I thought I’d take a little time for a cultural observation as well as a geographical observation, both having to do in some way with stars. Cesar took me out on the horses (for a total of about 2 minutes before I realized it was too dark for me to feel safe riding a horse), and I looked up at the sky on the way back to the house and noticed something amazing. I suppose I knew in the back of my head that we should be able to have a good view from our location of the Milky Way, but the amount of stars is indeed incredible. More than that, I saw beyond a doubt the only star grouping I could dream of locating and recognizing in the southern sky (North America constellations are, in general, not visible), and that was the amazing Milky Way, the limits of our galaxy. Such an observation makes the world feel so large and so small at the same time.
The cultural observation came shortly after as we all gathered around the TV (pretty much the only thing you can do on the farm after dark) and watched the novelas. I realized, having watched novelas in the past, most novelas are pretty much the same. There’s always the people who you don’t know are good or bad, the ones that are evil to the core, the saints, somebody always gets married and someone else always gets pregnant and they throw in messages of tolerance and modern values, but there’s very little of anything beyond that. I have yet to see crime shows, hospital shows, investigation, basically anything beyond the soap opera plot. I think I’m going to try to keep observing to find the reasoning behind this. I have some ideas… but maybe I’ll wait until they’re more organized. Any of you Brazilians or cultural observers have insights?