In response to Steve Crawford:

I lived in Brazil (in the late 1960's) in a small interior town where people
talked for months with great expectations about the circus that was coming
to town and would stay for 4-5 days ---an annual event. Anything out of the
ordinary was a welcome relief to a town with essentially no entertainment
except radios hooked up to car batteries and "Novelas em Retrato" --novels
in photographs, which were magazines that told soap-opera-like stories with
photographs and dialog bubbles like comic books. In a town filled with about
90% illiterate people, the high school students were in much demand to read
the stories to their neighbors.

For someone who grew up watching Ed Sullivan and the Sealtest Big Top Circus
on TV, I found the circus that arrived quite a disappointment. The
tight-rope walker balanced on a wire about 2 feet off the ground, for
example. (Even I might have attempted that trick.) There were a few other
very bad acrobatic acts, some singing and music, a clown who I didn't find
funny ---maybe his act didn't translate well. No animals. But the Brazilians
loved it and many attended several performances, which were essentially the
same each night.

The highlight of the show was the "drama" ---of which I can remember little
except that someone repeated over and over the line, "Oh, poor Maria; she is
totally bald," which resulted in roars of laughter every time. I admit it is
funnier in Portuguese, but not by much.

Mothers warned their children that some of the circus people were Gypsies
and con artists ---to enjoy the show but stay clear of the circus workers
outside of the tent. I remember, at the time, thinking of the King and the
Duke in Huck Finn, and that the small towns on the Mississippi in the early
1800's weren't that much different than my small Brazilian town over a
hundred year later.

The Brazilian movie "Bye, Bye Brazil" is about a small band of traveling
entertainers in Brazil at about that same time. (The film is quite
good ---adult content.) In the film, the show is not well attended because
people are watching TV.  Before I left my small Brazilian town, one tavern
and the bank president had the first 2 TVs in the city after the electric
lines stretched to there from the state capital, so I imagine the traveling
circus in that small town lost its appeal within a few years, too.

I recently found a website about the town where I lived in Brazil. The
'virtual postcards' on the site show a city I hardly recognize. The first
postcard I pulled up was a photo of the town's cell tower. I'm not so sure
that demonstrates progress.

Carol Peiffer