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 Hercílio Luz Bridge reopening

 
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December 31, 2019
 Title: Hercílio Luz Bridge
 Description: It is a suspension bridge of 821 meters long. It was built from November 14, 1922 and opened on May 13, 1926. It connects the island and continental part of the city of Florianópolis.
 Local: Florianópolis, Brazil
 Date of Registration: 31/12/2019
 
      Forty-nine years after first passing the Hercílio Luz Bridge, time when cars were driving on wooden trails, I return to it on December 30, 2019 to celebrate its reopening and relive the emotions of my eleven years: the balance of the bridge, the dimensions, the engineering...
      But I also came across watching the behavior of the people who were there, now with lots of ways to "like" and "share": cell phones, camcorders, drones, skateboards, bikes, bungee jump ... things that didn`t exist in my childhood and were not imagined by the builders of the early 1920s.
      Other times, another generation but really more than a postcard, monument or historical heritage, today I could see how much the Hercílio Luz Bridge is configured as an element of integration; not only between continental and island land, but between people.
      I saw the older ones remembering the old days and the younger ones experiencing of feeling the heritage that belongs to them. I have seen people of all kinds appropriating of what really belongs to them, their inheritance. I saw in their faces the feeling of belonging, the feeling of truly being part of a larger whole.
      Today I saw the Santa Catarina family smile, spontaneously talking, fraternizing, dancing, recording their selfies, interacting with each other: a feeling that I did not realize for a long time in this proportion.
      I return home happy certain that we are increasingly learning from past mistakes and rescuing what is genuinely ours: our material goods, history, origins, culture, and what is most important for consolidation of our identity as a people: unity, our greatest asset!
      I think that perhaps this is really the feeling we should start 2020: recognizing in the other person a part of the whole to which I am also inserted.
       Happy New Year!


Ruy Luiz Machado


 


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