I was invited by my local church to document a recent Family Day of its grade school called Betuel, at the church’s retreat in the interior of Minas Gerais. The charm of Brazil’s untouristed interior is in full flower here. As American poet Elizabeth Bishop characterized it a 1957 letter […]
“When we departed Minas Gerais for Goiás that day, we left the more developed Southeast for the wild Central West which used to be called Mato Grosso, or Dense Forest. Dense forest it is no longer, but then a good part of Goiás was always a relatively treeless grassland called […]
“If the state’s major tourist attraction was just a little too tacky, the economy of robust pink alligators too up and coming, the state of Goiás itself was fast growing on me. I felt as though I had found an older and simpler Brazil, untouched and undisturbed by oceans and […]
Minas Gerais is famous for its rolly-polly tropical highland hills and extensive number of backroads, many in dirt. The state is the size of France or Texas, after all, and a country unto itself: with different landscapes, accents, customs, and cuisine. In Minas “what developed was a distinctly Brazilian (as […]
Truly, Manaus is other-worldly. I visited for a glorious week a number of years ago. It is the safest large city in Brazil to carry around an expensive digital camera: as no roads connect Manaus to anywhere, and the jungle is forbidding, the only escape for criminals is by boat […]
You’re cordially invited to the first post-Rio Olympics reading of To Belém & Back, recently given one of Publishers Weekly’s coveted ★ Star reviews. Author Ben Batchelder intends to give a brief reading, present the short film “Tiradentes2Belém,” and answer any questions at the Signet Society, in Cambridge, Mass., on […]
One visits the Amazon to visit the jungle. But how? The most accessible way for the casual visitor are jungle hotels. This one, the Ariaú Amazon Towers, is a two hour boat ride up Rio Negro from Manaus, visited some years ago. They say it was Jacques Cousteau’s idea, back […]
The first public reading of To Belém & Back in Miami Beach, one of the cradles of the book’s creation, was a hoot, with 23+ people packing into my old friend Russell’s mid-beach apartment. Novelist Ben Batchelder read a darker passage than usual, about the change in his relation with […]
You’re cordially invited to a book reading of To Belém & Back with a view, at my dear friend Russell’s top-floor apartment in mid-beach. When: Friday, June 17th, 7-8pm Where: 4035 N. Meridian Ave., Apt. Ph How: use *5712 front door code […]
The first reading of To Belém & Back west of the Mississippi was a success, with over 20 people attending. (Twice the turnout of my last book reading in Santa Fe.) My black Lab Zeno stole the show, of course, and the 20′ video “Tiradentes2Belém” was well received. The author wishes […]
