O POVO E QUEM MAIS ORDENA

Ouvido esta tarde em frente à sede da candidatura do dr. Mário Soares à Presidência da República, nos Restauradores, pela voz de um cavalheiro que não deve ser muito mais novo que ele: "Esse Soares devia era estar num asilo, é que ele devia."

MOMENTO ZEN

Um gato preto enroscado em cima do capot de um Volkswagen Golf bordeaux fita-me com os seus olhos verdes quando passo por ele.

FORA DE CONTROLE

Acho bem que se tenha alarme no carro. Já não acho tanta graça — eu e o resto da vizinhança, parece-me — quando os alarmes parecem disparar de livre e espontânea vontade, geralmente a horas muito pouco apropriadas, do género duas da manhã de um dia de semana ou nove da manhã de um fim-de-semana. Nos últimos dias, na minha rua, há um que tem disparado regularmente — e é particularmente irritante, porque dispara uma buzina metronómica durante alguns minutos que pára precisamente quando está a começar a ser um irritante sério... para recomeçar algum tempo depois durante mais alguns minutos.

ELIZABETHTOWN

Já estava a desesperar de ver um grande filme (não-animado, entenda-se) nestes últimos meses. Foi hoje. Imperfeito, inacabado, descontrolado — e apenas maior por causa disso. Elizabethtown, de Cameron Crowe, é como a vida: não está, nunca, onde estamos à espera dele. Estreia a 10 de Novembro.

POLAROID: METRO

Na estação do Rato, estão a arranjar as escadas rolantes. Mas, como começa a ser hábito, a escada em funcionamento desce em vez de subir, obrigando as pessoas a subir a pé o longuíssimo lanço de escadas. Um senhor levanta a questão ao técnico que está a reparar a escada, mas recebe apenas um abanar de cabeça com os braços abertos, como quem diz "tem razão, mas eu não posso fazer nada". Como para ilustrar o problema, chega um casal idoso que se vê forçado a subir a escada — o senhor é cego.

Mais à frente, um jovem não consegue que o seu cartão magnético abra a cancela de entrada. Quando, à terceira tentativa, o consegue, dá um murro no mecanismo enquanto entra.

Quando regresso, algumas horas depois, continuam a arranjar as escadas rolantes. E, como começa a ser hábito, a escada em funcionamento continua a ser a que desce.

MOMENTO

Sentado num banco, numa das centrais da Avenida da Liberdade, faço tempo para uma projecção. Princípio de tarde. Temperatura amena. Brisa leve. Folhas que caem lentamente das árvores onde bolas prateadas estão suspensas . Gente e trânsito que atravessa a rua. O mundo pára, por cinco minutos.

This chord
This water
This son
This daughter
This day
This time
This land
It's all mine

This Calling Bell
This Forge Bell
This Dark Bell
This The Knife Bell
This calling
This burden
This falling
The world's turning

This What I thought I knew
This What I thought was true
This I understood
This In the deep wood
This Ah there I stood a child so fair
This On a certain square
This Down the dirty stairs
This To see the table set
This With golden chairs
This Ah to follow, follow, follow, follow there

This race
And this world
This feeling
And this girl
This revolver
This fire
This I'll hold it up higher, higher, high

— Brian Eno, "This", in "Another Day on Earth" (Hannibal, 2005)

PEQUENOS IRRITANTES QUOTIDIANOS #35

Ter que programar os canais manualmente no televisor porque a busca automática programa tudo nos números errados.

NAO OLHES PARA TRAS (#1000)

Há canções que só o tempo desvenda.

when you're nothing to no one
and you're less than your kin
and you're looking for someone
who won't cling to anything

so you're stuck in some motel
with the sound of her sleeping
don't you feel kind of old now?
well, ain't that a funny thing

I used to wake up early
I used to try to believe
but life seems never ending
when you're young

so you're back on the highway
and there's wind in her hair
and you know that it's no time for thinking
about somebody up there

because you'll turn her to drinking
and you'll lead her to hell
with her Bible beside her
she surely looks like an angel

I used to wake up early
I used to try to believe
but faith is never easy
when you're young

I used to wake up early
now it's hard, hard enough to sleep
but life seems never ending
when you're young.

— Lloyd Cole, "Don't Look Back", in "Lloyd Cole" (Polydor, 1990)

LAR DOCE LAR

É tudo muito bonito andar para aí a elogiar a santidade da família, a importância dos laços de sangue e todas essas coisas, mas há uma coisa de que toda a gente se esquece — é que a família não conhece apenas os nossos lados bons, mas também os nossos lados maus. E nunca perde uma oportunidade de no-lo recordar — o que, convenha-se, nem sempre é do melhor tom.

O ESTADO DAS COISAS

De um lado, uma mulher que desaparece de livre vontade em busca de qualquer coisa. Do outro, um casal que contempla o suicídio colectivo como única solução para o sobre-endividamento. Cada um que tire as suas conclusões.

O JARDIM SECRETO

Apetece lá voltar, sempre que as pessoas são complicadas. E não há, de todo, motivo para que o sejam — a não ser porque o querem.

(Sim, também vale para mim.)

AQUI E AGORA

Esta canção desculpa tudo o que de menos bom Cassandra Wilson fez na vida. (E desculpem qualquer coisinha se já vo-la tiver vendido algures nos quase dois anos que este blog já leva.)

did you ever love somebody?
did you ever really care?
did you ever need somebody
just to rub your hair
all the energy we spend on motion
all the circuitry and time
is there any way to feel a body
through fiber optic lines?

everybody's going through the motions
got their heads up or down
no one seems to want to see the other person's eyes
reflect the world go 'round

everybody seems to want to get away to some place
get away from themselves
I got a feeling if they found that some place
they'll want to go some place else

do we really want to go to Mars?
do we ever really want to try?
I got a funny feeling if we get up there
we're gonna stop and wonder why

don't you want to be right here
right now?

— Cassandra Wilson, "Right Here, Right Now" (Cassandra Wilson/Marvin Sewell) in "Traveling Miles" (Blue Note, 1999)

OS MISTERIOS DE ALFRAGIDE

...ou de Carnaxide, ou da Outurela, ou da Portela — vai tudo dar ao mesmo. O que meter pela saída errada da Segunda Circular dá é perceber que há subúrbios lisboetas onde a palavra "sinalização" não é, de todo, conhecida... E não há ninguém que peça às entidades responsáveis para definir melhor "zona comercial"?

A EFICACIA DOS 50

A capa da Caras desta semana diz que Teresa Guilherme, aos 50 anos, se sente mais eficaz e divertida. Posto desta maneira, parece um anúncio para um creme anti-rugas.

O DESAPARECIMENTO DA CANETA PRODIGA

Ficou na minha secção de voto, onde a deixei sem dar por isso no domingo à tarde. A Bic Cristal voltou a uso.

POLAROID: METRO

Corro para entrar na carruagem antes que as portas se fechem. A senhora que entra à minha frente pára assim que entra, tenho de forçar um pouco a passagem para não ficar com a mala presa na porta. A senhora pede desculpa educadamente, mas não se mexe um milímetro da posição que adoptou.

MARKETING POLITICO (SLIGHT RETURN)

"Por um voto se ganha, por um voto se muda", rezava a frase usada numa das campanhas de marketing destas autárquicas. Pelos vistos, Lisboa não quis mudar e Carrilho perdeu — mas, agora a sério, alguém alguma vez pensou que ele pudesse ganhar? Que disparate! Que disparate!

No resto, tenho a dizer que Portugal não me surpreendeu e continua no seu melhor. Os portugueses também não e continuam no seu melhor.

SERA QUE JA PODEMOS IR CHAMAR PAI A OUTRO?

Ângelo Correia à RTP: "Mário Soares é um dos grandes pais da democracia".

MARKETING POLITICO

"Por um voto se ganha, por um voto se muda", rezava a frase usada numa das campanhas de marketing destas autárquicas. Raras vezes uma frase terá sido tão apropriada na sua ambiguidade: é verdade que "por um voto se muda", mas será que se muda "para melhor"?

DEBATE

Depois do debate de ontem à noite, na RTP-1, fiquei esclarecido sobre quem tem realmente ideias, projectos e amor por Lisboa.

Fiquei escandalizado com a atitude diletante de Manuel Maria Carrilho, que fala muito de teorias mas não consegue esconder a falta de substância no seu discurso, que parece não estar minimamente preparado para ser presidente da câmara — a sua pose distante é a de quem gosta de teorizar para que os outros ponham em prática as suas visões iluminadas, é a de quem não tem programa e, à boa velha maneira de uma certa esquerda nacional, acha que o ser de esquerda é suficiente para garantir as credenciais.

Fiquei atónito com José Sá Fernandes, que parece não ter arcaboiço para estas cavalarias altas e se refugia em conversas de "medidas corajosas" quando o que os lisboetas querem não é medidas corajosas (aliás, não ouvi nenhumas), é problemas resolvidos (e como é que alguém que diz que Lisboa precisa de gente propõe uma taxa para quem quiser trazer o carro para o centro de Lisboa? como é que alguém que passa a vida a dizer que já há impostos a mais quer introduzir mais um?).

Fiquei desapontado com o nervosismo e insegurança de Carmona Rodrigues, que me parece uma figura simpática e com algum bom senso mas que me pareceu ali a fazer algum frete, que comeu muito por tabela da megalomania d'Aquele-Cujo-Nome-Não-Deve-Ser-Pronunciado, e que esteve bem (e com razão) quando diz que o túnel das Amoreiras/Marquês não vai trazer mais carros para dentro de Lisboa. Aliás, o túnel é um problema, é certo, mas ninguém parece recordar que os portugueses são um povo individualista que, mesmo com transportes públicos de melhor qualidade, só à lei da bala é que vai deixar o automóvel próprio em casa.

Sobram Ruben de Carvalho e Maria José Nogueira Pinto, seguros, ele mais pragmático, ela mais teórica, mas ambos com ideias muito claras do que está mal em Lisboa e do que deve e pode ser melhorado. Infelizmente, tudo aponta para que, mais uma vez, a demagogia ganhe à competência. Mas não é surpresa. Já é assim desde o século passado, porque haveria de mudar agora?

POLAROID: CAFE, PEQUENO-ALMOÇO

Duas mesas ao lado, está uma liceal com um telemóvel em cima da mesa, auscultadores ligados a um leitor de MP3, ouvindo música enquanto desenha, debruçada sobre um caderno espiral A4, com um lápis, manchas cinzentas nas margens nas folhas. Na mesa em frente estão três liceais, colegas de turma possivelmente, a tomarem o pequeno-almoço e, sem parar de desenhar nem levantar a cabeça, ela chama uma das três insistentemente, dizendo-lhe que é urgente e precisa muito de falar com ela, ao que a outra responde, agastada, "espera um minuto" enquanto continua a tomar o pequeno-almoço.

O REGRESSO DA CANETA PRODIGA

Afinal, a caneta lá estava. Tenho especial preferência por estas canetas transparentes de gel, de tinta preta, Uniball Signo 0.5 made in Japan (by Mitsubishi) — não tenho nada contra as Bic Cristal para escrita normal, diga-se desde já (já a Bic Laranja para escrita fina nunca me convenceu), nem tenho nenhuma especial razão sentimental para ficar contente por recuperar esta. Acontece apenas que me habituei a estas, já há uns largos anos, quer em preto quer em vermelho (dava jeito para rever páginas...), porque raramente a tinta seca e são bastante resistentes.

Tinha-me esquecido dela no café onde costumo tomar o pequeno-almoço, na manhã de terça-feira, em cima da mesa junto à janela, encostada à caixinha plástica dos guardanapos de papel, e só dei pela falta dela já a caminho da casa da minha mãe, para uma sessão de "Mum-sitting" enquanto o meu pai ia a uma consulta médica de rotina. Percebi imediatamente onde é que a tinha deixado e, sem grandes esperanças que ainda estivesse no café, desviei-me para a primeira papelaria que encontrei e comprei uma Bic Cristal.

Hoje, de manhã, quando pagava o galão e a torrada, perguntei se por acaso não teriam encontrado uma caneta — a empregada disse que não tinha ideia mas, em cima do balcão, junto ao cesto dos pacotinhos de açúcar para o café, lá estava ela. Surpresa.

DEPOIS DA TEMPESTADE

Aqui há uns meses, dei aqui um toque sobre Nancy Gibbs, da Time, mocinha que é capaz de ser uma escritora absolutamente notável. Na altura, fi-lo a propósito de uma peça sobre o Papa que não consegui reproduzir aqui — agora, volto ao fazê-lo por causa de uma peça que saiu na edição de 3 de Outubro sobre o furacão Rita. Parece-me que explica muito melhor porque é que eu gosto da maneira como ela combina análise, reportagem e opinião num todo eminentemente fluido (com desculpas pela dimensão da peça).

Act Two
Hurricane Rita brings a second cruel assault on the Gulf Coast. How well did we apply Katrina's lessons?
By NANCY GIBBS

«We get to know our hurricanes so well now. We christen them and watch them grow from little tempests way out at sea to big, clumsy storms spilling bright orange rings all over the weather maps. We track them so closely that we fool ourselves into thinking that what we can't control we can at least predict, with all our models and millibars, as though it were not in the very nature of hurricanes to skid and twist and break things. That's worth remembering now as the skies clear and we measure what worked and what didn't, who overreacted, who waited too long, as though someone should have had perfect intelligence about the least predictable of all our natural enemies.

Was any storm ever watched as closely as Rita, Katrina's unwelcome sister come to test the learning curve? There would be nothing normal about her, not after where we've been. Politicians and reporters prowled the operations centers. FEMA rained press releases. Disaster officials positioned supplies every 10 feet across East Texas--truckloads of water and ice, hospital beds, even the microchips to be implanted in dead bodies for identification. Fifty thousand troops were on the ground, as local, state and federal officials strapped themselves together in a life belt of plans and protocols designed to protect both the public and themselves.

And still the ironies blew in one after another. The previous storm was followed by so much human failure that it all but ensured this one would be preceded by failure. Thirty-four elderly people drowned in New Orleans because they didn't leave, and 24 people in Texas burned when they did. People filled their cars with their most precious possessions, only to abandon them on the highway when the traffic stopped and the engines died. President George W. Bush could not win; even before Rita hit, grouchy critics were saying, "Well, of course he'll take care of his home state." And in sad and sodden New Orleans, where army engineers had spent the past three weeks dumping sand and gravel to patch the levees, the debates about rebuilding were drowned in the second wave. "People are just going to be thinking, What's the damn point if this is going to keep happening?" said a New Orleans cop as he surveyed a flooded underpass. Soldiers went out to stare at the waterfall over the levee, and some took pictures--a still life in human limitations.

The culture of blame thrives in this climate, so it was easy to miss the victories. It is no small thing to evacuate the fourth biggest city in the country--not just the willing and mobile but also the old, the sick, the stubborn, women in labor, babies in incubators, criminals in prisons--more than the populations of 15 states, all on the move at once. Some tempers melted in Houston's 100-degree heat, but the effort in its entirety was a pageant in patience and cooperation. In the end, the greatest irony may turn out to be the high cost of good news. It will be days before we know the full scope of the damage, in homes and lives and livelihoods. But if it turns out that for all the disruption, fewer people died, more homes were spared and the destruction was not as bad so officials had feared, they know there is one last price they will pay, a debt that will come due the next time a disaster wanders into view and they once again have to convince people that it is far better to be safe than sorry.

It turns out that you can't drain a city of 2 million people in a day. It's not as if it's a fire drill you can practice, other than on a computer model that will never account for all the brave and stupid and sentimental things people do when their world starts to rattle and pitch. Sound the alarms too soon, and you may disrupt lives for no reason. Wait too long, and you risk losing them.

For officials in cities across the country, newly aware that they had better have some kind of rational evacuation plan in place, Rita taught as much about the challenge of leaving as Katrina taught about staying behind. Los Angeles, sitting on a basket of fault lines, has no plans for a mass evacuation. San Francisco envisions sending residents out across bridges that could crumple. New York City at least has subways that can move 8 million people a day--but those lines are mentioned as a favorite terrorist target.

In Texas, the plan was for about a million people to move out of harm's way. The reality was that two and half times as many hit the roads, and that doesn't count the dogs and cats and goats and hedgehogs evacuating as well. The Texodus came in waves, first on Tuesday from Galveston, the barrier island of 57,000 that takes its hurricanes seriously, then thousands more from coastal towns and hundreds of thousands more from Houston, whose Mayor Bill White urged residents of low-lying areas to get out--now. "Don't wait," he said. "The time for warnings is over." In Matagorda County, sheriff James Mitchell warned parents that if they decided to try to ride out the storm and were caught, they could be charged with child endangerment and their children taken into custody. But for once, the public did not need much convincing. Forecasters couldn't say for sure where Rita was headed, and people weren't in a mood to take chances.

White called what followed the largest mass evacuation in U.S. history. It was also at times the slowest. By Wednesday Rita was a Category 5 hurricane, one of the three meanest storms ever tracked in the Atlantic, moving at about 9 m.p.h. toward her prey, faster than East Texas could run away. Fleeing families were lucky to move a mile in an hour. Soon dead cars lined the roadsides, and the tanker trucks meant to revive them were themselves stuck in traffic or else had the wrong nozzles to fit civilian cars. "They're saying if you have one-eighth of a tank of gas or less, to get off the roads and let other people escape," said Mary Sieger, 62. "But where should people go if they do pull off? There's no gas in the entire city. They can't get home."

Somehow state and city officials could not seem to reverse the southbound lanes until midday Thursday, and even that was remarkable because there was no master scheme for doing it at all. "Contraflow was never in the plan," White tells TIME. "We improvised it." One city official says that was only because of TV images of packed lanes next to empty ones. "They [state officials] were not going to do it," the official says. "It was never part of the plan because they believed that the roads could accommodate the traffic." But that's barely true on a normal day's rush hour, much less during a sudden spasm of survivalism. Governor Rick Perry acknowledged that being stuck in traffic for 12 or 15 hours was bad, but "it sure beats being plucked off a roof by a helicopter." It was a line he was to repeat all day.

After endless hours of getting nowhere on the roads, some families tried to turn back. By then, White was calling cars stuck on highways potential deathtraps. To focus the evacuation, Houston had tried to publish maps of the most vulnerable areas, but the average citizen couldn't understand them or didn't try. "I think people just said, 'Oh, my God, I'm in danger. I'm leaving,'" says Carla Prater, a Texas A&M professor who helped design evacuation plans for the state. "We didn't have time to adjust our plans in accordance with this new factor, the freak-out factor," she tells TIME. Dozens went to hospitals, and several died of heat exhaustion and dehydration in temperatures that could bake the fruit on the trees. White warned on Friday that for those who were not already on their way, it was now too late to go.

For those left behind, there was little to do but stock up and hunker down. At the Houston zoo, geese, ducks and chickens found shelter in one of the men's rooms while the turkeys commandeered a ladies' room. The Siberian tiger section offered sanctuary to some maned wolves and anteaters. "Everyone is secured from everyone else," said spokesman Brian Hill. "There's no danger of any animal taking advantage." Over at the Museum of Fine Arts, a cast of Rodin's sculpture The Walking Man was laid down so it wouldn't fall over and get hurt. At the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, even as the patients were evacuated, researchers combed the hospital's lab where some of the world's most lethal viruses are studied, terminating experiments, storing viruses in locked freezers and fumigating the labs to avoid the chance that something could escape if the building were crushed.

Big storms announce themselves with that famous calm, and people exploited it however they could. Mothers took their kids to the playground to wear them out in the event that they would be locked down for a few days. A case of water was going for $30 at a convenience store, and condoms were a top seller as well. "We needed heroic amounts of food," said David Fine, head of St. Luke's Episcopal Health System, "so we broke into a warehouse to get it." The hospital got permission to pry open the freezer at a McDonald's near Texas Children's Medical Hospital to liberate a huge load of meat patties. The general advice? "Don't ask permission," advised Perry. "Ask forgiveness."

Everywhere across the city and beyond, people imagined the worst, and given what they had been watching night after night on the news, that wasn't hard to do ...

Some Texans felt a gust of guilt and relief in the hours that followed, as Rita wobbled eastward on her path ashore. They knew they did not want to be on the dirty side of a big storm, the eastern wing that tosses tornadoes as she goes. Instead she moved in on the Texas-Louisiana coastline, somehow steering between the major population centers, and managed to avoid most refineries. But Rita was so big and slow, she still caused trouble hundreds of miles in every direction, including Katrina's stomping grounds. In Beaumont, Texas, police patrolled the blacked-out streets in cruisers and on the backs of dump trucks, shotguns ready. "It was really whipping through here last night," said resident Bill Dode. "It was extremely loud, and the house was creaking." Tree branches were poking through some cars' windows and some homes' walls. At one house, a goat was standing on top of a patio table, braying at a window.

In New Orleans, Mayor Ray Nagin, aware that half his population may never return, had urged people to come back, only to have to turn them around again two days later as Rita approached. Watching Rita hover offshore, the Army Corps of Engineers was worried that the levees could not withstand another blow. The pumps were still operating at only 40%, and while the city was basically dry, some streets were pasted together with poison sludge. Six inches of rain, max, they said, but the levees were already overflowing by Friday morning.

Meanwhile, the city recited its lessons like a chastened schoolboy. Buses were waiting at the Convention Center, along with half a million meals and a field hospital, in case the city endured a replay. A new $4.5 million communications system using military satellites was ready in case the phones went out again. But if the city was wiser, so were the people. They were not counting on anyone else to save them this time. In the French Quarter the Deja Vu strip club was open for business, but just about everything else was closed, and everyone was gone, except the cops, the army, the reporters and the looters. New Orleans and out-of-town police confirmed to TIME that numerous looters and carjackers had been arrested in recent days, some carrying guns and impersonating cops. "They're drifting back in," an officer said--and they're hardly the residents Nagin needs to repopulate his near dead city.

But if New Orleans was a vast urban sacrifice to greater knowledge, at least the experience was being studied at every level. The President had planned to go to Texas on Friday, having spent time earlier in the week in Louisiana and Mississippi. Wouldn't he just get in the way?, reporters asked, which may help explain why the White House misplaced the press corps, inadvertently sending it along to San Antonio while Bush decided to head for Colorado to watch the Northern Command coordinate the federal response. As he got a tour of the facility, he finally found his bullhorn moment. When he came across a 9/11 memorial, including a photograph of him atop the rubble at ground zero, he took out his pen and signed it "May God Bless America, George W. Bush."

Given the challenges that face him now, as gas prices jump up three more floors and Congress revolts and the global war on hurricanes threatens to break the budget, the President did get a break from the Rita replay. For all the complaints about Bush's handling of Katrina, it was Texas Senator John Cornyn who noted that "when you dial 911, it doesn't ring at the White House." While federal officials were much more attentive this time, officials in Texas showed they could make the machinery work together. Katrina was a pop quiz for Texas emergency chief Jack Colley, an ex-military man whose office is practically empty except for a few baseball caps, a picture of an old dog and a thick walking stick topped by a pilot's joy stick. He's a man who knows the sheriffs and mayors and agency heads by name. The state has held 150 simulation tests, including a cascading nightmare of a nuclear power leak, a Category 4 hurricane in Corpus Christi and a nuclear terrorist attack. Perry told Bush not to even consider drafting Colley when the Governor thought the President might be in the market for some experienced disaster hands in Washington.

In the state operations center, a former cold war nuclear shelter in Austin, Perry let Colley manage the conference calls. One sheriff wanted to know whether he would be reimbursed for the gasoline he provided to federal agencies. Another said he was overwhelmed with evacuees and was worried about security along the roadways where people with knives were fighting over gas. Perry dealt with the politicians. House majority leader Tom DeLay called for the fourth or fifth time. His district would probably escape the worst, but he wanted to be sure enough National Guard troops had been called up. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had been calling four times a day. Bush called four times and by late Saturday had gone home to Austin to see the operation for himself.

One disaster is a test of readiness; a second is a test of character. For those already wearing I SURVIVED KATRINA T shirts, it was a cruel challenge to their resilience. "It feels like it's following us," said a New Orleans evacuee. They were like Israelites in the desert. There was talk of moving ... to another planet. The next best thing, maybe, was Mexico. Some evacuees headed south because it was home, others on the chance that they might have to be gone for a long time, and life on the run would be cheaper there.

Once you've lost everything, there is little left to mourn. More than windows and walls, hope is hard to repair once it is broken. "It's like watching a murder," said a repeat evacuee in Lafayette, La. "The first time is bad. After that, you numb up." But if anything, the storm had the opposite effect on the officials in charge of responding to it. They were anything but numb--rather, aware that something profound had changed in the efforts and expectations. And that this was only the beginning.»
--Reported by Cathy Booth Thomas, Deborah Fowler and Wendy Grossman/Houston, Matthew Cooper/Washington, Hilary Hylton/Austin, Tim Padgett and Amanda Ripley/New Orleans, Adam Pitluk/Beaumont, Sean Scully/Philadelphia and Deirdre van Dyk/New York

OS TEMPOS ESTAO MESMO A MUDAR

Isto é uma das mais notáveis peças sociológicas que li nos últimos tempos. Vem na edição desta semana da Economist. (As minhas desculpas pelo link.)

The times they are a changin'. Really

Believe it or not, America is beginning to escape its groundhog decade

«WE'RE told on good authority that history repeats itself, but this is getting ridiculous. The past week has been a giant flashback to the 1960s. On Saturday 100,000 anti-war demonstrators descended on Washington, DC, to chant peacenik slogans and listen to Joan Baez sing “Where have all the flowers gone?” The only thing missing was Abbie Hoffman trying to levitate the Pentagon. And that's not all. PBS broadcast Martin Scorsese's lengthy homage to Bob Dylan, alongside a week of tributes to “the years that shaped a generation” (including a special edition of “Antiques Roadshow”). Both the Rolling Stones and Jane Fonda have dragged their aged limbs on tour.

There have been a few attempts to update things. This time, some anti-war protesters wore T-shirts that read “make levees not war”, while Sir Michael Jagger has penned a song about the evils of neo-conservatism. But for the most part, everybody seems happiest with golden oldies.

Why are the 1960s so difficult to escape? One reason is the sheer size of the baby-boom generation. Giant arboreal slums of boomers now sit at the top of every establishment tree, not least the media. And like all ageing geezers they continue to see the world through the prism of their youths. Listen to Charles Rangel, a black congressman from New York, comparing George Bush to Bull Connor (the notorious white police boss in Birmingham, Alabama); or Jesse Jackson likening the peace protesters to the civil-rights heroine, Rosa Parks; or just about every pundit doing the “Iraq war as Vietnam quagmire” routine.

The other reason why the 1960s are so hard to shake off is that the decade split America down the middle, launching the culture wars that still haunt American politics and redefining America's two great parties. The Democrats became the party of people who regarded the 1960s as an unmitigated good (particularly feminists, blacks and social liberals) while the Republicans regarded the 1960s as an unmitigated evil (particularly white southerners and other “conservatives of the heart”).

This has made for “Groundhog Day” politics. Every election the same arguments appear about draft dodging, the permissive society and so on. Last year, while Iraq burned, American politics fixated on which Swift Boat veteran did what 40 years ago.

Is there really no escape? In fact, last year's election looks like the last hurrah for 1960s politics. John Kerry presumably thought that turning the 2004 election into a referendum on his war service in Vietnam was a slam-dunk, given that he fought heroically while Mr Bush skulked at home. But many voters were less obsessed by the Mekong Delta, and others remembered him as a war protester, not a war hero.

The future of both parties is in the hands of people who want to jettison their 1960s baggage. On the Democrat side, before Mr Kerry reintroduced Vietnam, the Clintonites had spent much of the 1990s distancing themselves from Eugene McCarthy. They demonised black radicals such as Sister Souljah, embraced tough policies on crime and welfare, supported school uniforms and V-chips, and sent American bombers into Bosnia. In her preparation for 2008, Hillary Clinton has taken positions on military force and abortion rights that would have scandalised her younger self. Barack Obama, a possible running mate, is very different from the older black leaders. On the relative merits of liberal and conservative solutions to black poverty—spending more money versus changing the behaviour of the poor—he says: “It's not either/or. It's both/and.”

For their part, the Republicans have been trying to get beyond Richard Nixon's “southern strategy”. Mr Bush has appointed blacks to more senior positions in his administration than any previous president and lavished more attention on wooing black voters. The reason why black Democrats seized on the catastrophe in New Orleans to demonise Mr Bush is not because they really think that he is Bull Connor reincarnated, but because they worry that his strategy of creating a multicultural Republican Party might get somewhere.

The old road is rapidly ageing
More broadly, American society is beginning to make its peace with that divisive decade: it is becoming neither a pro-1960s culture nor an anti-1960s culture but a post-1960s culture. Polls show only 5% of voters objecting to the civil-rights revolution. For all the rage of the culture warriors, most Americans—particularly young ones—put a high premium on “tolerance”. At the same time, they also think that the counter-culture went too far. Very few people decry the nuclear family or urge people to tune in, turn on and drop out.

Society is in a process of repairing itself after the big dislocations of the 1960s, when rates of crime, pre-marital sex and family breakdown began to surge. (The annual number of divorces, for example, more than doubled between the mid-1960s and the mid-1970s.) The figures for teenage pregnancy and abortion are both declining. Crime is down (America now has fewer burglaries per head than Canada), and divorce is beginning to drop, particularly among the college-educated, as the children of divorced parents re-embrace the nuclear family. Most young Americans say they believe in God and love their country.

Mr Dylan remains such an iconic figure not because he embodied the 1960s but because, unlike many of his acolytes, he refused to be defined by the decade. Mr Scorsese makes great play about the way the folk protester infuriated his hard-core fans by going electric. But this was only one of the bard's changes. He distanced himself from his protest songs. He got God in a big way. And in his recent memoirs he boasts that his dream was a “nine-to-five existence, a house on a tree-lined block with a white picket fence, pink roses in the backyard.” That's where the flowers went, Joan.»

POLAROID: CORREIOS

Estão cerca de 20 pessoas com senhas à minha frente para ser atendidas. Um dos empregados ao balcão, educada mas decididamente, avisa o senhor de idade que está a ser atendido que não pode ser assim, tem que fazer tudo de uma só vez, há muita gente para atender e não pode estar a perder tempo com quem não sabe o que quer. Entretanto, uma senhora de meia-idade queixa-se para o homem de pé ao seu lado (vizinho provavelmente, já que parece conhecê-lo) de que teve tempo para ir tomar café sem pressas e voltar que ainda não chegou ao seu número, e prossegue para contar a história do assalto de que foi vítima no domingo, que conta em tom de voz suficientemente alto para ser audível por toda a gente que está à espera de ser atendida.

POLAROID: AMOREIRAS, CINEMA VIP 1, 2 DE OUTUBRO, 18h30

Na fila à frente da minha, estão sentadas duas senhoras de meia-idade que, apesar de estarem juntas, entram separadamente. Têm aspecto de solteironas que frequentam os Alunos de Apolo, arranjadas com cuidado (uma é negra, de cabelo apanhado, está vestida de saia-e-casaco vermelho; outra é branca, de cabelo loiro pintado, vestida de calças-e-casaco claro), que combinam um filme ao fim da tarde. A loura chegou primeiro e, quando a amiga se senta ao seu lado, com um saco do supermercado na mão, está a abrir uma tablete de chocolate. A partir de meio do filme, começam a conversar uma com a outra em sussurros, por entre risadas que traem a incredulidade quanto ao filme que estão a ver, sem que chius pontuais façam calar o seu evidente descontentamento. A negra sai a meia-hora do fim para ir à casa de banho, amarfanhando o saco de plástico antes de sair, quase tropeçando no degrau da fila quando sai, quase tropeçando no degrau da fila quando entra. Quando o filme termina, saem com dignidade mas rindo-se uma para a outra.

LOGBOOK #33: GAIVOTAS

Sesimbra: Ponta da Passagem, sábado, 1 de Outubro, 11h21: 16m, 45 min, 16º C

Está-se bem: resolvida a constipação e a inspecção do carro, a gloriosa estreia em água salgada do regulador Poseidon Jetstream adquirido em segunda mão há um par de meses confirma tudo o que de bom se sabe da veneranda marca sueca. É, além do mais, um reencontro com o grande Vitorino, presença regular nas saídas de sábado de manhã com quem há largos meses não me cruzava, mais a sua câmara digital que apanha ali um caboz escondido numa pequena reentrância dos canais de rocha, aqui um polvozinho a fazer-se à vida. Finalmente, é a Ponta da Passagem no seu melhor, com uma visibilidade simpática na onda dos sete metros (mesmo com o esverdeado da suspensão), muito cardume prateado, muito peixinho a alimentar-se — um passeio de luxo onde sou até recrutado para servir de assistente de fotógrafo, segurando no foco do Vitorino enquanto ele foca a câmara no caboz. O todo enquadrado por verdadeiros tapetes de gaivotas vogando ao sabor das quase inexistentes ondas à entrada do porto de Sesimbra, obrigadas a levantar vôo pela passagem do barco que nos leva em tempo recorde à Ponta, sob um sol quente que é mais de Verão que de Outono.