptist household, Andrea's poetry orbits the topics of identity, gender, and self-determination (and the emotional impact of all of those) pretty regularly. In the early 00s, they began performing as a spoken word artist and became something of a rock star in the poetry scene, but retreated from all of that after their diagnosis. Neither Andrea nor Megan are inhibited by the presence of (plain, old regular) cameras and so this ends up being a surprisingly intimate depiction of two people struggling with the concepts of mortality while still trying to maintain their normally hopeful (Megan) and determined (Andrea) demeanor about life and everything in it. When it came to a close without displaying what the resolution of Andrea's struggle was, Tricia complained that we didn't find out "what happened." My response was that because this was a film about life, whether they had died or not wasn't relevant. The film had shown what they wanted and that was life and everything in it that was to be appreciated and sometimes endured. It's also on Apple TV.