Sunday, November 29, 2015

Feminist Lisbon Grafitti - Eliminating Violence Against Women


"Not shut!"

Pretty good grafitti stencils and posters for the International Day of Eliminating Violence Against Women (UN declaration for November 25). This stenciling and postering was an organized effort that appeared overnight in our neighborhood. We didn't see who did it. We did see similar stencils in some other neighborhoods, but the concentration here was impressive.

Look out, she's got a guitar!

These posters were on the front wall of a ruin right near our tram stop in Graca neighborhood. There's a community center devoted to art and creativity quite close by, and perhaps the posters came from there? I'm guessing - no idea actually.


I exist because I resist

I imagine that I see a wish for community action, a wistfulness and longing, besides the more conventional international protest iconography. A sort of underlying sadness. Does it relate to fado, the melancholy Portuguese musical style? I'd like to see and understand a little more about this.

We're going to dismantle patriarchy and capitalism (sorry for the bother)

A quote from Adrienne Rich was posted right alongside some poems in Portuguese. English is quite commonly used and understood here in Lisbon. Very useful language. I'm making it bigger because it's a bit hard to read in this small format. The wish for community so clear in this statement seems to fit well with the emotional tone of the other postings.

Quote from Adrienne Rich

Google didn't do too well with this

If one is touched, we all respond!

Gender is violence
Not only on what we could call the protest wall... also on utility posts and especially on the asphalt of street corners, where one walks to cross the street. You can't avoid seeing these stencils!

Well, I don't get the words, but I like the graphic.
Something about stamping on my heart?

If one is touched, we all respond

I want to be sad without guilt...Love speaks

Feminism is here to stay

"I disagree without agreement..." "Woman's scope"

I expect these poems are more subtle than Google can handle. At a certain point the translator bot fails to perform. The right-hand poem seems to start "Away with what I say, what I dream, what I think," but I can't get it any farther. The left-hand poem doesn't reveal itself in Google-ese.

We saw facebook postings about marches against violence toward women in Spain and Italy, otherwise perhaps the day passed without being marked very publicly. A very nice photo noted by my fb friend Francesco di Majo - a non-march that happened somewhere, perhaps in Italy. The image credit is missing. It might have been in Paris, where marches have been banned for the time being I believe. Anyway, it's touching, I think. A silent witnessing.


The stencils in Lisbon are another silent witnessing of a sad fact of life - violence - and a desire to overcome it, to make a better world. 

by Nancy

Wandering Lisbon on the tram--FUN



Our first day in Lisbon, Portugal.  We arrived yesterday in the dark after a glorious day in a marshy estuary in the Algarve, way south.  Beautiful birds, sunny then a longish drive north to Lisbon.  We Google-mapped our way in to our apartment but in the dark and tired we had no idea  of anything but bed.  But hey--morning sun revealed the beautiful city below us. We look out on the old city with the bridge across the estuary and the Atlantic in the background.  Coffee, too.  Life looks pretty good.



What we learn about getting around is to take Tram #28 which wanders the old city area.  We find it and hop on. Well--finding the ticket store, figuring it all out.  A great thing about Portugal is that many people speak English and they do not speak Spanish. The ticket guy and I did fine in his excellent English after I stopped with the Spanish pronunciation of what I thought were Portuguese words.  Our apartment is a couple of blocks from the tram stop.  Yay!

Off we went to our destination--the end of the line.

Lisbon turns out to be as hilly as Naples and much of it was similarly built in the 1800's, so I already loved it since I love Naples.  Our trip of about 3 miles went up and down several sets of very steep hills on narrow streets.  Yikes! But what views.  Several places which will require us to get out and wander on another day.




Scenes along the way

Bertrand Books. The oldest bookstore in the world.

Much feminist graffiti around.

Typical building

In the night club and gay area.



Tile design for storefront.

End of the line

Finally we reached the turn-around on the opposite hill from our house.  The large basilica which we see from our deck is set on one side of a glorious square and garden. We could not enter as a funeral was going on but poked around outside.  The church and steps are made from the local marble with seashells showing.



Finally, we also found a patisserie.  We had passed so many on the tram but not near the stops.  This was obviously the place for the locals--lots of chat and banter.  Also delicious.  One of our pastries is a custard tart and one is a cake with cardamom.  The counterman spoke good English too.




A wander across from the church was the entrance to a large garden--several blocks wide and long. Beautiful big trees, odd mixed ducks, something blooming dropping purple flowers on the path.  And then--something I have never seen--a street-side food cart for wine and cheese.  What a great country.



Also some chatty women selling chestnuts. All, speaking English too.  What is up with that?

Among other things, Portugal has the oldest treaty in the world with Britain.  Centuries of interaction, intermarriage of the royal houses predispose the population towards English usage vs. Spanish, not always but frequently an enemy. Then there is the abundance of American television.  Anyway, it is easy for us here.


School is out, kids congregate.  Older men and women are out chatting.



City squares 

On the return trip we passed yet another lovely square.  This one is dedicated to a poet whose name I did not catch.  The city workers are getting the Christmas decorations up.


A hilltop square dedicated to St. Vincent.



Another public square, this time with a chicken.  We see chicken statues or knickknacks everywhere, so there must be some meaning.



Back up steep hills to our neighborhood.  So glad we don't have to walk. More pastry shops.  We must have seen a hundred withing our three-mile journey.  Also some places selling fruit/veg, a couple of meat markets.  But pastry shops are everywhere.  Eat in or take home. Lime green and orange are favored colors both here and in Spain.





Lisbon's Housing


Much of the old city is made up of these tile fronted houses with wrought iron balconies.  Color and tile give the city a pastel charm.  At the same time, most of the areas we visited is distinctly shabby with ruined, empty buildings next to nice apartments. We do not know enough to know if some of the shabbiness has to do with the austerity resulting from the recent recession and how much with these older buildings not being valued.  In many other European cities , these historic areas are highly prized and very trim and prosperous-appearing; not so here.There are fenced building sites where construction has obviously long stopped; some other areas much building going on now.














Home

We got back to our street.  Our house is the blue tile building next to the bright green tile building.



As we walked in and poured our wine, the sun set over the city.



Text by Julianne.
Photos by both of us.


Saturday, November 28, 2015

Portugal: Global exploration inspired by Prince Henry the Navigator




Portugal--a small country on the edge of the continent--was first in global exploration.  Beginning in the early 1400's, explorers in small boats began pushing ever further southwards and further out into the Atlantic. How did they do that?  Why then?

It seems to be a story of scientific inquiry, deliberate invention or adaptation of known technology and widely shared knowledge.

Portugal, under the guidance of Prince Henry the Navigator, took giant strides in shipbuilding and navigation.  He formed the Sagres School of Navigation in southern Portugal where he was governor. The school attracted sailors, geographers, instrument makers, shipbuilders from all over Europe.  It sounds to me like the equivalent of a think-tank of shipping and navigation. The Renaissance approach to learning and knowledge was applied to ships and navigation.

Captains, fishermen, merchants and anyone with knowledge of sailing or shipbuilding were brought together.  Henry was particularly interested in exploring southward along the coast of Africa and into the Atlantic.  Under his auspices, explorers used new navigation techniques to sail out of sight of land and make their way to the Horn of Africa.  The Portuguese caravel was developed as an ideal ship to sail into the wind. The scientific approach to acquiring and testing information then teaching newly understood techniques seems to have been a new approach.  It was wildly successful and ushered in the modern world.  Most of the big names in world exploration spent time at the Sagres School including Magellan and Columbus.  Vasco Da Gama, the first European to reach India by sea is another Sangres alum.




As I have gotten older and become more aware of all the ways things can go wrong, I am more in awe of the brave people who got in small boats and explored the world.  In recent months, I have been in Iceland looking at the fragile-seeming craft which were the high tech machines of the 900's that allowed the settlement of Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland.  When we were in Holland, we were staying in the area where the whalers returned with their oil in the 1100's from far north expeditions.  In both cases, they had navigational knowledge and technical advances that allowed them to go farther.

In earlier travels, I have been intrigued by Portuguese remains, all from the early 1500's. In Malacca, Malaysia and Mombasa, Kenya I visited the remains of fortifications.  Far inland in Ethiopia, west of Addis, a stone bridge which is still used was built by the Portuguese.  (It is a good perch to see Lammergeyers and other birds of prey from above.)  Thus, I am pleased with the chance to learn more about the early Portuguese exploration. The Museum is housed in part of the Jerenoimos Monastery built tin 1502 to celebrate the "Heroic Discoverers." It is a specifically Portuguese building style and quite grand. It is in Belem, the port from which many of the journeys set sail.


Lisbon was thoroughly destroyed in an earthquake in 1755 but it seems that the monastery survived. The earthquake and associated tsunami and fires destroyed much of the city, including many of the records of the early voyages and the plans and drawings of the early ships.  Vasco da Gama's reports of his journey to India, for example, were completely destroyed.  However, the Museum and University have reconstructed the ships from written accounts, paintings, drawings which survived either here or elsewhere.

Instruments
Prince Henry's School developed the use of the astrolabe and quadrant (which had been known in the middle ages) for navigating away from land.  By using the instrument, a captain could know his latitude.  The astrolabe allowed the navigator to create a chart of the sky where they were located, the quadrant allowed them to sight on Polaris, the sun or some other known body and determine how many degrees north or south the ship was located. (Longitude was not figured out until the 18th C.)

For example, Polaris, the North Star, was known as a fixed point in the northern sky.  The edge of the quadrant was lined up with Polaris and the pendulum would swing X degrees of the circle. (The 360 degree circle had been defined before this time.) Based on where the pendulum swung to, the ship was X degrees north.  As explorers dipped south Polaris was no longer available so the sun and later the southern cross were used.





Maps and charts
Under Prince Henry,knowledge from any captain or sailor who could be induced to tell, was used to create maps and charts for dissemination to those visiting the school.  Explorers sent by Henry were specifically required to chart the coasts for future mariners use. Information about recently discovered areas was available beyond merely personal knowledge.




Ships
Caravels were adapted from a common ship used in the Mediterranean.  Small and flexible, they were adjusted for the rough water of the Atlantic.  Their two lanteen sails allowed the sailors to take full advantage of the wind. Later caravels used square sails on the same kind of rigging to take more advantage of the wind.  Caravels were about 15 meters long (seems tiny to me). This ship became the workhorse of the explorers and merchants travelling the Africa and later Brazil routes. Columbus's smaller ships were caravels. The small boat below the caravel, a barque, was the support for the caravel and could squeeze in to shore to help develop charts.





Other ships followed--bigger, stronger, more carrying capacity.  Here they are in time order but with no particular description of their technology--it is not well explained and beyond my low-tech mind anyway. The center of Portuguese maritime industry had moved to Lisbon after Henry's death in 1460, but the concept of analysis, improvement and shared knowledge continued.

I am not that clear as to how widely knowledge was freely available.  The Dutch whalers certainly guarded their routes to their territories in an earlier era.  But Magellan studied with Henry and then got the monarchy of Spain to support his voyages.  Similarly Columbus, himself a Genoese. So the Portuguese effort was used by their competitors to explore and compete for colonies and natural resources. It seems amazing to me that knowledge was so freely shared.













After the 1775 earthquake, Portugal was overtaken by the Spanish in trade and exploration of the Americas. Portugal was an ally of Britain from early days and seems to have shared technology with them at least sometimes  Eventually Britain became the powerhouse of the Indian Ocean and Portugal declined in importance. 

 Here is a statue of Henry in the museum.  I have no idea how accurate his features are--the statue was created in the 1930's.  He is always shown with the big hat.  Although Italian painters were active in Portugal during his lifetime, most paintings and drawings from his era were destroyed in 1755. But his achievements were immense.


Text and photos by Julianne.