bread in a dutch oven

Kinfolk's Dutch oven bread 

Making bread is a process. A slow and patient process. This film by Kinfolk portraits bread making beautifully: with every step follows a waiting period, so you need to take the time.
I've always read that to achieve better results in retaining moisture during baking to use a cast iron dutch oven. I finally got one. Last night I baked my first loaf with it.

Everyone always asks me for the recipe, but I don't really follow any recipe. I just randomly mix the ingredients. But I promise I'll write a post with a step by step recipe to make a loaf. 

Izziyana Suhaimi

It's not everyday that I find such a perfect combination between illustration and embroidery.

This is Izziyana Suhaimi, a Singapore-based artist. In her latest work she combines pencil illustrations with colorful folk-inspired embroideries.

Enjoy!

Photo credits: Izziyana Suhaimi

ai weiwei

Let me tell you a true story.

Last year I was giving a tour at the Portuguese parliament to a group of Chinese visitors. I spoke in English and had a Chinese translator. I would say 2 sentences and then pause so he could translate. I got to the part of the 1974's Revolution and I explained that with it Portugal had become free of a long lasting dictatorship. I then paused to let him translate.

He looked at me and said - "Dictatorship? What does that mean?"

I naively responded back - "You know when a country is controlled by an autocratic form of government and the people have no rights and no freedom of speech."

He looked at me and listened in perplexity. I don't know what he translated but whatever it was, it was too quick to be a word for word translation.

When you live in countries where you can say anything you please, for the good and the bad, it's easy to discard that there are others who still fight for those basic human rights. 

Sharron Lovell / Polaris

this is Ai Weiwei

watch the movie

follow him on twitter

This is an image you don't see here in Atlanta: clothes hanging out to dry.

Here, clothes dyers are a "bare necessity" and also a major energy consumption, not to mention a source of house fires. I do recognize that sometimes it comes in handy, but this is Georgia, with sunny weather most of the year. In Portugal hanging out your clothes to dry is a cultural thing!

We've been trying to be sustainable in small daily things and buying this rack (on craigslist of course!) is just another step towards a more eco-friendly life. Aside from air drying our clothes, we've been using biodegradable laundry and cleaning detergents. They cost a bit more, (but not a lot more) and in the long term are better on the environment and on more gentle on our clothes. 

ATL ART

I spent the last couple of days at the Gathering Atlanta, an event that brings together the creative masses of the city for a 3 day networking event. It was very eye opening to discover major cultural institutions here in Atlanta.

From the pile of cards and info I brought home, here's just a few things I learned:

- one could actually rent out an apartment at the Goat Farm, an amazing place for photos and events.

- there are graffiti in Atlanta after all! And Living Walls makes it happen;

- after much googling and phoning I finally discovered that I can use a darkroom at the Wooder Root has open access labs for  members at the amazing price of 10$ a month.

- Mass Collective is bringing together art and science in one space after they finish renovating a 100 year old building.

- There should be a website like this one for Portugal.

lomo

finally developed film that was brought from Portugal.
some are already hanging up on our walls.

algarve

Morocco 

Morocco

atlanta and toronto

sweet auburn

As part of my training to be a volunteer tour guide with the Atlanta Preservation Center, we went on a tour of Sweet Auburn, one of the most interesting historic neighborhoods of Atlanta. After Emancipation it became a strong black community district and during the Jim Crow segregation laws, its was a city within the city, self sufficient and exclusively black. Also, it's the birth place of Martin Luther King Jr. and where he started preaching his nonviolent civil rights activism.

 

Place of birth of Martin Luther King Jr. 

An old ghost sign for Gold Dust Washing Powder discovered after the neighboring building was demolished.

The Odd Fellows Building

Going back into the past is fundamental to understand how life is lived today.

On this note, while I'm writing this, I'm listening to chapter 6 of the audio book Outliers (by Malcolm Gladwell) on the culture of honor, social and behavioral pattern specific to, among other places, the American South. Interesting. Cultural legacies are powerful forces. They have deep roots and long lines. They persist...

no more empty walls

Slowly I'm going to fill them up with more frames and embroideries. I'm finally finished with this work I started last year and now I'm starting a special embroidery gift, aside from getting some tea bags together for a tea swap with meiadeleite.

have a great weekend!

traffic signs

In Portugal, as in the rest of Europe, traffic signs are intuitive: a series of color codes and pictorial symbols that are very easily interpreted. So, imagine after a 24h flight to Atlanta, having to learn to drive an automatic car at 2am and then encountering a 14 lane highway with this type of traffic signs:

Fun, right?! East, West, North, South, miles, etc, etc. 

Aside from my still very complicated understanding of the imperial metric system, most signs are in writing: sentences that must be read in a split second while driving down a highway. You can imagine my first experience behind the wheel: I either paid attention to traffic or I read the traffic signs. Pick one!

When people ask me what the biggest difference between Portugal and Atlanta, first I say that everything over here comes in extra-large sizes and then I say traffic signs. 

After being here for a couple of months, I still don't understand another thing: traffic sign duplication. Traffic authorities need to make sure that a driver thoroughly understands the signs. A simple pictorial symbol is very often supported by a written reinforcement of it's equivalent meaning: 

It's not enough that a red circle with a white horizontal rectangle universally means "do not enter", they have "do not enter" written right over the sign. I suppose it's to aid the color blind? They do this all the time: imagine a turn right sign and under it the words "turn right".

I'm now collecting traffic sign photos! (Sorry, not the best quality photos, they were taken from inside the car.)

american civil war

This past weekend we went to an american Civil War period (1861-1865) re-enactment of the front-lines. Atlanta commemorated the 148 years of the Battle of Atlanta, a battle that sealed the fate of the Confederates (11 southern slave states) against the Unionists (25 northern states that supported the federal government). The Unionists won the war and slavery was abolished in all of the United States in 1865.

The re-enactment was centered around the CSA's (Confederate States of America) position in the Civil War, the states that had seceded from the United States to uphold the Old South ways, namely slavery. But no one seems to mention this during the event. Immediately I recalled one of the opening scenes from Gone with the Wind when the men are smoking and drinking and debating the upcoming war. One of the main characters, Ashley Wilkes, says "most of the miseries of the world were caused by wars. and when the wars were over, no one ever knew what they were about". So true. 

And now for some real photos. The Civil War was actually the first major conflict to be extensively photographed in a photo-journalistic manner, being widely displayed viewed and sold all around the country. 

all 3 b&w photos from here