Kirjahaku

Letters from Brazil: A Cultural-Historical Narrative Made Fiction recounts the adventures of young researcher Mike Gaherty in Brazil in the turbulent 1960s. It tells the story of his research on Brazilian folklore and folk-popular literature (with inevitable amorous moments along the way) while dodging encounters and threats from agents of the DOPS, Brazil's chief espionage and anti-communist, anti-subversion agency. The nation's military revolution of 1964 and subsequent evolution to dictatorship are the background for Gaherty's ups and downs in Brazil's Northeast, the Northeast Interior, Salvador da Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, BrasIlia, the Amazon, and a final harrowing time in Recife. The thread of the narrative is the series of letters requested of Gaherty by James Hansen of the New York Times (international section) and his later involvement with Stanley Iverson of the INR (Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the United States Department of State)-WHA (Western Hemisphere Affairs) reporting on Gaherty's own research activities in Brazil and his discoveries of political and social sentiment in northeastern Brazil. The young American researcher reports as well on meetings with major Brazilian cultural figures, encounters with Brazilian Afro-Brazilian phenomena like Xango, Candomble, and Capoeira, impressive times during New Year's Eve and the Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, and cultural-travel highlights throughout Brazil. The fly in the ointment was the DOPS.

A Professor Takes to the Sea: Learning the Ropes on the National Geographic Explorer Volume I Epic South America 2013 tells of Professor Currans experiences on board this great expedition ship on the 2013 voyage. The book recounts early efforts to join with the ship crew, staff, and guest speakers in the collective task of providing an enriching experience for the guests or passengers. Secondly, it details Currans contribution of speaking of Brazilian culture and preparing the guests for the places to be seen in that country. Finally, it details the trip itself: At Sea with the focus on educational talks by guest speakers and recaps by the naturalists and On Shore with cultural and historical vignettes of the places visited.

A Professor Takes to the Sea: Learning the Ropes on the National Geographic Explorer, Volume II, 2014 and 2016, continues Professor Currans experiences on board this great expedition ship. No longer a rookie but almost, Curran recounts early efforts to join the ship crew, staff, and guest speakers on a return trip from Salvador da Bahia to Buenos Aires in 2014 (with an Atlantic Crossing from the Cape Verde Republic thrown in) and the 2016 Atlantic Odyssey 108 trip from Ushuaia, Patagonia, to Madeira with surprises in tow. Secondly, the book details Currans contributions of speaking of Brazilian and Portuguese culture and preparing the guests for the places to be seen in Brazil and Portugals Madeira. And as in volume I, it details the trip itself At Sea with the focus on educational talks by guest speakers and recaps by the naturalists and On Shore with cultural and historical vignettes of the places visited.

Letters from Brazil II is a continuation of Letters from Brazil, 2017. Mike Gaherty, now an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, is back in Brazil to continue research and begin the battle for publication in a "publish or perish" academic world. He now has a Brazilian visa as journalist-researcher in his role of writing occasional "Letters" to the New York Times's international section and is working in liaison with the Department of Research-Western Hemisphere Analysis of the US State Department (INR-WHA). "Letters" will chronicle what he sees and experiences in Brazil - politics, economics, and especially, daily life under the evolving military regime. The Brazilian intelligence agencies, the DOPS and the SNI, are aware of his role and keep constant surveillance on his activities. Life gets complicated as Mike juggles romantic interests both back at home and in Rio de Janeiro. And research evolves to treat the relationship between the folk-popular stories in verse ("literatura de cordel") and MPB (Brazilian Popular Music), especially regarding the composer, singer, and musician Chico Buarque de Hollanda and his efforts to write and perform in Brazil while battling with the general's censorship laws under AI-5. There are many surprises for Mike-some pleasurable, a few dangerous. Life for a researching professor turns out to be not as pedestrian as might be expected.

A Rural Odyssey: Living Can Be Dangerous is the story of Mick O'Brien's growing-up years on a small wheat farm in Central Kansas in the 1940s and 1950s. It tells of his Catholic Irish American pioneering farm parents, the religious and moral beliefs of their traditions, and the consequences of living the same way. Mick and his siblings inherited their traditions. The growing of their own food, the farm chores, the raising and caring of livestock, the field work on the tractor, and the harvest that provides the family subsistence, but not without danger. School, sports, having fun with buddies, and imaginary games filled Mick's teenage years. Music, singing, playing the guitar, and a special friendship are an important chapter of that time as well but with unplanned consequences. Unforeseen challenges and the unpredictable dangers of life filled O'Brien's days. Work and play, joy and sadness, Mick tells it all as it happened.

"Letters from Brazil III" is a continuation of Professor Mike Gaherty's adventures in Brazil. It chronicles in fiction Mike's initiation into the Portuguese-Brazilian academic world in the milieu of a major international "congress." The academic affair is followed by Mike's friendship and involvement with singer-composer Chico Buarque de Hollanda, the reporting for the New York Times of his songs jousting with Brazil's "prior censorship" board, and Mike's participation in one of Chico's LP's and successive concerts in Sao Paulo and Rio. The latter experience becomes dicey and dangerous with interference, surprising cooperation and then bad times with the military regime's enforcement agency - the "Department of Public Security." Mike, still a bachelor, is entertained and then becomes enmeshed in fun times turned complicated with beautiful "carioca" women.

"A RURAL ODYSSEY - Abilene - Digging Deeper" is the continuation of the story of Mick O'Brien, now a college graduate and back in his home town of Abilene, Kansas teaching at the new Junior College. He settles into daily life in Abilene and spends time with girlfriend Mariah Palafox a professor of English at the Juco. Family, friends, teaching, research and work on Mick's "History of Abilene" take up most of his time. Mick and Mariah become close friends, then romantically involved. This leads to visits to her family and summer travel in Mexico and Spain, tips and hints aided by her relatives. Family ethnicity - Irish and Jewish - color the relationship. Life in Abilene gets dicey and dangerous with repercussions from previous problems with local criminals, then KKK activists and a return to violence and now larger threats to the citizens and town of Abilene.

Around Brazil on the "International Adventurer" - a Fictional Panegyric is the story of Professor Mike Gaherty in a new "gig" as Cultural Speaker for Adventure Travel's small ship expedition around Brazil, a thirty-plus day trip from Manaus in the Amazon Basin to Rio Grande in the South with major stops in Bel m do Par , Recife, Salvador, Ilh us, Rio de Janeiro and Parati. Adventurers will experience nature on the entire trip, birds, animals and plant life, but will be exposed to the history and culture of a good part of Brazil. The date is 1972 and the political undercurrent of Brazil's Military Regime and its battle against Leftist Subversion affects the expedition. This however is the old, fun, colorful and entertaining Brazil of years past. Mike and his new colleagues of staff and crew of "Adventurer" mesh well, and there is time for an amorous relationship with Amy, the Assistant Adventure Leader on the ship. Surprises are in tow.