Hills, Hillbillies and The Blood of Chickens

From Lisbon to Ohio, with a detour to the Peninsular War

In San Domingus church in Lisbon, waiting for the Magdalan College choir to sing.

Living down here in Odemira county in the Alentejo, Lisbon seems a distant star, even though it’s just a few hours away by car or bus. I have been there several times, but I haven’t felt like I really know the country’s biggest city and capital.

So I was glad to spend five nights and days there recently. The main reason was to take an intensive Portuguese language course. I was disappointed with the course, but really happy with my days and nights exploring the city. Part of it was being without wife and child, particularly the child, which gave me a freedom to explore I haven’t experienced in a while.

Despite an avalanche of tourists, of which I was one, I really enjoyed Lisbon and feel I now know it some. I did not visit all seven hills of Lisbon. (Like Rome, Lisbon is famous for this.) But I knows its immediate geography closer to the river better.

You have the “Baixo” part, which is the grid of streets laid down by Pombal after the 1755 earthquake. To me it is one of the prettiest parts, even though or because Pombal used dictatorial methods to put it in place. He wiped out all the old curvy streets, which had grown up over a thousand years, and put in a grid. Then on the right, you have the Alfama district on hills with the Saint George castle on top, which dates back to the Moors. The Christians conquered it and the city in 1147. Then on the left hand, you have the “Barrio Alto” district on a hill, which has a funicular and leads up the Principe Real district. And all of this is from the perspective of the Rio Tejo, or Tagus river, which the city fronts on.

This isn’t all of Lisbon. But it’s a good start.

I loved best, as usual, my serendipitous moments. Like catching the Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford, which claims to date back to 1450, sing in the ruins of Saint Domingus church, which is still partially in ruins from a fire in the 1950s. Going to see a Shakespeare play, Twelfth Night, in Portuguese at the Trinidad Theater, an ornate oval with boxed seats up the side, like the old theaters in Prague. And I ate well, except for the last night at a more expensive, touristy restaurant, where I got food poisoning! That was a bummer.

But otherwise, a great trip.

Election Commentary: Whither Mr. Vance?

(Note: from hence forward, when inspiration strikes I will yield to the temptation to say something about the ongoing presidential election in The United States of America, from the vantage point of Portugal.

President Joe Biden is out, which is a subject worthy of exploration. But let’s rewind the tape a few weeks and look at the selection by former president Donald Trump of Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio as his running mate. How did this come about, and what does it mean? )

In the non-fiction classic The Power Broker, journalist Robert Caro describes how the big builder Robert Moses, early in his career in the early 1900s, initially leads good government groups in New York State. He and they got nowhere on a host of ambitions.

So Moses then joined government and began working through fear and intimidation. It worked. Moses got a lot done over the next four or five decades.

This journey from the light to the dark side is why I think the Power Broker would make a good opera.

I wonder if something similar happened to Vance. What a journey for the young man from Ohio who, as he recounts in his memoir Hillbilly Elegies, was largely raised by his grandmother and barely escaped a hard-scrabble life.

I was as an early admirer of Hillbilly Elegies. In my opinion, Vance told a simple story well. He talked about his life and the people he grew up with, and pointed a light at a part of America largely neglected in national attention. Vance did not come across as particularly political, although at one point he said he considered himself a conservative. The book was controversial in some quarters, I have never understood why, but not with me.

So it was with satisfaction that I watched Vance become a never-Trumper, calling the orange-haired man a liar and “cultural heroin.” And then it was with dissatisfaction and a sinking feeling as I watched Vance run for the Republican nomination for US Senate as a hard right-winger to see who could be the most strident and intemperate in their rhetoric. Vance, with Trump’s backing, won. It was with more dissatisfaction as I watched Vance seek and then accept the nomination for vice-president.

Dissatisfaction is not the right word. It was more of a sinking feeling. And bafflement. And doubt. After all, if Vance, a smart guy, had accepted Trump was right, maybe Trump was! Maybe I was wrong in thinking Trump all wrong. The possibility has to at least be considered.

I like many of the policies Vance has advocated, although certainly not all. In particular, I support helping Ukraine fight Russia, and Vance does not. But labels are almost all relative, and in the current era, I would say I am relatively economically liberal and socially conservative. Like my hero Elizabeth Warren, Vance has set out a path of policies to revive working and middle-class America. It’s why Warren and Vance have cooperated on some things in the senate. They include renewed antitrust enforcement, which I’m a big fan of. (Read here for a big takeout by Matt Stoller of just how much Vance differs from the conventual Republican. And here, for a take from Politico. )

In European terms, I am a social democrat. That is something I realized while writing this essay. I support an expansive set of benefits to make life easier for people, including national healthcare, family leave and low-cost schooling at both the secondary and college level.

But I also support government promoting social stability and common fabrics and routines of life. So in that sense I am conservative.

So maybe it’s no coincidence I am living in Europe.

But regardless of agreeing with Vance on many proposed domestic policies, I can’t look past January 6th and all it is represents.

Apparently Vance can.

I bet Vance is concluding that desperate times require desperate measures. Or to get back to how I started this piece, Vance has decided to move to the Dark Side of the Force. That’s what Trump is. An almost-open acceptance and even proclamation that winning any way you can is okay. Including breaking the country’s democratic traditions and processes.

Recently, Vance has blamed Democrats for the recent assassination attempt on Trump because they have been calling Trump an authoritarian and a threat to democracy. My answer to that is: well maybe Trump should stop being an authoritarian and a threat to democracy. Then it would be easier to stop saying these things

Despite what Vance says publicly, there is no way he can actually believe Trump won the 2020 election, which lest we not forget, also includes getting more than 7 million votes fewer than Joe Biden nationally. Vance must have concluded that we liberals are so wrong, so off base, that breaking democracy some is worth it.

It is a both a threat and a relief that someone as smart and insightful as Vance is now working closely with Trump. So far, every person who has chosen to work closely with Trump - Pence, Giuliani, Kelly - and on and on - ends up destroyed, broken and betrayed. Is Vance smart or savvy enough to avoid that fate? Maybe. Maybe not. Vance is like a very sharp dagger that Trump has picked up.

I feel my own flirtation with the dark side of the force. After all, if Trump were elected, and if Vance were given significant power, (two big ifs), many of the policies I favor might be enacted. Maybe I should root for Trump to win. After all, what’s a little ignoring the results of an election, and trying to stay in power any way you can? What’s a little encouraging your supporters to storm the capitol, and putting those indelible images before the world? What’s a little failing to peacefully transfer power, for the first time in the nation’s history?

What indeed?

Okay, like Luke Skywalker, I won’t even be tempted to go to the Dark Side. I can’t imagine any circumstances presently that would prompt me to vote for Trump. Still, if the orange man is elected, I will be more happy than unhappy that Vance is at his side.

What I’m Reading - The Recollections of Rifleman Harris, by Benjamin Randell Harris (as told to Henry Curling.)

In the 1830s, a man had a habit of chatting with his cobbler, Benjamin Randell Harris, in Soho in London while his shoes were mended. The cobbler told amazing stories about being a rifleman, what we might now call infantry, in the army of England fighting the Napoleonic wars in Denmark, Portugal and Spain. The cobbler was illiterate, which was standard in those days, but the man, who was Henry Curling, thought the reminisces worth saving, so Curling interviewed Harris.

The result was a book, a detailed recollection of serving in the Royal army. Historians have mostly verified the account. Harris tells of being involuntarily plucked away from being a shepherd, still living at home, and being sent off to fight in distant lands. He marches terrible distances, and then sees terrible battles as men around him are killed and maimed. He quickly become though an enthusiastic fighter, even as he endures terrible conditions. He participates in England’s siege of Copenhagen in 1807, something I didn’t even know occurred. Then in ferocious battles here in Portugal and in Spain in 1808, where the Portuguese and English beat the French under Napoleon. Finally after years of grueling conditions, including disease, Harris ends up back in England, living as a cobbler.

My main reaction is how stupid all this was. Why march through grueling conditions just to try your best to kill some other men while they try to kill you? Seems amazingly stupid.

But, there must be something genetic in us programmed to like this, because even in the worst conditions, Harris and the other men hunger for battle, to shoot while being shot at, even though it meant many of them would be killed or wounded.

Amazingly, Harris misses his life as a soldier.

“For my own part, I can only say, that I enjoyed life more whilst on active service, than I have ever done since; and as I sit at work in my shop in Richmond Street, Soho, I look back up that portion of my time spent in the fields of the Peninsula [the Iberian peninsula, including Portugal] as the only part worthy of remembrance,” Harris says toward the end of he book. It’s quite astonishing to hear Harris say this because his time on the Peninsula includes being left for dead on a forced retreat to Coruna, unable to march any further, and other extreme hardships.

I learned something about the armies back then. One was that wives and children often traveled with their men, with predictably terrible results. They went in ships over the ocean, and then marched behind the troops somehow. Where did they sleep? How did they eat? I never learned answers to those questions. The wives and children did often die, Harris recounts, as battles and weather strew them around like wheat chaffs.

Reading Rifleman was an unplanned book. I had no aim of reading about life as a common soldier in the 1800s. An algorithm threw it in front of me and I took the bait. Unplanned can also come from a suggestion by a friend or an author I respect. I try to listen to those. And because I do most of my reading digitally now, it’s usually pretty easy to download a sample chapter from the library, or Google Play, Amazon or Apple. If the sample chapter doesn't grab me, I stop, but if it does, I go on. In the case of Rifleman, a digital copy only cost me 99 cents, doubtless because it’s long past any copyright.

Tummy Time: Cuttle Fish and Cabidela

The other night, EC and I dined alone at a restaurant on the river and I stole glances at the Portuguese family of four eating beside us. Despite having been here close to a year, I was struck by how their dietary habits are still a bit beyond me.

They started with a big bowl of tiny snails, very popular in the summer. The dad, the mom and the two teenage kids all dug in. While I like these little snails, I don’t really love them.

Then for the main dish, the dad had a pile of grilled squid and the teenage girl had a pile of grilled cuttlefish. I know this because I asked. They didn’t mind the intrusion. The dad and the girl in particular seemed so pleased with their selections. They traded bites with each other eagerly.

Despite being open to both, I haven’t really liked either squid or cuttlefish here (which is called choco in Portuguese), when I’ve had them. Cuttlefish, which is like a big squid in appearance and clearly related, has been particularly hard to like. But I aim to go back to this restaurant and try it there. If a teenage girl can love it, maybe I can too.

I did though feel proud of myself for liking, in fact loving, a non-seafood dish on a different day. At a small restaurant up the street, I had Cabidela, which was the plate of the day. It is made from rooster with the chicken’s blood added, as well as rice. The manager joked with me that few foreigners want it, once they know what’s in it. It was very good, and sat easy on my stomach, which was still recovering from the food poisoning in Lisbon. The cost was 13.50 Euros, which is high for here.

Cabidela