Sprinklers and Sparklers and Mayo, O My!

Long ago and far away, when temperatures were measured with metal feed-store thermometers hung next to mops and buckets on the back stoop and heat indices weren’t yet popular, we had our own ways of calculating summer heat.   Summer meant mirages shimmering above the black-topped roads, imaginary pools of water swirling, receding and evaporating before our eyes as we traveled.  In the heavy, breathless night,  sleep became impossible.  As trees murmured and complained, cots were dragged from houses and we lay beneath the stars, lulled into dozing and then on to dreams by the comfortable chirring of crickets.

Eventually the grass – soft, feathery blades that tickled our feet and stained our clothing – began to crispen in the fullness of summer heat.  Here and there, sprinklers appeared,  four revolving metal arms that whirled ribbons of life-giving water across lawns with a soft, rhythmic schlush.   We ran through them, slid past them, then collapsed giggling into them when we miscalculated and collided with a friend.  As the play grew more exhuberant, knees began to skin and the occasional howl of protest rose over our delighted screams.  Just as protests began to overtake delight, doors flew open and a mother, grandparent or  neighbor would yell, “You kids dry off and go find something else to do!”

There always was something more to do.  Sometimes we hopped on our bikes and headed for the little gas station where glass cases overflowed with penny candy: root beer barrels, tiny wax bottles filled with ghastly syrups,  orange slices and soft, pliable circus peanuts. No one liked the licorice bits with hard pink and white coatings, but we always bought candy necklaces, candy cigarettes with tiny pink “flames” and Necco wafers, bargaining for our favorite flavors with all the savvy and ruthless determination of commodities traders.

Twice each week the BookMobile parked in front of the grade school, and we chose new books to read.  One week was set aside for Vacation Bible School (grape Koolaid and graham crackers with chocolate frosting), another was devoted to Camp Hantesha (night-time raids on other cabins and tin-foil dinners) while a third was reserved for Craft Camp, otherwise known as Popsicle Sticks Run Amok.

In short, summer was a time to explore and try new things.  During the summer, we learned to throw a ball, ride a bicycle  or roller skate.   As we grew older, the challenges of summer became tinged with excitement and anxiety as we set ourselves larger goals: walking with a friend to an uptown movie, daring the high dive, or navigating the stacks of the “big” library on our own. 

If we hesitated, it was our own timidity which held us back, and not that of our parents or caretakers.  The rules were general, and common sense prevailed. Wear your shoes on a bicycle. Be home by dark. Don’t eat all your candy at once. Never swim alone. Don’t fight.   Beyond that, we were on our own.

 The pinnacle of summer was July 4th.  It was the High Holy Day of Play, and everyone took part.  In the morning, the community parade circled the town square.  Afterwards,  parents lolled about on porches or busied themselves in kitchens while we ran to the schoolyard to swing or hopscotched our way around the block.  Boys tossed balls to one another while the girls played jacks or helped set the table for the yearly feast.

When the time for the picnic arrived, no one was picking at arugala or chicken grilled with a nice lemon-tarragon glaze.  The traditional menu never varied: hot dogs and hamburgers on white buns, sweet corn, thick-sliced tomatoes, potato salad with celery, egg and mayonnaise, baked beans, brownies and pies.  We ate our fill, and left the rest for late-comers, snackers or Aunt Janet, notorious for needing “just one more spoonful” of beans or potato salad.   After sitting around on an outdoor table for six hours, there probably was a risk attached to the mayonnaise-laden salads,  but we didn’t think of that any more than we thought about the dangers of our evening’s entertainment - boxes of red, white and blue sparklers that we’d burn before we headed off to watch the town’s display of aerial fireworks.

It was a news spot on a local radio station that released this flood of memories.   A representative of a local hospital was urging the usual pre-Fourth of July caution about fireworks. In the course of her remarks, she commented that no child ever should be allowed to hold a sparkler.  As she said, a sparkler could damage an eye, or burn a hand.  As she didn’t say, but perhaps believes and certainly implied, the thoughtlessness of allowing a child a sparkler might well bring down the whole of Western Civilization.  

Listening to her, I was astonished first, and then appalled.   Living in an area of serious drought, I have no quarrel with restrictions on fireworks, or even their ban.  However accidental, burning down an apartment complex or half a subdivision doesn’t fall into the category of celebration.  But fireworks safety in the absence of rain was not her concern.  Her intent was to discourage every parent, in every circumstance, from allowing their child a traditional pleasure of Independence Day celebrations. 

Certainly, we live our lives differently than we did in the 1950s.  Many of the changes are a direct result of increased knowledge, better judgement and the desire for healthier and happier lives.  Other changes seem to be no more than an expression of the “Nannie factor” in our society – the desire of self-appointed experts or general busybodies to control the behavior of those around them.  As C.S. Lewis wrote “In Freedom”,

“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.  It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busy-bodies.  The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

Lewis’ “omnipotent moral busy-bodies,”  kind, well-meaning, benevolent folk who would control and repress us “for our own good” are nicely pondered by Ian Chadwick in his essay on Conformity.  As he puts it,

Personal agendae do not benefit liberty: they hinder it.  Pretty soon it’s dictatorship by committee – committees peopled with well-meaning, dedicated but unelected members whose goals are to enforce their own personal vision of utopia. They erect increasingly restrictive rules that slowly squeeze the life out of a community and bleed it until it is colourless.

Those laws and bylaws that hamper and constrict businesses, clamp down on dissent, free speech and free expression are often created to further some publicly stated goal like “beautification.” But they really mean “uniformity.” They strip the living skin off democracy in order to pound all the square pegs in the community into the committee’s round holes.

 

Such concerns may seem far removed from sparklers, sprinklers and over-the-hill potato salad.  On the other hand, as warnings against “this” product or “that” activity increase on a daily basis, I wonder:  are we in fact becoming a nation of Nannies, Lawrence Durrell’s “old women of both sexes” warning one another away not only from legitimate risk but even from the richness of life?   The nation I love always has been a nation willing to allow its citizens to celebrate and live  as they will – worshipping, parading, remembering, reciting and above all participating in rituals that sparkle and sting like the reality of freedom itself.

As the practical philosopher Erma Bombeck said, “You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4 not with a parade of guns, tanks and soldiers who pass by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die of happiness.”

In a world of sprinklers, sparklers and unrefrigerated mayo, can we slip and fall on the water-slicked grass that bends beneath our feet?  Of course.  Can we over-indulge in over-exposed foods and suffer the consequences? Of course.  Can the sun or the sparklers burn, the bicycle tip, the bone break, the puppy nip or the cat scratch?  Yes, and yes, and yes again to everything that “can” happen in a world that doesn’t take “care”. 

But too much of the wrong kind of care can lead to paralysis and disengagement, particularly when what passes for care is little more than fear.  For those who fear what “might happen”, for those who hunger to control what cannot be controlled and prefer to deny that brokenness, contingency and pain of various sorts always will be a part of life, there never can be enough care.  

“Don’t you care about your children?”, they ask.  “Don’t you care about your health?”  “Don’t you care about security and acceptance and the approval of others?”  Yes, yes, and yes again we say - we do care.  But we care as much for life and freedom, for speaking our own word and celebrating the gifts the world holds for those who love her.

In simple fact,  some of us choose to worry less and participate more and most of the time, for most of us, nothing happens at all.  We run through the sprinkler without slipping.  The sparklers light up the night and the last bit of potato salad gets eaten, just because it’s there.  The children fall asleep, and we tend to them in the darkness while the world sighs everyone home: safe, and sound, and free as the birds that cry through the deep summer night, careless and carefree at once.

 

 

Comments are welcome.  To leave a comment or respond, please click below.

And many thanks to Barbara Bieber-Hamby, whose Fourth of July greeting card to me included the quotation from Erma Bombeck and helped to pull this entry together.  As the newest Member of Team Muse, she’ll soon have her very own tee and a link back to this entry on the Team Muse page. 

A Prayer for Yoani Sanchez

Sailing to Havana

On the Texas coast, easterlies mean rain,  but southeast winds whisper tropical promises.  Building in like the trades, they rise after noon to blow every hint of land – burning fields, greening trees, fresh-plowed earth – back upon itself until dusk, when they quieten again.  Shaking off the lassitude of winter, sailors tack into the southerlies, working their way forward against their steady call. Along the coastal plain, gusty west winds fill with pelicans and spoonbills, and empty the bays before dying away as quickly as they came. 

But no matter the season, it is the north wind that delights.  With its restless, gypsy-like dance across the waters, it promises an irresistable bit of temperate pleasure in the midst of summer’s oppressive calms. When the wind blows freely from the north without a hint of easting, steady and unwavering as a well-trimmed craft, every sailor who has known the incomparable pleasures of long, offshore reaches begins to stand at windows or walk to doors.  Looking to the south, sniffing the air, letting the mind unwind its coils of responsibility, commitment and routine as casually as lines flipped from a cleat, they begin to dream.  With a well-found vessel and a few provisions, with fuel and water and the proper navigation tools, the course would be clear.  Passing down the Ship Channel, through the jetties and out toward blue water, leaving the tanker anchorage, the safety fairway, Heald Bank and the Flower Gardens behind, there would be only wind, water and a destination.  Set the course at 117 degrees true, make adjustments as you must, and in six days, or seven, you would be in Havana Harbor.  Seven hundred thirty-five nautical miles on the rhumb line, she’s only a long reach away on a steady norther.

In a perfect world, I would be gone: yielding to temptations I hardly can bear.  My open window faces north, scooping up the breezes.  My wind chimes, tenor in range, tuned to an Aeolian scale, ring only on winds from NW to NE. Tonight they are singing due North and my heart echoes their sound: restless, with a slightly minor stirring.  Given time and a boat, I could find my way to Havana. Laid up against the wall at Marina Hemingway, I would walk El Malecon, using my new, rudimentary Spanish to ask, “Can you help me find Yoani Sanchez?”

Finding Yoani Sanchez

 It is, of course, a fantasy.  There is much more than water that separates Galveston from Havana, and a few hundred miles of ocean are more easily overcome than the twin realities of geopolitical obstinance and dictatorial whim.  The thought of sailing away to Havana Harbor, tying up and walking over to visit Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez clearly falls into the realm of fantasy. Recognized as such, it stands as a powerful reminder that Yoani Sanchez herself is not a metaphor, a symbol, a blank screen upon which we can project our own fantasies about the oppressed Third World writer. 

Yoani Sanchez is real, as her people are real. At this very moment, she is in Havana, living her life as you peacefully sit at your computer and read these words.  Perhaps she is reading.  Perhaps she is wondering where to find a bicycle chain, or pondering the mysterious messages painted on the broken windows of the city.  Perhaps she is taking one of the unusual red and blue buses which sit at the side of the road outside her window or perhaps (one can only hope) she is pouring her son a scarce and luxurious glass of milk.  Soon, she will be writing again, using the power of human language to bring to a world’s notice the abuse of political power.

Despite the fact that I don’t know her culture, can’t speak her language and barely comprehend the nature of the government which constrains her life, I have come to know enough of Yoani Sanchez in past months that any thought of  focusing on other things leaves me with an irrational sense of betrayal, of abandoning a friend.   A friend or two of my own say, “You can’t be responsible for everyone.  Think how many unfortunate and oppressed people exist whom you don’t know: the refugees, the prisoners, the disappeared and violated.”

And that is true.  There are many I don’t know, millions of people whose circumstances nearly defy description and whose lives are lived out in hopelessness and fear.   There was a time when I knew nothing of Yoani Sanchez.   I knew little of her country and even less about her people.  But now, I know.   I’ve taken my bite of this particular apple, and so I find myself accountable for my response.  The difficult question, of course, is the nature of my response.

However distasteful we may find it, the truth is that we are embedded in history, and it takes time for things to work themselves out.  In difficult and complex circumstances, the longings of the human heart can meet the limits of life in a clash of suffocating force. When that happens, allowing time to pass, allowing the next step to reveal itself, is difficult.   It is tempting to become impatient, and even easier to experience helplessness, anxiety and frustration.  The urge to take control, to force a turning of events simply in order to resolve the tension – the urge to DO something – can be irresistible.  It’s a generally unhelpful response, particularly since, when no other obvious solution exists, the temptation to resolve tension simply by turning away can be strong.

Kryie Eleison

Restless in the wind and feeling the call of the water, still haunted by Yoani Sanchez and uncertain which next step to take, I found myself impelled to Galveston’s shore.  Walking the edge of the same water that laps against El Malecon so many worlds away, I remembered other days when there was nothing more to do: times when clear thought dissolved into a blur of confusion, and every action proved ineffectual. Seeing those days in memory, I saw my solution as well.  Turning my gaze from the south, from the expanse of water and the impossible journey it represented, I turned instead to the north, to the little seaside town and St. Mary, Star of the Sea.

I am not a Catholic, and whether Yoani Sanchez’ beliefs are Catholic, I have no way of knowing.  But in the cathedrals of the world it is faith that matters, not definitions, and Yoani Sanchez is a person of deep and abiding faith.  She also is a person of words, and surely understands the silence that is the necessary partner of words: the seedbed that allows them to take root and flourish, the frame that surrounds their images.

In a cathedral, it is the silence that comes first.  Sitting near Mary, Star of the Sea, or Anthony, or Patrick, with their banks of votives and calm, impassive gazes focused beyond the horizon of time, silence begins to permeate the soul.  As the silence grows complete, as mind and heart are stilled by the unutterable presence of eternity, I rise and take a taper, and light a candle for Yoani Sanchez.   There is no need for specific prayer, no need for words to fill the silence.  The silence itself is prayer, and comfort, enough.

As I watch the flame, a mysterious wind sends ripples of grief through my heart like a rising wind will ruffle the waters.  But the wind lays, and the heart calms, and the grief stands revealed for what it is: a profound experience of the truth that to be human is to be limited.  The promise and the pain of faith is understanding that those limits will be overcome, but  only in due time, and by a power other than our own. 

I stand a moment longer, watching the flame, hearing the silence, feeling the grief ebb away.  As I turn toward the sunlight streaming in through the open door at the end of the nave, as I begin my long walk through the flickering shadows toward re-engagement and life, there is no need to look back.

Yoani Sanchez is safe.

 

 

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Imagining a Ban

 

In recent weeks, Cuban policies limiting citizens’ access to certain goods and services have been liberalized.  Farmers no longer are required to purchase materials from state-run stores, and it’s now possible for more individuals to rent cars. 

Restrictions on personal cell phone ownership have been eased, and bans lifted on the purchase of electronic or electrical consumer items of all sorts, including computers, video players, televisions, pressure cookers, rice cookers, electric bicycles, microwave ovens and car alarms.

Raul Castro’s reforms have been scrutinized closely for practical as well as political significance.  Apparently desirable, they are filled with irony.  In a nation where most individuals are not allowed to purchase a car, car alarms seem somewhat beside the point.  The scarcity of many basic food items and the prohibitive cost of others make the possibility of possessing an electric rice cooker or microwave seem amusing at best.

While the sudden availability of televisions, computers and cell phones has created a bit of a stir in the world outside the Island, Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez and others suggest Raul Castro’s easing of restrictions instituted by his brother Fidel is nothing more than bowing to the inevitable.  At this point, there is no stopping the influx of technology into the country, so it makes sense to get ahead of the curve and gain political advantage wherever possible.  Even more cynical observers suggest that easy availability of cell phones simply provides one more way for the government to keep track of its citizens.

In any event, the reforms have been noted with cautious approval and general agreement that, while the reforms are lovely, they probably are cost-prohibitive for most Cubans.  Writing in the April 1 Washington Post, Manuel Roig-Franzia notes that “Cuban state workers make an average of $19 a month… (while) car rentals in Cuba – also managed by the military – are among the most expensive in Latin America, with vehicles typically going for as much as $100 a day.”

The additional fact that such items and services must be purchased with Cuban convertible pesos, a stronger currency than the national pesos paid state workers makes things more difficult.  Cubans who receive tips from tourists or have money sent in from abroad have access to convertible pesos, but the existence of a de facto dual monetary system does little to increase purchasing power across the board.

The same issues arise when it comes to a less-publicized but symbolically important March 31 move by the Cuban government to lift restrictions on Cubans’ freedom to enjoy resort beaches, stay at luxury hotels or purchase services provided by the hotels.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and consequent economic difficulties for the Castro regime, the practice of keeping Cubans and tourists apart became so rigid it was known as “tourist apartheid”.  Some of the most beautiful places in the country were off-limits to Cubans: Varadero Beach, Cayo Santa Maria, the Vinales Valley in Pinar del Rio Province.

For most Cubans , being allowed to move beyond that “apartheid” and indulge themselves in the luxury of a hotel stay will be as symbolic as the right to purchase a computer or DVD; it simply is too expensive. A quick look at current rates published by TripAdvisor tells the tale: a night in Havana?  $201 to $369.  A little stroll along Varadero at sunset?  $169 to $305.  Guardalavaca? $255.  Guardala? Coming in high, at $455.  There was a listing at Guama for $3, with a description  that proclaims “twice the charms”.  If not a misprint, it’s either the world’s best bargain or the world’s worst decision: who knows?

In any event, it doesn’t take a genius to do the math.  Quoting Roig-Franzia again, “on (the salary of the typical Cuban), it would take nearly two years to earn enough for one night at the Saratoga.” 

Resort living and luxury hotels aren’t for everyone, of course.  Even as an American with a perfect right to head off to the Hilton, I prefer to make other choices.   I suspect there are Cubans who feel the same.  If I were Cuban, I’d be far more interested in regaining my right to travel to places like the Vinales Valley.

One of Cuban’s most remarkable natural attractions, it’s been declared a National Natural Monument and listed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List since 1999 as “a cultural landscape enriched by traditional farm and village architecture.”  Surrounded by mogotes with rounded tops and steep slopes, the valley is a luxurious mix of tobacco, taro and bananas, unusual plant life and exquisite vistas.   For decades Cubans showed off their treasure, until access was limited by the government.  In the words of Rafael Ferro Salas, “The old road was closed.  Now only the rented vehicles of foreign tourists travel the new route, and those carrying visitors invited to the spot by government officials.  For Cubans who live in the island nation, traveling is prohibited on the access road leading to the valley’s vantage point, the site where the view is loveliest and most unforgettable.”

In words of unutterable poignancy, he goes on to add, “Pinar del Rio is full of natural beauties.  The most beautiful sites are being left like a footprint in the fog of memory.  So far no one knows when the day will come when they can go back to traveling among them.“  (CubaNet, October 1, 2004)

Writing in Babalu, Val Prieto notes some uncertainty whether areas such as the Vinales Valley are now accessible to Cubans.  It may be the lifting of restrictions applies strictly to tourist beaches, hotels and services.  Whatever the final result, the changes certainly stimulate thought.  Whatever happens in the next months, whether Varadero, the Cays, the Vinales Valley and other prohibited sites become open to all Cubans, it remains a fact that for years Cubans have been barred from their own country, banned from visiting sights celebrated world-wide for their beauty and historical significance.

For a Cuban to be banned from Vinales is not unlike an American being banned from Yosemite, prevented from traveling to or enjoying its splendor because the government prefers to reserve it for those who will pay well for the experience.

What others experience can be hard to imagine.  But imagine, for a moment, being banned from the Everglades while tour boats filled with foreigners are granted special passes to enjoy the wonders of the River of Grass:

Imagine being banned from Anasazi ruins throughout the Four Corners area because a politician prefers to show off the sites to his cronies:

Imagine being banned from Cape Hatteras because the government intends to restrict contact between you and visitors from other countries:

Imagine being banned from Death Valley for the sole purpose of buttressing your government’s sense of entitlement and control over your life:

Imagine being banned from Niagara Falls simply because the government has the power to do so and decides it will do so for the simple delight of exercising power:

For some people in the world, such banishments are a bitter reality, limitations on freedom imposed by rulers intent on controlling other peoples’ lives.  It’s impossible to look at the world and not understand that such bans lead inexorably to other constraints.  The freedom to travel, to assemble, to speak without fear with whomever we choose, the freedom to participate fully in the life of a country or community – all those freedoms begin to erode when a valley, an historic site or an occasion is declared by the state to be “off limits”, made a punishable offense for the sole purpose of maintaining power over individuals.

As I read about the possibility of change in Cuba, and ponder the strange significance of open beaches and hotel stays for the cause of freedom, I can’t help remembering an expression I once heard someone use in quite a different context.   “I’m banned, and I’m proud,” he said. From my perspective, it was an odd statement.  I suspect a few Cubans would find it even more odd.

 

 

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Death by Fidel: A Family’s Story of Survival

 

There’s no question that life is filled with mystery.   From time to time, how things happen, or why, can be impossible to determine.  But when Mystery appears on your doorstep, demanding entry, only the foolish or insensitive would refuse to open that door.

Last Friday afternoon, Mystery came to call.  Many of you know that I varnish boats for a living.  I was down on the docks, working on a boat for a new customer and chatting with him as he went about his own projects.  One thing led to another, and I mentioned blogging.  Then, I mentioned my interest in the Cuban blogger, Yoani Sanchez, and the experience of finding the blog Babalu.  Glancing up, he said, “I know Babalu.”  I was startled, intrigued and curious.  As if to answer my unspoken question he added, “I was raised in Havana.”

Indeed he was.  Gary Anderson’s father, Howard Anderson, had moved his family to Cuba in the late 40s because, as Gary said, “Grandpa didn’t want to be alone”.  Together with his wife Dorothy and their children, Howard Anderson lived and worked in Cuba until 1960.  In the summer of that year, they moved their boat to Miami and rented a house.   Conditions in Cuba were simply bcoming too dangerous for a family.

After the New Year arrived, stories and rumors of expropriated business holdings were rampant.  Howard Anderson returned to Cuba to protect his assets, including a chain of filling stations and a Jeep dealership.  While he was not a CIA agent, he did carry messages for the Agency, as well as providing radios to the anti-Castro movement.  That was enough for him to be charged with conspiracy during the failed Bay of Pigs invasion on April 17, 1961, and sentenced to death April 18. 

Writing in the September 15, 2006 issue of the Wall Street Journal, Evan Perez recalls Mr. Anderson’s last letter to his wife from a jail cell in Cuba’s Pinar Del Rio province: “Mr. Anderson said his fate was sealed.  As his trial began, air-raid sirens could be heard outside the courtroom… ‘It is unfortunate that this invasion took place, as under normal circumstances I am sure that the tribunal would not have been ruled by passion but by their own revolutionary laws,’ Mr. Anderson wrote in neat, square letters. ‘I hope and pray that you and mother will forgive me for the troubles that I have caused, especially this present big one.’  He was executed four hours later.”

Gary Anderson’s sister, Bonnie, was five years old when her father was killed.  Today, she is an award-winning journalist with 27 years’ experience, including two decades with NBC News and CNN, and the author of NEWSFLASH, an exploration of the decline of independence and truth in media published in 2004.

She also is a daughter determined to preserve and honor her father’s memory and a Cuban-American who insists the world face the reality of Castro’s Cuba.  As Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, “You’re entitled to your own opinion, not to your own facts”, and it is the facts which Bonnie Anderson has on her mind.  On December 3, 2006, her feature column in the Miami Herald detailed some of her family’s experience, and her frustration with the current state of affairs.  The full text is easily found online; these portions should provide a sense of her passion and thought:

My father, Howard F. Anderson, was only one of 20,000 people tortured and executed by Fidel Castro.  Before my Dad’s execution by firing squad, he had most of his blood drained from his body to be used for transfusions for the revolutionary troops.   (Note: Anderson v. Republic of Cuba, No. 01-28628 (Miami-Dade Circuit Court, April 13, 2003). “In one final session of torture, Castro’s agents drained Howard Anderson’s body of blood before sending him to his death at the firing squad.”)  Other political prisoners who watched the execution from their cells told me years later that my father refused a blindfold, and he whistled as the bullets tore into his body.  One of the few memories I have, since I was only five years old at that time, was that my Dad whistled when he was angry…”

“As a journalist, I refrain from generalities.  But I do believe there are few Cubans on the island and even fewer Cuban exiles who have not had a family member either executed or imprisoned by this megalomaniac.  What I fail to understand is why there seems to be so little national compassion for the pain that Cuban exiles have experienced.  Americans show compassion for cancer survivors, for DUI and rape victims, for people suffering from depression, physical and mental abuse.  We show compassion for famine victims in Africa…genocide in Ethiopia…  So why, I ask, are Cuban exiles not afforded the same support and compassion?”

Despite my Anglo name, I was born in Cuba.  My mother was born there.  Her parents are buried there.  My father was buried there until Castro was so ticked off by an article I wrote in 1978 as a Miami Herald reporter that he had my father’s remains dug up and thrown out.  I am most proud of being Cuban American, and I want the rest of the world to understand our pain.  It is part of our daily lives, no matter where we live.  It is the ache of losing a country, but it is more than that, too.  It is a loss we feel in our blood and in our bones…  Our pain is part of our spirit.  The most we can hope for is compassion…”

While Fidel is celebrating a birthday, my brothers, sister and I are mourning the death not only of our father but also of our mother, Dorothy Stauber Anderson McCarthy, who died less than two months ago.  She was 39 years old when Fidel made her a widow.  She struggled to raise us and give us a new life, and she was most successful.  But her greatest triumph was to instill a sense of right and honor in us, to teach us strength and morality.

A month after her death, a New York judge ruled that we should receive millions of dollars of the frozen Cuban assets held in this country because of Fidel Castro’s murder of my father.  It is a very welcome decision, but very bittersweet.  Fidel Castro is alive and he knows he has been tried, convicted, and sentenced to pay for his heinous act.  But the fact that my mother isn’t alive to see this final measure of justice is a soul-deep wound that I wll live with for the rest of my life.

I weep for her.  I weep for us, and I weep for all who have been the victims of Fidel Castro.”

The entire Anderson family – mother and children - testified during the trial.   In our conversation, Gary said, “It was just as traumatic as I thought it would be.”  I can only imagine. Bonnie herself testified that when she went to Cuba in 1978, on assignment from The Miami Herald, she met Castro during a press conference, and he “knew who I was.” 

An AP story printed in the March 13, 2003 South Florida Sun-Sentinal reported that “she was able to travel to western Cuba and found her father’s untended grave at the rear of a municipal cemetery.  Twenty years later Anderson, then on assignment for CNN, again traveled to the cemetery, where the same caretaker led her to the grave site.  But this time, a teary-eyed Anderson testified, “There was just a hole in the ground. The caretaker said that someone had ordered that the remains be dug up, and they were either burned and thrown out or just thrown out.”

 Today, May 21, is Cuba Solidarity Day.  When I first thought of posting an entry to mark the occasion, I imagined I would speak of Yoani Sanchez, or the history of Cuba, or the people of the island.  To the extent that I know anything at all of Cuba, that is what I have known.

Instead, I find myself thinking of Howard Anderson, who whistled in front of his firing squad because, as his daughter says, he “whistled when he was angry”.  I think of his wife Dorothy, who learned of his death not by a compassionate knock on the door, but by a radio broadcast out of Cuba.  I think of Gary, his brothers and sisters, who told a judge they wanted to testify at trial, in order to make clear the larger significance of what had happened to their father.  I think of Bonnie, using her skills as journalist and writer to send words around the world that continue to resonate today, strong and vibrant as the day they were published. And, on this Cuba Solidarity Day, I will go down once more to Cuban Gold:  to work, and ponder the mystery of how a boat purchased with funds taken from a murderous regime has fallen into my care. 

Call it romanticism, call it too much time in the hot sun, call it crazy if you will, but I like to talk to my boats.  I do it all the time.   The constancy of the wind and repetitive nature of the waves seems to affect them.   They’re a bit like children – they love to hear their stories, retold a thousand times.  They love hearing how they came to be, and the meaning of their names.  LIke any of us, they love to dream, wondering where the path will lead once they’ve been freed from moorings and slip.

And so today, as the heat and humidity rise, and the feel of tropical summer permeates the air, as the pelicans dive and the wind begins again to blow steady from the southeast, from the Island whose day it is, I’ll talk to Cuban Gold.  I’ll tell her the story of her naming.  I’ll tell her what I know of the beauty of the Island for which she is named, and the endurance of the people who live there.  I’ll tell her of other boats that have crossed the Straits and of that great river of flowing water called the Gulfstream.  I’ll imagine with her the satisfaction of one day riding a great wave of joy into Havana Harbor, mooring beside the wall and resting there to be admired by the walkers along El Malecon: beautiful, proud - and free at last.

 

 

 

© Text copyright Linda Leinen 2008

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Cuba Solidarity Day – A Larger Context

 

 On October 23, 1956, I celebrated my tenth birthday.  Surely there was cake and ice cream, a gift or two, and a party with balloons and games, but I really can’t say.  My most vivid memory of the day (or perhaps the day after, given the  relative slowness of the news wires in 1956) is running down the stairs from my bedroom, only to discover the Hungarian Revolution had begun. 

I was a child, growing up in Iowa.  I certainly never had met a Hungarian, and I had little if any idea what a revolution might be.   But I could read, and I liked to look at photographs.  As I headed toward the kitchen, The Des Moines Register  was lying on the dining room table.   There was a huge photograph above the fold, and the words REVOLUTION IN HUNGARY were splashed across the top.   I stopped to see what required such large print, and such big pictures.  Looking at the photograph, my mind was wiped clean of thought like one of my grade-school blackboards.  I was gaining my first, visceral understanding that the world was larger than my town, and not everyone in that world lived with cake, ice cream and gifts.

I was lucky enough to be raised in a time and place where teachers were left free to teach children, and my teachers threw away their lesson plans in the days that followed in order to talk with us about what was happening.  As amazing as it may seem today, the 1848 Hungarian National Poem had been found without the aid of Google, and it  was made into a poster:

    Stand up, Hungarians, your country calls.
    The time for now or never falls.
    Are we to live as slaves or free?
    Choose one. This is our destiny!
    By the God of all the Magyars, we swear.
    We swear never again the chains to bear. 

As a child, I was moved by the straightforwardness of the poetry, and its breathless assertion that chains could fall.   More recently, thinking over events of the time from an adult perspective, I found myself pondering this excerpt from Karoly Nagy’s “The Legacy of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution”:

Liberty, democracy, human rights are like health. Servitude, oppression, discrimination are like sickness. Totalitarian tyranny is death. A revolution that overthrows tyranny and achieves liberty is a resurrection. During the last week of October and the first few days of November, 1956, most of us in Hungary felt as if we were risen from the dead…
 
It was euphoria.  We sang our long-forbidden national anthem, embraced each other on the streets, laughed and cried with joy.  We felt redeemed. We were intoxicated by hearing and saying words of truth. We learned the truth and demonstrated it to the World, that what defines a country, what qualifies a society is not any ideology, but the presence or absence of freedom. 

Decades later, it was events in Poland which focused my attention.  The emergence of the Solidarity Movement under the leadership of Lech Walesa was profoundly significant, and its history has assumed almost mythical proportions.  Solidarity’s success didn’t happen overnight, and it wasn’t linked directly to specific events or grievances.  The rising of Solidarity as a political force in Poland was related to governmental policies and economic difficulties which had become increasingly onorous over the course of a decade.  Consumer goods were scarce.   People waited in endless lines for such basics as bread and toilet paper, and often left with no goods to show for their patient efforts.  In July of 1980, as the government raised the price of goods but curbed the growth of wages, strikes spread across the country.

The history of the strikes, the further development of Solidarity into a national labor union and the quite amazing international support which it received is well documented elsewhere, and beyond the scope of this post.  It is worth noting that Solidarity was outlawed after the imposition of martial law on December 13, 1981.  Most of its leaders were arrested, including Lech Walesa, who was imprisoned until November of 1982.  Less than a month after his release, 10,000 more activists were arrested, and restrictions on civil liberties continued despite the lifting of martial law on July 22, 1983.

When Walesa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on October 5, 1983, the Polish government refused to allow him to leave the country in order to accept the award.   In order to avoid involuntary exile, he remained in Poland while his wife, Danuta, traveled to Oslo to accept the award on his behalf.  By December of 1990, Walesa had become the first popularly-elected President of Poland, and was free to travel as he pleased.

Former Polish President Alexander Kwasniewski once said,  “The idea of Solidarity is the most important answer to the globalized world in the 21st century.”   Viktor Yushchenko,  who eventually triumphed in  Ukraine’s ”orange revolution”, agreed, saying,  “By storming freedom, Poland gives an example for the continuing path toward freedom. Each country does it in its own way. But Solidarity was a guidepost for all of us.”

Indeed.  In 2005, ex-Czechoslovakian President and longtime dissident Vaclav Havel noted that, “On the 25th anniversary of Solidarity, we should all be reminded of the countries where there are still dissidents fighting for human rights, and where people are not free. Solidarity does not only mean freedom, it requires responsibility.”  He added that people in “Belarus, Burma, Cuba and North Korea still need clear signs of support, still need freedom, still need Solidarity.”

Recent events in Myanmar (Burma) related to Cyclone Nargis have proven Havel’s point as far as that nation is concerned, and there is an unfortunate number of other examples of oppression, incompetence and disregard for human rights around the world.   Next week’s Cuba Solidarity Day (May 21) will focus attention on a struggle taking place not in Europe or Asia, but 90 miles off our shores, where parallels with earlier circumstances and events are crystal clear. 

In her Generacion Y  blog, Yoani Sanchez speaks of the same sort of food shortages that brought trouble in Poland.  The Cuban government’s refusal to allow Ms. Sanchez travel privileges to claim her Ortega y Gasset prize for digital journalism recalls restrictions placed on Lech Walesa when he won his own Nobel Peace Prize.  Many recent changes in Cuba, including those regarding consumer goods and internet access, are as painfully incremental and nearly irrelevant as those implemented in any nation where dictatorial leadership seeks to maintain power while assuaging the masses.

Like Walesa, Havel and Yushenko before her, Yoani Sanchez  has become a face of Cuban opposition to tyranny, political repression and overwhelming bureaucratic and governmental incompetence.  But there are other bloggers, such as those at Babalu, who also speak of Cuba, and an entire people standing behind her who deserve no less recognition and no less respect.  Solidarity is meant not simply for the Sanchezes, the Walesas and the Nagys of the world.  It is meant even more for the nameless ones, the ones whose voice is not yet heard:  those who need someone to speak on their behalf until they are able to speak for themselves.There is something infinitely inspiring about real people engaged in real struggles over real issues.  They deserve our respect, our attention, our support and, yes – a vibrant and committed solidarity. 

Over the years, there has been some confusion and misunderstanding about the very term “solidarity”.  Some have endowed it with an ethereal, almost mystical quality, while others seem to limit its use solely to grand gestures with a distinctly Aux barricades! flavor.  The notion of solidarity actually is quite simple.  It has very little to do with free-floating emotion, philosophical constructs,  high-flown speeches or vague intentions, and a good bit to do with simple, concrete actions.  As so often happens, a little story may prove more helpful than formal definition.

Once upon a time, there was a man who began to read a book.  He was reading in bed,  comfortable and warm, with a glass of wine at hand and a candle burning on the ledge.  A bit of Vivaldi played in the background, and a fire flickered shadows onto the walls, although the book he was reading spoke nothing of music or pleasure or warmth.   The man was reading  Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”.  As he read, he discovered that ”Ivan Denisovich” portrays a world as bleak as any in literature.   In Ivan Denisovich’s world, there is cold,  hard work and misery, and not enough to eat.  Ivan Denisovich lives out his life in a Gulag, and the Gulag is not a comfortable place.

Eventually, the man reading Ivan Denisovich’s tale of misery  became distressed.  As he realized the comfort of his warm bed and all the delights of life which surrounded him, he stopped reading.   He rose and dressed, doused his fire, stopped the music and moved to a hard-backed chair, where he continued to read through the night.

Perhaps the time has come for us to rise and reclothe our spirits, douse the warmth and comfort of our lives, and accept an uncomfortable chair.  In Cuba, as in so many places in the world, it still is night.  There are voices to be heard, and words waiting to be read. 

 

 

 

  © Text copyright Linda Leinen 2008

COMMENTS are welcome.  To read previous comments or post one of your own, please click on the tiny “Comments” link below.  Eventually, I’ll learn CSS and revise the template, but this note will have to do for the time being