Portuguese Mix

Posted on June 6, 2024 by admin

Early last year, I ordered a number of 4″ x 6″ tabletop flags from an online vendor that doesn’t happen to be Amazon. I have pocket change and postcards and tourist spoons and all kinds of bric-a-brac from the places I’ve been, so why not flags? One for each nation I’ve visited.

So I ordered a Portuguese flag last week, to add to the collection. While Macao was still administrated by Portugal when I visited in 1990, it was too much of a stretch to say I’d been to Portugal, until last month.

Something I never noticed on the flag – behind the shield of Portugal, which has a lore of its own – is an armillary sphere, a model of objects in the sky. A navigators’ tool, among other things, which fits Portuguese history nicely. A cool design element.

We saw other representations of the globe — terrestrial or celestial — at Pena Palace in Sintra.

This one at Jerónimos Monastery.

For sale at the Cod Museum, canned fish. At fancy prices.

For sale at a Portuguese grocery store, canned fish. At everyday prices.

In case you didn’t buy enough canned fish in the city, at the airport there’s a branch of Mundo Fantástico Da Sardinha Portuguesa, a sardine store on the Praça do Rossio.

For once, the Google Maps description is accurate: “Souvenir shop showcasing fancy tins of Portuguese sardines in a wacky, circuslike atmosphere.” You can even sit on a sardine throne.

The “Beer Museum” off Praça do Comércio seemed more like a restaurant and bar, but anyway you have to have a beer at a place like that, and I did. A Portuguese brew whose name I was too much on vacation to remember.

I wasn’t awed by the beer, which was good enough, but I was awed by this display. That’s one artful wall of beer.

We didn’t make it to the castle overlooking Lisbon (Castelo de São Jorge), so I can’t comment on the view from there. I will say that the roof of our hotel offered a pretty good one.

Looking up at the city is another kind of vista. There’s a ferry port (and subway station) on the Tagus near Praça do Comércio. Step outside there, and some of the city is visible. The stone tower is part of Lisbon Cathedral.

We emerged from the subway one morning and spotted this.

Monumento aos Mortos da Grande Guerra. I had to check, and found out that about 12,000 Portuguese soldiers died in WWI, including in France but also fighting the Germans in Africa. The memorial is on Av. Da Liberdade.

Europe, in my experience, is pretty good at putting together leafy boulevards.

That’s a tall order for a sandwich shop. We didn’t investigate the claim, either the number of steps, nor the state of mind.

At Basílica de Nossa Senhora dos Mártires, we encountered this fellow.

Rather Roman looking, and I mean the ancient Roman army, not “prays like a Roman with her eyes on fire.” At first I thought he might be Cornelius the Centurion, but the key clue is HODIE (“today”) written on the cross, meaning he’s Expeditus. I don’t ever remember seeing him depicted in a church. The patron of urgent causes, among other things.

We saw a flamenco show in Barcelona last year, but no fado in Lisbon. We did see a fado truck, however.

We ate at the Time Out Market Lisboa twice.

There was a reason it was crowded. Everything was a little expensive, but really good. Such as this place, whose grub was like Shake Shack.

The last meal of the trip wasn’t at Time Out Lisboa, but a Vietnamese restaurant with room enough for about 20 people. It too was full.

Spotted at one of the subway stations we passed through more than once. Alice in Wonderland‘s fans are international in scope.

On the whole, the Lisbon subways are efficient and inexpensive, and the lines go a lot of places. Even so, elevator maintenance did seem to be an issue. There were times when our tired feet would have appreciated an elevator, but no go.

Scenes from Parc Eduardo VII, which includes green space and gardens but also elegant buildings.

There was an event there that day, at least according to those blue signs, that had something to do with the Portuguese Space Agency. I didn’t know there was such a thing. I’d have assumed Portugal would participate in the ESA, and leave it at that. But no, the Agência Espacial Portuguesa was founded in 2019, and is looking to create a space port in the Azores.

We didn’t investigate the event any further, but we did look at the tiles on the building. Nice.

Among the kings of Portugal, there was no Edward VII – only one Edward, who reigned from 1433 to 1438 – so when I saw it on the map, I figured it was for the British monarch of that regnal name. Yes, according to Wiki: “The park is named for King Edward VII of the United Kingdom, who visited Portugal in 1903 to strengthen relations between the two countries and reaffirm the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance.”

Lisbon manhole covers. Maybe not as artful as some of the other street details on Lisbon, but not bad.

I saw S.L.A.T. a fair amount. Later, I looked it up: Sinalização Luminosa Automática de Trânsito – Automatic Traffic Light Signaling.

The Jerónimos Monastery

Posted on May 30, 2024 by admin

If the Belém Tower and the Monument of the Discoveries were about Portuguese ventures into the world, the nearby Jerónimos Monastery shows one thing they brought back: immense wealth. Taxes needed to be paid on the incoming wealth, of course, and a certain large part of those levies went to build Mosteiro dos Jerónimos. The Hieronymite monks who lived there for a few centuries were tasked to pray for the souls of successive kings of Portugal and to minister to those leaving on ocean-spanning voyages.

Money well spent, I’d say. The monastery is the extraordinary work of a number of hands, beginning with architect Diogo de Boitaca and including a succession of other architects, designers and sculptors. Together with Belém Tower, it is a World Heritage Site.

The outside of the monastery church, Santa Maria.

The monastery grounds include other large museums, such as ones devoted to Portuguese naval history, and an archaeological museum, both of which would surely be worth the time. But we focused, as most visitors do, on the monastery church and the cloister next to it.

These structures are considered class-A examples of Manueline, a style particular to Portugal during the Age of Discovery and with an emphasis on elaborate stonework. Sturdy work, too: the earthquake of ’55 didn’t do a lot of damage to the monastery.

Some Portuguese royals, namely the go-getters of the Aviz dynasty who oversaw worldwide Portuguese expansion, are entombed in both transept chapels. Note the elephants supporting the tombs.

Quite the ceiling.

Vasco da Gama, as mentioned previously, has a tomb near the church’s entrance. Across from him is the Portuguese epic poet Luís Vaz de Camões (d. 1580), whose best known work celebrates the voyages of da Gama.

The poet might not actually be in the tomb. His original resting place was disturbed by the 1755 earthquake, and by the time of his entombment in Santa Maria in the 19th century, finding his remains was a matter of guesswork.

Santa Maria church, I’m glad to say, charged no admission, though I was happy to donate a few euros to its upkeep. All you have to do is wait in line, which took about 20 minutes.

The cloister, on the other hand, sold admissions, though at a fairly reasonable 10 euros. It was busy, but not so crowded that we couldn’t buy admission right then. Anyway, it was entirely worth it.

One is allowed to peer into the courtyard, but not enter it. I believe that that’s actual grass, not Astroturf.

Endless details carved all around.

A large refectory includes the sort of tilework that Portugal is famous for.

Including a depiction of an emotionally distressed horse.

That’s what it looks like to me, at least. Some of the tile artists apparently appreciated the fact that such a horse’s lot is little but work, work, work.

Museu Arqueológico do Carmo

Posted on May 28, 2024 by admin

The cat at Museu Arqueológico do Carmo in Lisbon wasn’t shy. This was his territory, after all. Tourists, such as ourselves, were just passing through.

A descendant of cats who did mousing duties at the Convent of Our Lady of Mount Carmel (Convento da Ordem do Carmo) centuries ago, including the sizable Gothic church associated with that long-gone convent? I like to think so, but in any case the cat seems to have the run of the place, a museum formed from the stabilized ruins of that church.

The green strips running the length of the nave-shell aren’t covered with grass. It’s something like Astroturf, if not that brand itself. For some reason, I found that amusing.

Surviving bits are on display under the roofless nave.

Including St. John Nepomucene, a sculpture by created in 1743, back when the 14th-century Czech martyr had recently become a saint (1729). Was getting a trending new saint a consideration for the Carmelites as they decided which saint statue to commission?

Looks like the sculpture survived the 1755 earthquake, which not only destroyed the church, it ended the site as a monastic community. The museum dates from the 19th century, through the efforts of the Association of Portuguese Archaeologists. But history wasn’t done with the site, museum or not: the former convent was a brief focus of activity during the Carnation Revolution.

The roof remains, or was restored to, the transept and the sanctuary, which now house other artifacts.

Such as a number of elaborate tombs original to the church, or relocated from other places where they were being neglected. This is the 14th-century tomb of King Ferdinand I (d. 1383). Apparently his remains got lost along the way, or at least are not in the tomb any more.

More tombs.

Or more likely, former tombs, now exhibits illustrating status, even in death. As if we needed even more reminders of impermanence in the ruins of an enormous church.

A Lisbon Ramble

Posted on May 24, 2024 by admin

Rain and wind sometimes but sun and warmth other times this week here in northern Illinois. Had breakfast on the deck most of the days since we returned. Lisbon wasn’t quite as warm as expected, with cool evenings – a little below 20° C. – evolving into warmish days, maybe 25° C. or so, followed again by cool evenings. We were rained on only once, more about which later.

Back to posting on Tuesday, in honor of Decoration Day, even though that’s next Thursday. I’m all for three-day weekends, or four or five, but we ought to acknowledge the heart of the occasion.

We arrived tired in the early afternoon of May 14 at the smallish but popular Praça Luís de Camões, emerging from the artificial lighting of the Metro into broad sunlight on the warmest day during our near-week in southern Portugal, just shy of about 30° C as they reckon things.

At once the dulcet sounds of these three gentlemen captured our attention, and we joined the loose ring of those listening. A good thing to do while sitting around getting ready to catch your second wind.

They played their versions of jazz standards and more recent songs. Sweet versions, each of the musicians taking the tunes aloft in distinctive ways. I didn’t see their names posted, even when I got close enough to drop in one euro each, so they’ll just have to be the Musicians of Praça Luís de Camões.

They had an enthusiastic audience member. He danced around on his feet for a while, the lay on the plaza tiles and “danced” around in that position.

We’d have listened longer, but we needed to obey our thirst, to use the ad phase that’s too good just to be that. Facing the square: McDonald’s. We each had a cold drink.

That’s my idea of a good souvenir, and I took it as such.

We headed down a busy retail street, R. Garrett, a thoroughfare with the likes of Ale-Hop Rua Garrett, Stradivarius women’s clothing, Gardenia shoe store, bbnails, Happy Socks, Livraria & Cafe, a book store, and the Percassipt quilt shop. A handsome street at spots. And under development.

Basílica de Nossa Senhora dos Mártires, the Basilica of Our Lady of the Martyrs, also rises on the street.

Before 1755 there was a different church on this site. As a Christian site, its roots stem back before Moorish domination of the Iberian peninsula.

Reinaldo Manuel dos Santos designed the current church, and of him Portuguese Wiki says: “Reinaldo Manuel dos Santos (1731-1791). Arquiteto e engenheiro militar português, foi um dos maiores expoentes da arquitetura e do urbanismo pombalinos,” which I believe is clear enough except for that business about pombalinos, a building and design style distinctive to Lisbon after the earthquake.

Now that’s a ceiling for the ages.

At R. do Carmo, a pedestrian street, Yuriko and Ann went to examine a particular clothing and other item store, while I took a wander.

People seemed to be paying attention to something.

They were right to take pictures. Stand just off the street was Elevador de Santa Justa, a Machine Age lift connecting two parts of the city, each at a different elevation.

I’d read about it, but didn’t make a particular plan to see it. But there it was. The work of one Raoul Mesnier du Ponsard, who is known for this structure and others like it. We didn’t get around to taking a ride, since time is short and Lisbon’s destination list is long, whoever compiles it.

Knickknacks, An Expatriate Scotsman & St. Anthony of Padua – Rather, Lisbon

Posted on May 22, 2024 by admin

Souvenir shops usually don’t make much of an impression, though there are exceptions, such as Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland in Frankenmuth, Michigan.

Another exception: the small shop facing the small plaza just downhill from the Sé de Lisboa and in front of the Church of Saint Anthony of Lisbon (Igreja de Santo António de Lisboa). The place, Gaivota Citadina, was wild with tiles and other high-quality souvenirs.

Look carefully, and you’ll see cork in the pictures, too. Cork souvenirs come in the form of coaster bottoms, but also wallets, bags, neckties and more, though not all of those were at this shop. Cork, incidentally, lines the backs of seats in the Metro cars. If you go to Portugal, you will see cork.

As far as tourist souvenirs goes – the knickknacks offered in countless small shops worldwide that exist to sell just such knickknacks – many Lisbon stores rate highly, carrying an unusually distinctive and good-looking stocks of items. Tiles and cork, but much more than that. Best of all, many of them still sell postcards, often for 50 euro cents each, and not just the usual pictures of the absolute most famous sites. Interesting postcards at popular prices: something we can all get behind.

While Yuriko and Ann were poring over tiles at Gaivota Citadina, and I’d already picked out a selection of cards, I had a short chat with an English-speaking fellow who seemed to know the proprietor, or at least the people running the shop that day. A Scotsman, he turned out to be a resident of Lisbon. I asked him how long.

“On and off for about five years now. I came on holiday once and just stayed.”

As if anticipating a next question, he then told me that other parts of Europe aren’t as pleasant or hospitable as Portugal these days.

“France, Germany, those places are on fire,” he told me. “Literally in the case of France. It isn’t like that in Portugal.”

Actually, he was wrong about literal wildfire; Portugal has suffered some recently. Regardless, though he didn’t quite put it this way, he said that the Portuguese have an underappreciated talent for living well. And leaving well enough alone.

Could be. I’d only been there a day at that point, and had (and have) no way to assess his feelings on Portugal. But he did seem enthusiastic about the country even after five years.

Later, I parked myself on the plaza’s only bench and watched people throw coins at a statue of St. Anthony. The goal seemed to be to land the coins on a flat part of the statue. The saint’s open book, as it turns out. Tradition, according to the museum behind the statue.

That was hard, but this fellow in red (not the Scotsman, someone else) was able to do it.

The baroque church itself – a replacement for the one destroyed in 1755 – rises where St. Anthony was said to be born, as Fernando de Bulhões, in 1195.

In Lisbon, he isn’t Anthony of Padua, since they claim the popular saint as their own. Anthony of Lisbon, and don’t you forget it.

Sé de Lisboa

Posted on May 21, 2024 by admin

Uphill from the flat Praça do Comércio – a lot of places are uphill in Lisbon, its seven hills famed, at least among tour operators – is the storied Lisbon Cathedral. Or in full in English, Cathedral of Saint Mary Major. In Portuguese, Santa Maria Maior de Lisboa or more simply, Sé de Lisboa.

Parked in front of the cathedral are tuk-tuks, motorized rickshaws. Rather than being a form of ordinary transport in Lisbon, they take tourists to tourist destinations. That isn’t a surprise. There’s some horse-drawn transport in Chicago for the same purpose. The surprise is that they’re called tuk-tuks, same as in Bangkok, where they are more ordinary transport, or at least were 30 years ago.

The Sé is cavernous.

So while the cathedral attracts a fair number of visitors, it didn’t seem crowded, except maybe in the narrow staircase leading both to an exterior balcony overlooking part of Lisbon, and to an interior balcony under the rose window.

Unlike some large churches, the side chapels at the Sé were well lighted and generally not behind bars. Tombs, in this cathedral’s reckoning, shouldn’t be dim places.

Dimmer was the second-floor Baroque Treasury, which displays antique silver, ecclesiastical vestments, manuscripts and relics of Saint Vincent. Low lighting must count as a conservation measure for the treasures.

One question: Where was the sign or memorial or marker noting the spot, or at least pointing to the spot, where a mob tossed Bishop Dom Martinho from a cathedral window in 1383?

The people of Lisbon defenestrating the Bishop D. Martinho de Zamora during the 1383–1385 Portuguese interregnum. Illustration by Roque Gameiro, in Leonor Telles (1904).

Maybe I missed it, but you’d think the cathedral would want to point out something like that with some prominent plaque or sign – like in Prague Castle, where you can see the very windows where the Defenestrations of Prague occurred?

A grim fate for the bishop, if Wiki is correct in citing an early Portuguese chronicle: “In 1383, to celebrate the acclamation of King John I, it was ordered for all churches of the realm to ring their bells. However, upon the lack of any ringing coming from the capital’s cathedral the populace of Lisbon revolted and rammed their way inside the building. Bishop Dom Martinho of Zamora was accused of treason by the populace for being Castilian and schismatic and was, therefore, defenestrated from one of the bell towers.”

Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, Des Plaines

Posted on May 7, 2024 by admin

We happened to be in Des Plaines recently, so we dropped in on the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. It occurred to me that it had been a long time since I’d been there, and that Yuriko never had been. The last time I visited was well before I went to the Guadalupe shrine in Mexico City or even the one in Wisconsin.

“Its origins date to 1987, when a group of Chicago-area Catholics decided to launch a mission to promote devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe using a special pilgrim statue from the shrine in Mexico City,” says the Catholic News Agency.

“In 1995, construction began on an outdoor shrine in Des Plaines modeled after Tepeyac Hill in Mexico City, where the Virgin Mary appeared to the indigenous Mexican St. Juan Diego in 1531. The Virgin Mary left her image on his cloak, known as a tilma, and asked him to build a church on a hilltop.”

Their depiction is a replica of the sculpture at the basilica in Mexico, known as “The Offering,” by sculptor Aurelio G.D. Mendoza from Guadalajara (d. 1996), a man of considerable talents, known as El Mago de la Escenografia (The Magician of Scenography).

Nearby.

“The Apostles Cross,” an artistic representation of the vision received by the Mexican mystic, Concepción Cabrera de Armida, and the spirituality of the Missionaries of the Holy Spirit.

Thorncrown Chapel

Posted on April 22, 2024 by admin

My bourgeois householder impulses kicked in today and I mowed the lawn, which, happily, is sporting a nice crop of dandelions. I’m actually fond of dandelions, so I suppose my lawncare impulses aren’t entirely conventional. I gave up raking leaves years ago, too, and don’t regret it. I look at my lawn in the spring and think, where did all those leaves go? To nourish the soil, of course.

On April 7, we left Harrison, Arkansas, where we’d spent the night, and headed for Dallas by not quite the most direct route. Soon we passed through Eureka Springs. We wanted to amble around town a bit, but parking was hard to find and – this rankles on a Sunday – costs money. So on we went, west on U.S. 62. Moments out of town, I spotted the sign for Thorncrown Chapel.

The chapel rises gracefully on its Arkansas hillside, whose trees at that moment were budding, but not obscuring the view. Good timing for a visit.

Wood and glass and light and – air. So light you’d think it’s going to float away, despite however many pounds of wood it represents.

“Thorncrown Chapel… is the most celebrated piece of architecture built in Arkansas,” says the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, which is a tall statement. But that opinion seems to have some weight, considering the structure’s honors and spots on architecture lists, besides the acclaim accorded architect E. Fay Jones.

“Eighteen wood columns line each of the long sides,” the article notes. “The columns are connected overhead by a latticelike diagonal web of light wood pieces, creating the building’s most important visual feature. This interior bracing is Jones’s inspired inversion of Gothic architecture’s transfer of the loads of a building to “flying buttresses” that brace the walls from the outside.”

The Mildred B. Cooper Memorial Chapel, also by Jones, has similar charms, but I’d say Thorncrown kicked things up a notch in design.

We happened to be in time for the Sunday nondenominational service, so we sat in for a while. No admission, but we were happy to make a donation.

Much better images are here. Seems that the muse was with E. Fay Jones when he designed the chapel for a couple who happened to own the land, Jim and Dell Reed, and who had this built instead of a retirement home, tapping Jones, a one-time student of Frank Lloyd Wright, for the job; and ultimately seeing it completed in 1980, after divine intervention was said to be a factor in the financing.

One of the speakers at the service – I can’t call it the sermon or homily, just a chat – who looked my age or a little more, was their son, Doug Reed, I think. Maybe he sees chapel every day, or often enough, but somehow a sense of awe came through as he described how the Thorncrown came to be. That didn’t make an impression on me in the moment, but the more I think about it, the more impressive it is, how familiarity hasn’t effaced awe for him.

Spring Break Bits

Posted on April 4, 2024 by admin

It might not feel like spring out there, but no matter. Time for spring break. Back to posting around April 18.

Not long ago, an entire movie on YouTube called First Spaceship on Venus came to my attention, and I decided to watch a few minutes to see how bad it might be. Soon I realized, this isn’t that bad. For what was clearly a pre-manned spaceflight depiction of spaceflight, not bad at all. I didn’t have time to finish it, but I will at some point.

I’d never heard of it. But I have heard of Stanisław Lem. I read His Master’s Voice years ago – nearly 40 years, so I don’t remember much – and saw the 1972 movie version of Solaris, ditto, though I’ve read it’s rather different from his novel. Turns out First Spaceship on Venus is the American title of Silent Star (Der Schweigende Stern), an East German-Polish production from 1960. Lem wrote the source book, The Astronauts, a few years earlier. The American version is dubbed into English and, I understand, cut in length.

Also, if you want, you can listen to the original soundtrack of Der Schweigende Stern. YouTube’s quite the place.

More idle curiosity for the day: checking ticket prices for Billy Joel and Stevie Nicks, who are appearing the same night at Soldier Field in June. The closest ticket for sale is pretty close indeed: front section, third row. For resale, actually. There are a scattering of resale tickets available in that section, with those on the third row listed for $3,791 + fees. Oddly enough, fourth row seats list for $2,794 + fees. At least for now. So one row ahead, where you can catch a slightly better glimpse of Mr. Joel’s shiny pate, is worth about a grand more?

I expect that represents dynamic pricing of some kind, facilitated by soulless algorithms in the service of maximized shareholder value, and varies from moment to moment. But I was never one for front row seats anyway, or even third or fourth. Checking further, I found that you can bring your opera glasses and sit way back for $179. As it happens, I’ve seen both of those entertainers; separately, in 1979 and 1980. I don’t remember what I paid. A handy inflation calculator tells me that $179 now is the equivalent of $47 back then. I’m positive I didn’t pay that much, total, for both tickets.

Visiting Queen of All Saints Basilica in Chicago last month, I took an image of carved text that puzzled me a bit, but then I forgot to look it up.

“Ecumenical Year?” I remembered to look into that more recently, and realized that it must refer to the first year of Vatican II, which was indeed 1962. Formally in English, the meeting was the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican.

Naturally, when one hears of Vatican II, it’s time to listen to “The Vatican Rag.”

The council might have been 60 years ago, but that song never gets old.

Nephi on the Sidewalk

Posted on March 21, 2024 by admin

Today I’m reminded of the old joke whose punchline is, “He called me from Salt Lake City.” If you know it, you know it, but enough to say that Mormonism is the crux of that joke.

We took a walk around a northwest suburban pond late this afternoon, a familiar place, but there was unfamiliar writing on one of the many stretches of sidewalk.

Illustration to the left.

3 Nephi 11:14? That didn’t sound familiar. Maybe a book in the Douay version I don’t know about? I’ve never been able to remember all of its distinctions from the KJB. I forgot about my passing, and erroneous, thought until I downloaded the pictures later. That was the time to look it up. It’s from the Book of Mormon.

That’s a first in my experience, Mormon graffiti.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Religious Sites