JOKE-AGORY Pt 1: a Chaplain, Converso & Fat Girl walk into a Writer's Brain...

UPDATED 9/16: The Converso needs to dig up her Jewish roots. It's tough. Her mother cut & stuffed the family's Sephardic roots in a LOCK BOX, jammed it with relics, & purified the Lock Box in Holy Water from the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima.

Then she buried the Lock Box under the mythical land of Atlantis (Portuguese Azores). She's one thorough Mother.

The Converso asks the Chaplain for help. No problem. "If I can be Born Again in Jesus the Jew, why can't the Jew in You be resurrected?"

As with all good intentions, therein lay a silver thread of self-interest. The Chaplain needs to bone up on Judaism to serve Jewish sailor-sheep in her flock.

The Fat Girl, who'd been hiding in a corner, timidly speaks up. "Um, I could help too, if you think I'm good enough to help. But, umm. I'm not sure how. Sorry. I can't really do much. But, I have this dream. I guess it's silly. But I want to get buff, so I can Sail the Seven Seas."

So the three form a team. They get hats & t-shirts that read: The Trinity Friends. The Chaplain insists on Sailor Blue with Gold Lettering.

The trinity build an ark. The Fat Girl brings her Vietnamese pot-belly pig; the Converso drags along her scapegoat; and the Chaplain calls her Warrior Pigeon.

They sail the ark to the Memory of the New Rochelle Pier where the Sarah Lawrence College rowing team rows. Once Upon a Time, The Fat Girl rowed (badly) with the Gryphon team. But that was long ago.

But, back to the Quest. The Trinity Friends must first get past the Writer's PR Angel.

[TO BE CONTINUED]

See: The Trinity Friends Hear from the Writer

1974: Big Father lingers...

For more, See Post: Revolution & its Discontents

My parents grew up under a repressive regime that valued OBEDIENCE to authority above all. And Antonio Salazar [left] was the Grand Patriarch, the ultimate AUTHORITY. His right-wing state effectively kept Portugal out of the Modern Age.

My maternal cousin, an anthropologist, once told me, "If you want to know what life was like during the Middle Ages, just ask our parents. It was like something out of the Canterbury Tales."

Approximately 90% of the population was illiterate. My parents were the first generation in our family to go to public schools. My paternal grandmother was illiterate. And my father's siblings, who hadn't finished primary school, were functionally illiterate as young adults.

Jeronimo Vazao: family scholar

My dad was the family scholar. He completed the fourth grade. And he continued his education by joining the Army. My father got teased for his "intellectualism."

"My first year in school," my dad tells me. "The teacher asked us questions. And I answered them. After school, the boys were waiting for me. They beat me up. I learned not to answer questions."

But there were consequences. "If you didn't know an answer, the teacher would smack you with a ruler. But the boys hit harder," says Father. So he learned the Art of Silence.

Church & State, Yes. Civil Liberties, No.

The STATE was allied with the Roman Catholic hierarchy. What Portuguese Catholic bishops said, effectively, became the law of the land. As long as priests remained obedient to Salazar. See how Portuguese rural life paralleled life in the Middle Ages?

Life under a police state, sanctioned by the moral authority of the Catholic Church, was the only political reality my parents had ever known. That is, before we came to America.

I don't take American Civil Liberties for granted. I grew up watching and learning re: What Happens to People schooled in Repression.

My dad was a bit of a rebel, intellectually, if not openly. In the 1960s, he used a short-wave radio to pick up a Communist radio station that broadcast from abroad.

Says my father, "It was the only way to find out what was really happening in the country."

wikicommons: Symbol of PIDE, Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado, the International Police for the Defense of the State. They were rumored to have secret informants in even the smallest villages.

There was no freedom of the press. Or freedom of assembly. The "press" would never announce where Salazar was scheduled to appear. They feared protesters, says my Dad. The News only reported where Salazar had been, and how "welcomed" he was by the Portuguese people.

Mother: Someone is Always Watching

My mother's case, however, is different. She fears the secret police. Even today. And has a generalized fear of neighbors, who could report you to the authorities. THEY would come and get you at night. And, if you didn't have well-connected patrons, you would, quite simply, disappear.

When I was a teenager, my political activism, as minor as it was, terrified my mother. Even today, she acts as though Someone is Always Watching You.

"Life is theater," she says, "and you have to be seen doing the right thing."

My take: you have to act as though you are "right in the head." And, how do people know whether you are thinking the right things, if you don't say the right things? Old cultural beliefs die hard.

Clinging to Eden: Converso Names Take Root

To find out from whom I came, I must travel to Portugal. Ironically, the best records of Conversos are kept by Roman Catholic parishes. Records likely go back hundreds of years -- back to the start of the Inquisition (1497), or to the year the parish was founded, perhaps as far back as the beginning of the Millenium.

If you want a sense of how meticulous Lusos (people of Portuguese heritage) can be when it comes to documenting death and torture, watch the movie Brazil.

[Paradise by Lucas Cranach der Ältere, oil on wood, Wikicommons]

Complications Ensue...

Most of my family, myself included, don't have birth certificates. My only record of "coming into existence" is my baptismal record, or cedula (which doesn't have a picture). The cedula records birth, comfirmation, marriage, and other sacramental rights. The parish also kept records of "good behavior" & financial contributions. And course, records of heretics, and their "outcome."

But, until I can get grant money for travel, I must rely on Library & Web research; exploration of every clue, however far-fetched; lots of Imagination; and Conspiracy-Theory-type thinking.

Confirmation BIAS alert, ie, even though I want to believe my immediate ancestors' surnames are definitive clues, they are about as reliable as hearsay, however juicy my "facts" may be. Pre-Modern people made up & discarded surnames at will, and often village folk re-named their neighbors. Descriptive names might stick to a man, and remained glued, like it or not, to the next generation. Imagine a world where nicknames given by siblings, fraternity brothers, the town joker, and/or gossips have a half-life.

My maternal grandfather, Francisco Pinto, for example, loathed one of his paternal surnames: Alpiarca. It was the name of the village in central Portugal from where his grandfather migrated. When he was nine or so years of age, Francisco Pinto managed to officially eliminate the Alpiarca name from his line of descent. My people are precocious. He wasn't the only anti-Alpiarca campaigner; many kinsmen tried to wipe the name from history. Of course, that/those stories are for another post. And of course, the name survives (in Massachusetts, btw).

A man and/or woman could try to assert control over their destiny and/or re-create their heritage by adopting the name(s) of persons they aspired to be. Or take the socially-respected, Inquisition-Evading names of the local gentry. A powerful patron could be named as a child's godparent, and the godparent's name (and some privileges) would be given to the child.

A great source is Jeffrey S. Malka, author of Sephardic Genealogy: Second Edition, Discovering Your Sephardic Ancestors and Their World. [More commentary from Malka in future posts]

To briefly sum up: When forced to convert, Sephardic Portuguese chose new surnames that were "close to the earth."

Who, What & Where in the World are my Maternal Surnames?

My mother's natal village contained many wild plants/trees, as well as cultivated orchards & crops. "We had so many trees on the finca (estate)," said my grandmother, Maria do Rosario Bispo Carvalho (abridged name). "It was as if I lived in the Garden of Eden."

Commonly, when Jews were baptized, they re-created themselves by selecting names of trees, eg, Carvalho (Oak), Oliveira (Olive tree), Pereira (Pear tree), Pinheiro (Pine). Less common: fruit, eg, Sousa (type of Sherry grape near the Douro River); or animals, eg, Coelho (rabbit), as in Tony Coelho, former congressman, and Pinto (type of horse), which happens to be my grandfather's name.

Flying to America: REVOLUTION & its Discontents

I left Portugal nine days after junior officers led a coup against the semi-fascist regime that had dominated Portugal for decades.

My parents planned to work in America for two years, and save enough to mechanize the Vazao stone-cutting business. Then we would return to Portugal.

But then, the Carnation Revolution happened. And political & economic instability ensued. Thousands of refugees from the Portuguese colonies in Africa flooded into Portugal. Many had lost fortunes, and couldn't find jobs. People were desperate, and running out of patience. They wanted government assistance, and they wanted it NOW. My parents feared a Communist takeover.

My dad had initially supported the revolution, but I hadn't known that as a child. Both my parents seemed arch-conservative to me. Mostly, my mother ranted re: communists & my father said nothing, so I assumed he agreed. Yes, I was naive. But then, I was only four.

By 1976 (two years after the 25 de Abril Revolution), the Communists had gained substantial power among the ruling factions. Local communists (including some distant kin) had led the resistance in Portugal, as local communists had led the resistance against fascism in most countries in Europe. After decades, the Portuguese communists had become disciplined and well-organized compared to centrist and left-of-center factions. In the southern provinces, a few large estates had been invaded by landless peasants & Communist allies. Led by their bishops, Catholic priests preached the imminent threat of a Communist takeover.

Communist-led unions organized strikes, but much of the violence was spontaneous. The poor had been repressed for decades, and many acted recklessly. As my father said, "What does an abused and caged dog do when it escapes? It bites the Master." Given the cold war climate, my parents were terrified.

SEE: NYT Film Review re: Documentary: Scenes from the Class Struggle in Portugal (1977)

My mother's employment visa to America was sponsored by the Honeywell Corp, or some such. She was a tailor & embroidery teacher, who started her own school. More importantly, she designed wedding dresses and other custom-made garments [see: photo of one of her creations]. We were supposed to settle in Philadelphia.

Instead, we remained in Ossining where my mother had one cousin who had emigrated from Portugal to Brazil, and from Rio to the US. More important, her second cousin also lived there and was available to pick us up at Kennedy airport.

Yes, we have cousins in many cool places, including Paris & Madrid, and, at one time, Mozambique & Angola. The Portuguese are a mobile, swift-footed people. You never know what tomorrow holds. You may have to leave in the middle of the night. Literally, as did our cousins in Angola.

[To be Cont'd]

Want to see a film re: Carnation Revolution? CLICK: A funny thing happened on the way to the Revolution, re: Capitaes de Abril, or Captains of April (available on Netflix!)

STAY TUNED: I made a 10-minute video with still pictures & audio entitled, "Maria Vazao Wills a Miracle" for Oral History class @ Sarah Lawrence. Pictures will be posted. And perhaps audio too.

WTF DNA Pt II: Good Breeding

According to Wikipedia: "Inbreeding is the reproduction from the mating of two genetically related parents, which can increase the chances of offspring being affected by recessive or deleterious traits. This generally leads to a decreased fitness of a population, which is called inbreeding depression." Ouch.

Good breeding has its benefits. Because nobles traditionally married their cousins, kinsmen were eventually placed on all of Europe's thrones. High intelligence, artistry, physical virtuosity, and other expressions of excellence were heightened. Yes, musical virtuosity runs in families.

But then again, the Royals also spawned the likes of Mad King George. "Insanity" was rather common among the aristocracy. Hence, the lovely expression, "black sheep."

[LEFT: "Mad" King George III of England: Wikicommons]

The gentry (families who owned sufficient land to generate income) generally aped the aristocracy, and married (locally) among their "Own Kind." Because of the limited gene pool, gentle folk also experienced "genetic irregularities."

Nuts
Some mentally challenged offspring were said to be "imbeciles," or possessed by "demons," but most were merely rebels or geniuses (for good or bad). What's the difference between a lunatic, a fool, a heretic, a visionary, a traitor, a champion, and/or a saint? PUNCHLINE: The audience or community of said individual.

[RIGHT: Galileo facing the Roman Inquisition, painting by Cristiano Banti: Wikicommons]

Galileo, for example, was both a genius (to scientists, philosophers--the rationalist/enlightened vanguard) as well as a heretic (Roman Catholic Church & their adherents). Galileo was also a fool to many because he naively believed he could Tell the Truth, given his dark time and place. But such recklessness also made him a Champion. Eventually, even the Roman church, which is never, officially, wrong, acknowledged Galileo was right. And it only took the papacy 500 or so years to come clean.