THE EASY WAY OUT

THE EASY WAY OUT



This fine morning
Coyote feeling worse
than useless.  Happens.
So, she says, write
a poem.  Oh, right, write
a poem, okay, take
the easy way out.

YES!

FROM KATE

Hi to all of you,

I had a real flashback yesterday evening after a beautiful weekend with my three grandsons in Franklin Massachusetts (home of the first American free Library)  They have created a very suburban village in an old Italian Village full of old Roman Catholic Iconic sculpture. They have created a new sculpture park and the young families have a place to walk in nature and see public sculpture.  

I turned on the IPAD to check my email and there was a beautiful shot of Havana with a skycape against the Sea Wall on a day of blue sky with billowing clouds.  It brought a flood of images to mind that really delighted me.  One of standing in a beautiful tropical breeze on the top of the hotel near ours where Cuban music played each night. I am standing by Kent Twitchell looking over the edge at the beautiful detail in the architecture of the building next door.  The gorgeous European detail, gargoyles and long carved West Indies French doors flung open to reveal a small glimpse of the interior.  It was breathtaking and it made me for a short moment aware of the incredible work of so many people to create these buildings. It was a moment of remembering how incredible each human life is, invested in enormous intelligence and spirit and creativity.  Seems to me our egos rob us of awareness of the miracles all around us in the world.

As I drove toward home--a 90 mile trip we make quite often to return to our post and beam cedar cottage--a beautiful tropical storm was brewing out near Nantucket.   Steve and I had taken different cars in order to get all our errands done while up in the more modern shopping of off Cape communities.  The sky was so spectacular and it lit the whole horizon creating  such a show you couldn't imagine what you were seeing. 

It made me remember our day at the beautiful Fine Arts Museum in Havana, the way the thunder and lightening had echoed through out the amazing open stairway of the museum.   It was as though nature was creating a symphony to match the works collected in the museum. 

I wanted to write to myself in my journal that night , to never forget the powerful moments that can't be really described even in images.  The feel of the oppressive humidity on our skin, the heat and the build up to the first lightening strike.   I notice in myself and so many artists around me the striving and the burning creativity that sometimes keep me from being present for the real miracles around me. 

I will remember this weekend, such a great time with my friends and family just enjoying each other and being aware that it is always a miracle, each day, each friend, each child running in the grass.  

Art gives us a second look at those moments when we take the time to really look.   I am sure the wonderful people of Cuba (that we met and experienced_ often see a show of fantastic lightening and thunder out beyond that sea wall.  Perhaps those gifts of nature in someway make the other suffering tolerable at times?

FROM KATE

Here's the latest from Kate, plus a wonderful offer--if anyone is up for some time back east!

Hi Peter,

I hope you and Ellie got to the beach and have enjoyed the summer.   Our life got to busy we just took it day by day...

My brother had such a great time, I set him up to paint for 10 days out in the garden, even though he is very abstract in nature it really made his spirit come alive.  I fed him from our organic garden and he went home with 10 paintings to Detroit.  Frontal Lobe Dementia takes your verbal world away, think of becoming instinctive like a domestic animal but more.  He still is very cogent and funny, his humor has kicked in.  His visual world has become more lucid and amazing.
We then had 19 people here for almost three weeks. So wonderfully fun, to the beach each day and the pond and dinner by torch light everynight.  Whew I just couldnt write at all.  It reminded me of our time in Cuba the way people stay outside and then the nights are so alive.   

While touring with our 17 year old granddaughter looking at colleges where she is being recruited in a way by the theater programs, we went to Boston College and realized that the WILFREDO LAM , show is coming  there in September what a small world.    Our college professor Marie Canaves fled Havana as a child and she has shared so much with me.  I am taking her gifts for the 60th birthday I brought from Havana on Sunday,  There have been many documentaries on CUBA on PBS all summer.  We can never get enough.

Still working with Deede Tonelli at the Cape Cod Museum of Art on bringing  you here. It would be such a gift to our art community.  I have actually been reading Persist at night, what a wonderful book.  Thanks for writing it.

This is the craziest request but I will post it. Our house exchange in San Francisco fell through due to illness for the people there.  We are coming anyway.  Do you know anyone, who you would trust to take care of a beautiful house and art collection who would like to use our house from Sept 14 to October 25.  It has to be someone who we can get a reccomendation on.  We dont rent this house, its not a rental in any way with a big art collection and gardens. but we have had writers and artists do residencies here.  Just a crazy thought but perhaps there is an artist or writer who would be able to rent such a place but might enjoy staying here on a retreat while we are gone?  

Hope you are doing good, and that you had time to relax, enjoy , write and make art.  

Love to all the LA crowd, Kate and Steve  

www.studioonsloughroad.com  

PS  I made a typo , the house would be free, we never let people pay to stay here but we love it when artists or writers come and stay while we are out to see our kids in California. Its an offer of a place for people to come and get inspired. Rentals go for 4 to 5 thousand a week on Cape Cod in August, but we would never charge artists or writers , not in our nature, yet we are very careful about who stays here? does that make sense?

FROM KATE

William Pate from Detroit is visiting US on Cape Cod.  He is my brother, a sculptor and painter who was Joel Shapiro's studio assistant in the 70's. Our uncle Maurice Pate, who was the founder of UNICEF, had a home here and we visited many times in the summer. Maurice's  work in the world influenced my whole family. He was nominated along with U Thant for the Nobel Peace Prize for creating UNICEF. 

My brother, 60 years old, is a Cum Laude graduate of Princeton in Fine Arts, he studied with Tony Smith and made environmental sculptures like Richard Serra and others back in the 70s.  He now has PPA, an awful form of dementia, and and no longer can drive or talk--so brilliant and so young to be in such a way.  But he is here making art with me for three weeks.  We watched the Buena Vista Social Club and I read your blog to him.  Amazing how the story of Cuba touches people in a deep way.   

We both keep thinking of what he might think of Cuba as we saw it.  We pored over the many images of people to people and spent the afternoon playing around with images that caught our attention. It is amazing how the impact of this journey lives on.  So many amazing artists, writers and activists who shared the trip with us.  It continues to impact people because it is such a compelling story.  We painted all afternoon experimenting with thoughts that came from the many photographs.  

Viva Cuba. yes? Love Kate and Steve.

FROM TRICIA...

Greetings To All…. i hope everyone is close to 100% …….

I had to wait to share ……  My Biggest personal news… I have been awarded a California Community Foundation Mid-career Artist Fellowship  centered on my contributions to LA through the arts….

…..this of course has contributed to my spirit being elevated and most importantly allowing direct support for the creation of an interactive website to serve as a pictorial platform/map of my 20+ years in the trenches/streets challenging and yet nurturing policy for interdisciplinary civil equity through equality…..

……where is the support both generationally, politically and financially for this work to continue….?  At this juncture I think the only way we provide for the public in America ….is through private investment…..

My desire is that a discussion will follow and allow for a natural editing of information, and a small concise book will emerge….

Does anyone know a creative, patient website and code designer/developer…?  now with the fellowship… it affords me not having to work with phd students… not that it’s an unpleasant experience… just that you are at the mercy of their time commitments…. so an issue of you get what you pay for arises…. 

Recommendations taken… thanks to all…

I want to have a celebration in the near future… I will keep all posted… I did like the idea of us all meeting at one of the new downtown spots… Zinc is one Peter and Ellie recommended… belonging to their friends

The CCF fellowship website is a place where the public can view the work of current fellows.

The Kim Abeles announcement (click on the link, below) describes her newest, poignant and inclusive public art piece, in which I am honored to have my shoes included as a local leader of community building through the arts, sharing my story and  allowing everyone to “walk a mile in my shoes”…… Please visit.  you will enjoy having an urban experience to couple with Isabelle’s downtown offering of new Los Angeles.

……this has come at a time that has elevated my sense of accomplishment and encouraged me to move on to walk a mile to  discover my new endeavor… bestest to all my new friends, sending good thoughts... 

FROM ISABEL

DTLA Arts District is my office

My daily life is kind of crazy, but tons of fun! On any given day I average at least three meetings that take me all over greater L.A., from the North to the South; from the East to West, meeting artists, gallerists, educators, politicians, and the community at-large. Given the heavy traffic and the distance from point A to point B, I have recourse to meet people half way and mostly in Downtown Los Angeles. To be more exact, the DTLA Arts District.

Luckily for me, DTLA is burgeoning with new cafes and restaurants that serve as the best places to hold meetings that accommodate all budgets. Handsome Café, Urth, Stumptown, DailyDosage, Novel Café, Pie Hole, Demitasse, and Eat Drink Americano, are, among many others, the places were I hold my meetings and to people-watch while I wait for my next meeting. I love immersing myself in the culture that makes LA one of the most interesting cities in the world. I have met some of the most fascinating people while waiting for my next meeting.

At the recommendation from Peter Clothier, confirmed by René Goiffon, I added Zinc Café to my list. Zinc...

... is located at 580 Mateo Street, in the growing arts district. It has an excellent menu (vegetarian), great ambiance, and an impressive wine list. 

Zinc would be the perfect place for all of us to meet once again!

Downtown L.A. is definitely on rise as a place to work and to eat. And it's without a doubt one of the best spots in town to hold meetings!

So next time you are in need to meet someone or to show off LA to out of town family or friends, visit DTLA Arts District. You’ll be happy you did!

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FROM KATE

We had a beautiful tropical Cuba sort of humid summer evening with a breeze like the night we all went to the Fort for the cannon firing.  It was perfect for an opening of the remarkable work of Dale Bradley and his daughter Sarah.  

Dale is the inventor of the massive large scale platen press originally built in the Beaver Mill in North Adams, around the time of the building of Mass MOCA. He was originally an anthropological illustrator for Williams College and went on in his early career to become an accomplished etcher, working with wildlife images.  As time progressed he became a contemporary artist creating experimental ways to use printmaking.  

In the last four years he has created three state-of-the-art pneumatic presses that allow him to vacumn seal large works, often wood cuts, to canvas, so they do not have to remain beneath glass.  His subject matter is related to Cuban culture, magic, animal spirits and the Haitian culture in the Dominican Republic.  His daughter who created art alongside her dad for thirty years has become a mixed media sculptor in Santa Fe.    

The evening was beautiful, with our Cuban music playing. Marie Canaves, our art history professor from Cape Cod Community College, who did a show with us three years ago about her childhood in Havana Cuba, came to the opening with homemade flan--in fact it was a very special flan whose magical qualities I can't articulate; "nectar from the Gods," she says.  

So Cuba seems to be with us in a big way still.  We hope it has remained with all of you.

FROM SARAH

Hello fellow Cuba travelers--

I am winding up my journal entries on Cuba. My latest, a peek into Santeria, is on line now (there is a photo of Isabel in it, and a photo credit to Peter Clothier)  

The next entry (Thursday) I will upload photos of Fuster's house and some interior (not street) art, and then I will wrap up my Cuba diary (entry # 9) with photos of the necropolis, next week.

If you are around Eagle Rock/Elysian Park this weekend, I am one of the artists in Cactus Gallery's Birds show, part deux (held over by popular demand). It's a fun gallery, and the NELA art walk is nearby, same night, as well as NOMAD books anniversary event, just down the street from Cactus on Blake (Nomad is a funky, arty bookstore)

Next week, on the 17th, I will be a featured artist in the Montana Avenue Art Walk, showing my paintings at Urban Hardwoods' very beautiful showroom. 

Also, my family and I would like to invite you to join us for a boat trip, just around the harbor for a few hours. (The boat is in Long Beach.) We'll save Catalina for a later date.  Let me know if any weekend days this summer suit your schedule? (Gail, Kate and Steve--you may need to fly out for this...)

Cheers,

S

ISABEL IS BUSY!

Culturally vibrant DTLA, July 4^th!

We Angelenos are kind of new at using public transportation. After all, we are part of the car culture so perfectly conveyed by Frank Romero in his 1984 Going to the Olympics mural on the 101 Freeway. But this has changed dramatically thanks to the younger generation. Our youth ride bikes and use the Metro throughout greater L.A. They move easily from their bikes to the Metro while going to school, attending art openings, lectures, our mural tours, bars, and restaurants. I must confess we used to do this with my husband until the end of the 1990s. We were known for parking our cars in Santa Monica, riding bikes to Paradise Cove for brunch and then winding down the hill after having dozens of oysters and a cool Chardonnay by the ocean side.

So on July 4^th, Stephen (my husband) and I decided to take the Metro to Grand Park in DTLA. We parked our car at the South Pasadena Station, charged our TAP cards (cheaper for senior citizens) and jumped on the Metro...

... to culturally vibrant Downtown Los Angeles. We both enjoyed the ride as we moved through South Pasadena, Highland Park, and Chinatown, to arrive in Japanese Town (corner of 1^st & Alameda). We happily walked to Grand Park, the fabulous 13 acres of beauty, our own Central Park, created in 2012 ($56 million price tag) where a variety of events are offered everyday.

It’s amazing how much one can see when walking and not driving. We passed MOCA/Geffen (Mike Kelley’s exhibition is free every Sunday during July), the Japanese American Museum...

... the Far Bar (one of our favorite outdoor bars in the Summer) and many great sushi places. We walked by the LAPD and The LA Times buildings, both overlooked by Disney Hall at the corner of First & Grand.

It took us a half hour from the time we parked to our arrival at Grand Park by 7.30 p.m. Everyone arriving was checked, same way as it happens when one travels internationally. There were thousands that joined the festivities, which began at 1 p.m. There were food trucks everywhere & no alcohol. It was fantastic to see so many people singing, dancing, and having a wonderful family time at the Park.

We were happy to celebrate the 4^th of July for the second time since Grand Park’s creation with thousands of awesome Angelenos!

FROM KATE..., JULY 4

(Thanks to Kate for another submission!  Keep 'em coming! -- PC)

We are having a hurricane party.  Ha. 

Hope everyone is back to normal, that was a tough bug whatever is was. Do you have Oscar's email. Sendmeanywhere@...?   (It's actually sendmeanywhere2009@yahoo.com--PC))  We would love to thank him. 

It sounds like the Mural Conservancy is doing just great work.  We were so thrilled to be included.

Really enjoyed and came back in love with all things Cuba.  

Our new Director at the Cape Cod Museum of Art, Deede Tonelli, who worked at UCLA and knows Al very well is working to bring Al, Peter and Ellie here for our docents and artists. Would be so great and we are working on it.   

Summer is well under way, art, sports, great time with grand kids and too much work of our own making.  Love hearing from all.  Thanks to Peter for his wonderful blog and Sarah Stone for the great photos and travel notes, wonderful to read and look back.  

Take care, Love Kate and Steve

Nice picture of Steve!  And their clan...

I HEAR FROM... OSCAR!

I wrote to our friend Oscar a while back, to thank him and bring him up to date with our communal bug.  Here's what I heard back yesterday afternoon (with no editing from me):

HI PETER,THANKS FOR WRITING AND KEEPING IN TOUCH I AM OK THANK GOD BUT NOTHING TO DO IN THE OFFICE NOW, ALSO THANKS FOR TELLING ME ABOUT THE MISTERIOUS INTESTINAL BUG RIGHT AFTER YOU LEFT I HAD SOME DISORDERS TOO BUT NOTHING SIRIOUS AND ONLY LASTED COUPLE OF DAYS I RECOMMENDED YUDY THE CUBATOURSTRAVEL REP IN HAVANA TO DUOBLE CHECK ALL THE PLACES WHERE WE ATE SHE DID NOT SEEM TO BE THAT CONCERNED SO IT WOULD BE GOOD IF YOU WRITE TO THE TRAVEL AGENCY IN THE STATES MAY BE SHE THOUGHT I WAS JOKING AS USUAL, HOPE U ARE OK NOW HUGS OSCAR

Let's send him some good vibes!

FROM AL...

... this notification of plans for a trip to next year's Havana Bienal.  Hope he's planning to work with a different connection to and from Miami!

DEFINITELY DRINKING FOR A GOOD CAUSE!

 (From Isabel...)

I knew bartenders were fun, but I was in awe witnessing the creativity and performance skills of top LA bartenders as they mixed the most delicious concoctions at Sadie House in Hollywood.  The House was crowded with hundreds of beautiful and mostly young people. I quickly forgot the age difference as I walked into the place. Indoor and outdoor bar and food stations throughout offered delightful drinks to quench the thirst of the happy crowd. The World Cup game between Costa Rica vs Greece was playing at the cozy bar inside. Hundreds were cheering for one team or the other as incredible drinks were poured back and forth and delicious bar bites were served. The all-inclusive ticket to benefit The Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles, included cocktails, art, entertainment, and hors d’oeuvres from Sadie and Guelaguetza.

The fundraising event by Art Beyond the Glass (ABTG) was to benefit MCLA’s next mural restoration. In a Huffington Post article, writer José Martinez stated on June 23, “Sadie is once again donating its space, staff and food. Art Beyond the Glass lll will be raising funds for the Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles, an acclaimed arts nonprofit that works to restore, preserve, and document the murals of Los Angeles. Proceeds from ABTG lll will help restore Luchas del Mundo (Struggles of the World), a landmark mural created for the 1984 Olympics by famed artist Willie Herrón lll.”

When Daniel Djang, one of the co-founders of Art Beyond the Glass approached me to have this fundraiser, I knew our passion for what we do had touched people’s hearts in the LA community and worldwide. Djang told me that, “restoring one of the freeway murals from the 1984 Olympics will be appreciated by future generations of Angelenos. It's something that everyone can look back on with pride."

MCLA’s recent fundraising trip to Cuba with a fabulous group of people, followed by the one by Art Beyond the Glass confirms that we are doing something right and made June an spectacular month in my life. We forged life-lasting memories with the friends we made going to Cuba. New friends were made Sunday at Sadie.

Isabel, making new friends!  

I’m so lucky to live in vibrant and culturally diverse Los Angeles, a place where our history is written on the walls!

FABELO

From Peter

For some thoughts today on the Roberto Fabelo show at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, please click here...

Love to all!

A VISIT TO MOLAA

(Cross-posted from The Buddha Diaries)

We were delighted to be reunited with several of our Cuban tour group members at the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) in Long Beach on Saturday evening...

We were there for the opening of the exhibition of Roberto Fabelo, an artist whose work we had seen and admired at the art museum in Havana--and were treated not only to a comprehensive view of Fabelo's work, but also to three other fine exhibitions: the Mexican artist Marcos Ramirez Erre, a group show entitled Neomexicanism, and another entitled Magical Realism and Modern Oaxaca.  An eye-opening, not to say mind-bending combination.

I can't begin to "review" all four exhibitions here.  What I can say is that I felt a healthy sense of shame for having failed to visit this museum before.  Created in 1996, it's a remarkable institution, devoted to the exhibition of Latin American Art and to educating the public about the art of our neighbors to the south.  It was good to hear (from our fellow tour member Isabel Rojas-Williams: see her post on Viva Cuba!) that the museum will now extend its embrace to the work of Latinos born in Los Angeles--a policy she has been proposing since the start of the museum.  The enthusiastic crowd of supporters at Saturday's grand opening was testament to the flourishing of a culture I had been--to my own loss--only peripherally aware of.   The museum itself is an elegant and capacious building...

... offering generously proportioned gallery spaces for its exhibitions, along with other fine amenities including an intriguing gift shop stocked with books and trinkets relevant to the museum's theme.  It's a cautionary reminder--to myself, and I suspect to many others--of just how insular, self-referential and self-congratulatory our "Anglo" culture has become; and how much we stand to benefit, particularly in Los Angeles, from learning to pay attention to those others that thrive in our midst.

I'm going to be writing more about the Roberto Fabelo exhibition in a while.  Meantime, I was struck both by the quality and the passion evident in the other shows.  Marcos Ramirez Erre's accomplished work in his project room was a conceptually-based critique of the dominant corporate oil economy; it included a powerful row of high-tech, finish-fetish riot police shields created out of oil drum halves, emblazoned with the modified names of oil giants ("SHELL" becomes "HELL"), each installed with an adjacent police night stick.

In the "Neomexicanism" and "Magical Realism" shows, I thought a lot about the difference between our North American visual arts culture, where social criticism seems often to proceed from an intellectual, conceptual position, and the bred-in-the-bone social passion that permeates even the painting of our southern neighbors.  The aesthetic heritage of lofty Modernism--and of those influential mid-20th century critics who preached the self-referential quality of all art, including painting--is far stronger in our culture than in others, which never lost their contact with "the people" they addressed.  There is a sad undercurrent of truth in the assertion that our American art has become elitist, a pleasure reserved for those in the know--and inaccessible to the majority of the population.  A visit to the Museum of Latin American Art is a reminder that artists, too, can have a voice in the much-needed social conversation.  See, for example, this historically revisionist view of Zapata as martyr:

Mónica Castillo (Mexico, b. 1951) Plato de Zapata / Zapata’s Dish, 1987. Oil on canvas. 23 3/4 x 48 in. Nicholas Ingram Collection. Photo by Blue Fire courtesy of Teresa Eckmann

I responded, too, to the artists' willingness to put their visual skills to work in exploring the depths of their own psyche, revealing sometimes darker aspects of their inner lives.  Here's one who does it with whimsical, poignant humor in a "wedding portrait":

Nahum B. Zenil (Mexico) Retrato de boda, 1992 Lithograph, 50/100, 21 x 28 in. Robert Gumbiner Foundation

I'll want to talk about this aspect of Latin art in greater depth when I start to think about the solo exhibition of Fabelo.  Stay tuned.

FROM GAIL

CONGRATULATIONS to Gail for this great achievement at the Bronx River Art Center, and the promise of more great things to come!  She writes:


Like Isabel I'm all caught up in the never ceasing world of non profit and agent, and have so little time for socializing. But of course I'd like to share with my Cuba comrades my recent crowning achievement of breaking ground on the $10 million renovation of our dear old warehouse art center...

(Photo submitted by Gail without specific credit)

And, the news I got at the GB when our councilman announced that he had allocated another 600k to the project in this years capital budget, and, that apparently there are additional matched funds from the Mayor and the borough Pres that brings this year's purse to 1.2 mil. 

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FROM ISABEL

I'm looking forward to finding the time to contribute. Unfortunately because of our health issues and my so many job commitments, I've not been able to find the time to write. I'd love to write about the so many events happening right now, but not time. Just to mention a few:

1. We were able to hep secure $750,000 funding from Council to a City-Wide Mural Program (this took innumerable meetings, lobbying, phone calls, & emails and it's not as good as we had hoped).

2. MOLAA changed its politics about excluding Latinos born in LA in their exhibitions. Now MOLAA will exhibit artworks by Latinos born in L.A., something I've been proposing to the Museum since its creation in 1996. 

3. Join Council President Herb Wesson, Jr., Councilmember Tom LaBonge, Councilmember Curren D. Price, Jr., and the Los Angeles City Council in partnership with The Wende Museum in celebration of Nelson Mandela Day in the City of Los Angeles for the unveiling of renowned muralist, Kent Twitchell's portrait of Nelson Mandela on the Berlin Wall Monument. Special performance by the Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles. When: 9:30am, Friday, July 18, 2014. Where: Berlin Wall Monument (5900 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA)."

I'm looking forward to seeing you all today!

AND... FROM SARAH

Since returning from Cuba I have gotten back to much of my usual routine, with the addition of doing much more writing than usual. I have been recalling my sensory, intellectual and aesthetic impressions of the trip as I work through my pile of photos and, as you can imagine, I am trying to work fast because every passing day I feel bits of crucial data evaporating into the ether. I am posting these "notes from the field" in my blog, Art Integral, which you can reach by clicking on the link.  

Peter helpfully pointed out that my blog settings were not open for comments, so I have changed them, and fixed a few other settings to boot. I publish new articles Tuesdays and Thursdays (I have been writing double time because there is a lot of material to plow through) so if you want to follow the articles, there is a blue button on the top right of the page.

Blogging aside, when I returned to LA the first thing facing me was gathering the materials for my display booth at the Culver City Affair of the Arts where I brought many of my original paintings and prints. I loved meeting all of the new people, and gathering many new names for my mailing list, but I was also in a fog from the first onslaught of our "dark passenger". 

Since then I have been working on some of the connections I made there, one of which may turn into an opportunity to design nature art gift items for Parks Department visitor centers.  Several of my bird paintings on view at Cactus Gallery in Eagle Rock.  The show has been extended through July 31st, if any of you are in the Eagle Rock area (it's actually technically Elysian Village, aka Frogtown) and finally two of my carnival banners are being displayed at an antiques shop in Canoga Park.

That's my update!

FROM KATE

Steve and I huddled down in our summer white sheets with fan blowing cool sea breeze and watched our movie that came in the mail today.  Buena Vista Social Club, the Wen Wenders movie about Cuba. 

I hope it isnt some strange obsession I am getting with this beautiful, sad country, but I can't get over the emotion this beautiful movie evoked in us.   If you have never seen it you can purchase it online. You will probably want to keep your copy and watch over and over. 


The story is so poignant, about the quest to find the old classic musicians of Cuba, before they were forgotten.   

The characters are real and the story is the most romantic longing for human connection I have seen in long time.  The power these people, who have been shut in time since the fifties, have to survive is tear jerking. The way they have adapted their inner psyche and turned it to harmony and syncopation, the rhythm in body movement of the longings and heartbreak of life. Loss, rejection, longing, passion, unrequited love all at the bench of a beautiful piano, or the neck of  a handcrafted string instrument, made in Cuba, but of Spanish ancestry.  


I will ruin it for you if I tell you the ending, so just rush and get a copy.   Wim Wenders, one of my favorite film makers, uses the moody light, the sky, the beautiful buildings decaying in the tropical salt air, to create what we saw with our own eyes.  People who have adapted to an ever shrinking world, by making the most of it. 

One beautiful scene of a Santeria Lazarus altar and the Lazarus staff that becomes, mother, father, god to the man who has held it to his heart since the loss of his beloved mother.   The beautiful mellow and mournful voices, woven in a sensual, sexy, haunting melody that tells of the dreams we all secretly have to belong, to feel passion, to connect and to express our urges to people who care or will listen. 


Well..... all I can say is Viva Cuba, a culture more compelling than words or images could really articulate.  It will get into your craw and you won't be able to extricate it.  So many people, I read 50 million refugees in the world today. Lost from their moorings, moving across the earth looking for home, a place of their own?

It will make you look in your own heart and imagine these people and all who must leave home or adapt to a home taken from them, not by their own choosing.   

Summer musings, Kate and Steve

BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB: The Movie

For my own contribution to Viva Cuba! The Blog, please click here to go to my thoughts about the Wim Wenders movie, the Buena Vista Social Club.  I could have posted here, but I have neglected my own blog, The Buddha Diaries, for too long...  PC

FROM KATE

Thank you, Kate & Steve, for being the first to take the plunge.  Since they requested it, I have made some editorial corrections. (PC)  They write:

It took us a while to reenter present day life after a most incredible journey to Cuba with the LA Mural Conservancy.  It was such a bucket list for Steve and I.   We knew Al Nodal from our New Orleans days, and our wonderful Bill Hemmerdinger--an LA artist who knew Kent Twitchell--called and said you will love these people why dont you go? We only had ten days to get ready, get our place handled and the dog who we never ever leave, ha, a wonderful Hurricane Katrina creature.  

We went on faith and it turned out to be the trip of a lifetime--and Steve's 70th birthday present. 

Cuba is an enigma I can't describe, the most beautiful setting on earth, with an old European elegance, a ruin whose story is so sad you couldn't write it without falling into despair.
  
What I found in the surreal week after was the way the faces of the people, the music, the very poignant and sophisticated contemporary art, the Santería, the poverty, the intelligence of our tour guide Oscar... haunted day time and dream time.

I felt like I had fallen through the rabbit hole.  We spent time in the mosaic community of José Fuster, with beautiful children riding in the evening light...

Then we spent a day with the gorgeous Folklorica Nacional de Cuba dance troupe, in a restored dance hall with wooden floors and beams that only made a frame for these masculine male dancers, elegantly and powerfully presenting a ritual of war dances, and sword handling, waiting for the women in royal blue skirts to dance around and among them in a rhythm of sensual yet such elegant forms. 

Oh my, I can't seem to come out of the dream for now.  Who would want to? 

-- Kate and Steve Sidwell

VIVA CUBA! THE BLOG

I polled our group of travel companions about the idea of converting CUBA VIVA! the travel blog into a site for continuing exchange and community.  Despite our common indisposition, I received a number of enthusiastic responses...

Al wrote: I like it? How do I contribute?

Kate wrote, for herself and Steve: great great idea, we are in. Love reading from everyone. its fun and inspiring. thanks Peter

Sarah wrote: I like ideas that are community building, and cross connecting links is a fine idea for connecting readers as well.

Tricia wrote: I support further cultivating our new and very intimate community through exchange of the current and aspiring future visions....count me in...tricia

And Gail wrote: sounds nice Peter (along with a request to change her email address).

Good enough for me to say, Let's give it a try!

To take Al's question first: the idea would be for everyone (who so wishes) to send me (or, by "reply all" via email, the whole group) a brief update on what's going on in their lives.  It does NOT need to be about Cuba.  The idea, as Sarah and Tricia saw, is to build community, to hold us loosely together as a group as we get back to our lives.  So often, after these trips, we swear to stay in touch--and then don't.  Community is too rare a commodity these days, as is lasting friendship.  Just maybe, this way, we could make it happen.

No pressure, though!  What I'd ask is just an occasional note--a paragraph or two, perhaps, or maybe three or four, but not a saga.  As I suggested in my initial entry, it could refer to another trip, a film you saw or a book you read, a family event, something at work...  Some hap or mishap.  Even something you'd like to publicize: a painting completed, say.  No matter what, just the kind of conversational piece you might want to exchange with any one of us individually.  Maybe attach a picture or a video...  My function would be simply to receive, post, and add links where appropriate.  And notify.  

Okay?  The only remaining question is, who's on first?  (I have chosen, as you'll note, NOT to post any (or all) of those fascinating emails concerning our common experience this past week.  No need to share any more of that!  But something good, or fun, or interesting, must be developing in someone's life...  Let me know--with your permission to post.

A FINE IDEA

Amigas, amigos!

I woke at 3AM with this fine idea running around in my head: why not keep VIVA CUBA! alive?

You know how it happens--you meet some wonderful people on a journey and vow to stay in touch, but slowly the glow fades and what was first an enthusiastic and well-intentioned exchange dwindles to a trickle, and most frequently vanishes altogether.

I have been so much entertained by our flurry of emails, by the variety of voices and visions, this thought occurred: why not, if you're so inclined, from time to time, send me an email that I could publish as a new post on VIVA CUBA!?

It doesn't have to be a saga.  It doesn't have to be about Cuba.  But we all brought back with us (aside from that bug) something of the spirit of fun and curiosity that brought us together.  So... You may have been on another journey.  You may have seen a movie, read a book.  You may have encountered a new friend, eaten at a great restaurant.  Write a bit about it, send it to me, include a picture if you'd like, and I'll post it and let everyone know.  (I won't edit!  I'll preserve all of your, um... idiosyncrasies of language!  Just cut, paste, post, et voilà!)

Wouldn't this be great?  Who of us would not want to know how little Stash is doing from time to time?  See how he looks a few months down the road?  Hear about Peter and Andrea's trip to Italy?  See a painting by Sarah?  Hear music news from René?  Get a picture of Kate's garden in dead of winter?

You see what I mean?  It would not be a great chore, just a little ongoing community project--and don't we all need these communities, these days?

Let me know what you think, via email of course.  I could start by publishing a selection of responses.

 And then... who's on first?  VIVA CUBA!

VIVA CUBA!

Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles’ CUBA tour, May 26-June 2, 2014

AT LA GUARIDA

Let’s start at the end.  Well, near the end.  By now it's Saturday evening.  We have been in Havana since Monday, but today has been unquestionably the hottest day of all.  The digital clock aboard our bus was recording an exterior temperature of 35 degrees centigrade this afternoon.  That’s 95 degrees fahrenheit.  Add in the humidity factor and it feels like 110 degrees.  And it’s still hot out there this evening.

But we’re cool in our air-conditioned tourist bus.  We have plush seats and a plentiful supply of water.  And we’re driving off for a previously scheduled dinner at La Guarida, touted as one of the best restaurants in Havana.  The big bus lumbers through once elegant, now decaying neighborhoods, where the streets are teeming with the Saturday night crowd, with bicycle rickshaws and taxicabs, and with those gas-guzzzling monsters of American cars, relics from the 50s, for which Havana is famous.  Along with the flutter of multicolored wash hung out to dry, many of the rusting iron balconies boast a human figure, man or woman, who leans out over the busy street seeking the relief of a small gust of the slowly cooling breeze.  It’s a wonder the balconies don’t collapse under their weight: the sometimes skeletal hulks of the tenements on either side of the street have been deteriorating for decades, as have the occasional small, ramshackle houses in between.  The numerous vacant lots are filled with the debris of fallen structures, attesting to the neglect of decades. 

Our bus comes to a halt at the foot of one of these decaying tenements and the automatic door hisses open.  At once, a crowd of ill-clad youngsters who had been playing in the street surround us, eager to part our party from a few of our CUCs--the tourist currency  These are not the sad-eyed, rheumy, energy-depleted kids who beg for change in other cities I have visited.  These are high energy, spirited young entrepreneurs who are smart, bright-eyed, eager for success.  Who can blame them?  I don’t know about others, but I can’t help but take out my wallet and sort out some small change, and even then with the feeling that it's absurdly inadequate.

Our contributions made, such as they were, we walk up the crumbling steps into what was once the fine, high-ceilinged lobby of an upscale dwelling.  Once inside, we’re guided to a staircase that winds up, past a mural tribute to Fidel Castro, in the form of a long quotation from the words he used to explain his oft-repeated motto: PATRIA O MUERTE, country or death...

All photos are mine or Ellie's, except where otherwise indicated

The words are in Spanish, though, and I’d need a translator if I wanted to understand them.  Shame on me.  A long-time Southern Californian, I should have taken the trouble to learn my neighbors’ language years ago.

At the top of the first flight, we find ourselves on a spacious landing, barely lit by the light that filters in through the gaping holes once occupied by windows, and still in a state of decaying splendor... 

Washing lines, now stripped of their daytime load of flapping clothes, are strung the length of the empty space...

Photo: Isabel Rojas-Williams

To one side, the remains of an atrium that went from top to bottom of the building...

... and a long, abandoned corridor, leading back into darkness and allowing the eye to guess at the original grand size of the structure.

Another flight of stairs, narrower than the first, and a short corridor lead us to the entrance to our destination.  A step across the threshold and we’re in a different world.  Here everything is subtle lighting and contemporary design.  

Oscar surveys the art at La Guarida

We glimpse through glass partitions into separate dining areas, where smartly-dressed diners sit at well-set tables, with gleaming silverware and glasses.  The bar is backed by shelves stocked with liquors from throughout the world—Pernod and Martini, single malt Scotch whiskeys, Belvedere gin and Remy Martin cognacs.  Contemporary art work is displayed on every wall.  Waiters and waitresses, dressed fashionably in black, dart about with laden trays, murmuring polite greetings to the new arrivals.  We are led to a back room set with a long table for our group, and a smaller one for our Cuban guide, our driver, our tour manager.  We are regaled with a preliminary mojito (a rum cooler with lime juice and fresh mint) and menus offering a variety of delicacies.  I order, to start with, a delicious cold gazpachio and a glass of wine…

Al and Tricia

So this is Havana, a place of sometimes stark contradictions, a place, at once, of deprivation and excess, of exuberant color and drab frontages, of incessant high spirits and repressive bureaucracy, of magnificent generosity and ubiquitous street hustle.  In the course of the past week we have eaten so much, and so often, that many of us can barely face the feast we’re to be treated with tonight.  We are pained by the knowledge that most Havanans must scrape and scratch for the basics of life, while much of the food that is served us will be left on our plates.  Riding through these mean streets that teem with both life and poverty in our air-conditioned luxury, we are called on constantly to be aware of our privilege—as among the relative handful of human beings thus privileged on the planet Earth; as Americans, in a third world country; as educated folk, who know enough to count art and culture among the necessities of life; and certainly as among those fortunate enough enjoy the financial resources to afford this kind of travel. 

These thoughts were on my mind throughout our Cuban adventure.  From our conversations, I have reason to believe that they were shared by my fellow-travelers, along with the gratitude I feel for an extraordinary experience and a big piece of learning about how others live.  But for now, enough with the commentary.  Let’s just get back to the start of it all…

*********

We left Los Angeles early Sunday morning, May 25, for an incredibly fast ride to the airport—never before made it in such good time.  Having upgraded our airline tickets (to First Class!  No business available on this flight) we expected better things of American Airlines than our last experience…  Alas, it was not so.  But let’s not make that a part of this story.  We have better things to talk about.

First, the group.  This is the most complete group photo I've been able to find to date.  I'm pretty sure that the image came from Sarah's camera, since she was the one who forwarded it.  Who the trigger-person was remains a mystery, since Sarah herself is in the picture.  Missing from the picture are (the other) Peter, Rene and Gail--though I suspect it's Gail who is hidden between Tricia and Harriet.  (Oh, an email from Gail confirms this...)  Wish I had an image that included us all, but failing that...

ENLARGE WITH A CLICK.  From the right: Al, Kent, Steve, Kate, Sarah, Ellie, PC, Andrea, Isabel, Tricia, Gail, Harriet, Lana, Stash. Jeanna and little Stash

We could not have wished for better company!

Monday, May 26

HAVANA BOUND

Having booked a room for the night at the Miami International Airport Hotel, we ran into the first of our fellow-travelers already at the reception desk, and were delighted to be reminded that Harriet Zeitlin was a friend from quite some time ago—and a friend, too, of Ellie’s family.  We enjoyed a pleasant catch-up conversation with Harriet and, later, Isabel, who is representing the Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles, the organization sponsoring our trip.   A rather indifferent dinner at the hotel restaurant, overlooking the airport runway from the seventh floor; but thereafter, we were grateful for a comfortable bed and a good night’s sleep, before showing up at eleven the next morning at our meeting point outside a Chilli’s restaurant in our departure concourse.  Tour management was on hand in the form of Fierce Frank to collect our passports and arrange for our visas and tickets for the flight to Havana aboard Vieja Hoy. 

Scheduled for 2PM, our takeoff, we soon discovered, had been postponed until 5:30, extending our anticipated three-hour wait to an unwelcome six-and-a-half hours.  Ellie and I had more than enough time, then, to do some desultory airport shopping before joining some of our group for lunch and lengthy conversation at Chilli’s.  At least that left us the opportunity to make some new acquaintances with several of those with whom we’d be spending the next week—a jovial and remarkably patient bunch with varied interests and experience in the world of current art.  We have some artists among us, some teachers, some involved in different aspects of arts management and administration.  Aside from Harriet, we found another old friend in Kent Twitchell—a former student in my Otis days and a muralist joining us for his long—indeed distinguished—experience with the art that was to be a focus of our visit.  

Having made the best of a long wait, we were finally able to board our flight for the short hop across the Straits of Florida to Havana, where we were delighted to be greeted by what we took to be a propitious rainbow in the sky above the airport....

Hope you can make it out...

Past immigration and customs, we were further greeted by another old friend, Adolfo “Al” Nodal, whose travel company had made all the arrangements for our trip; and a short time later, on the bus that was to become our principal means of transport, by our Cuban tour guide, Oscar...

Photo: Isabel Rojas-Williams

... and our driver “Mandy” Armando.  Oscar—who proved during the week to be a charming, affable and knowledgeable escort—provided us with an orientation and an introduction to the streets of Havana as we drove to our hotel, the Telegrafo...

... where we were mightily grateful to find a comfortable room awaiting us.

Here's a fine image of the Telegrafo bar but Kent Twitchell.  Thank you, Kent, and for more to come!

With little time to unpack our suitcases and change some dollars into CUCs, we boarded the bus again for a short ride and a walk through the well-lit, renovated streets of Old Havana...

... for our first Cuban dinner in an elegantly appointed colonial house with stained glass and murals and, according to our tour guide, original 19^th century floors...

At the far end, Jeanna and little Stash, big Stash; right side, Isabel, Gail, Oscar

Los Mercaderes is a “paladar”, originally one of the early privately owned and operated restaurants opening up as Cuba began to emerge from the “Special Period” that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the consequent loss of its most important trading partner and political support system.  We were to hear much about this period and the recovery from it in the course of our stay.  In the meantime, though, we enjoyed the first of what was to become a familiar culinary pattern: a complimentary mojito to get us started, followed by a menu of rice and beans with a selection of pork, chicken or fish and, finally, a flan.   One glass of wine or beer was usually included; the second needed to be paid for in CUCs.

After dinner, the bus drove us back to our hotel, up the wide boulevard we came to know as the Prado.  After a long day, the comfortable bed in our hotel room was a welcome sight.

Tuesday, May 27

FOUR PLAZAS… AND MORE, IN OLD HAVANA

We started in good time for another—daylight—stroll through Old Havana.  The bus took us to the Plaza de Armas, the site of the oldest Spanish fortress in the Americas and of the city’s founding back in 1519.  On the far side is the grand Palacio de los Capitanes Generales, the early seat of government.  As we left the bus, we were greeted by an impressive outdoor, pop-up exhibition of large-scale images of Papua, New Guinea by the photographer Stephen Dupont...

... a striking reminder that good art can be displayed in public places, and not necessarily in exclusive galleries.

Our first steps into the plaza introduced us to the ubiquitous Cuban art of the hustle.  People who wanted to sell us postage stamps, or candy, or picture postcards—anything, really, or even nothing—swarmed around this new batch of American tourists with the insistent offering of things we did not want or need.  A group of women in colorful colonial Cuban costume were on hand, posing for pictures or offering scarlet kisses in exchange for a CUC or two.  More reasonably, the square was crowded with the stands of booksellers...

... offering mostly secondhand, and perhaps a few rare books to tourists like ourselves.  Legitimate or not, it was clear that the post-Special Period Havanan is an enthusiastic entrepreneur.

 

Colonial seat of government

Our guide, Oscar, introduced us to a new escort, Raquel Carrera...

This lovely portrait taken by Kent Twitchell

... a young art historian who could tell us something more about the history of the plaza and, as we walked on, a large-scale ceramic tile mural on the wall of a maternity hospital, created by the artist Ismael Gomez and depicting—in traditional, illustrative form—the universal theme of motherhood.  Passing through the spacious plaza that fronts the church of San Francisco de Assis...

... we were impressed by the trompe l’oeil mural at the far end of the church’s chancel...

... depicting the absent altar and reredos.  Also, incidentally, on the church steps, the “living statue” of a cellist offered a fine surprise for those taken in by his bronzed make-up and attire.  

Photo: Isabel Rojas-Williams

Trompe l’oeil, in three dimensions…

Stray dogs, everywhere, seeming happy enough to snooze or cruise...

We were happy to be allowed a half-hour’s coffee break when we reached the third of our plazas, the Plaza Vieja—a large, open square...

Harriet, Plaza Vieja.  Photo: Kent Twitchell

 with several modernist sculptures and what was billed as “the best coffee shop in town.”  We were about to pass up on the opportunity when confronted with a line that stretched for half a block, but soon discovered that the line was not for a cup of coffee in the coffee shop, but rather for packages of ground coffee to take home.  Inside, the brewed stuff was fine, though the heat outside prompted the choice of an iced version. 

A short-ish walk in the midday sun brought us to the restaurant Nao...

Ellie and Kent at Nao

.... where we downed a plate of rice and beans accompanied by—in my case—shredded pork and a bottle of the local brew called Bucanero, which soon became the choice beer for our group.  I also enjoyed a conversation with Oscar and, with his interpreting skills, with our driver, Mandy, about politics and the embargo.  I had brought along my own simplistic view that the embargo was a blot on America’s relationship with our island neighbor to the south… but seems that for Cubans things are a little more complicated than that.  Not everyone in Cuba worships at the altar of the 1959 Revolution, and the embargo also provides a useful scapegoat for all economic woes.

An after-lunch walk took us past the block-long, sepia mural portraits of notable historical figures from Cuba’s history, which seemed to invite a group portrait of our members, strung out in a line in imitation of the mural... 

My IPhone picture, not near the quality of the one taken with Sarah's camera, included above...

Raquel was still on hand to tell us more about the figures included in the mural than I could either write down or remember.  On, then, to the Plaza de la Catedral, a beautiful, small square surrounded on three sides by buildings dating from the 16^th and 17^th centuries; and on the fourth, the Cuban baroque façade and two towers of the cathedral itself.

A side street led us from there to the Taller Experimental de Grafica, an artists’ collective founded in 1962 by a group supported by the Chilean Poet Pablo Neruda and by Che Guevara.  The Taller hosts artists from throughout the world, and we were delighted to be able to watch a group of young American art students hard at work...

... apparently with great enjoyment and commitment.  The Taller’s gallery houses an impressive range of woodcuts, lino cuts, etchings and lithographs.

From the Taller, it was a short walk to the Wilfredo Lam Centro de Arte Contemporaneo, where the current HavanaBienal was on display.  Our group was particularly taken with an installation by Alexis Leyva Machado, known as Kcho (Kah-cho), in the central atrium...

... a tall, oddly balanced tower of ships and associated marine objects entitled “Archipelago in my Mind.”  We thought, of course, of those many who have sought to escape the island in rickety boats, and of the many who have lost their lives in the attempt.  Other standouts, for Ellie and myself, included paintings by Antonio Ole...

... and Haimal Herido...

Having recognized the name on our itinerary, we had been looking forward to seeing some works by Lam himself—arguably the best known of Cuban artists of the 20^th century… but we would have to wait for these until later, when we visited the Museo de Bellas Artes. 

Not sure where or when this was taken, but happy our friends found a handsome Cuban guy to consort with!
Photo: Kent Twitchell

Meantime, before boarding the bus to return to our hotel, we made a quick tour of the Cathedral of San Christofde la Habana, and were taken with several of the unusual dioramas of sacred scenes behind the altar and in chapels to either side, combining painted sculptural elements with background paintings...

... also a particularly dramatic life-sized crucifix.

A HUSTLE HERE, A HUSTLE THERE…

The bus brought us back to the Telegrafo in good time for some serious relaxation before heading out for an evening, as the itinerary put it, “on your own.”  Ellie and I joined up with the other Peter and Andrea—both professors at USC—for a walk across the square and an obligatory stop at the famed Floridita.  This favorite Hemingway watering hole (for daiquiris) boasts a bronze figure of the macho writer leaning up against the bar—and ready to pose for pictures with anyone who chooses to put an arm around his shoulder.  Ellie and the other Peter both complied...

... and Ellie was treated to a Hemingway kiss

For the sake of proper form, we downed daiquiris before setting off down the Avenida Obispo in search of a restaurant for dinner.  Obispo turned out to be a major tourist trap.  Hustlers armed with menus lay in wait outside every restaurant along the way and, truth to tell, not one of them looked the slightest bit appealing.  We did, though, make an interesting stop at a “five artists” studio—where three of the five were actually at work on canvases, one of them making some pretty interesting land- and city-scapes...

He seemed glad enough to find us interested in his work, and was happy to talk at length about the studio and about his own painting process.  Paints and other art supplies are hard to come by in Cuba, so this artist has established a source through a dealer in Mexico.  Another example of Cuba's crippling shortages.

Having walked the length of Obispo and back to La Floridita without having found a place to eat, we turned off in another direction toward Sloppy Joe’s—reputed home of the original “sloppy joe” and highly recommended to us by our friend Al.  I did, indeed, order the house speciality and, along with a glass of red wine, it went down pretty well.  So well, in fact, that the other Peter was tempted, after finishing his own order, to order one for himself.  How he managed both remains a mystery.

Leaving the restaurant, the four of us were accosted by a friendly couple who purported to love Americans and, coincidentally, longed to visit our home town of Los Angeles...

Ellie took the picture...

Once our lasting friendship was firmly established, they discovered that we loved Cuban music—and knew just the place to hear the very best of it, if only we’d walk along a couple of blocks with them.  Ellie and I began to smell the hustle after only a block, and turned back home—though on the way we ran into another couple playing exactly the same scam, though this one involved not music, but cigars that purported to be much better than the Cohiba I was smoking on our way back to the hotel.  We worried a bit about Peter and Andrea, but were amused, the following day at breakfast, to hear how it had played out, involving eventually multiple players working both with and against each other.  Havana, we have discovered, is a hotbed of this art.  Everyone has a hustle, some shady, some legitimate.  It’s a way of life, in a place where it seems to be a required skill for survival.

At least the streets are filled with adventure late at night, and everyone seems to be having fun.

Wednesday, May 28

A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE

After a drive through the now familiar streets, where buildings seem about to collapse, or have already collapsed...

 ... we find ourselves standing beneath a revered baobob tree in the Parque Trillo, “the center of Cuban African identity” in the Cayo Hueso district.  

In front of us, Elias...

... a short, stocky man in a bright African shirt is holding forth about the pagan religions that, along with Catholicism, form the spiritual belief systems of the Cuban island.  The tree itself, he tells us, is a living force that “absorbs negative energies”, a shrine beneath which offerings may be made, or to which amulets may be attached.  According to these naturalistic, non-Christian beliefs—the heritage of more than a million African slaves—all human energies are represented by an array of deities, whose help may be invoked by those empowered as spiritual leaders to heal or provide guidance.  Santeria, he tells us, “a religion of here and now,” which “helps people to face shortages and solve their problems.”

A delightfully enthusiastic and knowledgeable guide, Elias fills us in with the basics of Santeria and Palo delMonte, the two principal religious sects, before leading us off on a brisk walk past a famed rumba night club, the Rumba Palace...

The Rumba Palace, on the right

... and on through hot and dusty streets where children play and their elders are engaged in the business of the day.  Families gather on their porches.  Chicken parts are laid out for sale at a small meat shop, open to the street...

Photo: Isabel Rojas-Williams

A tiny farmer’s market offers vegetables and fruit.  Stray dogs wander hither and yon, or stretch out lazily in the sun.  

Everyone seems to know our guide, and greet him with a shout, sometimes a hug…  He leads us in through a modest doorway and down a dank corridor...

... with doorways to either side, open for a glimpse into small, dark dwellings and their busy occupants; and finally into the tiny room that serves as the sacred work space of a “palero”—a black man who sits quietly in a corner, robed in African garb and seeming at first oblivious to his visitors, lost within his own thoughts.

The palero is a priest in the Palo del Monte tradition, with origins in the Congo.  His cramped, barely lit shrine is packed everywhere with objects of all kinds, dolls and carvings, totems and textiles, charms and amulets—some of whose meanings were revealed to us as Elias spoke with our spiritual host and interpreted his words.  Palo del Monte's principal spiritual concern is with death, but the palero has the power to channel the spiritual energies for those who seek his help in dealing with the problems and challenges of life.  He speaks to us familiarly of the spirits of the dead, projecting a supreme confidence in the exercise of his power to communicate with them, and appears undismayed by either the heat, the humidity, or the poverty of his environment.

Out on the streets again...

Photo: Kent Twitchell

Photo: Isabel Rojas-Williams

Of the beautiful image below, Stash writes: "In the photo the other little boy is giving Stashu a piece of wrapper from some candy.  Then we gave the little boy a peso and he tried to give it to his dad. His dad told him to keep it. The little boy was our guide's assistant's son.  I forget his name.  The boy was named after his father as well.  I think it might have been Jorge."   

We follow our cheerful leader for a few more brilliantly sunlit blocks to the home of a “santera”—a priestess of the Santeria tradition.  Her home, on the second floor of a tenement building, is also chock-a-block with shrines and sacred objects of every kind imaginable...

But her rooms are spacious, filled with light, as though her spirits were more those of life than death.  The high wall that greets us as we enter her space is decorated with framed portraits of Fidel and Raul, Cesar Chavez and Abraham Lincoln...

... the latter revered here for having freed the American slaves.  (I like the Don Quixote carving in front of them!)  Marta, the santera, awaits us calmly, brandishing a cigar, and offers us a lengthy introduction to her religion...

Photo: Kent Twitchell

Originating in Nigeria, she explains through Elias’s interpretation, Santeria is “the way of the saints, the deities that live inside your head, empowering all aspects of life.”  It welcomes and embraces all other religions, Catholicism as well as Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism...

Each of us has a personal energy, represented by a particular god, who acts as an oracle or spiritual guide.  Her job is to identify that deity and interpret the oracle.  Animals, she says, are sacrificed only to “save people,” and the ceremonial eating of their flesh assures their “healing properties.”  (For those interested in further clarification, by the way, she recommended “The Santeria Experience,” by Migere Gonzalez-Wippler.  It’s available on Amazon.) 

STREET ART… AND MUSEUM ART

There followed a short walk to the open-air “Afro-Cuban Religion Sanctuary”...

... where the local artist Salvador Gonzalez has taken over the entire length of a back alley, “adorning its walls,” our itinerary tells us, “with evocative Santeria murals paying homage to religious cults and currents of African origin.”  His bright, sprawling murals and ceramic tile works form a single, dazzling, large-scale installation.  At one point, a set of steps winds down into a small underground gallery where Gonzalez shows and sells his work along with that of the students whom he encourages to work with him.  Ellie and I were much taken with one tiny painting, and brought it home with us.  When framed, it will be a vivid reminder of our Cuban visit. 

(This may be an appropriate moment, as an aside, to mention that we encountered the hard—or soft!—sell almost everywhere we went, and the Gonzalez alley was no exception.  One stand sold talismans and amulets in the form of bright, beaded bracelets and necklaces; another, soft drinks and food; a third, a variety of souvenirs.  Havana is no different in this respect, of course, from other tourist meccas throughout the known universe; but the urgency seems somehow a little more intense than other places—perhaps because the need is greater.  It’s just another aspect of the great Cuban hustle.)

Before lunch, we were treated to the spectacle of three street dancers...

Tricia and Ellie in the background--Ellie about to receive a dancer in her lap!

... in a high energy performance accompanied by a variety of drums--and some of our number were included, willingly or not, in the performance.  We settled in for lunch...

Photo: Kent Twitchell

... in the Gonzalez residence, its interior furnishings and decorations in keeping with the rest of his installations.  A buffet selection of good dishes awaited us, along with the inevitable mojito and a can of Bucanero.  After lunch, Elias escorted us back to our bus and offered us an astute piece of parting wisdom.  “Enjoy my country,” he exhorted us: “Don’t try to understand it, just enjoy!”

The cigar is de rigueur in Santeria-land

The afternoon found us on more familiar territory, with a visit to the Museo de Bellas Artes, devoted to the history of Cuban art.  The museum itself is a fine example of modernist architecture, built around a graceful central courtyard.  Following a long ramp up to the third floor (no photographs!), we were treated, finally, to an extensive survey of the work of Wilfredo Lam—an artist as much influenced by the Cubism of his friend Picasso as by the later period of Dada and Surrealism.  This substantial collection led to several subsequent galleries devoted to the work of individual early modernist artists, amongst whom my personal favorite was certainly Amelia Pelàez, of whom I had never heard before and about whom I was happy to correct my ignorance.

The rest of the third floor brought us up through mid-century to the end of the twentieth century, with some interesting examples of art work from around the time of the 1959 Revolution.  The last galleries we visited, those hosting the work of our contemporaries, were particularly interesting in revealing more of the ambivalence toward the revolution that we have also found amongst our Cuban hosts.  In a culture that until quite recently was dominated by the fear of speaking openly about political and social issues, many of the artists found ways to express their feelings of ambivalence in double entendre and other forms of subtle irony.  I regret not having examples to include, because many of the contemporary works were powerful in their critique of cultural constraints. 

Ellie and I enjoyed a quiet walk along the Prado...

... back to the hotel, just a few blocks distant; and the luxury of a long rest from the heat and exertions of the day.  Before dinner, we found Al in the bar, treating a growing number of our fellow travelers to a shot of excellent, seven-year old Cuban rum.  Most of us had not been rum-drinkers in our lives to date, but it took no more than a few sips to convert us to its rich, warm, tropical flavors.  Then Oscar arrived to round us up and escort us back to the bus, where Mandy was waiting patiently as ever to drive us out for the evening.

A lovely drive, down the Prado to the shoreline and up along the bluffs into a quiet, green area overlooking the ocean, where small private houses with blossoming gardens and mango and coconut trees...

... line the narrow streets.  Here we enjoyed a pleasant dinner al fresco in one such garden, Doña Carmela’s paladar restaurant...

Photo: Kent Twitchell

... where we found friendly service on a shady patio, to the accompaniment of Latin music.  CDs available for purchase...

After dinner, we took a long walk up the palisades and through a remnant of the original defensive wall, into the old citadel...

... that once guarded the city of Havana...

Havana, night view, across the bay

Here, every night, the Cuban military dress in in 18^th century costume to re-enact the traditional firing of a canon to mark the closing of the city gates at nightfall...

Despite the crowds, we managed to get a decent view of the ceremony before heading back to the bus for the drive back to the Telegrafo.

Photo: Isabel Rojas-Williams

Thursday, May 29

THE INDIAN CAVES, LUNCH IN THE COUNTRY, CIGARS…

Breakfast at the hotel is buffet style.  There are trays of fruit to choose from, as well as meats and cheeses and a selection of other dishes, hot and cold.  My choice is to make life easy this early in the morning, so I stop by the hotplate where a friendly man rustles up a variety of eggs—fried, scrambled, omelets, you decide.  The gift of a CUC buys you a nice smile along with the eggs, so that’s what I do.  And then stop at the coffee counter for a double espresso, to which I add hot milk from the regular coffee counter.  Espresso is free, but latté costs you CUCs, so I get the espresso and add the milk myself.  The regular coffee, by the way, is awful.  Get the espresso…

Today we leave town for a trip to the countryside.  It’s a two and a half hour bus ride from Havana to our destination, Vinales, in the Western Province of Pinar del Rio...

This image of Steve and Kate aboard the bus is by Kent Twitchell

As we start out, Oscar offers his usual commentary on the sights around us as we drive and today, passing the crowds gathered at bus stops... 

... or small knots of others trying the thumb rides at roadside or—as we drive further—at every highway underpass...

We learn a great deal more about the life of average Cubans living in the city.  Transportation, Oscar tells us, is a constant challenge for commuters.  You never know when a bus will come by, or whether it will be too full to take on new passengers.  Living some distance from the city center, he has to worry daily about how to get to work on time.  “Every Cuban worker,” he tells us, “goes to sleep at night wondering how he’ll get to where he wants to go the following day.  And every Cuban mother goes to sleep at night wondering what she’ll feed her children.”  The shortages, not only of food but of every other commodity, from AA batteries to toothpaste and aspirin, are evident everywhere.  Life in Cuba, we have come to understand is a constant battle to find even the most basic of necessities—the kinds of things we take for granted at home. 

The countryside, to begin with, is quite beautiful, very green from the frequent tropical rains, and for the most part untended.  Watching through the window...

... I wonder why such arable-seeming land is not more used for agriculture.  The cattle and goats wander aimlessly, uncontrolled, mostly with free access to the highway.  Produce like corn and other vegetables seem to grow in patches, rather than in whole farms.  We drive by rice paddies, but they seem scattered, disorganized, a relatively small in number.  There are orchards of mango trees and banana palms, but there is nothing to compare to the vast acreage of agriculturally developed land in, say, the San Joaquin Valley in poor, drought-ridden California.  How much better they could do here, where the soil looks rich and the rain is plentiful.

We pause for a break at a rest stop, taking pictures of a pair of oxen...

... in front of a beautifully thatched tobacco barn and the “pregnant” palms that surround it, with their curious, pot-bellied trunks.  Dogs wander freely through the coffee show; a little pig snuffles at the perimeter...

... along with a hen and her chicks.  We follow the call of nature, leave the required quarter CUC tip, buy a cup of coffee, return to the bus, and drive on.

Soon we’re driving through the national park of the Vinales Valley, lush with green trees and undergrowth...

On either side, weather-worn limestone cliffs loom up above us.  We drive through the colorful tourist village of Vinales, where all the houses are kept trim and freshly painted...

... and where, Oscar tells us, home owners make a handy living renting rooms to tourists.

Arriving at our destination, the Cueva del Indio (the Indian Cave), we head up a series of steps past the reenactment of an Indian village...

Isabel demonstrates her iguana handling skills

... to the mouth of a large cave and follow the wet path that leads down into its depths, with limestone rock formations on either side.

 

At the end of the path, we board a small boat with an outboard motor...

Photo: Gail Nathan.  Thanks for this great image!

... and penetrate further into the cave...



... along the waterway to an underground waterfall...


The guide points out familiar formations, the Snake, the Sea Horse, the Indian Head.  We emerge from the tunnel into bright sunlight...

... pausing at the edge of another waterfall, and disembark to find a series of souvenir stands selling basketry, jewelry, crafts…  We buy a basket, a wooden car for our grandson, and a nicely crafted humming bird.

Before lunch, there’s a planned stop at the Mural de la Prehistoria, the Mural of Prehistory, supposedly the largest in the world, or in the hemisphere, or something… Supposedly the Commandante Himself commissioned it.  Painted roughly in simple swaths of color on a mountainside, it purports to depict the ascent of man from prehistoric times.  We ask our mural expert, Kent Twitchell, for an opinion.  He says, “This location doesn’t need Kent Twitchell”...  

... but Kent took this picture...

It’s a consensus: badly painted, badly designed, the mural is little more than the desecration of a beautiful natural site.  

Still, good for a group photo, at least

On the plus side, there are people offering horse rides and bull rides, and for no more than a CUC.  Irresistible.  I take a bull ride...

The massive creature rocks and rolls beneath me, swaying powerfully as it walks.  I find it surprisingly hard to stay on top—and harder still to get off.  Our friend Isabel is quick to take my place.

Isabel is more stately, I think

Next stop, lunch.  We drive back through the village to a small, family tobacco farm, Finca Rojas, where Mandy parks our huge bus precariously on the narrow roadside.  We eat lunch on a tiny, thatched patio and watch the gathering thunder clouds.  

The tobacco farmer's granddaughter looks on...

Scrawny chickens scratch at the ground around us, and we wonder if others will stop to eat these poor creatures, just as we, now, are eating what may have been their parents or grandparents.  We drink Bucaneros.  And after lunch we are invited down to the tobacco barn…

What a treat.  The barn is hung everywhere with drying tobacco leaves...

  
The aroma is delicate, a bit intoxicating.  The paterfamilias, an elegant older man, tall and lean and serious, demonstrates how a cigar is made...

... stripping a coarse leaf of its tough ribs and bunching some of the soft parts into a central core; he then strips a finer leaf and rolls it skillfully around the core; and finally takes a still finer leaf for the outer wrapping, sealing it off with a twist at the blunt end.  I accept the offer of the finished cigar and a light.  Delicious.  I never tasted a cigar so fresh, so aromatic.  The non-smokers around me begin angling for a taste.  Pretty soon, even they are shelling out for a two-dollar cigar and lighting up.  The barn fills with smoke and laughter.

It’s as though we were all smoking not tobacco but marijuana.

Even Ellie smokes!

A crash of thunder breaks into the laughter… and the rain starts outside.  In moments, it’s coming down in sheets, but we’re all happy where we are.  Pictures are taken.  Smoke is blown.  The most reticent among us are persuaded to join in the general merriment.  The thunder continues to crash outside, the rain pours down.  The path to the barn turns into a small river, a torrent of rushing water...

We are already off schedule by an hour at least…  Finally, sensing no let-up in the storm, I head out of the barn and back to the restaurant, hopping through puddles and over streams.  Others follow, too much caught up in the hilarity to worry about sodden shoes.  Oscar calls for the bus, and we pile aboard…

We drive back up out of the valley, pausing only for a brief stop for pictures at a vista point.  

It’s time—well past time, in fact—to head back to the city, where we’re scheduled for a visit at the José Fuster studio and the surrounding neighborhood.  The studio is closed when we arrive, but we spend a half-hour wandering around the enchanting environment of mosaic street murals and houses decorated wall-to-roof with colorful ceramic tile...

Fuster is billed as the Cuban Gaudi, but his vision was not only to construct his own fantasy environment, but to persuade those who lived around him to join the adventure.  The result is a whole village joyfully transformed into art, essentially, but charmingly, of the amateur variety. 

Your blogger found a leaf.  Photo: Kent Twitchell

Our return route to the hotel takes us, with Oscar’s commentary, through the once wealthy districts of El Verdado and Miramar.  We turn on to the famous oceanside boulevard, the Malecon, at its southern end and drive back up with the ocean on our left, passing the “U.S. Intersection Building”—not quite an embassy or a consulate, but at least an American business presence on the island our country has chosen to ignore.  Immediately in front of the building, Castro has built a plaza specifically for anti-American demonstrations, and a forest of flagpoles to interfere with radio communications.  Also, a block away, a statue of Cuba’s great national here, Jose Martí, stands with the famously abducted child Elian Gonzalez in his arms, a finger pointed accusingly at this remnant of (here) disreputable America.

Tonight it was “dinner on your own” again.  Ellie and I wandered for a while, then followed Isabel’s recommendation to try La Terrazza, on the third floor of a building nearby.  It was excellent.  Fresh food, not too much of it.  A glass of wine.  We sat at the edge of the balcony, overlooking the Prado.  Looking back at the Hotel Telegrapho, we realized that from this point your could look directly into our hotel room.  Need to be more careful in the future…

Friday, May 30

WALL PAINTINGS, MURALS…

Today we met up with a new guide, a young woman still in graduate school with a special interest in murals.  Interestingly, her definition embraced all kinds of painting on both interior and exterior surfaces, including historical shop signs and trompe l’oeil decorative detail.  Starting us off in the Old Havana district, she pointed out several examples of 18^th and 19^th century shop signs along the way...

... nicely preserved from under the more recent coats of paint. 

Next on her tour was the beautifully restored 18^th century Colonial house, Casa de la Obra Pia, long owned and occupied by a single wealthy family, with an original ceramic tile mural on the wall of a spacious central patio...

 A decorated stairway led us up to the main floor...

... where the trompe l’oeil paint work on the skirting and the lower parts of the walls continued throughout the living area... 

A friendly guard offered to let our group into the roped-off area of a gracious, elegantly appointed living room and dining room...

... where all the furniture and decorative objects were of the period—though I was never quite sure if they were original to the house.  I would happily have taken home a few of them myself…

From there, we strolled back to the Plaza de Armas, this time to hear a little more about El Templete, a small building and fenced courtyard...

... that marks the spot where the city of San Cristobal de la Habana was founded in 1519.  The original silk-cotton tree beneath which the ceremonial mass was celebrated has been replaced by a stone column since the founding, and an adjacent shade.  The Neoclassical building is home to three monumental murals depicting the event...

... painted (in neoclassical style) by the French artist Jean Baptiste Vernay.

On the way to our last downtown stop for the morning we passed by a state sponsored political mural by the Union of Communist Students, featuring “Ché, Patria o Muerte.”  Unsurprisingly, there are a good number of this kind of mural around the city, many of them celebrating the image of Ché Guevara (el mejor amigo), and most displayed on huge billboards.  

This one protests the imprisoning of five Cubans in America--a cause célèbre in Cuba

We were surprised to learn, however, that there are no murals featuring Fidel Castro, who frowns on the “cult of the individual.”  He will likely be celebrated in many similar murals after his death.  Unless much changes in Cuba before then.  Che, however, is everywhere...

Photos: Isabel Rojas-Williams

Coming back to the center of town, our guide led us into a deco building—if I recall, a bank—with a large frieze painted by the Mexican muralist-inspired Cuban artist, Ippolito Hidalgo Caviedes, depicting “the spirit of the first half of the twentieth century” as expressed in the printing and distribution of the local newspaper, El Noticioso de la Habana.  (Only two women, our guide pointed out; though one of them is shown reading!)  Here it is:

Heading out to the El Verdado district for lunch, we stopped along the way at the former Hilton, now the Habana Libre Hotel, to see a monumental mosaic mural by the artist Amelia Pelàez, whose work we had so much admired at the Fine Arts Museum—a blue-toned, mid-century modernist work...

... that we personally found “interesting” but uninspiring.  In the hotel itself, we found an impressive wall piece constructed from hand made ceramic elements, “Revolution Car,” by Alfredo Sosabravo...

(detail)

Made in 1973, it combines a purposefully klutzy charm and energy with a good dose of humor.  And finally, in the bar, another mid-century work by Rene Portacarrero, “Flora y Fauna,” an 11-panel ceramic affair occupying the entirety of a long wall.  

Impressive, in its own way, but again not to my personal taste.

And finally, approaching lunchtime (!), we drove past an outdoor sculpture garden featuring a spare ceramic tile mural by Marta Arjona...

Photo: Isabel Rojas-Williams

... the head of cultural affairs in Cuba after the revolution.  Mandy slowed the bus for us, but we had only a glimpse of the garden and library behind it.

Lunch (!) at El Aljibe in the Miramar district, a large, open-air restaurant shaded by a neatly thatched roof and surrounded by lush tropical flora.  “The specialty,” our itinerary informs us, “is the El Aljibe chicken, which combines roast chicken with French fries and fried plantain, delicious black beans, white rice and salad.”  The spread was accompanied, as always, by a Cuban music band (guitars, drums, flute) whose singer was soon at our table offering CDs for sale.  I think that by this time all those interested in our party have a stack of CDs yea high…

Sarah at El Aljibe

Refreshed and restored from the morning’s labors with our mural guide, we boarded the bus for a short drive to the rooftop studio of the artist Luis Camejo, whose large scale, expressionistic paintings capture the spirit and energy of the city Havana with great brio.  

His scenes of the Malecon at different times of day and in different weather conditions, particularly, seemed to summon the peculiar spirit of the famous boulevard.  Of all the art we have seen to date, his seemed to me the most vital and contemporary—and indeed Camejo enjoys an international reputation and commands good prices on the global art market.  Learning that today, May 30, happened to be the anniversary of our meeting 45 years ago, he was gracious enough to sign and dedicate a catalogue of his paintings to Ellie and myself.

The final lap of the day’s art tour was a bus drive through the city, passing several political murals like this one, by university art students, depicting the human species devouring the planet...

But we were soon in the middle of another tropical rain shower, and at this point most of the group, like myself, were too art-weary to pay much attention to murals that were hard to see through sheets of rain...

Photo: Isabel Rojas-Williams

We did, however, pause for long enough to take pictures of the monumental, building-high “murals” in black, painted-metal outline, depicting Che Guevara...

... and fellow revolutionary Camilo Cienfuegos on Revolution Square.  We had passed them several times before in our travels, and we glad to have the photo op.  Oh, and then was the Che mural, near the bottom end of the Prada, which we had also often seen in drive-by moments, too late to get the cell phones out for pictures...

A welcome rest late afternoon, accompanied by a huge tropical storm...

... which Ellie and I watched in wonder from our balcony on our return to the hotel...

Our maid found a new way to surprise us every day!  This one...?  Hmmm!

An elephant... with my glasses!

  Later...

Add caption

Add caption

An anniversary glass of rum before dinner, on the hotel terrace

Ellie finds a new friend.   Little Stash wins Best Baby on the Tour Award.  Hands down.

At 7:00 o’clock we headed out for dinner at Atelier.  Like La Guarida (see the beginning of this narrative), this upscale restaurant, formerly a mansion, was located in a now unprepossessing neighborhood.  Still, the row of toilet tank planters lined up at the entrance suggested a light-hearted sense of décor that was soon confirmed by the elegant, contemporary design of the interior.  Long tables, white table cloths, sparkling glassware, spare art work on the walls all contributed to the “sparse modern lines” evoked by our tour itinerary.  We sat inside...

... but rather wished we’d been placed on one of the two balconies, where an evening breeze had begun to take the edge off the day’s heat.  Still we ate well—though probably too much, as usual!  And were happy to return to the Telegrafo for a good night’s sleep.

Saturday, May 31

ACROSS THE BAY... AND PAPA HEMINGWAY

A nice change of pace.  The bus was on hand...

... to drive us out to the passenger ferry that took us on a ten-minute ride across Havana Bay to the city of Regla.  Great views of the harbor and the city, all around—and it’s always pleasant, I find, to be on water.  

Andrea surveys the scene

Then, too, it gave us the opportunity to be shoulder-to-shoulder with a crowd of regular citizens, and feel a wee bit less like the tourists that we obviously are. 

Disembarking on the opposite side of the bay, we were greeted by the spectacle of Santeria rituals taking place at dockside...

... with santera women crouched down by the water, scattering rose petals and various sacred objects on the surface as they uttered incantations intended, we assumed, to dispel the negative energies and attract the positive ones.  Even given the scant knowledge we’d acquired on our Santeria day about animal sacrifice, I found the sight of sacrificed, dead birds bobbing on the surface to be not a little unsettling.  I could wish for some other way to appease the spirits!

It was a short walk from the ferry to the church of Our Lady of Regla, built in homage to the Black Virgin who offers her protection to the mariners who come to worship her here.  Today, we discovered, was the Cuban national day that honors children, and the church was filled with the noise and jostling of young families come to join in a community ritual of baptism.

The spectacle offered a curious juxtaposition, it occurred to me, with the rituals taking place on the docks just a handful of yards away.   As we left the church, we had the opportunity to have our fortune told by one of the white-robed santeras sitting on the church wall outside...

Photo: Isabel Rojas-Williams

We declined.  Instead...

... Ellie had a word with Jesus.

Mandy had driven the bus around from the other side of the bay, and was waiting for us for the drive through the suburbs...

... to Finca La Vigia, the lovely hilltop house above the village of San Franciscode Paula where Ernest Hemingway lived for many years before his death.  

Finca la Vigia

We came upon this lovely scene near the Finca la Vigia parking lot

Cuba’s National Trust has done an excellent job in restoring the house, at the family’s request, to exactly the way it was when writer left it in 1961.  Windows and doors have been left open through the house, to allow visitors to look through into every room...

... including the bathroom, where Hemingway made daily pencil notations of his weight on the wall...

Photo: Sharon Stone

... and the closet in which his wartime journalist’s uniform hangs alongside shelves of boots and shoes...

  
Every room is lined with heavily laden bookshelves...

... and bottles of his favorite booze still stand on a table behind the living room couch.  The heads of the poor wild creatures that he shot for his macho entertainment are mounted on the walls.  

We climbed to the top of the two-story tower where he wrote...

... looking down over a large swimming pool as he did, Oscar assures us, when Ava Gardener swam naked...

  

Tricia and Ellie, relaxing by Ernest Hemingway's pool

Next to the pool we found his sport-fishing boat, the Pilar...

... constructed in dark wood with immaculate detail.  Near the pool, also, his pet cemetery...

On from there to the coastal village of Cojimar, where Hemingway launched the Pilar on his fishing expeditions.  We lunched at Ajiaco, rated the top paladar in Cuba by the Guardian newspaper.  I don’t want to sound snarky, but it was beans and rice again.  Okay, very nice beans and rice, but still beans and rice.  The palate longs for a change of tastes.  Well, mine does, anyway.  And to judge from other responses from the group, I’m not the only one.  No matter, here's some views of the decaying grandeur of the Malecon, taken from the bus on the way to our next stop:

And, by contrast, a view overlooking Havana Bay from our next stop, the elegant Malecon apartment of the curator Juan Delgado Calzadilla...  

Here, drawings and paintings by contemporary artists are stacked salon-style on every wall, with barely a gap between them...

Photo: Kent Twitchell

Photo: Kent Twitchell

Every one of them, Calzadilla tells us, is for sale.  This is his way of supporting younger artists, capitalizing on an international reputation as a curator to promote their work.  Most recently, he upstaged the Havana Bienal with his exhibit Detrás del Muro (”Behind the Wall”) a spectacular series of performances and installations exploring the cultural significance and topography of the Malecon, some of them interactive with the crowds that spend their leisure hours on this popular Oceanside promenade.  As our itinerary informed us, “Detrás del Muro captivated viewers and critics alike for its self-r​eflective subject matter as well as its accessibility. Many of the installations and interventions involved participation from pedestrians and viewers wandering the Malecón. Detrás highlighted works that played with illusion, many of which were further activated when approached, touched, and explored by the public.”  Well put!  We were served cool mojitos on this hottest of hot afternoons, and watched an extended video documenting the event...

No disrespect, Steve!  I think many of us felt like this, in the heat of that afternoon!

... and were impressed by the quality of the work and its reception by both art enthusiasts and lay people, out for a day of relaxation and hardly expecting to encounter art.

At this point, many of us were overcome by the heat and humidity, and we were happy for a couple of hours of respite at the Telegrafo.  Then, at 7PM, on to La Guarida (and, for hardy readers with a good memory, back to the beginning of this narrative…)

Sunday, June 1

SORRY, NO COLUMBUS...

On a day when our tour had nothing scheduled (!) for the morning, we had a lazy start and a late breakfast.  I even took some time in our room to get started on this travel blog, anticipating the substantial task that would be awaiting me on our return to Los Angeles.  By mid-morning, though, we were ready for an expedition to the “Cementerio Colon”...

...the Columbus cemetery—with our fellow travelers Peter and Andrea, and Tricia and Sarah.  For a mere 10 CUC a person, we got a couple of cab drivers to drive us out to the cemetery and wait for an hour to bring us back to the hotel.   Christopher Columbus is not, as it turns out, buried in the Columbus cemetery.  That’s another Havana hustle.  His remains did, it appears, spend some time there, but were eventually taken back to Spain.  The story of his final resting place is contested. 

Anyway, here we were.  Al Nodal had advised us to ask for Octavio...

... as a guide, and he proved to be an inspired one.  His voluble dramatic narratives and wild gestures kept us entertained for the hour of our visit.  Highlight, we thought, was the tomb of Amelia, that has become the pilgrimage site for petitioners from throughout the world.  She was buried in tragic circumstances—I have to abbreviate Octavio’s fifteen minute narrative—after the death of her child with the baby’s corpse between her legs.  When exhumed some time later, the baby’s bones were discovered on her breast with her skeletal arms wrapped around it.  Miracle!  Behind the grave site, almost buried in freshly placed bouquets, there is a mass of "thank-you" notes engraved in stone from those who requested, and received, her help from beyond the grave. (There's a beautifully illustrated online entry about the cemetery here.  Worth a look!)

Our taxis brought us back to the hotel, where we stopped across the way for lunch.  Pizza!  Somewhat indifferent by American standards, it had the appeal of gourmet pizza after nearly a week of beans and rice.  (Sorry to harp on about this, but it did get to be an “issue”!)   A brief rest, and back to the bus for the trip out to Muraleandro (literally, “making murals”), a community arts project that serves both local artists and children by providing them with a space—and to some extent with supplies—to exercise their creative talents...

Here's Victor, who greeted us and explained everything!

A number of the artists involved came together to treat us to a performance of music and dance in the space outside El Tanque, “the tank”, a former water tank they persuaded the government to let them convert into an arts center and show space.  At Al’s suggestion, many of our group had brought art supplies as gifts, in a country where such basic things as pencils and paints are hard to come by, and we took pleasure in passing them on to this worthy group. 

No bus to dinner tonight.  Instead, we were greeted outside the hotel by a parade of classic cars, American monsters from the fifties, restored with incredible skill and passion by their owners, immaculately maintained, and put to use as taxis for occasions such as this...

Here's some more pictures of the parade:

Photo: Isabel Rojas-Williams

Photo: Sarah Stone

Photo: Sarah Stone

Photo: Sarah Stone

We two, again, taking pictures of the rest of the group.  Photo: Sarah Stone

Thanks, Sarah and Isabel!

Great hilarity, cruising down the Malecon in these truly magnificent convertibles, the ocean wind blowing in our hair.  An unforgettable experience. 

The cars brought us to the home and studio of the artist Kadir Lopez, where we were warmly greeted and given the run of this lovely restored mansion, hung everywhere with the artist’s work.  Along with others, I requested a Cuba Libre (rum, coca cola and a shot of lime) at the open bar, and enjoyed a conversation with the artist about his work...

... much of it recycling old, pre-Revolution American corporate signs, mostly from oil companies, laminated with familiar political images and layers of baked-on paint.  Here's one:

You see one another in the background below, on the left.  I also liked the three-dimensional work:

The artist has representation in the States, and will be showing later this year at Bergamot in Los Angeles. 

We ate out in the garden, under the trees, enjoying a wonderful buffet of fresh vegetables and fruits...

... prepared by the artist’s family.  It was a delightful, rather romantic way to spend our last evening in Havana.

Back to the hotel in… our tour bus!  What a come-down!

Monday, June 2

Our last day in Havana.  Our plane is scheduled to leave at 4 PM, so there’s still time for a half-day’s tour activity.  We’re breakfasted, packed and climbing aboard the bus by 9 AM, greeted for the last time by our driver, Mandy, and our tour guide, Oscar.  Even Che Guevara is on hand to bid us farewell in front of the hotel…

We enjoy a last view of the Malecon...

... as the bus takes off for our first destination of the day, the former mansion that is now home to the Grupo Folklorico Nacional de Cuba (the home page is in Spanish, details translate into English), the national dance company that specializes in Afrocuban performance.  The rehearsal space is a generously proportioned space on the first floor, where we are invited to occupy a row of chairs set up against the wall and are treated to the performance of a half dozen different dances...

... beautifully choreographed and performed with passionate, engaging energy by the two dozen young dancers, male and female, who form the troupe.  And after the dance, we have the opportunity to sit and talk with the performers about their lives, and the kind of work it takes to achieve their level of skill.  

Delightful young people.  I’m old-fashioned enough to believe that character is formed in good part by the kind of discipline and dedication that it takes to be able to perform at this level.

Here are some of those beautiful girls outside, in mufti

(I've been meaning to say how much I have been appreciating the infinite varieties of skin color in Cuba, and this would seem to be the last opportunity to do so.  It seems to be so problematic at home.  Not so here, where colors range from dark ebony to lovely, milky coffee and white white, and no-one seems to take much notice of it, beyond its obvious, glowing beauty.  There may be, for all I know, hidden prejudices about how dark dark skin should be, or how white, white.  I sure didn't notice it.  In my observation, skin color appeared to have little or nothing to do with social standing or class.  Everyone seemed perfectly happy with what they had, and was content to accept others with theirs.  More of a pleasure, then, than a problem.)

The final leg of our Cuban journey takes us back to the home and studio of José Fuster, where we arrived too late, the other day, to get past the outer gate.  With a few minutes to spare before heading to the airport, we wandered around the maze of brightly colored corridors and stairways, admiring the fantasy of this artist’s fecund imagination...

The whole environment is magical, provocative, and a lot of fun.  I can’t say the same about the hundreds of individual paintings and ceramics that were on display everywhere for sale.  They seemed to me to be repetitive, hastily made for commercial purposes, and hackneyed when compared to the endless creativity of the surrounding forms and spaces that could please both the eye and the mind with their peculiarity. 

Off to the airport, then.  For our 4 PM flight, we arrived at noon, with more than enough time to spare—only to discover on our arrival that our flight had been “delayed.”  No one could tell us for how long.  Ellie and I were booked on a 7:50 American Airlines flight from Miami to Los Angeles, leaving us nearly three hours to catch the flight after our scheduled 5:00 PM arrival.  Others were booked to leave at 8:30.  Should we pay the extra $300 to take an American Airlines flight, due to leave on time, and be assured of our connection?  $600 for the two of us.  It seemed like too much money.  It was only after we’d decided to take the risk that we learned our Havana-Miami flight was now rescheduled to leave at 7:30!  So we were left, waiting, waiting, stuck with the rest of our group for more than seven hours, in all, in the bleak departure hall of Havana airport…   

Apologies for this one, Kent! I couldn't resist.  Your pose expressed exactly how I felt!

By the time we finally deplaned in Miami, we had all missed our connections, and had to spend the night at the Miami Airport International Hotel.  Not exactly the way we would have wished to end our tour…  To add proverbial insult to injury, we heard that Tricia lost her luggage! 

Still, we had a great time, didn’t we?  So much to see, so much to learn, so much to experience.  So many good people to have met and talked to.  So much life and passion, even in circumstances that were often, at best, deprived of so much that we take for granted in our lives.  If we failed to come back changed in the way we see the world, then we most surely weren’t paying attention.  So I think I speak for all of us when I say...

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