gallafent

The Maldives’ nearly 1,200 coral islands top out at less than eight feet above sea level. Climate forecasters predict they’ll be swamped by rising seas due to global warming within a century.
So the day before the country’s leaders staged an underwater cabinet meeting to draw attention to their plight, I took the opportunity to meet [...]

The British Ambassador to the United States, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, has written a blog post extolling the virtue of British (on screen) vampires. Here, in a quick turnaround story for PRI’s The World, I tackle the undead.
Posted in news spots

Before there was Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, there was the original: Zen in the Art of Archery. The 1953 book chronicled the story of Eugen Herrigel, a German who traveled to Japan to learn Kyudo, the Way of the Bow. But you don’t have to go that far. Here’s what happened when [...]

For most of us, Bulgarian folk singing means one thing — and one group: Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares. The world-famous choir features about 20 women, singing intricate arrangements of traditional folk melodies. Well, in Brooklyn, I met four young Americans doing it their way.The story aired on PRI’s The World.
Posted in new york new [...]

I’m headed to the Democratic national convention in Denver over the weekend. I’ll be there with my colleague Matthew Bell, both of us reporting for PRI’s The World.
I’ve never been to one of these things before. As a kid in the UK, I remember watching the American electoral process roll out in all its gaudy glory. And I was a total sucker for it.  It was so extraordinarily different to the way politics played - and plays - out in Britain. Sure, we have Prime Minister’s Questions, the parliamentary knockabout show in the House of Commons, but there’s nothing to compare to the circus of a national convention.
In the UK, the equivalent event is the annual party conference (the major ones being Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.) Historically, these events are dominated by images of leaders looking windswept in rainy seaside towns that are a few decades past their best.

Or of the so-called blue rinse brigade holding politicians’ feet to the fire in a way that only the elderly can do.
Things have changed a bit these days, with British politicians (starting with the Tony Blair of the mid-1990s) imitating some of the elements more associated with the American way of doing things.  But there’s still nothing to compare with the exuberance, the theater and the sheer glitz of the conventions. And for that reason, I feel like a kid about to enter the candystore.

Here’s how it goes. You get the Brazilian cellphone. You get the cellphone to work. You get the cellphone to work with Twitter back in the States. And then you go and visit somewhere where there’s absolutely no chance of anything approaching a signal. But I guess that’s what you should expect when you’re in the Amazon rainforest.
It was oddly frustrating, not being able to send something back as it was happening. Odd because a cursory glance at the history of exploration in this region tells you that this really isn’t the sort of thing one should get frustrated about. But still, so much to tell, so much to tell..
Today featured a bone fide DiCaprio-Titanic moment, planted as I was some 53 meters above the ground with the rainforest canopy laid out before me in all directions. I couldn’t claim the jungle king’s crown - we all know who that belongs to - but this was an utterly spectacular experience. The micro-meteorological tower I climbed belongs to INPA, Brazil’s National Institute for Research in the Amazon. You’ll find tower K34 in the Cuieiras Biological Reserve, some 80 km from Manaus. It’s just rainforest, doing its thing. Specifically, the tower operates as part of an international experiment to monitor and better understand the various atmospheric processes, functions and exchanges of the forest. We’re talking things like rainfall production, carbon sequestering and CO2 emissions (sorry, I don’t know how to do the sub-line ‘2′: a sub-line crisis.)
The forest operates in different ways at different heights. So towers like this one are decorated top to bottom with technological jewels, little devices to produce specific data sets at different layers. The structure itself is plain, a small square of scaffolding that extends up, up and out. Twelve metal ladders get you to the top, assisted by regiments of purposeful termites that threaten to take matters into their own hands if you don’t get a move on. By the ...

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I haven’t posted, like, forever. Apologies. Here’s a recent story of mine that aired on PRI’s The World. It’s a look at the complexities of Chinese bilingual ballots in Boston.
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Posted in international

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Prices at the pump are going up and up. Recently, President Bush argued that the United States ‘must produce more oil.’
Other countries have come to a similar conclusion. For Brazil, that means - amongst other things - drilling in the Amazon rain forest.
I visited Urucu, an oil and natural gas facility hidden deep within the Brazilian Amazon.

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Earlier this month (June 1) the French fashion icon Yves Saint Laurent died at the age of 71. He was one of the most influential figures in 20th century fashion. And he was also instrumental in the development of a garment that figured in presidential politics this year.

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Brazil got a new environment minister this month. Carlos Minc has the right credentials - he’s a founder of Brazil’s Green Party. But he’s got a tough job. Balancing the demands of environmentalists with the demands of Brazil’s booming economy is tricky business.


For your listening pleasure, here’s my guide to Rainforest Economics.

Also, take a look at some extraordinary aerial photos of what’s thought to be an uncontacted Amazonian tribe. The tribe lives on the border between Peru and Brazil

Deforestation is a constant threat to the Amazon rainforest. Loggers, cattle ranchers and farmers press to claim ever more of the forest. The Amazon stores vast amount of carbon that would otherwise be in the atmosphere. Deforestation releases much of that carbon into the air. 
But the Amazon serves other environmental purposes as well. For one thing, the giant South American forest affects the globe’s climate. Scientists are working to better understand that relationship.
Here’s the second part of my

Here’s the first radio piece from my trip to the Brazilian Amazon. It’s a look at the history of Manaus through something that’s not very often associated with the Amazon: opera.

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A trip to the moon today. I was at Urucu, an oil and natural gas facility some 600km west (and south a bit) of Manaus. It sits above massive reserves of natural gas, and smaller fields of high-quality oil. And those reserves are in the middle of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest.
If you don’t believe me, take a look at the final approach into Urucu, as seen from my airplane window early this morning.

The Urucu facility itself is a strange, strange place. It operates much like an offshore rig - workers come for fourteen-day stretches, followed by weeks off. The regulation uniform is an orange jumpsuit (which produces immediate associations in the mind). Identikit gas-powered Petrobras 4×4s move at speeds no greater than 50kmph. And everywhere you look there’s a stern series of bins reminding you to recycle everything that can be recycled, lest the pristine state of the place be disturbed. I couldn’t help but think of one of those Bond villain lairs circa 1978. A remote location. Men in monochrome uniforms and hard hats, motoring around at purposeful, pedestrian speeds. And no visible trash.
Only there doesn’t seem to be much that’s villainous about Urucu. The environmental procedures and processes are deeply impressive, especially since the business of the place is the exploration and exploitation of fossil fuels. They even have a nursery for forest seedlings, ready for planting over closed wells. But whether there are lessons for energy strategies in other environmentally sensitive parts of the world - Alaska, say - well, that’s another matter. I hope to produce a radio story about Urucu for PRI’s The World before too long. Stay tuned, as they say.
Tomorrow’s my last full day in Brazil. Two interviews lined up: the first with someone from SUFRAMA, the organization behind Manaus’ free trade zone (the principal motor of the city’s growth in the last few decades). And then I’ll meet a representative of some of the Brazilian Amazon’...

Amazonas State has a big ticket project to curb deforestation. Trees aren’t cut down here to the same extent as they are in, say, Mato Grosso (where soy is a passport to profit) - but even so Amazonas governor Eduardo Braga is adamant that the rainforest in his state be preserved.
I spoke with Braga back in Boston. And on Wednesday - just before I catch my flight home - I’ll meet Virgilio Viana, who leads the Sustainable Amazon Foundation. Before taking up that role, Viana was Braga’s Secretary of State for the Environment. Together, they’ve come up with something called the Bolsa Floresta, which loosely translates as ‘forest subsidy’.
The idea is that families in certain areas of the rainforest be paid a monthly sum of money not to cut trees down. The Bolsa Floresta is making waves: it’s been highly publicized here in Amazonas, and in the environmental community. So - is it a good idea? Depends who you ask. I’ll examine the program in one of my radio stories for PRI’s The World (which I’ll write when I’m back in Boston, and when I have the expertise of my editor William Troop to call on).
But today I met someone who’s firmly against the program. He runs a guitar workshop for disadvantaged teenagers in Manaus. The specifics of his criticism will have to wait - I want to put that criticism to Virgilio Viana before writing anything else. But here’s a quick look inside the workshop, fresh off the laptop.

Before we left, I traded Jobim names with the workshop leader. You say Corcovado. I say Wave. You say One Note Samba. I say Desafinado. And then he beckons me to play one of the newly-minted guitars. Now by this stage I was sweating buckets from running around grabbing video and still photos and pure audio and - oh yes - interviews. But he was insistent.
I spare you the resulting cacophony.
Tomorrow should bring music of another order. I’m off to the opera! (Really? The opera?  Yes, really. The opera.)

I’m trying to get stuff out as soon as possible, but video production is slow, slow, slow. At least, it is if your laptop has a habit of seizing up and your expertise is negligible. (These things are true of me.) But I’m happy to present the fruit of many hours labour today: a peek inside Manaus’ extraordinary fish market.

The benches overflow with the morning’s catch: pacu, tambaqui, bocachico and many more. Knives flash across slippery scales. Wooden stakes skewer a dozen fish at once. A merchant assembles dried rolls drawn from the giant pirarucu. And, just outside, pans sizzle with whole fish crisped up in hot, pungent oil.
You can be assured that this will be the last fish-related post from the Amazon. That is, unless I suffer an encounter a local piranha. (Assuming it’s kind enough to leave me some fingers, of course.)
If you want an even more up-to-date sense of where I am and what I’m doing, you’ll find me twittering away here: http://www.twitter.com/gallafent
By the way, for a succinct look at the way reporters at PRI’s The World work from our base in Boston, check out a post from my friend and colleague Jeb Sharp.
And, while I’m at it, The World has launched a new blog exclusively about global sports. There’s some great stuff there already, so do drop by. 

Here’s a nice moment from yesterday, when I met a group of local musicians. (I’m being secretive about them at the moment so that I can save some good stuff for a Global Hit on PRI’s The World.) So this is something to thank you for your understanding: an interesting sound followed by an interesting explanation. The voice you can hear (in addition to mine) belongs to my fixer in Manaus, Ursula Alonso Manso.
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