Going the Way of the Dodo

I've been thinking a lot about the dodo and other extinct creatures lately. First, there was this hilarious quote from a makeup artist in Revista O Globo this past Sunday. According to him, thin eyebrows are "going extinct" in Europe. That made me laugh really hard because so are mine (thin and vanishing rapidly).

Second, there is a documentary playing at a movie theater near me called O Fim do Sem Fim (something like The End of the Endless). It is about occupations or professions that are disappearing in Brazil. The directors (there are three of them) spent months traveling through several states to interview and film, among others, a lighthouse keeper, a movie theather usher, a diamond prospector, a former railroad employee, a cordel writer, an elevator operator, a church bell ringer, and my three favorites: a prophet, a rooster maestro, and a or, shall I say, THE, master of masters. The prophet, well, you know what they do. The rooster maestro teaches roosters to crow and the master of masters knows everything there is in the Universe and was writing a book about it when the documentary makers appeared at his doorstep. In case you're wondering, the usher was discovered at a porn cinema downtown Rio that happens to be one of the loveliest old buildings in town (I've only seen the lobby, I promise). The film is at times a bit confusing, the camera work often irritating, but the subjects are eminently likeable. I found myself rooting for the prospector and his wife to find the biggest rock on the planet. And for all the others to be able to keep doing whatever it is that they still do until we all reach the end of the endless.

Thirdly, and a propos of this documentary, Brazilian railroads: this enormous country has, unfortunately, let them die in favor of, you guessed, roads and automobiles. One of the saddest scenes in the film has the former railway man walking amidst rusting and rotting locomotives and boxcars in an overgrown train yard, talking about the good old days.

As for the dodo...I think he was the cutest thing and he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But then, think of the Chinese river dolphin. Have we learned anything since then?

Image © Oxford University Museum of Natural History.