Thursday, April 27, 2023

The Carnation Revolution

Today, the 25th of April, is the Dia da Liberdade, the national celebration of the Carnation Revolution of 1974. A year ago, Aitor Hernandez-Morales wrote a moving history of 20th century Portugal, the events that led to Portugal's Carnation Revolution, and the Revolution itself. It's a fascinating and inspiring story, exceptionally well-written, and the illustrations bring the story to life. 


It begins: “Today is the is the 25th of April, anniversary of Portugal’s Carnation Revolution. It’s a good day to remember what it was like to live under four decades of authoritarian rule and to celebrate the people who fought to restore democracy 48 years ago…”


It ends: “So on this 25th of April, say it loud, day it proud   ‘25th de abril sempre! Fascismo nunca mais!’   [April 25th always! Fascism never again!]


The last picture is of today’s banner at the website of my Junta de Freguesia (City Hall) in Quarteira. On it are the words of one of Portugal’s most famous poets, Fernando Pessoa:

“Não o prazer, não o gloria, não o poder, a liberdade, unicamente a liberdade.”


[Not pleasure, not glory, not power, freedom, only freedom.]


I’ve included some of the illustrations below. Here is a link to the entire essay: 

 

Today is the 25 of April...










25 de Abril

49 years since the Carnation Revolution of 1974, when fascism was peacefully overthrown and democracy brought to Portugal after four decades of authoritarian dictatorship.



Sunday, April 16, 2023

We made it! Arrival at the Lisbon Airport

American Friends in Portugal facebook group is an amazing resource that has made it possible for who knows how many to relocate to Portugal. There is no way we could have done it without them. 

It's become a tradition - after all the questions, the doubts, the requests for info, the "You can do this!" cheerleading, the milestones (we got our D7s!) - to post a photo from the airport showing people, pets, and blue bags to announce "We made it!" Here's ours:


I wouldn’t let myself believe it until I was actually standing in Portugal, but here we are! Four humans, two dogs, two cats (second cat is in a carrier behind the red bag on the left). Those last couple of weeks – and especially the last couple of days – were insanely hectic. The final stretch of coping with the belongings of two households, the vet visit, the list of last-minute practicalities which seemed never finished, the long drive to Dallas for the first of four flights. We were lucky to have the support of friends and family helping us get it all done and seeing us off.

To get to the East coast we flew JSX, the only airline we could find that is currently flying pets in the US. JSX is a semi-private jet service and therefore more expensive than mainstream airline flights. However, we found this a great compromise to the high cost of charter pet flights, because for us the cost was approximately the same as renting something like a suburban or van to drive all of us, our pets, and belongings cross country plus several nights’ accommodation along the way and was of course much faster and less squished. (To be fair, this was the most expensive leg of our journey). 

Our pets traveled in the cabin with us and were able to get used to the idea of air travel with us before travelling in the hold on their next flights. Bonus that the flights on JSX were very comfortable, I imagine like flying first class with your pets, and much less stressful most airport experiences.

We had our USDA paperwork mailed to a family member in New York. This turned out to be a savior for us as our paperwork was delayed and ended up being delivered the day of our flight out of JFK. Lesson here is to ask your vet to check the status of the certification paperwork if the FedEx tracking isn’t updating. Luckily, they were able to make a correction on our paperwork and still have it arrive on time. I am so thankful I selected morning delivery for our FedEx priority overnight return shipping label.

We flew SATA Azores Airlines out of JFK because of their shorter flight times, large dog policy, and less busy vet experience. We also took advantage of the free stopover in Ponta Delgada. We took four days to rest after the last-minute stress of everything involved with wrapping up our lives in the US, and to see some of the beautiful island of São Miguel, before jumping into our new lives in Portugal. If it works for you, we highly recommended this. The vet, Frank, at the Ponta Delgada Airport was super nice and helpful. Our animals were waiting for us at baggage by the time we made it through the passport check. When Frank saw us greet them, he came over and started scanning their microchips and processing their paperwork, so that we could exit the airport as quickly as possible and let the dogs check out the closest grass patch.

We’ve felt completely inspired and encouraged by American Friends and everyone who wrote files, those who made posts, those who added helpful comments, and the amazing admins who hold it all together and keep the site alive, encouraging all of us do it yourselfers. Special shout out to Sally Sparks who helped ease my concerns about getting our large dog and her carrier through The SATA crate size requirement seem to switch height and width and I could not find a crate that would meet their requirements. 

How could we have gotten four animals to Portugal without y’all? And yet here they are. And here we are. 

This community helped us not feel panicked and answered many questions along the way. Like when I discovered that we old people sometimes have fingerprints that don’t register on fingerprint scanners. Or when the notary refused to notarize our passport copies. Not to mention the FILES, and the checklists, timelines, tips, and most of all, the attitude of “You can do this!” When we watched the FedEx truck arrive – it was our turn to think OMG, D7!!!! We’re really going! We’ll do another post on our D7 story to help keep the info flowing.

Photo above by Nuno Miranda Alves, who we were SO happy to see at the Lisbon Airport. On the way across the Vasco de Gama bridge, he told us all about the amazing cat rescue on the bridge of the day before, about the flamingos spotted by the youngest of the family and the storks on the tall electric towers, helped me with my questions about Portuguese, told us the stories of his rescue cats. As we passed though the Alentejo, we discussed how the land there is and isn’t like Texas. And finally helped us haul all that stuff up the flight of stairs to our apartment. Thanks, Nuno!

[The post garnered 314 likes and 51 comments. This was my favorite 💜. ]






Wednesday, April 5, 2023

The apartments of Quarteira

Quarteira is our temporary home, probably for the next couple of months. We landed here because we didn't intend to live in the Algarve (south coast of Portugal). We needed to land somewhere, to get to work learning Portuguese and try to figure out where we wanted to live for at least the next year if not longer. While we were doing those things it seemed perhaps our only chance to get to know the Algarve as more than a vacation spot. To have some time living in a beach town with the Atlantic ocean a couple of blocks away. So what does it look like?

Well, it mostly looks like apartments. If you walk out on the jetty and look across the harbor to Quarteira, this is what you see:


If you look on the other side of the jetty, you see Vilamoura, also apartments:


I really like the design of some of the apartments. Here a couple of my favorites in the immediate vicinity:


Here are some others. These are out the balcony window from my bedroom:


Across from the driveway that's the entrance into these condos:



There's a sushi take away shop in the bottom of this one - we ate there a couple of nights ago, first time we ate out since we got here. Even though it says "take-away," it has tables out front where we ate outside. It was delicious. Except for that time, we cook, so we're learning where the grocery stores are and which have what things.



Sometimes the streets lined with apartments are pretty boring:



Here's a busy main street lined with unremarkable (but probably quite nice) apartments made prettier by a tree looking like Springtime:



Finally, here's our apartment. Its the one in the middle, second floor (American system of numbering floors, where ground floor = 1st floor, in Europe, they're numbered Ground, 1st, 2nd - so here, we're on the 1st floor). Anyway, there's our balcony with our laundry and we're extremely happy about having an apartment on the end. Look at the extra windows! 

Até já...



Saturday, July 24, 2021

Why?


Almost 9,000 unvaccinated Texans died of Covid since February…and of the ones who died because they refused the vaccine, I'm betting the vast majority got vaccinated against measles, mumps, rubella, polio, whooping cough. They got their tetanus shots every 10 years or so. They made sure their kids got the shots too.

They vaccinated their kids, and were glad their parents did the same for them, because those are nasty diseases that can cause disabilities like blindness or deafness or mental and developmental disabilities. Sometimes, though rarely, they are fatal. Of course they protected their kids from those things!

If those who refused the Covid vaccine are older, they may also have gotten vaccinated against pneumonia and shingles.

But not this one, the one that would have protected them against the most dangerous, the most lethal disease we've seen in our lifetimes. That has killed not hundreds, not thousands, as those diseases now almost wiped out by vaccines did before we had vaccines for them, but hundreds of thousands. And will leave millions with disabilities caused by the long term damage the virus did to their organs if they survived it.

Why? They give a host of reasons, the vaccine's development was too rushed, the technology is too new, infertility or birth defects, microchips, becoming magnetized. But I don't think those are the real reasons. The technology is decades old, the vaccines were in development for 20 years. Women in the trials got pregnant at the same rate as tens of thousands of women of childbearing age always have, their babies had neither more nor fewer birth defects as babies have had over the last ten or twenty years of data collected. Microchips and magnetism? No idea what to say to that but it doesn't matter if the objections seem reasonable, though incorrect, or bizarre.

I think the reasons come from a different direction. They see "us" and "them" and "they" are getting vaccinated and saying everyone should, and being one of "us" - and more importantly not being one of "them" - is literally worth dying for. Identity is a powerful force.


July 22, 2021, the second summer of this pandemic:



Texas has seen nearly 9,000 COVID-19 deaths since February. All but 43 were unvaccinated people.



Friday, July 23, 2021

Does not compute

 I expect the anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers to make no sense, but this is into territory so far beyond "makes no sense" that I have no words. 

Outside a cancer clinic? Where many patients undergoing chemo have to wear masks, have had to wear masks since forever, long before the pandemic? They want to rip away protection from infection for cancer patients whose treatments are destroying their immune systems? Why?

One protester, who was filming the scene on his phone, asked her why she was so angry, as a man holding a cardboard sign saying “End the Censorship of Vaccine Risks” smirked. 

“Because I’ve just gone through fucking breast cancer,” Burns said. “And you motherfuckers are here.” 

“That has nothing to do with you.”

“You are protesting a breast cancer fucking center. It has everything to do with me and my community,” Burns said. “Do you know anything about chemotherapy? Do you know what happens to the immune system?”

Breast Cancer Patient Attacked by Violent Anti-Mask Protest Outside Clinic

Thursday, July 22, 2021

Abbott's million dollar reward

 If you voted for Abbott, are you OK with this?









In perspective, a billion is a thousand millions. Kelcy Warren made 2.4 billion, 2,400 millions - two thousand four hundred millions - on our grid collapse over the course of what, two weeks? He gave one of those two thousand four hundred millions to Abbott, who held no one accountable for not winterizing generating plants, for not burying natural gas pipelines deep enough to not freeze, for extortionate profiteering like Kelcy's on the cost of gas. What a deal.


After Kelcy Warren’s Energy Transfer Partners Made Billions from the Deadly Texas Blackouts, He Gave $1 Million to Greg Abbott

Friday, May 14, 2021

What is community college?

Sometimes people argue against providing more access to college, "Not everyone needs to go to college." And also, "We need to bring back trade schools."

I think that many are not aware of how much the world has changed since they graduated from high school and went to college or did not go to college.

When I graduated from college, only a minority of young people went to college. College was for the brains, the smart kids, the A students. If you wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher, you needed a college degree. Otherwise, most jobs didn't require one. 

Nowadays, you might not need a four year bachelor's degree in history or engineering or business administration, but most people will need to have some training or education past high school if they want a middle class income and some economic security in a world that's going to be constantly changing through their working years.

I copied all of the programs offered at my local community college - then deleted all of the ones that were what most people think of when they think of college majors, English, Biology, Geology, etc. Here's what's left. If you or someone you're close to has not attended a community college lately, you might not realize that they have so many programs like these:

Advanced Manufacturing

Agricultural Sciences

American Sign Language-Interpreter Training

Architectural and Engineering Computer Aided Design

Automotive Collision Repair and Refinishing Technology

Automotive Technology and Outdoor Powered Equipment

Biotechnology

Building Construction Technology

Business, Government, and Technical Communications

Child Care and Development

Computer Information Technology

Criminal Justice

Culinary Arts

Dental Hygiene

Diagnostic Medical Imaging - Radiology

Education Instruction

Emergency Management 

Emergency Medical Services Professions

Engineering Technology

Environmental Technology

Exercise Science/Personal Fitness Trainer

Fashion Design

Fashion Marketing

Fire Protection Technology

Game Development, Animation, and Motion Graphics

Pre-Health Sciences

Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

Health Information Technology

Heating, Air Conditioning, and Refrigeration Technology

Hospitality, Meeting and Event Planning, Tourism

Human Services

Jewelry

Logistics and Supply Chain Management

Medical Laboratory Technology

Music Business, Performance, and Technology

Nursing

Occupational Therapy Assistant

Office Administration and Technology

Paralegal

Pharmacy Technician

Physical Therapist Assistant

Professional Nursing

Professional Photography

Real Estate

RN-to-BSN Program 

Sonography

Surgical Technology

Technical Theater 

Veterinary Technology

Vocational Nursing

Welding Technology


Of course community colleges also offer the traditional college courses. You can get a 2-year Associate Degree in these subjects, but most students taking these courses at a community college are planning to transfer to a four year college or university for their third and fourth year of a bachelor's degree.


Here are the more traditional college programs at my local community college


Accounting

Anthropology

Art

Bachelor of Applied Science in Software Development

Biology

Business Administration

Chemistry

Communication Studies

Computer Science

Creative Writing

Dance

Drama

Economics

Engineering

English

Environmental Science

Foreign Language

Geography

Geology

Geospatial Engineering

Government

Health and Kinesiology

History

Interdisciplinary Studies

International Business

Journalism

Management

Marketing

Mathematics

Music

Philosophy

Physics

Pre-Med

Psychology

Radio-Television-Film

Social Work

Sociology

Visual Communication