A de sempre - Carlos Drummond de Andrade

A de sempre

Carlos Drummond de Andrade

 — Até beber cerveja ficou difícil — queixa-se. 

— O preço?

— Não. A variedade. O embaras du choix.

— Mas se você já estava acostumado com uma...

— E as novas que aparecem? Em cada Estado surge uma fábrica, se não surgem duas. Cada qual oferecendo diversas qualidades. Você senta no bar de sua eleição, um velho bar onde até as cadeiras conhecem o seu corpo, a sua maneira de sentar e de beber. Pede uma cervejinha, simplesmente. Não precisa dizer o nome. Aquela que há anos o garçom lhe traz sem necessidade de perguntar, pois há anos você optou por uma das duas marcas tradicionais, e daí não sai. Bem, você pede a cervejinha inominada, e o garçom não se mexe. Fica olhando pra sua cara, à espera de definição. Você olha para cara dele, como quem diz: Quê que há, rapaz? Então ele emite um som: Qual? Você pensa que não ouviu direito, franze a testa, num esforço de captação: qual o quê? Qual a marca, doutor? Temos essa, aquela, aquela outra, mais outra, e outra, e outras mais. . Desfia o rosário, e você de boca aberta: Como? Ele está pensando que eu vou beber elas todas? Acha que sou principiante em busca de aventura? Quer me gozar? Nada disso. O garçom explica, meio encabulado, que a casa dispõe de 12 marcas de cerveja nacional, fora as estrangeiras, sofisticadas, e ele tem ordem de cantar os nomes pra freguesia. Até pra mim, Leovigil? pergunto. Bem, o patrão disse que eu tenho de oferecer as marcas pra todo mundo, as novas cervejas têm de ser promovidas. Não mandou abrir exceção pra ninguém, eu é que, em atenção ao doutor, fiquei calado, esperando a dica... Não quis forçar a barra, desculpe.

— E aí?

— Aí eu disse que não havia o que desculpar, ordens são ordens e eu não sou de infringir regulamentos. Os regulamentos é que infringem a minha paz, freqüentemente. Mas para não dar o braço a torcer, nem me declarar vencido pela competição das cervejas, concluí: Leovigil, traga a de sempre.

— Não quis dizer o nome?

— Não. Minha marca de cerveja — "minha garrafa", digamos assim, pois a individualidade começa pela garrafa — passou a chamar-se "a de sempre". Não gosto de mudar as estruturas sem justa causa, nem me interessa dançar de provador de cerveja, entende?

— Mas que custa experimentar, homem de Deus?

— Só por experimentar, acho frívolo. Os moços, sim, não encontraram ainda sua definição, em matéria de cerveja e de entendimento do mundo. Saltam de uma para outra fruição, tomam pileques de ideologias coloridas, do vermelho ao negro, passando pelo róseo, pelo alaranjado e pelo furta-cor. Mas depois de certa idade, e de certa experiência de bebedor, você já sabe o que quer, ou antes, o que não quer. Principalmente o que não quer. E é isso que os outros querem que você queira. Tá compreendendo?

— Mais ou menos.

— Na verdade, não há muitas espécies de cerveja, no mundo das idéias. Mas os rótulos perturbam. Uns aparecem com mulher nua, insinuando que o gosto é mais capitoso. Bem, até agora não vi rótulo de cerveja mostrando mulher com tudo de fora, mas deve haver. Mulher se oferecendo está em tudo que é produto industrial, por que não estaria nos sistemas de organização social, como bonificação?

— Você está divagando.

— Estou. Divagar é uma forma de transformar pensamentos em nuvem ou em fumaça de cigarro, fazendo com que eles circulem por aí.

— Ou se percam.

— E se percam. Exatamente. 0 importante não é beber cerveja, é ter a ilusão de que nossa cerveja é a única que presta. 

Sujeito mais conservador! Ou sábio, quem sabe?

Texto extraído do livro “De notícias & não notícias faz-se a crônica”, Livraria José Olympio Editora – Rio de Janeiro, 1974, pág. 137.

3 strategies to get more veggies from a small garden

Most commercial farms concentrate on growing a few select crops to supply to a wide variety of customers — but gardening at home is a different story entirely. Most backyard food gardeners are looking to supplement their family’s grocery store purchases with an abundant variety of seasonal vegetables, fruits and herbs throughout the growing season.

For those of us who face time and space constraints in our gardening endeavors, combining crops within the same planting areas makes a lot of sense. Try these three proven crop-combining techniques to boost crop productivity from your small home garden and get more sustained and bountiful vegetable harvests.

Crop-combining gardening techniques are particularly well-suited to organic gardening, which relies on natural techniques to control garden pests and maximize crop productivity rather than using chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

1. Interplanting

The most common way to combine garden crops is via an age-old technique called interplanting, which in essence means planting various garden edibles with different growth and spacing attributes together in the same soil beds or rows.

One example involves combining fast-maturing vegetables, such as lettuce, field greens or beets, with slower-maturing ones like winter squash or pole beans. According to Our Garden Gang, mixing tall plants like sweet corn, peas or staked tomatoes with low-growing crops such as melons or radishes is another way to maximize diversity and yield.

2. Vertical gardening

Vertical gardening is a space-saving way to combine low-growing crops with plants that produce vines and can be grown on trellises, or on fences along the edges of a garden. Vertical gardening can concentrate much more production into each square foot of planting area.

Better Homes and Gardens recently reported that crops grown off the ground “tend to be healthier because they are less likely to contract fungus infections or soil-borne leaf diseases.”

Tomatoes, pole beans, cucumbers, snap peas, melons and winter squash are all examples of crops suitable for vertical gardening if staked or supported properly. 

3. Succession planting

Another common technique often employed by “weekend gardeners," whether their gardens are organic or not, is succession planting, which entails replacing a finished crop with a different one, or planting a single crop in small amounts over an extended period of time.

Examples of using succession planting techniques include:

• Replacing a spring crop with a summer crop, such as planting cucumbers — which thrive in warmer weather — where the peas had been growing earlier.
• Staggering the planting of seeds over the course of the growing season to ensure a continuing supply as long as possible.
• Planting both early- and late-maturing varieties of the same type of crop around the same time and harvesting the resulting crops successively. Tomatoes and corn, for example, each come in varieties that ripen at different times during their respective growing seasons.

Crops that are particularly well-suited to succession planting include bush beans, lettuce, spinach and radishes, each of which have long growing seasons but can be harvested after only a few weeks.

 

While it may be easy to get carried away with edible gardening, don’t forget to plant a few flowers to spruce up the look of your garden and attract bees to help pollinate your food crops. Marigolds and sunflowers are good choices as they are relatively easy to grow organically and tend to attract lots of bees.

Opera - Tosca - Giacomo Puccini

An idealistic artist, a celebrated singer and a corrupt police chief engage in a fierce battle of wills in this tempestuous tale of cruelty and deception. With its themes of political intrigue, sexual intimidation and official hypocrisy, Puccini’s great melodrama set in 1800 is anything but dated. Canadian soprano Adrianne Pieczonka, praised by The New York Times for her “lushly beautiful sound and poignant vulnerability,” makes her Company debut in the title role. Baritone Lado Ataneli (Scarpia) has been praised by the Los Angeles Times as possessing “one of the healthiest, roundest, most mellifluous voices on the planet.” Honey-voiced Italian tenor Carlo Ventre makes up the third side of this fatal love triangle.

ACT I

Cesare Angelotti, a political prisoner who has just escaped from the jail at Castel Sant'Angelo, seeks refuge in the Attavanti chapel of the church of Sant'Andrea della Valle. He hides at the approach of the Sacristan who is soon followed by the painter Mario Cavaradossi. The Sacristan recites the Angelus while Cavaradossi climbs the scaffold and begins to work on his painting, pausing to admit that his portrait of the Mary Magdalene was first inspired not only by an unknown lady who came to pray to the Virgin, but also by his beloved Floria Tosca, a famous Roman opera singer. The scandalized Sacristan leaves. Angelotti comes out of hiding and asks for Cavaradossi's assistance. The painter, thrusting a lunch basket into his hands, urges Angelotti back into the chapel as the voice of Tosca is heard. He hides as Cavaradossi admits Tosca into the church. She demands to know why she was kept waiting, and suspects Cavaradossi of talking to another woman. He reassures her of his love, and the pair agree to meet that evening at Cavaradossi's villa. With Tosca gone, Angelotti reappears and Cavaradossi vows to save him. A cannon shot is heard announcing the escape of a prisoner: Angelotti. Cavaradossi leaves with the pursued man in order to hide him at his villa. The Sacristan returns and gathers choristers around him, telling them they must rehearse for a special performance of a cantata that evening celebrating a defeat of Napoleon; Tosca will be the soloist. At that moment, the Roman chief of police, Baron Scarpia, arrives searching for Angelotti. His men find the Attavanti chapel open, but all that remains is a fan with the family crest on it and the empty lunch basket. The Sacristan expresses amazement, as earlier he had noticed that the painter had not touched his meal. Scarpia puts two and two together and realizes that Cavaradossi had aided Angelotti's escape. Suddenly Tosca returns and Scarpia uses the fan to convince her that Cavaradossi has fled with another woman, thus awakening jealousy in her. He hopes Tosca will then lead him to Cavaradossi and thus to Angelotti. He orders his spies to follow her as she leaves the church, then joins in the Te Deum, swearing he will capture not only the painter, but Tosca as well.

ACT II

Scarpia is dining alone in his quarters in the Farnese Palace, anticipating the pleasure of bending Tosca to his will. His henchman Spoletta appears and reports that Tosca has led Scarpia's spies to a remote village, and though Angelotti was not to be found, they arrested Cavaradossi. The painter is brought in as Tosca's voice is heard from the concert in the courtyard below. Tosca, who had been summoned by Scarpia, is shocked to see Cavaradossi who quietly warns her to reveal nothing about Angelotti. Scarpia tries to get the location of Angelotti's hiding place from her, but she insists that she knows nothing. When Cavaradossi is put to torture in the next room, she reveals the secret and asks Scarpia for Cavaradossi's freedom in return. Scarpia has Cavaradossi brought back in. Delirious from torture, Cavaradossi hears Scarpia order his men to the villa, curses Tosca, and cries defiance at the tyranny of Scarpia and the foreign oppressors he represents. Word arrives that the earlier report of Napoleon's defeat at Marengo was incorrect. Instead, Napoleon was the victor. Cavaradossi cries out with joy and is dragged from the room to prison. Tosca pleads for her lover's life, and Scarpia offers her an exchange: if she will give herself to him, he will give Cavaradossi back to her. In despair she pleads for mercy, protesting that she has never done anything to deserve being faced with such a terrible choice, but realizes she must agree to the bargain. Scarpia tells Tosca there must be a mock execution and circuitously orders Spoletta to make preparations for a real one. He then prepares a safe-conduct pass for Tosca and Cavaradossi and comes to claim his prize. She grabs a knife from the table and stabs him, then takes the pass and flees the room.

ACT III

On the terrace of Castel Sant'Angelo, outside the prison, the voice of a shepherd is heard at dawn while one by one the bells of Rome strike the hour. Cavaradossi is brought in for his execution, which is an hour away. He bribes the jailer with a ring for permission to write a farewell letter to Tosca. Left alone, he recalls pleasant memories of her. She suddenly hurries in, explaining that there is to be a mock execution in which he is to pretend to have been shot. She also tells him about Scarpia's murder and of the safe-conduct pass that will get them out of Rome before the murder is discovered. He can hardly believe the news and looks in wonder at the delicate hands that did so much to save him. The lovers ecstatically plan for the future but are interrupted by the arrival of the soldiers. As the firing squad advances and takes aim, Tosca retires with a final word to Cavaradossi about how to fall realistically. The soldiers fire and Cavaradossi falls. Tosca bids him to wait until they are gone and then asks him to rise and come away with her. She hurries to Cavaradossi and is horrified to discover that he is dead and that the execution was real after all. Distant shouts announce that Scarpia's murder was discovered. As Spoletta, Sciarrone, and the soldiers rush in to seize Tosca, she climbs to the fortress parapet and leaps to her death.

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