Getting rid of the penny.

I know that periodically there are discussions in the US about getting rid of the penny because it costs more to make than it´s worth. But it never goes anywhere and it probably isn´t even a very serious discussion. And there are a lot more pressing economic issues than the cost of producing pennies...like pouring borrowed money down rat holes in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But, for what it is worth, Brasil got rid of its one-cent coin in 2005. Individual items are still priced at R$x.99, or whatever, but the total purchase price at checkout is always rounded to the nearest 5 or 0 if you pay with cash. You are charged the exact amount if you pay with a credit or debit card. It seems like a very reasonable practice to me, and I can´t help but wonder if there was an emotional social debate about it before the change was made. I´d bet not. Brasileans are accustomed to changes in their money. The current monetary unit is the Real, but as recently as the 1990s it was the Cruzeiro. And the coins themselves haven´t always had the same size or color. In my coin purse right now I have different types of (to use US terms) nickels, dimes and quarters.

I saw a one-cent coin once and it looked exactly like the 10-cent coin. In fact I probably had it because someone gave it to me in change as a dime.

That´s all. Just wanted yáll to know that life without a one-cent coin is ok.

Go shopping.

One thing you probably take for granted in the US that Brasileans never get to do is window shop when the stores are closed. The stores here all have metal doors that are pulled down and locked when they´re closed. If you walk down a street at night or on Sunday, you have no idea what kind of establishment you are passing because all of those gray metal doors look alike. It´s probably different in the malls, but how often do you walk around in a mall with closed stores?

Speaking of malls, I don´t know of any in São Paulo like the big sprawling suburban malls in the US with acres and acres of parking lot. I am familiar with a couple of malls that are very similar internally to the ones in the US, with several floors of retail shops, food courts and multiplex cinemas, but (I think) without the big anchor department stores. The two that I know of have underground parking, but not nearly as much as there would be in the US, because lots of people arrive there on buses or the subway. I do know of one huge mall on the outskirts of the city of Campinas, about an hour away from São Paulo, that is exactly like the US model, and something like that may exist in São Paulo too and I just don´t know about it.

I saw a headline in the paper the other day, by the way, that the population of São Paulo just went over the 11 million mark. I know people of asked me at various times about the population, and I never knew the answer.

Another little retail oddity. There are areas in São Paulo where all the stores sell the same things. If I want embroidery thread for cross stitching, I go the area next to the São Bento subway station and there are dozens of fabric stores that all sell what I need. A couple of weeks ago when Heitor´s ipod headset quick working, I went to several stores to find a replacement, but all they sold were the little ear buds. Finally a guy in one of the stores told me to go to Santa Ifigênia street, and he was right. It is a street where there are stores selling every imaginable type of thing electrical and electrical-related. I know of a similar area for luggage stores, and even stores that sell the kind of things a front-yard mechanic would want (oddly enough right next door to the area of fabric stores). There is another type of mall here that you might encounter on any given street. It has several floors of retail shops that all sell the same things. I know of one that has 3 or 4 floors of nothing but shoe stores. Another where the stores all sell either cameras, or clocks and wristwatches.

I hope this has inspired you to go shopping...for the sake of the US economy.

Tchau

Poverty and the 2nd Amendment

One can´t live where I do in Brasil without thinking frequently about poverty, and then there were articles in both last sunday´s NY Times and the leading sunday paper in São Paulo which hit on the topic. The NY Times article by Barbara Ehrenreich ("Is it Now a Crime to be Poor?") was obviously about the criminalization of poverty and the one here in São Paulo was about a specific area where homelessness and poverty are associated with the use of crack.

I don´t know the comparative statistics about poverty and homelessness, but I´m willing to believe that it is still a greater problem in Brasil than the US. But for how much longer, given the unemployment (and under-employment) statistics in the US? Whatever the actual numbers and trends might be, one thing is clear. The US does a much better job of keeping the poverty out of the public eye. As the Ehrenreich article makes clear, we hate the necessity of witnessing poverty more than we hate the fact of the poverty itself.

I think that we good people in both countries have created myths about the poor to obviate the need to see real people. They´re drug-addicted. They´re mental cases. They have no ambition.
And, most importantly, they´re not our fault or our problem.

One thing which makes the whole mix more volatile in the US is the addition of guns. It occurred to me the other night, when I was walking in an area where everyone who reads this would be terrified, but where I felt reasonably comfortable (alert, but comfortable), that one big difference is that people in Brasil don´t have weapons.

I know that guns exist in the favelas around Rio, where there seems to be something like a state of war between the drug dealers and the police, but that part of Brasil is totally alien to me. In general, I am assured that people don´t have guns and would find them difficult to buy if they wanted them. Thank goodness.

Because I think Frank Rick is always worth reading:

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/frankrich/index.html

It´s about a book really, not the pictures

These are not timely fotos, but they are just about the only ones we´ve taken with people in them since I arrived here in August 2008. They were taken in May when Heitor and I took a weekend trip to a neary artsy community. There was nothing particularly noteworthy about the trip, and we only remembered to take these photos as we were in the process of leaving the little place where we stayed, which is typical. But, since I just ran across them and some of you have been bugging me for photos, I will include them.

I just finished listening to the audiobook of "The Greatest Experiment Ever Performed on Women: Exploding the Estrogen Myth," by Barbara Seaman. The author and the book are probably well known to most women, or at least I hope they are, but I´d never heard of either and I only listened to the book because the title sounded like something important. That´s embarrassing to admit, even more so because Seaman died last year before I even knew of her.

Obviously the book is most important for women, but anyone concerned with the irresponsibility of drug companies, the double standard applied to the approval process for drugs used by women as opposed to those used by men, the issue of artificial horomone use in cattle and the runoff of these hormones in animal waste into the environment (and some already-documented, horrendous environmental side effects) should also read this book. Not to mention anyone who still thinks they need to defer to their doctor in matters of their own health care.

As regards the history of the drug companies and their irresponsible falsification and misrepresentation of research data or, in short, their commitment to their profits and their shareholders rather than to their integrity, I am reminded of one of my bosses at General Mills describing a particular Democratic candidate for Congress as anti-business. I think it was at one of the semi-regular pitches made by the General Mills PAC in its effort to recruit new members (although the PAC always made a great point of insisting that they contributed to candidates from both parties, this particular guy was definitely a Republican). I remember thinking what a stupid statement it was, as if any serious politician in the US is anti-business, and wondering what exactly that meant to him. Now I have an idea what it might have meant; he probably didn´t like those meddlesome government regulations that interfered with the bottom line.

Tchar for now.

Frank Rich, Bob Herbert and Conan O´Brien

Here are links to two excellent perspectives on Gatesgate. America: It´s not post racial quite yet.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/opinion/02rich.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/01/opinion/01herbert.html



From one of Conan Obrien´s monlogues last week:

"Yesterday, of course, on Fox News commentator Glenn Beck said that he believes President Obama is a racist. Well, to be fair, every time you watch Glenn Beck, it does get a little easier to hate white people. "