Adeline, Eleanor, Amelia, Theodora, Beatrix, Sidony, Madeleine, Clementine, Henrietta, Ione, Lila, Delphia, Adele, Adela, Dora, Vera, Evelyn, Greta, Ingrid, Fern, Opal, Finola, Olive, Lyra, Willa, Angeline, Petra, Mina, Pearl, Mehitabel, Ellen, Keisha, Thora, Lucinda, Ramona, Naomi, June, Sarai, Thea, Evanthia, Thomasina, Tilda, Mirabella, Iole.

What do you think of these? which do you like? dislike and why? which could you see on a child born in the next couple of years?

Marcia Layton Turner & Robbu Hess.

Didn’t manage to get to the end before had to go back to the library but heres the ones stood out for me.

Which do you like? any similar suggestions for me?

Girls

Demi, Bette, Greer, Winona, Elle, Tatyana, Sally, Deva, Mattea, Paloma, Rowan, Scout, Tallulah, Cordelia,

Nora, Lucille, Willona, Thea, Vivianna, Dahlia, Calliope, Iyanla, Alice, Felicity, Lily, Edie, Ambrosia,

Belle, Rosanna, Sage, Oprah, Tyra, Claudia, Greta, Molly, Soledad, Sibila, Dorothea, Frances, Annie,Belinda,

Cleotha, Etta, Dottie, Faithm Reba, Albertina, Cassietta, Cece, Evie, Inez, Mahalia, Maude, Polly, Nina, Adia,

Arabella, Guinevere, Iris, Josephine, Mabel, Ophelia, Clementine, Daisy, Mairead, Sojourner, Zelmer, Kaisha,

Augusta, Lovelace, Celia, Caroline, Clemence, Dorotea, Maud, Nettie, Sadie, Sethanne, Themista, Willamina,

Beulah, Carol, Grace, Harriet, Lillian, Margaret, Sibilla, Virginia, Claudie, Ester, Kalpana, Leda, Valentina, Willa,

Amaris, Ara, Indu, Soleil, Vega, Venus, Orea, Ivria, Kaveri, Naiyah, Rhea, Ryo, Allirea, Hazel, Olivine, Opal, Pearl,

Prunella, Ayala, Jemima, Paloma, Aurora, Dora, Josie, Lilo, Demetria, Farrah, Lucy, Penelope, Ione, Sistine, Pandora,

Lucine, Tabitha, Leonora, Elfriede, Grazia, Olympia, Bebe, Florence, Enya, Oksana, Milena, Aurelia, Tatiana, Fifi, Lella,

Beatrix, Amelie, Anke, Leta.

If you want to cut to the chase and get the 5 tips, scroll down : ) But here is our story:

Neil, Roku and I have been on 2 trips since eating 100% raw. One trip was on the road for a weekend in Sarasota. The other was flying to NY for a week long trip to the Jersey Shore. We tried to be as prepared as possible with a plan and plenty of raw food snacks so that we could stick with our nutritional goals. The road trip was pretty easy. We were staying at our family beach house, so I knew we would have a refrigerator. We also easily packed the vitamix since we were traveling in the car. I made a big batch of granola, some raw burgers, flax wraps and 2 huge chopped salads. I put the salads in large baggies for easy travel. I did one beet salad and a ‘rainbow’ salad from Rene Oswald’s “Transitioning to Living Cuisine” Recipe Book. I just packed the dressings separately so that the salad did not get soggy. Sarasota was also an easy trip for us to stick with our 100% raw plan because they had both a Whole Foods AND a Raw Food Restaurant. We bought plenty of organic fruits and veggies to snack on at Whole Foods. At Ione’s (the Raw Food Restaurant), we picked up a Raw Pizza, Raw Burger, Raw Snack Crackers, and an amazing chocolate mousse pie. Between all of these treats and the items that we brought with us, we had such great variety. My sister met us in Sarasota and she pretty much adhered to our same meal plan which made it easier (we shared our goodies with her of course!). She understands this lifestyle and has dabbled with raw foods herself so she was 100% supportive.

Now our trip to the Jersey Shore was much different. We would be traveling by plane, but that did not stop us from packing goodies and our vitamix! I just made sure to bring non-perishable items. I have attached a video below showing you how we packed these items. We brought a huge bag of granola, raw crackers, carob cookies, nori snacks, salad toppers, and some dehydrated raw snack bars. I also brought along a container of Himalayan Sea Salt, Stevia, and I put Raw Agave Nectar in a travel size shampoo bottle. When we got to the shore, we picked up some produce. Not a ton of organic stuff though so we looked up the closest Whole Foods. It was about a 30 minute drive, so we made a road trip up there with Roku (he loves Whole Foods! must be all of the colors). But even with all of the preparation and variety of snacks, it was still difficult to be 100% raw. Particularly for Neil….we were with his family (there were about 8 of us in a cute little house on the beach) and there are a lot of nostalgia in eating cooked food with them. He chose to have a few cooked items with them at dinner and felt really good about it. I ended up cooking some Kasha (roasted buckwheat) for dinner to share with everyone. The cooked grains tasted really good to me. This was the only cooked item that I had, and I decided that I would continue to incorporate some cooked grains into my diet for now. So, from our experiences, here my top 5 tips for eating raw while on the road:
5 Tips For Success!
1) Prepare snacks for your travel days. Small baggies of nuts, fruit, raw dehydrated bars, carrot sticks, are all good choices to stash in your carry on and/or glove compartment.
2) Bring your vitamix! I know it is a pain; we actually paid to bring the extra bag on the plane, but so worth it. We had at least 2 green smoothies per day
3) Bring condiments if you use them: Himalayan Sea Salt, Stevia, and make a salad topper (nutritional yeast, buckwheat groats, nori granules) so that if you have a salad on the road you can sprinkle this on top with a squeeze of lemon and olive oil
4) Check online for raw food restaurants and places to buy organic produce BEFORE your trip. Right down the address and phone number.
5) If you like granola, bring as a big a bag of it as you can manage. This might just be a ‘personal thing’ but I found that being on vacation I wanted to munch more. I bulked up my granola up with dehydrated buckwheat groats so it would not have such a high fat content.

HAPPY TRAVELS!!!

The food we packed for the plane. Neil does not show the vitamix, but it is in the bag too!!

Food that we got at the Raw Food Restaurant called Ione in Sarasota. You HAVE to see this beautiful food!!

Hi Curtis!

June 13, 2009: Colville, WA to Usk, WA

Today’s ride began in Colville, Washington. The group set-off on an absolutely beautiful day and headed for the day’s destination point of Usk, WA.

As we left Colville, we climbed approximately 800 feet, followed by some pretty serious up and down stretches.  After climbing, we encountered a nice downhill stretch that took us to Ione, WA.  From Ione, the ride was mostly flat all the way into Usk.

While in Ione, we ate at the Log Cabin Grill, a nice place with good food. At the grill, Sue and Mark encountered an old friend, Curtis Patton. Curtis was manning the grill at the Log Cabin and was doing a superb job.

Our camp site in Usk is pretty primitive – no electricity, running water or shower facilities. We used this as an opportunity to use the camp privy that we purchased prior to our departure. Howard assembled and operated the shower while we all took turns cleaning-up – it worked exceptionally well.

Following our showers, we ate a great spaghetti dinner prepared by Ann and Marshall.  The evening came to a close with a little rain, a little thunder and a little lightning.

Today’s numbers: 78.5 miles ridden, 3,300 feet climbed.  After seven six days of riding we have traveled 424 miles and conquered 25,316 feet in elevation gain.

Tomorrow’s ride will take us into Idaho.

The bare essentials

Ever the loyal Beaver fan

Mark with Bob, our camp host in Colville

Crystal Falls

Howard and Chicken on the road to Usk

Howard's shower

Getting clean in Usk

Yes, you read that right.  We’re primarily an Oracle and PHP shop.  (You all know what LAMP stands for by now.  Our variant is known as “OPAL“.  Or if you prefer to keep the order the same, LAOP.)

This has its origins back in the mists of time, when MySQL was but a few semi-formed cells in Monty’s womb and Postgres was a wee wisp of a lad… way back in 1999, give or take.  For better or for worse, it was decided that Oracle was the only database that a large site could be built upon – and it was, in fact, large.  BlackPlanet had a million members by 2000, and was doing around at least 2 or 3 hundred million page views a month by 2001 (and if you included Asian Avenue, our first site, and MiGente, our third, we were doing something like 800 million page views a month by 2001).  It was no joke, and there had really been pretty much nothing like it ever before.  I joined in 2001, and it was already a force to be reckoned with.  It continued growing, and today has something like 25 million members (or maybe more like 19 million if you strip out some spam and abandoned accounts).  But I digress.

The decision was made to go with Oracle, and the entire company’s history has been influenced by that early decision.  Oracle was not a database like MySQL or Postgres, there was nothing of the scrappy startup to it.  Oracle was the enterprise database favored by (even back then) many financials and large corporations, and back then, there was no web 2.0.  We were the small fish, even with our various Oracle installs.

Fast forward to today.  We are currently running on a combination of Oracle 10g SE1 and 11g EE databases, migrating over to an Oracle 11g EE RAC cluster.  More on that later.

Oracle is pervasive throughout our environment and architecture.  We use a SAN, centralized fiber channel storage, because it made sense for Oracle, especially w/ a RAC environment.  We keep our application logic, or at least large chunks of it, in the database – stored procedures, often kicked off by triggers, which has kept us firmly in Oracle’s bed.  Huge amounts of time was spent “optimizing” our environment for Oracle’s licensing – not its technology, but its licensing model.  This is not to say that Oracle is a bad database – on the contary, it’s not a difficult argument to make that it is the most powerful database on the market, as long as you can afford the features you need.

So, let’s look back, and figure out how exactly you optimize for a licensing model over the sorts of things that most companies optimize for, like performance, or scalability, or availability.  We were rebuilding a large chunk of our software and infrastructure, trying to modernize code and systems that had gotten quite dated.  We had an opportunity to fix mistakes that had been made, and to make some new ones.  We wanted Oracle – for better or for worse – but we had to deal with the unpleasant reality of its licensing.

Oracle’s list pricing, at the time, worked like this.  Oracle Enterprise, the high-end database, ran $40,000 per CPU, plus options.  Partitioning, for instance, was another $20k per CPU.  Oracle Standard Edition was a scaled down version that lacked many of the enterprise features – hence the name change – but was much cheaper, $15,000 per CPU.  It was, however, limited to 4 CPU systems.  It didn’t really have the option of many of the advanced features of EE – but it was less than half the price, and that made it very attractive.  Finally, there was the less known Standard Edition One – SE1 – which was only $5,000 per CPU, but limited to 2 CPU machines.  You can imagine where our minds went.

Sure, you could argue that a lot of the benefit of Oracle was lost in moving from EE to SE and potentially even more from SE to SE1.  But it was cheap, so very very cheap, and for a struggling not-quite-startup, that was meaningful.  At the time we were running EE on multiple boxes, and the cost to grow and expand would’ve potentially have been in the millions.  So, I rolled up my sleeves, and put together an escape plan.  We’d move to SE1, but in doing so, would limit ourselves to a subset of the EE features and even those only on 1 or 2 CPU boxes.  This was prior to the days of multi-core chips and almost prior to HT chips… back then, a CPU was a CPU, and that was h0w men liked it.  I laid out the cost of switching licenses, purchasing new hardware, reconfiguring the data center… after all of that, not only was it feasible, but we saved over a million dollars by following that path.

The problem with my plan, of course, was that it required us to scale our app our horizontally, and at the time, this whole notion of horizontal scalability was relatively new.  It was possible – I had watched LiveJournal scale out that way, and even contributed to some of the conversations in which they discussed how to do it.  But I wasn’t a developer, and I didn’t really know how to program against Oracle, so I mostly just shut up and let the developers do their thing.  The solution was splitting the data up, and syncing it across multiple machines with materialized views (mviews) running over database links (db links).

None of this is a problem – it works quite well, in fact.  The problem arises when you do it once, and then twice, and then suddenly every aspect of the application is using this.  It only grows worse when the decision is made not to segment the data through the practice now known as sharding, but when things are chopped into several applications.  This isn’t inherently flawed, of course, but grows more difficult to manage as a.) more applications are added and b.) the userbase grows.  Why?  Well, imagine this: if your user management app and storage is on one database, and your messaging app is on another database, in order for users to send messages back and forth, the messaging app will need to “know about” the users, right?  So you need to sync your user table (or some subset of it) from that user database to your messaging database.  That’s fine, but what happens when your user table goes from 1 million users to 10 million?  Now imagine that you’re running a complicated social network/ community website, with a couple dozen applications and around 20 million user accounts.  Suddenly, you get into a situation where you have hundreds of materialized views syncing hundreds of millions of rows of  data between databases… whoops?

The flaw in our thinking, at the time, was that we weren’t thinking of each piece of hardware as a small piece of a distributed infrastructure, each of which was fairly independent of the rest.  We were thinking in a fairly monolithic Oracle-style way, which is to say, each database was one piece of a larger whole and all of them were crucial to the growth and stability of that larger whole.  That’s not to say that a failure or performance problem on one piece of hardware took down the site; actually, things scaled fairly well overall.  It just meant that the architecture, both from an application standpoint as well as from a systems standpoint, tended to be much bigger and more complicated and more dependent than it should have been.

There’s another problem, too, which is tied into the way that Apache/PHP works and in the way that Oracle connections work.  Apache/PHP, by ‘default’, and with at least some of the modules we use, is not thread-safe.  This means that each incoming keepalive connection uses an Apache process, and that each Apache process uses mod_php and has a PHP instance.  On the Oracle front, open and closing connections is a very ‘heavy’ task, unlike w/ databases like MySQL.  This means that, typically, you want persistent connections.  However, persistent Oracle connections means persistent shadow processes on your Oracle database, each of which eat up precious system resources (primarily RAM).

So why does this become a problem?  Well, when you’re scaling out by putting each app on its own DB, that means each time a user clicks over to another app on that webserver, it connects to another database.  When each connection is persistent, it means a whole *bleep*-load of persistent connections… on every single database.  We’ve measured the shadow processes, and each connection uses around 4MB of RAM.  So let’s imagine that you have, at peak, 10,000 simultaneous users.  Let’s say you also have 10 physical database servers.  That means, potentially, that *each* database server has up to 10,000 connections to it, and at 4MB each, that means 40,000MB, aka 40GB of RAM, on *each* database, dedicated to nothing but holding open connections.  That’s not necessarily terrible, but it means that you’ll need at least 64GB on RAM on each DB, and will only be able to use 24GB of that RAM.  At today’s prices, that’s extravagant, but doable.  At the prices for RAM several years ago, that would’ve broken the bank.  (The other problem, of course, was that at peak time we had more than 10,000 users, and more than 10 DB’s.  We would’ve needed somewhere along the lines of 400GB of RAM for managing connections, not 40GB.  You get the idea.)

So what do you do?  We decided to solve this problem in two ways: first, by breaking our webservers into clusters, one per application, and then in doing even more syncing over those materialized views, so that whenever possible, webservers could get all of the data they needed to build each page from a single DB server.  At first, this worked well, but as the site scaled out further and further, and grew in complexity, it became a bear.  At our peak we had something like 16 DB servers for a single site, and something like 20 web clusters, each of which needed to be managed separately and constantly maintained and updated every time the devs changed anything in the data model.  It was, to say the least, a bear.

(As you can imagine from having read this far, this is a tale of many lessons learned the hard way, both about how to scale, and specifically about the quirks of scaling Oracle-backed PHP apps.)

That was the problem we were left with, as recently as a year ago.  The way that was solved is the story for another post.  (Continued…)

Hey there, and welcome to my new blog.

Why a blog?  Why another blog?  Well… let’s start this way.

I’ve been working in the web world, as a sys admin and architect, for over 10 years.  I’ve worked at some start ups, and some large corporate companies, and I’ve learned a few things in my time.  Not enough, never enough, but enough that I figured I might be able to help a few people learn some things, and contribute to some interesting discussions, and hell, just have a presence.  It seems to be awfully hard to do that, nowadays, without a blog.

So, a blog.

What will I be talking about?  Well, mostly, how I do my job, what I’ve learned, interesting tidbits, announcements about meetings, links to articles… the usual.  It’s aimed at people who are interested in building and running large scale websites.  I’m a unix geek, so most of it will be on that side of the house, but windows users are welcome too.  ;)

Right now I’m working at Interactive One, where we run several WordPress-powered blogs as well as BlackPlanet.com, probably the oldest surviving social network, and one of the few aimed at African-Americans.  Our sites push a few hundred million page views a month, and reach several million people.  They’re not the biggest, but they’re respectable enough.  ;)

Ok.  That’s enough to start.  Welcome aboard!

I found out the other day (via commercial on television) that Trix cereal no longer has fruit shapes, but rather colored puffs. I guess this is old news, but it was new to my ears. I don’t eat Trix very often, but I do like them very much, and I was devastated by the news. Those fruit shapes- the grapes, the bananas, the watermelons- they were so special and unique, they were cute and fun. No other cereal has shapes like Trix. But now, they have returned to their old roots- boring typical balls. How sad. You can’t even buy an old box on ebay.

The Trix evolution:

Trix are for kids. But I’ll always love them.
My other favorite cereals (I love cereal!)

Two years ago I tried the Special K diet. It worked pretty well for me, and it was pretty easy too. I didn’t get sick of the cereal and I lost about 10 pounds. A lot of times I still like eating cereal for dinner. In my house we always have at least 6 boxes of cereal. They are always different too (I like almost every kind.) I guess I grew up in a cereal-house-hold. I remember when I was very young (5 or 6?) I would wake up early and make my own cereal before my parents woke up. My parents put the bowls in a low cabinet so that I could reach them (they are still there today). And they would fill a little gravy bowl with milk- for easy pouring. Freshman year I made a video about breakfast/cheerios/Ione Barrows being consumed by cereal. I covered her in 11 boxes worth of cereal.

speaking of breakfast…

lele

Our first night taking advantage of a Full HookUp for our RV and I must admit, it’s pretty nice. It’s like having our own little house. Dinner is cooking (Kashi Pizza) in the convection oven, Rob is taking a shower, we finally get to give the dishes a decent washing and to top it off, we can see what we are doing! Of course I was just sitting here trying to figure out just what to do with myself now! The pups are sleeping so they don’t want to play (one of them got sick while we were in the supermarket and of course we don’t know which one it was. And of course they had to get sick on the fabric seat and not the linoleum floor!). I have no desire to get on the computer, though we will probably watch a movie later. I have no desire to be in touch with the outside world. (something which came back to haunt me when I got home, but I don’t want to dwell on that). I love the disconnect of traveling, which sounds a bit backwards, doesn’t it?

We explored a few of the historic mining towns in the Sierra Nevada today. I think I could live there! I love the history, the narrow streets, the smushed together buildings, plus the area was just beautiful! My only concern would be the weather- snow in the winter and maybe the heat in the summer?

Driving the RV…well, I’ve just been a passenger but you know what I mean. It definitely lacks the maneuverability of a car. I worry a lot more on narrow streets and low hanging branches. If it were me, I probably wouldn’t go down a few of the roads we went down today, namely the historic stretches of Route 49. Even parking requires much more thought and many times I just don’t want to stop for that reason. Plus we are obviously a tourist. That is a huge pain in the arse for me. You can’t just quickly pull to the side of the road to take a picture without everyone looking at you!

Preston ‘Castle’ in Ione was gorgeous- a dang shame that it is now non-functional. Up until 1960 it was a facility for Juvenile Delinquents. Now it sits in disrepair. How they can let a beautiful building like that go to pieces is beyond me!

Miguel é o primeiro Manzato registrado na Hospedaria do Imigrante

Pesquisa feita junto ao Memorial do Imigrante, onde outrora era Hospedaria, mostra que dos Manzatos lá registrados, o primeiro que aparece é Michele (que virou Miguel no Brasil).

Os computadores do Memorial do Imigrante, localizado nas proximidades da Estação Bresser do Metro, em São Paulo, não têm todos os registros de membros da família que chegaram ao Brasil no final do século XIX. Muitos dos vapores que chegavam ao Brasil, deixavam imigrantes no primeiro porto. Os dados registrados no Memorial mostram isso, principalmente quando apontam que o vapor, antes de chegar a Santos, passou pelo Rio de Janeiro. Além do Rio, existem portos em grande parte da região litorana deste imenso país, o que significa que, de repente, algum parente pode ter ficado pelo Rio de Janeiro ou se instalado na Bahia, Santa Catarina, isso para ficar apenas em alguns exemplos de estados onde há grandes registros de imigrantes vindos ao Brasil. O fato é que, dentre os registros apontados no Memorial, nossos familiares foram os primeiros a aportar no Estado de São Paulo. A chegada ocorreu no dia 28 de abril de 1887, exatamente durante o período em que a Hospedaria estava sendo construída (a obra começou em 1886 e foi concluída em 1888). Observem, também, que de todos os registros feitos – e aqui apontados – apenas a esposa de Miguel (esqueçamos Michele a partir desta linha) tem seu sobrenome registrado nos livros ali arquivados.

Maddalena Ferretto – esta grafada com dois “ts”, enquanto nosso Manzato tem apenas um – tinha 37 anos quando chegou ao lado de Miguel – que tinha 44 anos – acompanhada pelos filhos Santa (assim grafado nos registros) que é nosso Santo e que tinha 14 anos, Marco, tinha 12, Luigi, 8; Romano, 5 e Giovanni, um ano. Na lista não consta o nome de Fausto, que deve ter nascido no Brasil. Nossos parentes desembarcaram em Santos, no Vapor Bourgogne, ficaram hospedados em São Paulo, até conseguirem um local para ir. Não consta nos documentos que tenham sido contratados por fazendeiros, mas segundo Avelino, com quem conversamos recentemente, vieram para Jundiaí, se instalando no Caxambu, onde Miguel – que era lavrador – adquiriu ou foi prestar serviços numa fazenda ali existente. Com o passar dos anos e com a morte de Miguel, quem morou por lá foi Biazzio, filho de Fausto.

Acompanhem os dados de outros Manzatos a chegarem ao nosso país. Quem tem contato com alguma família citada a seguir, nos informe via comentários, para que possamos buscar parentescos mais próximos. Os dados mostram que as crianças começavam a trabalhar aos 12 anos, pois muitos já aparecem com profissões, nesta idade. Antes disso, o registro conta apenas como “criança”. Vejam como os nomes eram muito iguais ou parecidos. Tem Giuseppa e Giuseppe, Maria, Maria, Maria e Maria, Antonio, Antonio, Antonio e Antonio…

Angelo Manzato – era contador e chegou no Vapor Bretagne, no dia 24 de outubro de 1887. Tinha 49 anos e trouxe consigo Basílica (esposas), 31 anos; Giuseppa, filha 19 anos; Maria, filha, 15 anos; Primo, filho, 12 anos e Maria Luigia, 9. Vieram ainda: Giuseppe, 45 anos, irmão de Angelo. Silvestro, 11 anos, Eugenio, 5 e Pietro, 2 anos, todos filhos de Giuseppe. Foram para Valinhos, trabalhar na fazenda de Francisco Lacerda. Todos, acima de 12 anos, eram lavradores.G.B. (o registro aponta apenas as iniciais, sem mais informações). Ele, com os familiares, eram agricultores e chegou ao Brasil no dia 23 de dezembro de 1887, no vapor Bretagne.Vieram com ele, Tereza (esposa), 47 anos e os filhos: Lorenzo (17), Agostino (15), Arcangelo (11) e Luigia (13). Destino ignorado.Arcangelo chegou ao Brasil no dia 2 de janeiro de 1892 (passou o Natal e o Ano Novo em alto mar) com 38 anos. Veio sozinho no vapor Arno.Giuseppe chegou com a família no dia 4 de maio de 1888 no vapor San Martino. Todos eram agricultores e seguiram para Jaguary, para trabalhar na fazenda de Antonio C. Barbosa. Giuseppe tinha 43 anos e trouxe a esposa Antonia, 40; Gioconda, 14; Angela, 10; Luigia, 17 e Adolfo, 6.Antonio chegou ao Brasil no dia 11 de novembro de 1888 e veio no vapor Carlo Raggio, com 38 anos de idade. Veio com o filho Giuseppe, de 12 anos e com Pasqua, viúva. Não há parentesco registrado entre eles, mas ela era viúva. Destino: Vila do Rio Claro, na fazenda de Paulino Botelho.Antonio (mais um) chegou ao Brasil, com 21 anos, em 29 de junho de 1891, no Vapor Caffiaro.Veio sozinho e não consta seu destino.Luigi chegou ao Brasil no dia 8 de fevereiro de 1892, com 51 anos, junto com a esposa Maria, que tinha 40 anos. Vieram no vapor Europa, com destino a Botucatu.O vapor Rio Paraná trouxe ao Brasil Paulo, 40 anos, que desembarcou em Santos no dia 2 de abril de 1891, acompanhado do sobrinho Pompeo, de 16 anos. Destino ignorado.Pietro chegou em Santos no dia 15 de junho de 1891, vindo no vapor Victória. Ele tinha 38 anos, trouxe a esposa Luigia, de 34 e os filhos Santa, de 3 anos, Luigi, 10 e Giuseppe, 7. Não consta o destino.
Sante chegou ao Brasil no dia 11 de novembro de 1888, no mesmo vapor Carlo Raggio, que trouxe Antonio. Ele tinha 35 anos e trouxe a esposa Modesta, que tinha 33 anos, os filhos Maddalena, 24 anos, casada com Giovanni, que tinha 26. Eusébio, 3 anos, Pietro, 9, filhos de Sante e Amabile, de 3 anos, sobrinha. Imagina-se que as idades estejam incorretas, já que Sante teria apenas 11 anos e Modesta 9, quando Maddalena nasceu… O destino foi Vila do Rio Claro, na fazenda de Paulino Botelho.Mais um Luigi, este com 52 anos, desembarcou no dia 1° de maio de 1892, no vapor Colombo. Com ele veio a esposa, Maddalena, de 34 anos, outra Maddalena, esta com 66 anos e que seria madrinha de Luigi e o filho Carlo, de 15 anos. Vieram ainda, sem constar parentesco, mas sob a guarda de Luigi, Giusepe, 4 anos; Leopoldina, 10; Luigia, 11; Adele, 13; Luigi, 7 e Giovani, 1 ano. Todos foram para Xarqueada, na fazenda de Ferraz do Amaral.Maria, de 32 anos, veio sozinha no dia 20 de março de 1892, no Valor A. Doria.Silvestro também veio sozinho, com 23 anos, no vapor Washington e chegou no dia 20 de janeiro de 1900. Sua profissão, segundo os livros, era de serviços domésticos.Maria chegou ao Brasil no dia 10 de outubro de 1903, com 47 anos. Era viúva e trouxe os filhos Gino Battista, de 21 anos e Eugenio, de 18. Vieram no vapor Las Palmas, de Gênova, eram agricultores e o destino foi Rio Preto, na fazenda Francisco Schmidt. No livro consta que ela já tinha estado no Brasil. Mas não descobrimos a outra época que esteve aqui ou com quem veio.Outro Luigi, este vindo no dia 21 de março de 1906, no vapor Rio Amazonas, de Gênova. Tinha 35 anos, era agricultor e trouxe a esposa Maria, de 27 anos e os filhos Antonio, de 4 e Adolpho, de 2 anos. O destino foi São Manoel, na fazenda de Vicente Soares.Sante Manzato desembarcou do vapor Rosário, com destino a Campinas, no dia 30 de março de 1892. Tinha 43 anos, trouxe a esposa, Maria, de 34 anos e os filhos: Antonio, 16; Ferdinando, 12; Fiorenza, 4; Innocente, 8 e Maria, 1 ano.G. Batta chegou no vapor Arno, no dia 14 de setembro de 1897, aos 37 anos de idade, trazendo a família: Elisabetta, esposa, 35 anos e os filhos Angelo, 14; Luigi, 12; Maria, 10 e Ione 6 anos. O destino foi Jaú, na fazenda de Onofre Almeida Sampaio.Giuseppe trouxe a esposa Anna e o filho de um ano, Antonio, desembarcando em Santos no dia 17 de agosto de 1896, no vapor Edílio Raggio. O casal tinha 34 anos de idade e eram agricultores.

A seguir, informações sem detalhes dos Manzatos (ainda com um “T”) registrados no Memorial:

Angelo, veio sozinho no dia 5 de fevereiro de 1908; Gio Batta chegou no dia 28 de dezembro de 1913 e veio com a esposa Pasqua e com os filhos Anna, Giuglielmo e Rosa; Maria chegou em 10 de outubro de 1903 e trouxe os filhos Eugenio e Gio Battista.

O Memorial registra, ainda, Manzattos ( com dois ”t”): Cesare chegou em 8 de outubro de 1896. Trouxe a esposa Santa e os filhos: Andrea, Angela, Augusto, Elisa, Enrico, Maria, Theresa e Victorio. Segundo os registros, sua nacionalidade é espanhola. Vieram ainda, no dia 13 de março de 1923, Giuseppina e sua filha Leres, ambas Manzatto. Mansato tem três registros: Carlo veio sozinho no dia 9 de setembro de 1891; Felice veio dia 27 de agosto do mesmo ano, também sozinho e Luciano trouxe a família, a esposa Teresa e os filhos Bárbara, Francisco, Maria, Romano e Vittorio. Esta família chegou no dia 29 de outubro de 1891.

Segundo os registros no Memorial, as viagens duravam, em média, dois meses, mas em algumas ocasiões, quatro meses. Imaginem olhar para o horizonte e não ver terras, ver pessoas morrendo no vapor, primeiro por conta do tempo de duração da viagem e depois, por conta de doenças, epidemias. Um sacrifício que só terminava com a chegada ao porto, as acomodações na hospedaria e o destino definido por fazendeiros ou se arriscando numa cidade desconhecida, como deve ter sido o caso de Miguel e Maddalena.

(na próxima semana, um pouco mais sobre a hospedaria – os alojamentos, as doenças, os horários da alimentação e a ferrovia: a rota para um destino feliz).

Texto: Nelson Manzatto
Foto/Imagem: Fábio Manzatto
Pesquisas: Nelson e Fábio

Sunday night Ione, General D, Charli and I go on the hunt for a place to drink and dance, the options were limited by what public transport we could use or where our feet would take us, after some debate we settled on the Brisbane. The place was swarming with over-dressed girls in bad colours. strappy backs and so low cut fronts I wondered why they bothered to pretend to cover up.

Now that we had the drinking underway it was time to focus our efforts on dancing, we walked down to The Court, the local gay bar, who knows how we came to the decision to go there. The Court was pretty quiet, and having had a few drinks in me already, I was on the dance floor in no time. Ione joined me on the dance blocks they have (raised platforms so everyone can watch us). At some point in the night, Charli fixated on a cute blonde girl standing close by. I insisted she go up and say hi, Christina sent encouragement via txt in the form of ’start with a hi’. By the time she got the courage to talk to her and was all ready to walk on over, she was gone! As a fall back, I invited some girls to join us on the blocks though Charli wasn’t all that interested in these ones. We danced until the bar closed, and joined the standard exodus to Connections, only with a slight detour to my place on the way.

I walked home with my shirt off to cool down, we sat around in the driveway while waiting for General D to set up posts with ‘do not enter’ tape to reserve our spot for the Oz Day pool party. Ione called it a night and the rest of us went down to Connections. Walking up the stairs tends to give me a little heart rush now, for fear of a repeat of Friday night flashbacks. Dacba joined us briefly, though he must have been there with others that night, he came and went, dropping in and out on us.

On the roof, we meet Jackson, who I hit it off with as we share some common techie nerdy interests. When the time came to leave, General D, Charli, Jackson and I head back to my place. We grab bad food and stumble our way home.

Jackson chats with the girls as I hang out with Dacba. They tell me in the morning that Jackson wasn’t sure he wanted to hook-up. I know that we did, and really what do you expect when you go home with a stranger from a club. His words were along the lines of, I’ve done this before with guys like him, and all they do is sleep with you then in the morning they just kick you out.

HELLO! That would about be the perfect definition of a one night stand. As in what he was, as in what you get when you hook-up with a stranger at a club. I mean frak!

Why am I a minority in this Gay Perth scene? It seems that most guys (as in all but one so far) are not interested in a one night stand. Here I am, single, willing and able. Where are the rest of the guys like me!?!?

So the sex was pretty bad, kinda like when you are young and it’s fast and rough ’cause you don’t really know what you are doing, and it didn’t last all that long. We slept, and the next morning to my shock and horror, I discover that Charli had invited him to the pool party!

There I was trying to be aloof without being outright rude, so that Jackson would get the hint that the night was now over and he should leave. Instead he is talking to Charli about details for the party, getting numbers and location details. I sit there in silent shock waiting for him to leave so I can do the ‘WTF Charli?!?!?!’

The girls leave for the party and I say I will join them later, I wanted to clean and shower away the night before. I had hoped that if Jackson did come to the party, he would see that I wasn’t there and leave. I arrive two hours late confident that my plan would work… only I get there to see a random in the pool with Charli, Ione and General D as I got closer it was none other than Jackson. Again with the WTF?!?!?! racing through my head.

I attempt to muster up all my bitchiness and just out right say to him, ‘What part of ‘one-night-stand’ don’t you understand?’ Instead I chicken out and act all tired and aloof, reverting back to this mornings antics. I attempt to have fun with my friends while showing this guy that I’m just not that interested. He kept on trying though, I would give points for efforts if I ever planned on seeing him again. There were many attempts at conversations, I tried to sound interested but all I could think was ‘I really don’t care and why are you even here?’

I am finally able to have some fun after the very drawn out goodbye from Jackson (‘Just leave already, don’t say goodbye to everyone, just wave farewell and go!!!’) After he leaves Charli apologised for inviting him. What an awkward, uncomfortable start to a party.

The rest of Oz Day was great, slugging down punch while swimming about, chatting to friends, laughing as we remembered events from the night before, like Charli brushing her teeth while I am in the shower and me opening the door to shake it about some (not that glass doors hide all that much ;p)

Having almost fallen asleep while hanging onto the side of the pool I decide home for a quick nap and then back to join the others, only a quick nap turned into a long nap, and I end up missing the rest of the party, and what turned out to be an important phone call.

I know, I know, this is really really late for a NYE post. I have a confession to make, I was almost not going to publish this one. It will become clear later on why. But in the spirit of my blog – avowal – I feel it would be an injustice to the meaning of the word to leave this out, and so, almost a month late, here are the events of NYE.

The week that was

I want to begin by putting the week in context, you see it turned out to be one giant bender of a week. It started with the events of what’s the opposite of mondayitis?, then on Tuesday I headed out to my favourite Wine Bar (the location of a boy and his party) to catch up with a friend and preview the party room options. Turns out we got so caught up drinking wine and cocktails that we totally forgot to check out the rooms. We had a great laugh and I shared too much information about Monday night’s events. Fast forward to Friday and we have Friday night flashbacks.

«« Rewind to Wednesday and we have NYE

The night begins in the seemingly usual way, the girls, Charli and Ione, head on over and we begin the night with drinks, parading outfits and gossip (sound a little familiar?). We got stuck into the drinks and danced away to some music. Very late in the evening Angelina arrived and just in time to head down to Northbridge to ring in the new year. Before leaving the apartment we downed our fair share of tequila, cowboy and lemoncillo shooters. Charli and I took a drink for the walk down and there we were, on the streets in a sea of people. There wasn’t long until the clock was to tick over, and with very little fanfare, there we all were, standing in the street, in 2009. Luckily the night picked up some.

there and back again, and again

The girls wanted to head out to the Library, which is an odd name for a club. This would be the first time that despite the heat-wave in Perth – no shorts allowed – would get in my way of a good time. Ione accompanied me home where I quickly changed and we grabbed some more shots and a drink for the road before racing out the door. By the time we were half way it was time to ditch the glasses we took, bye bye cheap glasses, and continue on our way to join the others, only I stood on Ione’s strappy shoe and it broke! Good thing I live close, and I mean really close by, we race home to change again, more shots and another drink for the road.

It was on our way back in the second time where we were stopped by police on horseback, the conversation goes a little like this:

Police: you know it’s and offence to steal glasses from a club
Ione: we stole them from His place (points to me)
Police: just throw them out (gestures towards the bin)

Bye bye cheap glasses number two. Good thing they were in a good mood, especially considering Ione’s feisty comeback – though I support what she said 100%.

We eventually catch up with the others and get busy drinking and dancing. At some point in the night, Ione hands me some cash and tells me to head on over to the gay nighclub, and off I go in search of the NYE shag. Sadly, at this point Dacba came along for the ride and he was in full swing. Dacba was briefly distracted while I paid whatever amount they asked to get inside Connections and then, as if to pay me back for that brief moment of distraction…

just to clarify on why so late

…the next thing I know I feel a foot nudge me. I wake up, to hear a voice ask ‘Are you alright?’, I my drunken haze and apparently abandoned by Dacba, I find myself alone being woken up from sleeping in the driveway to my apartment complex. I slur my response ‘I just need to get upstairs’ and stumble down the driveway only to be greeted by Dacba, he was waiting for me at the foyer entrance. At least I made it inside the gate and didn’t pass out somewhere on the streets of Northbridge.

Now, I get up to a lot of crazy things when I go out, but never before have I just passed out on the floor of anywhere (ok there was this ONE time I kinda fell asleep on the bench in a changeroom at a wedding reception held at a Yacht club, but that’s a whole other story). It was for this reason I was too ashamed to post about NYE, but here it is for the world to see, and I have to make peace with the crazy night that it was – I no longer hang my head in shame about it, it’s in the past, I have accepted it and moved on.

The next morning, I wake up to hear my phone ring, wait a second, it’s morning already?!!? Why does my phone have so many missed calls and why is someone at my door? I open the door to find Charli, wide eyed exclaiming something along the lines of thank god your ok and what happened to you last night. I look through my phone to see missed calls and un-read txt messages from both Ione and Charli, also from General D I think. I search my mind for the events of the night before, and turn to ask Dacba what the hell happened, but in his usual style, Dacba is nowhere to be seen when you have questions!

NYE earnings

Later that day, I do the morning after things, clean up, wash clothes, and during this time I pull out a wad of cash from my pockets. I drop it by my wallet thinking I must have taken more cash with me when Ione and I popped back home. When I put it all away in my wallet I realise that I had more cash with me than when the night started. Now this was odd because I deliberately left my key card at home to stick to a budget. I’m a little worried about this and when discussing the night with Christina she quips ‘maybe you got payment for services rendered?’

Being that Dacba had still failed to make a visit to discuss the nights events, I began to wonder. I had often joked about being a whore, what if I was? What else did I get up to duing that time apart from my friends to greeting a surprised Charli at my door the next day?

For weeks this plagued me, not matter how hard I tried, I could not recall the nights events and no-one could shed any light. It wasn’t until the other day at the beach as Charli, Ione, General D and I chatted about a boy and his party, that we fell to the topic of NYE, and someone asked the question about the extra cash, to which Ione was finally able to shed some light. Turns out she had given my more than enough to get in and have some drinks at Connections. They asked how much I paid to get in, and all I could say was ‘What ever they asked I pay’. So luckily I didn’t turn tricks for cash on the streets or in a club, we are pretty sure on that one. I would still like to know what happened that night. If you were there and you know me, leave a comment.

It is with a sigh that I finish this post. A tough one to write as I had to own what I did that night – and the fact that Dacba stole most of my memories. Not my proudest moments, but nonetheless, from what I do remember, NYE was one hell of a night, never partly to be forgotten ;p

Some say it’s haunted!

I was excited to finally have some time to finish this production.  Pictures taken from an all day photo shoot in Ione, CA on November 15th 2008.

Preston Castle

I’m Busy… Here are a few things to look over today.

-Happy Birthday Fela Kuti!

-Hipsters set out to re-populate the earth! It’s ironic… Here are a few stand-outs from a recently compiled list of popular baby names for hipsters. Asher, Butch, Dashiell, Dexter, Edie, Gus, Harper, Hudson, Ione, Isla, Kai, Leonora, Leopold, Levi, Luca, Magnus, Orson, Poppy, Roscoe, Sadie, Silas, Stella, Talullah, Theo

Acorn? What about voter supression? Read More

-Radiohead announced today that In Rainbows sold around 3 million copies across all formats. While  BitTorrent downloads surpassed that number, the band still made more on the record than they did off of 2003’s Hail to the Thief (994,000 physical sales). While many were quick to write-off Radiohead and their publicity machine of an album, I though quite highly of it. “All i Need” gets me every time for some reason. 

Stats:

• After being made available for free for 3 months the album was no.1 in the UK and in the US
• 1st Radiohead album on iTunes – no.1 album selling 30,000 units in the US in the first week
• The physical CD has sold 1.75 million to date and is still top 200 UK & US
• They sold 100k boxsets via W.A.S.T.E.
• Nearing 17 million plays on last.fm
• 1.2 million fans will see the tour
• The digital income from the experiment made a material difference to WCM’s UK digital revenue this year

Ione is a city in Amador County, California, United States. The population was 7,129 at the 2000 census. Once known as “Bed-Bug” and “Freeze Out,” Ione was an important supply center on the main road to the Mother Lode and Southern Mines.