CUTE UGLY AND FROM CUBA

CUTE UGLY

    How can you not love a face like this?

     Little junior or sissy turkey is out for a walk and test flight. Wild Turkeys are among the population of abundant wild life here on the ridge in Cambria. The practice surface in this case is our roof.

REMINDER TO THE DONALD

   Dear Mr. Trump,

       It is an ancient wisdom and is also a Biblical lesson, "Reap what you sow."  Or if you prefer consider Newton's law or the law of Karma-for every action there is a reaction.

       Or closer to your own idiom, don't say stupid things or people may begin to think you are an egotistical idiot. That would be more people may begin to think that.

CUBA

    If you like to travel I hope you'll get to Cuba now that we have begun to normalize relations. As a toast of celebration here's a post from June 2011. Enjoy your Daiquiri. A further exploration of the extraordinary island follows below.

THE DAIQUIRI- 
AND THEN,

THE PAPA DOBLE 
Popular history affixes the creation of the daiquiri to a group of American
mining engineers who were working near Santiago Cuba.
The Daiquiri beach is near Santiago.  A bartender at the Venus bar in
Santiago is credited with making the first of the rum drinks and giving it the name of the beach.
But then the Daiquiri moved to Havana
and the Floridita Bar.

It was here where the Daiquiri met Ernest Hemingway and
where the story gets interesting. And where the Daiquiri grows up.
But first a little back story.
The paintings below hang near my kitchen.
The top painting, if it looks familiar, is a study of a Monet painting in London, 
painted by my eldest daughter Kristin.
She is a superb artist and created the piece as a student.  We like it, hung it
and often explain it to people who think it looks "familiar."
The painting below is a watercolor that I purchased from a street artist
in Havana.

This is the Havana corner as it is

and this is the water color.

The Floridita was a Hemingway favorite.  It was here

the bartenders followed the writer's directions and created

what some call the Hemingway Daiquiri.

At the Floridita they call it the

Popa Doble

2 1/2 jiggers of white rum

juice of 2 limes

juice of 1/2 grapefruit

6 drops of Maraschino cherry liquer

NO sugar

served frozen.

These descendants of Hemingway's bar tender friends can still build a 

great Popa Doble. According to legend, Popa or Poppa would pop
quite a few in one sitting.

The writer spent a lot of time at the Floridita.

His original bar stool, a the end of the bar, near a wall, has been

preserved and chained off.

Hanging above the stool is a bust and an Oswaldo Salas photograph of 

Hemingway and Fidel Castro the day Hemingway left Cuba for the last 

time.  One of my prized possessions is a copy of the photograph

signed by Oswaldo Salas.

Getting the photo and getting it out of Cuba is the story
for another post.
Cheers!

   If you are interested in Cuba, here are links to previous posts from that amazing Island nation.

The Cuba File Archive

• The Old Man and The Sea-meeting Hemingway's Captain
• Cuban File-Street Scenes
• Cuba File-The Shrine of St Lazaro
• Inside Hemingway's Home

   See you down the trail.

THE CUBA FILE-- THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA

HEMINGWAY'S FIRST MATE

        The young man is the old man.  He is Gregorio Fuentes, Ernest Hemingway's first mate, bar tender, confidant and life long friend. Some think he was the model for the old man in THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA.

       "The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the

back of his neck," 

Hemingway described his central figure.

"The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had 

the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none 

of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless 

desert.

``Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same 

color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated."

Gregorio was 101 when we met.  It was 3 years before he died in his home in Cojimar, a fishing village east of Havana.

     He lived modestly, but comfortably.  He was hailed as a man who had mastered the sea and who "was a symbol of Cuban fishing and of human brotherhood, thanks to all of his 
years of friendship with Hemingway,'' Reuters quoted Jose Miguel Diaz Escrich, who runs 
Havana's Hemingway International Nautical Club. 

     A school of Hemingway scholars discount the idea that Fuentes was the model for the 

old fisherman in the 1952 Nobel Prize winning novel. He was only 55 the year the book was published. There are those who say, however, that Hemingway used Fuentes' hands as the inspiration for his character.

      Fuentes became Captain of the Pilar, in 1939 when Hemingway began his life in Cuba living in the Hotel Ambos Mundos. They fished the Gulf Stream together.  During World War II Hemingway outfitted the Pilar with special gear so he and Fuentes could hunt German U-boats in the Caribbean.

When not patrolling the Caribbean, Hemingway covered the war. He accompanied Martha Gellhorn, a photo journalist and his love at the time, to China.  He returned to the Pilar and Cuba but later went to Europe to work as a war correspondent.  

After the war the writer and his captain spent extensive time in the Caribbean waters where Hemingway was said to have a special sense or enhanced vision that enabled him to spot deep Marlin which he battled from this chair.

The pier in Cojimar where the Pilar was docked was all but abandoned. 

The La Terazza was a favorite Hemingway hang out.  It was still a vibrant tavern and favorite of the locals. Many of them had Hemingway stories.

Cojimar has memorialized the famous American, not far from where he and the Captain launched their many adventures.

Gregorio Fuentes had a unique knowledge and relationship with one of the 20th Century's most influential writers.  He outlived his old friend and fishing mate by many decades.
He was there, in the moments, when Ernest Hemingway drew from life, from practical experiences to create literary images that live on, as Gregorio did for 104 years.
An old man of the sea.
See you down the trail.