Through the magic of internet´s “Meet,” this former cultural reporter, columnist, food, music and theater critic for the now extinct English newspaper in Rio de Janeiro the Brazil Herald, attended Sunday afternoon a reunion fifty years later of our former reporters and editors.
The occasion was to herald(!) in a new book of over 496 pages (103.51 reais in kindle form ,204 reais in hardcover from Amazon) by my former editor now Iowa State university journalism professor Stephen Bloom called “The Brazil Chronicles.”
The Brazil Herald was managed by the late Bill Williamson, a native of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Williamson, a became the general manager of the Brazil Herald and who was a passionate sailor as well as journalist and lover-admirer of Brazil.
The newspaper was a starting ground for many international reporters including the famous Hunter S. Thompson, found of Gonzo journalism, including the “Rum Diary “which was made into a popular Hollywood film.
Having been out for decades of my native country the USA (now transformed to Trump land), I have never been able to attend a high school or university reunion.
And to put it mildly it is very emotional, hits the emotional nerves so much that I can only explain the absence of some as fear of nostalgia.
For really to quote the old adage, “we were happy and didn’t know it,” in an age fifty some years ago before internet and Donald Trump when typewriters, teletype machines and beer bottles on the table, fans rather than air conditioning were the rule at a bustling office on Rua do Resende, in Lapa, the supposedly Carioca Montmartre, Paris.
And most important we didn’t work from home offices but at a main, bustling and somewhat disorganized, chatter-filled newsroom where this oboist could run to after a rehearsal with The Brazilian Symphony Orchestra at nearby Sala Cecilia Meireles.
On the top floor of the same building where our printing presses rolled out English newspapers every day was a group of rowdy Brazilians including journalist Paulo Francis, the cartoonist Jaguar and Ziraldo and the founder of the iconic satiric newspaper, humorist Millor Fernandes.
If only I—and some of the others speaking English and little Portuguese at the time—had known them better or at all!
The local English—speaking community was much larger than it is these days and back in the last century(!) people depended on newspapers in print-paper as a contrast to these online days of incomplete reads which perhaps explains some of the unfortunate political occurrences around the world.
Our discussion yesterday was literally a get a reunited and re-acquainted meet which unveiled the hard fact that most of our ex-journalists are no longer in the profession, working or retired as therapists, a former taxi-driver who owns a taxi fleet and two novels he wrote on his adventures in Brazil, the head of a translating agency , a retired news agency reporter writing plays in Sao Paulo, a former editor who covers the movie industry and is producing a film on ex-train robber Ronald Biggs, who found exile for 30 years in Rio de Janeiro ,an ex-Peace corps worker turned novelist and author, the son of our ex-publisher and the director of an art workshop in Guatemala.
Newspapers and journalism are about what is “new” and I have seen in my lifetime the extinction of innumerous beloved journalism enterprises.
Whether it be in paper or online there is no doubt that there will always be a market for writing and trying to understand the complexities of every day and age and in some form or other the next Brazil Herald will surely return.
But meanwhile a few tears shed for the happiest days of our life and we didn’t know it at the Brazil Herald in Rio de Janeiro.
PS-As I stated at the reunion, after the Oscar nominated “I´m Still Here,” I/we are awaiting the Hollywood or Brazil film called “The Brazilian Chronicles.”