Marta's Favourite 50-word Saga

He gazed longingly, desire written in every fiber. The irresistible scent teased him. Quick slip and grab; the prize was his!
She was too fast, and caught him by the ear. Disappointment sank into the pit of his stomach.
Mother put him on time-out. No apple pie until after dinner.

Marta's Favourite Short Story

Little Brother™, by Bruce Holland Rogers

Peter had wanted a Little Brother™ for three Christmases in a row. His favorite TV commercials were the ones that showed just how much fun he would have teaching Little Brother™ to do all the things that he could already do himself. But every year, Mommy had said that Peter wasn't ready for a Little Brother™. Until this year.
This year when Peter ran into the living room, there sat Little Brother™ among all the wrapped presents, babbling baby talk, smiling his happy smile, and patting one of the packages with his fat little hand. Peter was so excited that he ran up and gave Little Brother™ a big hug around the neck. That was how he found out about the button. Peter's hand pushed against something cold on Little Brother™'s neck, and suddenly Little Brother™ wasn't babbling any more, or even sitting up. Suddenly, Little Brother™ was limp on the floor, as lifeless as any ordinary doll.
"Peter!" Mommy said.
"I didn't mean to!"
Mommy picked up Little Brother™, sat him in her lap, and pressed the black button at the back of his neck. Little Brother™'s face came alive, and it wrinkled up as if he were about to cry, but Mommy bounced him on her knee and told him what a good boy he was. He didn't cry after all.
"Little Brother™ isn't like your other toys, Peter," Mommy said. "You have to be extra careful with him, as if he were a real baby." She put Little Brother™ down on the floor, and he took tottering baby steps toward Peter. "Why don't you let him help open your other presents?"
So that's what Peter did. He showed Little Brother™ how to tear the paper and open the boxes. The other toys were a fire engine, some talking books, a wagon, and lots and lots of wooden blocks. The fire engine was the second-best present. It had lights, a siren, and hoses that blew green gas just like the real thing. There weren't as many presents as last year, Mommy explained, because Little Brother™ was expensive. That was okay. Little Brother™ was the best present ever!
Well, that's what Peter thought at first. At first, everything that Little Brother™ did was funny and wonderful. Peter put all the torn wrapping paper in the wagon, and Little Brother™ took it out again and threw it on the floor. Peter started to read a talking book, and Little Brother™ came and turned the pages too fast for the book to keep up.
But then, while Mommy went to the kitchen to cook breakfast, Peter tried to show Little Brother™ how to build a very tall tower out of blocks. Little Brother™ wasn't interested in seeing a really tall tower. Every time Peter had a few blocks stacked up, Little Brother™ swatted the tower with his hand and laughed. Peter laughed, too, for the first time, and the second. But then he said, "Now watch this time. I'm going to make it really big."
But Little Brother™ didn't watch. The tower was only a few blocks tall when he knocked it down.
"No!" Peter said. He grabbed hold of Little Brother™'s arm. "Don't!"
Little Brother™'s face wrinkled. He was getting ready to cry.
Peter looked toward the kitchen and let go. "Don't cry," he said. "Look, I'm building another one! Watch me build it!"
Little Brother™ watched. Then he knocked the tower down.
Peter had an idea.
________________________________________
When Mommy came into the living room again, Peter had built a tower that was taller than he was, the best tower he had ever made. "Look!" he said.
But Mommy didn't even look at the tower. "Peter!" She picked up Little Brother™, put him on her lap, and pressed the button to turn him back on. As soon as he was on, Little Brother™ started to scream. His face turned red.
"I didn't mean to!"
"Peter, I told you! He's not like your other toys. When you turn him off, he can't move but he can still see and hear. He can still feel. And it scares him."
"He was knocking down my blocks."
"Babies do things like that," Mommy said. "That's what it's like to have a baby brother."
Little Brother™ howled.
"He's mine," Peter said too quietly for Mommy to hear. But when Little Brother™ had calmed down, Mommy put him back on the floor and Peter let him toddle over and knock down the tower.
Mommy told Peter to clean up the wrapping paper, and she went back into the kitchen. Peter had already picked up the wrapping paper once, and she hadn't said thank you. She hadn't even noticed.
Peter wadded the paper into angry balls and threw them one at a time into the wagon until it was almost full. That's when Little Brother™ broke the fire engine. Peter turned just in time to see him lift the engine up over his head and let it drop.
"No!" Peter shouted. The windshield cracked and popped out as the fire engine hit the floor. Broken. Peter hadn't even played with it once, and his best Christmas present was broken.
________________________________________
Later, when Mommy came into the living room, she didn't thank Peter for picking up all the wrapping paper. Instead, she scooped up Little Brother™ and turned him on again. He trembled and screeched louder than ever.
"My God! How long has he been off?" Mommy demanded.
"I don't like him!"
"Peter, it scares him! Listen to him!"
"I hate him! Take him back!"
"You are not to turn him off again. Ever!"
"He's mine!" Peter shouted. "He's mine and I can do what I want with him! He broke my fire engine!"
"He's a baby!"
"He's stupid! I hate him! Take him back!"
"You are going to learn to be nice with him."
"I'll turn him off if you don't take him back. I'll turn him off and hide him someplace where you can't find him!"
"Peter!" Mommy said, and she was angry. She was angrier than he'd ever seen her before. She put Little Brother™ down and took a step toward Peter. She would punish him. Peter didn't care. He was angry, too.
"I'll do it!" he yelled. "I'll turn him off and hide him someplace dark!"
"You'll do no such thing!" Mommy said. She grabbed his arm and spun him around. The spanking would come next.
But it didn't. Instead he felt her fingers searching for something at the back of his neck.

Nuno Bettencout – Holly Art in Óbidos

How about profiting your free- time during Easter, visiting a middle-aged village and at the same time experiencing all the art performances we can find there?
Óbidos is well-known for many good reasons: the castle with the great mural and the village growing inside; the cultural agenda with diverse festivals such as the one dedicated to the chocolate or the middle-aged market; the excellent restaurants and pubs where we easily find a spot according to our special week-end needs and, of course, the illustrious liquor served in small chocolate glasses “Ginja d’Óbidos”.
Surely Óbidos is by far the best place to find again ancient times, imagining how life was a few centuries ago.
As usual, I went to Óbidos during the holly week after Easter Sunday, to discover how was one of my favourite places dressed in this period of the Catholic Church.
There were quite a lot of expositions regarding Easter, but the one that attracted me most was that from Nuno Bettencourt, a young plastic artist who organized an original performance related to the holly art.
Easter is the main subject and Nuno focused on the holly elements such as Jesus Christ’s Cross, with some of the contemporary cultural icons.
As we get in the “Casa do Pelourinho” gallery, an antique house now committed with the young artists who wish to perform, we get in contact with an original Cross, named 33 Cross.
The contemporary elements of the 33 Cross, represent technology, industry, death and devil temptations to which we are exposed in somehow everyday I our daily routine.
Other interesting work in Nuno’s performance is a panel containing both Iuri Gagarinand Jesus Christ, as the icons of different periods of mankind: one representative of the space exploring and a symbol of the Russian’s political and social affirmation and the other symbolizing hope and the advent of a new world.
Although, Jesus Christ appears related to a quite famous trade mark, as a social critic on what concerns the over reacted consume in the industrialised world.
Through this performance, we find some of the most interesting aspects of Nuno’s work, especially on what concerns the fusion of several materials such as wood and iron a long with paint and serigraphy’s works. He made a degree in sculpture and plastic arts in an Art School in Caldas da Rainha.
In some way, Nuno brings to this gallery, the traditional and the modern, focusing a religious aspect mixed with the profane as if one goes strictly with the other as two parts of the same nature.
Nuno Bettencourt was born in 18th June of 1969 in São Julião da Barra. He started his artistic formation in the Plastic Arts of the Marechal Carmona Calouste Gulbenkian’s park, and studied at the art school António Arroio. Nuno than attended some formation on serigraphy, photography, cinema and painting.
He developed his work in several projects including collective and individual performances in Portugal and abroad.

Filipa

One moment

One moment left
To show how memories are kept
Between thoughts and feelings
Crossing pain and healings
And learn how to wait for the unexpected.


One moment needed
To give time a chance
To start a new and single dance
To recover soul from darkness
Giving me a love complete awareness


One moment of pain
The one that should remain
As a presence of love
The one that should stay above
The sky and the stars
The tears, the fears and the scars.

One moment is for me
What existence is reflected in the sea.

Filipa

Voicing complaints - I’m sick of moaners

If there’s something that gets on my nerves, it’s people who keep moaning every single day and actually do nothing to improve whatever it needs to get better .
Portuguese people are moaners of politicians, social conditions, salaries, working conditions, of what works and what doesn’t work at all. Just like the British…and the weather!
It drives me mad when I listen to someone complaining about the prices of the petrol, and still uses the car as the main transportation, when there’s always the possibility of catching a bus or a train, or the subway to arrive on time and relaxed at work.
I’m sick to death of those who say all the time that hate politicians and politics and still attend the speeches, and go to those pathetic dinners and political parties before elections, praying to achieve to the candidate and give him a hand-shake.
This year there will be three election moments and it really annoys me thinking that I must deal with that reality until the end of 2009. First of all, the outdoors, which will pollute the streets all over the country, then the TV programmes with face-to-face debates where we can assist at nothing but a bunch of layers and corrupted people whose goal, is to attain power and to win as much money as they can in order to assure and improve their private heritage.
I know that most of you may be thinking that I was born when democracy existed already in Portugal, and I don’t give the right magnitude to the fact that we’re free to express ourselves and free to choose and opt. Well that’s a truth but comparing to those I know who moan all the time, I must say that my opinion rarely changes and as a citizen I try to make a few changes even if I know that those changes will never make a big difference.
So, If you are as fed up as I am and if you share my opinion, why not separate rubbish, help abandoned animals, educate and teach our children how to work in agriculture or how to cook, change television by radio and reading moments?
Why not be active instead of moaner?

Filipa

Darwin's Evolution Exhibition

‘Our story starts at the dawn of the 18th Century… The stage was set for someone to do for Biology what Newton did for Physics.’ This is how the Darwin’s Evolution Exhibition, at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, begins. Having opened on the 12th February 2009 to coincide with Darwin’s birthday, this exhibition joins museums, research institutes and organizations from all over the world in the celebration of two events: the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his masterpiece, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1st October 1859).

Divided into eight sections filled with interactive content, the exhibition features: 1) biology before Darwin (from Worm to Linnaeus, and from Buffon to Belon); 2) live animals (six San Francisco Piranhas, a Boa Constrictor, several Golden Lion-Tamarins, several Meerkats, Iguanas, and two very large Leopard Tortoises); 3) the Beagle’s five-year voyage (the event considered by Darwin as the most important in his life); 4) the idea of evolution and of the tree of life (that came to Darwin after he was back in London); 5) his life and work in Downe (where he wrote On the Origin of Species); 6) modern genetics (that sprang from the hands of men like Fisher, Haldane, Wright, Dobzansky, Mayr and Simpson); 7) Darwin’s correspondence with other scientists (which largely contributed to his research); 8) and his legacy (the tree of life that keeps expanding over the decades through the work of other evolutionary biologists).

Walls written with quotations from Darwin’s writings, the original letters he wrote to his family and friends when he was travelling around the world, a big model of the HMS Beagle, a wax figure of the young explorer, many samples of various species to observe with magnifying glasses or with microscopes, live animals, hundreds of drawings and pictures of animals that led to the theory of evolution, a staircase and a slide built around DNA bands (where one can climb up the genetic code and slide down the protein synthesis), a small room where children can write and hang letters addressed to Darwin, computer games, films, various electronic and mechanic devices for children, a telltale skull exhibition of human evolution, and a short documentary on the origin of life and evolution by David Attenborough, are some of the attractions of this exhibition.

On visiting the Darwin’s Evolution Exhibition, one cannot help feeling enraptured and overwhelmed by the fact that one man’s passion for knowledge, love for nature and keen eye for the observation of animals and plants led to the disclosure of truths that today are part of our daily lives. Darwin’s lifelong achievements opened an endless path towards the discovery of the mysteries of the origin and evolution of life on Earth.

Marta