Uncle Otto !

Otto Landahl as 'The Crofter'

Otto Landahl - our own in-house family Swedish actor, who actually worked with Ingmar Bergman, as can be checked in the Bergmanorama site. His bio in the IMDb site is short " Born on 22 October 1889, Härnösand, Västernorrlands län, Sweden, died 31 March 1949, Helsingborg, Skånelän, Sweden . The actor Otto Landahl comes from large family with 8 siblings. He was born in Harnosand, in the north part of Sweden, where he lived with his family. Later on he moved to South Sweden, to Helsingborg, where he worked on Helsingborg Theater and performed in 8 plays directed by Ingermar Bergman."

The 'Crofter'

His roles included: Kalle, the cook in the 1952 film ‘Adolf i toppform’; the crofter in the 1948 film ‘ Each Heart Has Its Own Story’; Verkstadschefen in 1946 ‘Youths in Danger’; a Professor in 1945 ‘Sten Stensson kommer till stan’; Måns Olssonin in 1944 ‘Skåningar’, Elvira's Father 'Mikael' in 1943 Elvira Madigan, Kalle in 1939 ‘A Cruise in the Albertina’, Pastor Borg in 1937 ‘Laila’; and Aslak in 1935 ‘Fredløs’. 

as Kalle, the cook on the 'Albertina'

The play is Rekviem, directed by Ingemar Bergman in 1946 at the the Helsingborg Theatre.
Otto is fourth from the left.

Otto also worked at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm in 1934, in the Othello by Shakespeare classic play. His first child was born out of wedlock, and his mother (sister in law for Per Oskar ) took care of that child. Later on he met his wife to be, also an actor. She had an accident which left her permanently disabled and eventually died still very young. Apparently she was the love of his life, as he never remarried and dedicated himself to the theatre instead completely.

California Wilderness

I'm jealous! Being the 'house Biologist' I am naturally inclined for Nature walks and trails, and try to make them whenever, wherever possible. But the pictures below show a recent hike and camp-out in the California / Lake Tahoe area done by Michael, Nicholas and friend adventurers... Check out the crispness of the air, the apparently very cool waters of the lake, and the degree of communion with nature these guys had!

California trailblazers...

and their competent guides...

A 'natural' friend...

NOT sand! --- Snow! Brrrrr

Cliff hanger!

Rock surfing?

The quest for the sun...

Rio Life in 3D

 

Going up (and down) the many steps of the Morro Santa Marta, (-22.9479,-43.1940)  one of the traditional Rio slums known as simply  'Dona Marta'  which has now  been semantically 'upgraded' to 'Community' status because of its expanding urban infrastructural improvements such as a 5 station inclined plane tram, a developing power line distribution and sewage collections pipeline, is still not for the faint of heart, exercised-deprived, agora or acrophobic....

steps, steps, steps...

One can only imagine the outcome of a brain  (human or other) developing in this constant very  3-D world where all can be seen from above, and maybe even  seen  even better from still further above, in a vertical cascade of observations! Observe and be observed. All is triangulated, horizontal surfaces heavily competed for by all species, human or otherwise. 

Rio life has developed from 3D to 4D ! The traditional old-school 'favela' shacks originally made from the cheapest materials available such as discarded planks and plywood, ( back in the day when wood was cheap...) over the years are gradually demolished and rebuilt into solid brick and mortar houses with aluminum frame windows. Asbestos water reservoirs are being substituted for PVC or GRF  blue containers with proper tops to keep Dengue mosquitoes away. Sat dishes bring in the world's latest info as well as the probably much more important local telenovelas. Washing machines now do the heavy  laundry and aircons cool the worst of the days insolation on the hillside... No more carrying 20 kg water filled tin cans uphill on dirt paths like in the Marcel Camus 1959 version of Black Orpheus! Clean city water for all... at no cost ! Mind you, electricity  also is generally something just hooked onto as another favela freebie...Things have definitely changed ! Tempus fugit...!

The place attracts visitors from all over the world, including some of the more the musically inclined... one of which has become immortalized on a vertical surface, others however, are not so lucky!

Still, the beast is growing, not being handled with authority... The fad (and the perfect excuse) is to be 'social' these days... ! Rather 'please and pacify' 'the people' than invest properly in decent infrastructure such as good transportation systems which would allow people to commute to towns in abundant flat lands  in a 100 km radius of Rio. Better keep these people surviving, thriving, developing in the risky hillsides of rainy Rio than face the risk of losing votes or political status. After all, these are hundreds of thousands of voters with a room with a view!

Boris

Boris

 Returning from a recent trip to a coastal town, I could not help but reflect on the sadness of dog's relationship with Man. The recent heavy rains that hit Rio's hillside towns took a toll of over 1,000 human victims, 800 of which lost their lives, but also probably at least three times as many pets who were lost or died in one way or another. Dogs such as Boris (below) are really cute pets to take care of homes, many times occupied only during the summer months. Bought in most cases for their appearances or fame for taking care of property and people, they sometimes are even trained professionally. An account given by a friend owning one such weekend leisure property tells how these dogs are now in total distress... Whimpering, begging for lap, human attention, to stay close to their weekend masters all the time, and probably to be taken away to a cozy apartment in a big city, away from natural disasters, and the whole natural environment. if possible! Their property had a limiting wall which was torn away by the recent floods. The backyard became open to all. These weekend pets are probably shut most of the time out of the house, in a damp cold kennel of sorts if lucky, having to defend the perimeter from 'invading' species, including probably other lost/displaced stray dogs and an assortment of also displaced wild species equally  disturbed by the heavy rains, including large opossums. The constant rain did its part of a psychological flogging on these poor canine home guards, torture enhanced by the noise of continuous thunderstorms for over 20 consecutive days, only to be followed by the extra 'thunder' of low flying helicopters looking for victims or the media crews just filming material damages for the 8 o'clock news. I can't imagine what Haiti was like. The following pictures were all taken on the same street, close to the beach, far away from Rio's hillside towns. But the apparent intent is the same: to show passers by there are ferocious guards on the block. Something difficult to reconcile when you get to play with pup Boris up above...I wonder how much training the owners get before they are allowed to keep a pet!

Sweden wins over US & Russian hearts

Who would guess? Rachel fell in love with a Russian, Ruth with an American.... The saying in lower latitdues  is that anything is possible below the Equator. Not even the infamous Portuguese or Spanish Inquisitions were very successful in extraditing heretics back to the Old World! Gracias a Dios!  

So, Alex Balbachevsky arrived in Brazil as a young man largely as a result of a Romanov connection, his father being a high ranking officer attached to the tzar. However, that is another strong story, better narrated in Ricardo Balbachevsky Setti's blog  (in Portuguese for those of you who can...!). Anyway, the two 'foreign' suitors to Ruth and Rachel had to pass through the approval of Swedish mum Eva Landahl and her energetic husband Hildebrando Oliveira, a publisher of car and fashion magazines in São Paulo, educated in Brighton, England. Oliveira was as much an adventurer as a businessman. Eva passed away in 1944 and Oliveira remarried a Southern 'girl' - Mildred Avellar

Whatever chemistry was involved in the prenuptial arrangements, Eva and Hildebrando got it right... Dick and Alex, were to the best of my knowledge great admirers of each other, and loving spouses of Eva's 'girls' to the ends of their agreements. Coincidentally, as a young engineer, Dick had spent some time in Russia, and Alex definitely was very fluent in English, AND they both enjoyed chatting over a little aqua vitae, especially with a good sailing motif on the bottle's label such as 

The Cutty Sark...

Another deck, another day

I never took much notice at the diversity of men on this deck back in 77. Ulrich St. Paul, Peter Bayley and myself, were one with the native deckhands aboard the Amazon National Research Institute's fisheries research vessel for a week or so, as we collected fish from tributaries upstream of Manaus.The stories were great, the food average, but the dessert was my favorite... Cans of preserved bacuri an Anacadriaceae typical of the Amazon, looking like a mango, tasting somewhat like a litchi, but more pronounced. 

Here in these 'abundant' freshwarers, I knew I had made the right choice back in Fortaleza, despite the close encounter with the sharptoothed-sandpaper-skinned kind,  in full strength seawater...Fish by day, mosquito by night... Still it was fantastic to see close up, piranhas, arowanas, arapaimas and croaking fish. During stops I could wander through forest trails and see the logging, the native inhabitants, their homes and problems with local parasitic species and lack of medical attention. All new to me. I hauled back home, boxes of fish samples and orchids collected from felled trees. 

Dark Eyes

At 18, my hero was Igor (Landahl-Oliveira) Balbachevsky. Although only 7 years older, he was already 24, married and had 2 kids! On and off, I had visited the Balbachevsky's in SP. An incredible house with many surprises for me. I vaguely remember a  kind of small, dark backyard with a rabbit and a dog. my cousins Lidia - the blond bombshell and her ochi chornya when angry,   and Betty, always the studious intellectual. Igor, was definitely the ultimate macho and an incredibly talented artist, who for a living did Mandrake and other illustrated cartoons by day,  and boxing, by night - a wierd thing to do in the 1970s, times of Peace & Love. 

At 18 I was already in search of a definition for a second career choice. Having been accepted at Agronomy school the year before, and being totally disappointed with the facilities at the state college in Rural Rio, I decided to wander  'North' . So, I called on Igor who was living in Fortaleza, CE and asked him if I could crash in for some time... A Fisheries Engineering college had opened there and the excuse was to check its program and facilities. To get a feel for this, potential career in the marine environment Igor, myself and Pedro Pankov, - another SP second generation Brazilian of Russian extract - talked some of the local fishermen to take us aboard on  their 'jangada'  to fish. Cost? 8 bottles of the cheapest booze, cachaça, guaranteed to get everyone drunk, would do...I had but a dram during the 10 hours or so we spent at sea, but all bottles were dry when we finally landed... My dear friend Pedro, who is still the one of us more often on a boat, couldn't be in worse shape... drunk as a skunk and puking during the whole trip, he looked green as green can be. Igor was having a hell of a time, laughing his head off, thoroughly enjoying Pedro's misery, and my naiveté...and I guess, the distance from the problems on shore. At one point, when the wind had dropped to nada,  I asked if I could dive of the boat for a swim. He and the captain said sure! Sure enough, the wind picked up, and fortunately I was tied by a rope... During this little fun time, just as I re-boarded, a white-tip shark swam in parallel to the jangada and followed us for a little while...! When I complained, they laughed all the harder...  

 

The sailing experience included going off to 'a risca'  a definite trace in the sea, where suddenly the greenish, turbid coastal waters meet  'blue waters', turquoise  blue waters, because of the huge increase in depth. It is along this 'line' that  hungry oceanic migratory fish like tunas come in search of small coastal fish. All day long, with our artisanal hook and lines we pulled in shiny, bizarre, colourful fish, and ate fried manioc flower and fish downed with cachaça, of course. It was enough for me to decide a career on...

But Igor was in trouble, of all sorts...Too many very loose women, him a bright blue-eyed good looking hippie-like artist from 'the South' and also kind of loose in town... At home, a troubled relationship with a beautiful, intelligent hard-working wife and smart kids to look after. Cloudy horizon, turbid waters.. So he and I moved from the home to a tiny house by the sea. He owed everything, had no income... Aside from the very few clothes he took with him, the only other material belonging he cared enough to carry were the art books, from Russia. Somehow, I managed to send them back to Rachel (Landahl) Balbachevsky in SP. I can clearly see the inspiration of this painting of his from these books, although the original material in the books  was much more depressing. Still, here the sky is cloudy, but somehow there is hope. But Igor was on a long journey. His talent lost in a sea of booze. He died on on island, true to his calling, painting until the very end.