by Philip Booth

Lie back daughter, let your head
be tipped back in the cup of my hand.
Gently, and I will hold you. Spread
your arms wide, lie out on the stream
and look high at the gulls. A dead-
man’s float is face down. You will dive
and swim soon enough where this tidewater
ebbs to the sea. Daughter, believe
me, when you tire on the long thrash
to your island, lie up, and survive.
As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told you:
lie gently and wide to the light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.

Get ready for a crabby post. Are you ready? Here it goes:
Why are there so many ellipses being thrown around? It seems like every other email I receive has at least 10 ellipses scattered throughout the text. I’ve also seen them cluttering more formal means of communication (letters, business texts, even messages of condolence).

Why on earth have ellipses become stand-ins for proper punctuation? Here’s what the proper use of ellipses suggest to me: extreme hesitation, the trailing off of a thought, uncertainty. The Chicago Manual of Style supports this, saying, “Ellipsis points suggest faltering or fragmented speech accompanied by confusion, insecurity, distress, or uncertainty.”

So an ellipsis can be used to indicate a pause, especially if there is uncertainty in the writer’s train of thought. But ellipses do not stand in for commas, periods, dashes, and other necessary elements of punctuation.

I’m not a grammar expert. I don’t hate all ellipses, either. I just hate the fact that they are abused. Why? Because those poor, abused ellipses are not confident or decisive. They are the opposite: hesitant and uncommitted. They communicate, at best, an extremely insecure writing style and, at worst, utter laziness.

The book Punctuate it Right says this about writers who use ellipses to imply that they have more to say: “It is doubtful that they have anything in mind, and the device seems a rather cheap one.”

Maybe this post is snarky. I’ll admit to snarkiness on this particular subject. I’m just tired of seeing the ellipsis used as a placeholder for thoughts that aren’t properly formed, or as the replacement for other, better punctuation. Over time, I don’t want us to lose the marvelously pliant comma or the succinct and utilitarian period. They deserve a place in our everyday communication.

I recently read “Wench” by Dolen Perkins-Valdez and here’s what happened–I couldn’t put it down. I don’t have a lot of time for reading these days, but I found myself making time for this heartfelt and heartbreaking book. One of my favorite reads of 2010 for sure. Here’s the Publishers Weekly Review:

In her debut, Perkins-Valdez eloquently plunges into a dark period of American history, chronicling the lives of four slave women—Lizzie, Reenie, Sweet and Mawu—who are their masters’ mistresses. The women meet when their owners vacation at the same summer resort in Ohio. There, they see free blacks for the first time and hear rumors of abolition, sparking their own desires to be free. For everyone but Lizzie, that is, who believes she is really in love with her master, and he with her. An extended flashback in the middle of the novel delves into Lizzie’s life and vividly explores the complicated psychological dynamic between master and slave. Jumping back to the final summer in Ohio, the women all have a decision to make—will they run? Heart-wrenching, intriguing, original and suspenseful, this novel showcases Perkins-Valdez’s ability to bring the unfortunate past to life.

My short story, The Serrambi Case, appears in the latest issue of Zoetrope:All-Story magazine.

You can read the story online, or get a copy of the Spring 2011 issue. I love Zoetrope:All-Story (and not just because they are kind enough to publish my work). Zoetrope is a quarterly literary magazine. Its content is (as the magazine’s name suggests) all short stories, and each issue is designed by a guest designer. Previous designers include Marilyn Minter, Tom Waits, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Lou Reed. So each issue is a little work of art.

Thanks for reading!

A 2004 Political Rally in Taquaritinga do Norte, PE

There’s a popular story in northeast Brazil’s political folklore: back in the 1950’s, a powerful Brazilian landowner named Colonel Chico wanted to rig local elections. He distributed ballots that had already been filled out and instructed farm workers to slip them into the voting box. “But, who am I voting for?” one worker asked. “Can’t tell you,” the Colonel replied. “It’s a secret ballot.”
On October 3, millions of Brazilian voters will use electronic voting machines to elect their president, senators, and state representatives. Brazil’s electronic voting machines are called urnas, a reference to a time not so long ago when paper ballots were deposited into urns. The electronic urnas are portable voting machines designed by the Brazilian government and manufactured by Diebold Election Systems. Unlike the United States, where voting procedures vary widely from district to district, Brazil’s procedures are federally standardized by the Tribunal Eleitoral, a branch of the justice department created solely to implement and regulate elections.

In 2004, during the nationwide election for mayors and city council members, I interviewed mayoral candidates, voters, and other election officials from Taquaritinga do Norte, Pernambuco. Taquaritinga is a rural town in northeast Brazil, where our farm is located. 2004 was only the second election that electronic urnas were used in all Brazilian cities.

“God forbid we use a system other than the electronic urna,” said 2004 mayoral candidate José Pereira Coelho. Coelho, the son of a shoemaker, was running for reelection in Taquaritinga do Norte, In 2000, the first year electronic urnas were used in local elections, Coelho won an upset victory against the PFL party, which had dominated local politics for 112 years. “The elections here are very, very close,” Coelho said while eating a plate of chicken and rice at a supporter’s home. “The electronic urna is the security that all Brazilians needed to guarantee our votes.”

The former mayor, Janio Arruda da Silva, once again Coelho’s opponent in the 2004 election, had no complaints about the urnas either. “The electoral process here is lengthy,” Silva said. “The campaign itself lasts many months. But a positive point is the electronic urna, which gives results instantly.” Silva looked at his cell phone and let it ring while his wife rushed to answer their home phone. Their house’s shutters were drawn and it’s front gate closed. “If people knew I was home,” Silva said quietly. “There would be a line outside my door.”

Before the 2004 mayoral election, each candidate had a loyal following. Coelho’s supporters, backed by a coalition of ten different political parties, are known as the calabars, or “traitors,” a reference to toppling the former, 112-year-old regime. Silva’s supporters call themselves the boca pretas, or “black mouths,” a name which comes from a local superstition that a catching grasshopper with a black mouth means good luck. The candidates also had official campaign colors—Coelho’s was red, Silva’s was blue. The municipality of Taquaritinga do Norte covers over 450 square kilometers of land with voters scattered across small townships and farms. The majority of Silva and Coelho’s 2004 constituency was made up of farmers, day laborers, and textile workers earning the Brazilian minimum wage which, at the time, was approximately $85 dollars a month. Many constituents could not read or write. Most did not have phone lines and had never accessed the internet. (In 2010 this has changed significantly thanks to inexpensive cell phones and internet cafés.)

Voting is mandatory in Brazil. All citizens between the ages of 18 and 70 must register with the Tribunal Eleitoral and appear at the voting center on Election Day. If a citizen is continuously absent from the voting process, that person cannot hold public office, cannot enter competitions to become teachers, judges or district attorneys, cannot attend a federal university, and cannot take out a bank loan in a federal institution. The law permits that, once in the voting booth, you may annul your vote or vote in blank. “A blank vote says you prefer not to vote. A null vote says you don’t like either candidate,” explained Taquaritinga’s chief judge, the Honorable Lauro Pedro dos Santos Murilo, a young man in his mid-thirties. “Those are two very different things.” His voice echoed in his chambers, a massive white room with a desk, a crucifix, and a view of Taquaritinga’s mountainside. “Whether the vote is optional or obligatory, what’s certain is that the vote ensures the growth of democratic institutions.”

With electronic voting machines, voters simply punch their chosen candidate’s numeric code into the machine’s keypad. The candidate’s picture then appears on the screen and the voter is asked to confirm their vote. Before electronic voting, Taquaritinga’s citizens voted on paper ballots signed by the local judge and president of the voting commission. The votes were collected and counted by a voting commission comprised of the local judge and voting officials approved by both parties. This led to human error—if a barely literate person drew an “x” between two candidates’ names, the voting commission had to interpret that voter’s intention. There were also instances of fraud.

“There were instances where the canvas and leather urns arrived with ballots already inside,” said Judge Santos Murilo. With the electronic urnas, this kind of fraud is more difficult to achieve. Each citizen has a voting identification number, called a Titulo de Eleitor. Voters present poll workers with their federal voting number and a photo ID. Poll workers input the voting number into the polling place’s computer system, which recognizes the voter from a national database. Only then is the voter is allowed to vote on the electronic machine. This is not only a way to check a voter’s identity, but also to make sure they only vote once. Ten minutes after the last citizen’s vote is registered with an electronic urna, the results for that particular machine are calculated and the machine prints a paper tally of votes. Copies of the tallies are posted on the polling place door, given to each candidate, and to the town’s judge, who is the official representative of the federal Tribunal Eleitoral. Voting data is also stored in an encrypted hard drive in the voting machine. This hard drive is only readable on computers hooked into the federal elections system database.

At the end of Election Day, the voting machine hard drives are placed in a car from the federal elections bureau and taken to the local courthouse. Candidates, poll workers, federal officials, and voters accompany the car in an informal parade to the courthouse. There, everyone will hear the official tally of all of the machines.

“Today, we [judges] that lead the Federal Elections Justice System have no doubt of the results of what is in the electronic voting machine,” said judge Santos Murilo in 2004. “It represents what the voter chose. What needs perfecting now is the phase before the act of voting—the campaign.”

In order to reach voters in the 2004 mayoral election, Coelho and Silva hired cars with loudspeakers strapped to their roofs. The vehicles circled the city limits from 8 AM to 10 PM each day (this time frame is mandated by federal law) playing campaign songs. On weekends, both campaigns organized rallies where the candidates on the blue and red tickets explained their platforms. The speeches were followed by music and dancing. Candidates had to hire the bands and provide transportation for rural supporters to go to and from the rallies. In 2004, the least expensive and most effective campaign method was personal contact. Silva and Coelho made regular visits to voters’ homes and attended community events. Both men attended Catholic mass, sitting on opposite sides of the church. And when a prominent local merchant died half-way through the campaign season, both candidates appeared at the funeral wearing freshly-ironed shirts, Silva’s blue, Coelho’s red.

There is another aspect to campaigning, one that existed long before the electronic urnas, and still exists despite them. “The politics of favors is a politics of exchange, or bartering,” said 2004 mayoral candidate Janio Arruda da Silva. “A favor is done in exchange for a vote. This still exists.” (When we talked about this aspect of the campaign, both candidates began to use vague language, without specific names or personal pronouns.) “For example,” da Silva continued, “someone asks the candidate for…to give them an operation for cataracts. The candidate arranges this surgery in a public hospital. And the person who received the surgery…they feel pressured to give their vote in return. For me, it is more practical to hire a doctor who can operate on many citizens, for the common good.”

One 2004 voter, who did not want to be named, said a local candidate gave her gas money to help her take her autistic son get to the doctor in Caruaru, a large city 57 km away. A female city council candidate allowed one voter to live in her mother’s house in Recife, the state’s capital, while the voter underwent thyroid treatments. Individual favors seem to be a part of the political process in Brazil. “Its part of the culture,” said Antônio de Padua, the president of Taquaritinga’s PFL party. “It happens everywhere.”

With electronic urnas, candidates have no guarantees that their favors will win them votes. Voters may receive personal favors from both parties, and then enter whichever candidate’s numeric code they choose at the polls. Brazil has alternated between military dictatorships and democracy since the fall of the imperial monarchy in 1889, and has tried to combat election fraud through out its electoral history, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Fifty years ago, in rural voting districts like Colonel Chico’s, voters weren’t given a choice. People did not matter but their ballots did. Today, things are different. While the culture of personal favors is not ideal or just, it illustrates a marked shift in the role of the voter in Brazilian elections. Voters must be courted now, and given tangible evidence of a candidate’s intentions before they head to the polling place. It’s not ideal, but it is an evolution.

I recently wrote a feature essay for Real Simple magazine. The essay, and some lovely farm photos by Frederic Lagrange are in the August 2010 issue.

Eu escrevi recentemente uma matéria para a revista americana Real Simple. A matéria, com belas fotos do fotógrafo Frederic Lagrange já está nas bancas dos EUA!

“Just as definitive death is the ultimate fruit of the will to forget, so the will to remember will perpetuate our lives.”

José Saramago passed away yesterday, according to a post on his foundation’s website.

Here’s the first portion of an autobiography written when Saramago received the Nobel Prize in 1998:
“I was born in a family of landless peasants, in Azinhaga, a small village in the province of Ribatejo, on the right bank of the Almonda River, around a hundred kilometres north-east of Lisbon. My parents were José de Sousa and Maria da Piedade. José de Sousa would have been my own name had not the Registrar, on his own inititiave added the nickname by which my father’s family was known in the village: Saramago. I should add that saramago is a wild herbaceous plant, whose leaves in those times served at need as nourishment for the poor. Not until the age of seven, when I had to present an identification document at primary school, was it realised that my full name was José de Sousa Saramago…”

O escritor José Saramago morreu na sexta-feira, aos 87 anos. A escritora Nélida Piñon definiu como “imortal” e “eterno” o escritor português. Saramago sempre viverá nos seus livros.

Maria, Tamires, Frederic, James, me & Yacob on the farm

In preparation for an essay I wrote for an upcoming edition of Real Simple Magazine, photographer Frédéric Lagrange and his assistant Yacob Vincent visited the farm to shoot some photos of all of us. It was a great shoot, and the dogs (especially Lorenzo) were top-notch models. Lorenzo (who literally trembles and then hides in the bushes when we tell him it’s bath time) decided to swim in our pond (???!!!) for Frédéric. He performed some water ballet, waving his paws and flicking his tail, as if this kind of thing was perfectly normal.

Many thanks to Real Simple, Fréderic, and Yacob for the photos. I hope they turn out well!

“Starlings in Winter” by Mary Oliver

Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly

they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,

dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can’t imagine

how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.
Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,

even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard, I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

As you set out on the way to Ithaca
hope that the road is a long one,
filled with adventures, filled with understanding.
The Laestrygonians and the Cyclopes,
Poseidon in his anger: do not fear them,
you’ll never come across them on your way
as long as your mind stays aloft, and a choice
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Laestrygonians and the Cyclopes,
savage Poseidon; you’ll not encounter them
unless you carry them within your soul,
unless your soul sets them up before you.

Hope that the road is a long one.
Many may the summer mornings be
when—with what pleasure, with what joy—
you first put in to harbors new to your eyes;
may you stop at Phoenician trading posts
and there acquire fine goods:
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and heady perfumes of every kind:
as many heady perfumes as you can.
To many Egyptian cities may you go
so you may learn, and go on learning, from their sages.

Always keep Ithaca in your mind;
to reach her is your destiny.
But do not rush your journey in the least.
Better that it last for many years;
that you drop anchor at the island an old man,
rich with all you’ve gotten on the way,
not expecting Ithaca to make you rich.

Ithaca gave to you the beautiful journey;
without her you’d not have set upon the road.
But she has nothing left to give you any more.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca did not deceive you.
As wise as you’ll have become, with so much experience,
you’ll have understood, by then, what these Ithacas mean.

By CP Cavafy, born April 29, 1863
Translated by Daniel Mendelsohn