Swinging on a Star

Two ten year old boys are pedaling their bikes north from Mt. Prospect, Illinois in the summer of 1944.  Their moms aren't worried about them as traffic is almost nonexistent.  Today that same road is clogged with honking cars, growling trucks, and the occasional motorcycle.  The warm air cools a little and a sparse sprinkling begins—ignored by the boys.

The flat prairie land moves slowly by as they approach their destination—a meandering creek feeds a pond not far off the side of the road.  In 1944's pre-television quiet, these boys have very different ideas from today's kids on how to have fun.  For these bikers, creeks and ponds are high on the list of fun things to do.

Would you like to swing on a star?

They dismount, wheel their bikes away from the side of the road, and get out the jars they've brought along for their hunt.  They're looking for tadpoles.  Call them polliwogs if you will—they're really the first post-egg form of a developing frog.  To catch them, you have to be quiet and stealthy.  Sometimes whole schools of them can be found near the side of a pond and a swift scooping with strainer into a large jar can capture a bunch of them at once.

The boys think life is perfect as they hunt.  They've heard about terrible things happening in other parts of the world, but their world—the here and now of 1944 Illinois—is a picture of peace and enjoyment.

 Carry moonbeams home in a jar?

They head home with their jars of squirming, nascent amphibians.  Back down the same long flat road toward their homes.  Their moms aren't too happy with their new pets with good reasons.  How will you feed them?  You can't expect them to survive in a jar with a screw-on lid.  It's hard to argue with a mom on these matters, and she plays on their attachment to the little swimmers.  Soon the kids are convinced the nicest thing they could do for the tadpoles is to release them in a nearby pond.

And be better off than you are?

Dejected, they start toward a pond a few blocks away.  They had hoped to keep them long enough to see the little frog legs grow out from the bodies right by their stringy tails.  Not this time—not this bunch of tadpoles.  One of the boys said, "Mom's right, we can't keep them," and as the jar's contents splashed into the pond, the tadpoles happily swam away, refreshed, free, restored to their element.

So you see, it's all up to you

You could be better than you are

You could be swinging on a star.

 

Les Inglis

 

With thanks to Bing Crosby, Jimmy Van Huesen, Johnny Burke, and a kid I used to know

Musings of a Wandering Tourist

If you're looking for something to do in Havana, take a walk.  The city is filled with interesting sights—especially the buildings.  Havana, like Miami, has some remarkable art-deco buildings, coming from the 30's, 40's, and 50's.  In these blogs, I've already covered La Casa de las Américas, perhaps one of the most recent art-deco structures.  Some others were discovered on my walks.

One afternoon I decided to walk east from my Vedado hotel.  In a few blocks, I spotted a 12 stories tall, very beautiful art-deco apartment building.  Its intricate architectural details were perfect, its proportions correct, and its condition unkempt and run down.  The outside was dirty, and a few scrubby bushes in the small yard hadn't felt a gardener's touch in a generation or more.  The north (front) façade was beautiful even in its neglected condition.  Several stairs led up to an elaborate entrance and a propped open door leading into the lobby.  I couldn't help myself; I stepped into the lobby, dimly lit by a lone bulb hanging by its wire from the ceiling, in spite of lovely deco metal and glass sconces unlit on the walls.  Still there was plenty of light to see a gorgeous marble floor with a deco radial design of many colors.  I wondered who lived here midst dilapidated beauty.  A feeling I didn't belong here rushed me back outside to the sidewalk.

Later I learned it was built in 1932 for Jose Lopez Rodriquez and known as the López Serrano Building  It towers above most of the other buildings of its part of Vedado, and is reminiscent of the tower at Rockefeller Center or the Empire State Building, not for its height but for the styles of its base and pinnacle.  Since then I've seen the building in other photos of Havana, and every time I see it I imagine the luxury and style experienced by its residents back in the 30's.  I wonder if today's residents entertain such thoughts.

Another memorable building was along a walk to the south from my hotel.  I had only gone two blocks when I noticed a beautiful Italianate mansion sitting on a corner lot and looking out across the broad parkway of Avenida de los Presidentes, Havana's most beautiful street.  In this part of Vedado, within sight of Malecón and the Florida Strait, nearly all the buildings are grand works of architects.  Many were built as embassies of other countries which later moved on, for the most part to suburban Miramar.  Some of these places are surrounded by high wrought iron fences enclosing well-tended gardens.  Such places contain important government functions like the Cuban State Department across the street from my hotel.  If their function is important enough, they are kept in perfect condition.  But the old Italianate mansion that caught my eye wasn't quite so important.  It needed paint and yard work and repairs of cracked and chipped cement.

As I looked at the old building I guessed it had about 8000 or 9000 square feet in 3 floors.  It filled its lot leaving only a small front yard containing a large cement fountain, which hasn't worked in years.  I thought how much fun it would be to be a developer with a large budget to restore this mansion, and perhaps even to live in it.

The Italianate design had all the appropriate bells and whistles—a square tower, arched windows, balustrades, steps, columns, and porches.  In the back, someone had built a large addition of nondescript style.  My developer's mind was already tearing that down.

The desirable properties in this area were all taken over by the government after the Revolution and converted into public purposes.  By asking around I learned this mansion, clearly originally a private home, was now a court for first time offenders.  That explained a gaggle of young people waiting on porches and in the yard one day when I walked by before courts were called to order.

How strange, I thought, to have a court devoted to first time offenders.  In my county, the young, the old, the in-between, all use the same courts for hopefully impartial justice.  In Cuba, perhaps the first time offenders get a slightly more compassionate measure of justice.  At least that's my guess.

A month ago, I spent a day in court for jury duty.  Our bright modern courthouse had modern furniture, comfortable chairs, a PA system and good lighting.  In comparison, I imagine courtrooms in the old mansion in Vedado are dingy, have extension cords running along the floor, and suffer from cracked plaster and poor lighting.  Still it isn't the condition of the courtroom that determines the quality of justice.

 I'll be happy if I never have to be subjected to the court system either here or there.

 

Les Inglis

Adiós Presidente

If you go back far enough as a reader of these blogs, you know about Aló Presidente, the beautiful Spaniel mix dog with long black curly fur Nora and I rescued from the streets of Vedado.  Four of us were walking from Nora's apartment to our Hotel Presidente, when we encountered this friendly little guy, not yet fully grown.  He started following us and wouldn't stop.  In the distance of a few city blocks we decided to rescue him.  The complete story is available in a blog titled, Aló Presidente, from August 20, 2010.

We named him Aló Presidente for the Hotel Presidente, in the shadow of which we took the decision to rescue him.  Also, Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's President and benefactor of Cuba, had a weekly Saturday radio show he called Aló Presidente during which he assailed Cuban ears with his views on politics and everything else under the sun.

I'm happy to say Aló, whom I think of as my dog, is living out a happy life as the only male (fixed, that is) in a harem of several females in the Aniplant Headquarters on Principe Street in Central Havana.  Hugo Chávez, who died a few days ago, was not so lucky.

Chávez was a military man who wanted to be like the many Latin American strongmen in all ways but one.  He was a leftist while most of the old Latin strongmen were hard rightists.  Frankly, as a leader, he didn't do Venezuela much good.  Coming to power after failing in a coup and finally winning an election, he mismanaged Venezuela's vast oil resources for his own political purposes more than for the welfare of Venezuela's needy people.  But politically he succeeded, and today most Latin strongmen are leftists, like he was.

Hugo was a friend and admirer of Fidel Castro, Cuba's guiding light of the last 54 years.  In spite of this, Chávez never called his political system Communism, but he surely pushed it in that direction.  He saw the Cuban economic crisis after the fall of the Soviet Union, and he made large regular gifts of oil to help his friends, Fidel and Raul.  Many Cubans now worry if with his passing, Cuba will suffer.

A couple of years ago, when he was diagnosed with cancer, Chávez opted to seek his medical care in Cuba.  He knew Cuba's medical establishment was the pride of the island nation.  In fact, to reciprocate for the gifts of oil, Cuba sent 20,000 doctors into the Venezuelan countryside to improve the health of the Bolivarian campesinos.

As often happens with cancer patients, Chávez underwent surgeries and infections and long recuperations, during many trips to Cuba—all at the hands of Cuba's finest doctors.  If curing him were possible, he'd be alive today as nothing was spared in his medical treatment.  Throughout all this he kept his position as President, even winning reelection in the past few months while he lay in his Cuban hospital bed.

My little Aló Presidente passed through the era of all these events oblivious to the entire drama of Cuban-Venezuelan relations.  Instead, he played with Bella, a long haired, light brown beauty of a Daschund mix rescued by British flight attendant, Angela, who every few months brings the headquarters dogs new treats and toys,

Sometimes, a dog's life is better than the ones we can arrange for ourselves.

Les Inglis

Karma

In the 1980's we used to drive between our homes in Indiana and Sarasota.  That meant long hours of windshield time as we snaked along Interstate 75 through Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and northern Florida.  The task of driving that far can lull you into an almost hypnotic trance, and I promised myself I would never attempt it if I wasn't well rested and feeling in tip-top condition.  Possibly that policy kept me and my family safe, but this story is about saving a little white Spitz dog.

Our long car trips to Florida almost always included our Beagle, Annie, the first dog of our family.  She was a good traveler and would just go to sleep somewhere in the cavernous space in the back of our Toyota minivan.  Come to think of it, Annie was a big reason we drove and didn't fly.  While she was just as nonchalant about flying in her little travel carrier as she was about a car ride, I wasn't so passive.  One time we flew we found out Annie made the trip in another plane than the one we used.  We ended up at the same time and place, but after that I had a low opinion of dogs flying in baggage compartments, and we seldom flew with the dog again.

It was early in 1985, and we were headed south near Lake City in northern Florida.  We approached what appeared to be a dead dog ahead on the side of the road.  We felt a familiar wave of sadness.  Just as we got near, the dog raised her head, our hearts jumped, and we braked to a stop a little past where the dog lay.

Charlene lives by her motto—Never be so busy you can't help an animal in trouble—and I've made it my motto too, since I want to stay married.  We walked back to the dog and were surprised to see she seemed to be in fairly good shape.  But she had tire marks on her white fur and couldn't walk.  We had to find a vet right away.

We scooped the little dog into the front passenger's floor space and pulled back out onto the road.  In the rear of the car, Annie woke from her slumber when we stopped.  Now she knew instantly there was another dog in the car as we loaded the hapless Spitz onto the front floor.  I was busy driving and Charlene was busy comforting the little Spitz while trying to keep a curious Annie away.

The next exit was several miles ahead, and we got off, found a phone book and located a veterinarian.  The vet examined her and thought her main problem was a concussion.  If he could stabilize her, he said, Lake City had a good humane shelter which could try to rehome her.  We paid for the day's treatment, promised to cover whatever bills might come up, and left the little girl in his capable hands, hitting the road once more.

The dog did indeed go to the Lake City Humane Society, a fine organization run by an Australian lady named Margaret Smith.  Margaret found her a home with a local family, and we later learned that she spent the rest of her life in that family.

Soon I became a member of the Board of Directors of The Humane Society of the US.  HSUS had a regional office in Tallahassee, and it happened that I mentioned Margaret and the Lake City shelter to our Regional Director.  "Oh," she said, "Margaret runs one of the best shelters."  That endorsement and the fact that Margaret had saved the little Spitz, motivated me to try to help.

HSUS manages money bequeathed in trusts to it for animal protection work.  One such trust used HSUS to direct its grants to worthy shelters. Over the five years I served HSUS as a director we were able to award grants totaling more than $100,000 to Lake City Humane Society. They used the money to help finance a doubling of their capacity.

So Charlene's words to live by helped her to set into motion a karmic chain of events that gave a little white Spitz a new lease on life and also helped countless other needy animals of northern Florida.

And the good work goes on.

Les Inglis

Toot Toot

We live on an island, and the nearest bridge to the mainland is an old single lane swing bridge which pivots in the center to let large boats pass.  The inconvenience of waiting many minutes for the gates to lower, the bridge to open, and for a slow sail boat to approach and pass through is phlegmatically accepted by island residents as just another vestige of island life.  So is the additional delay of letting long lines of waiting cars on both sides of the bridge to dissipate.  To pass the time, I sometimes count the cars in line after the bridge restores passage to automobiles.  The largest of these counts stands at 25 cars each way.

Unfortunately, our island's having a roadway running along the beach makes it a favorite route for tourists who like to gaze at the sea, admire sunsets, and ogle the many houses being built or remodeled.  These strangers aren't schooled in bridge etiquette in spite of well worded signs that dictate that the file of cars going off the island goes first, and then the on-island flow goes next—all without alternating individual cars from opposite sides.  If these instructions are followed, delays can be minimized, but—alas—tourists aren't familiar with the rules and don't read the signs.

Somehow a wrong-headed sense of politeness takes over, and the driver of about the third car in line thinks it would be nice if a few cars of the opposing stream could get across.  Thus a hap-hazard alternating is established which drives local residents nuts.  Yesterday I was third in the line of off-island traffic.  The first in line was a tourist who had waited ten minutes for the bridge to open facing, not ten feet away, the sign explaining the rules.  The gates opened and he decided to wait in a silly, Alphonse and Gaston "after you" gesture to the first car on the other side of the bridge.  A polite toot-toot on my horn got him to cross the bridge before the horde on the other side could get moving.

Then, to my consternation, it became evident that the second car—the one in front of me—was also a tourist.  A cordial toot-toot again didn't move him.  Not wanting to wait for the whole line of cars to come on the island out of turn, I pushed the car ahead of me across the bridge on the sheer strength of my horn.  Thereafter, even the tourists got it, and all cars crossed the bridge in two long single files as requested by the signs.

I'm not normally an impatient driver, but our single lane bridge tries the manners of all local residents.  Impatience doesn't usually get you to your destination any sooner in 21st century Florida traffic.  So I'm not really proud I used my horn to get bridge traffic to move in an orderly fashion yesterday.  I must learn to tolerate out-of-state rubber-neckers who drive the key looking from side to side and pointing at the water while ignoring traffic signs.

These blogs are about Cuba and its animals, and clearly the above has little to do with those themes.  But I was reflecting on the meaning attached to a polite toot-toot of a car horn, and I recalled how very different the meaning can be in Cuba.  If you hear a little toot-toot while crossing a street in Havana, be afraid, be very afraid.  For in Cuba, "toot-toot" means, "you are in my right of way, and if you don't get out of the way, I'll hit you."  I've seen this command caution to pedestrians and bikers many times while riding in Cuban taxis.  The drivers are deadly serious, and pedestrians who don't heed them are in deadly peril.

Spanish and English have a few words that are identical in spelling, but have completely different meanings.  Those words are called "false cognates."  Well, the "toot-toot" of a Cuban auto horn is a false cognate with the same sound in Florida. Here it is a gentle nudging, and there it is a command with potentially fatal consequences.

Les Inglis

Snapshots from the Caribbean

I have a large collection of photos I took during various trips to Cuba.  And I have a smaller batch of photos Charlene took during her trip there in April 2012.  On searching through all these photos, I realized that she and I have different ways of looking at the world.

It wasn't really a surprise for in all the years I've known her she has demonstrated an almost extreme orientation toward animals.  Extremely compassionate, that is.  My own history shows some compassion and humane interest, but it can hardly be called "extreme."  She is, but I am not, ready to parody Barry Goldwater to say, "Extremism in the defense of animals is no vice."

How does this manifest itself in my picture collection?  We both take pictures of dogs and cats, but she concentrates on animals much more than I do.  She snaps street animals and pet animals—sick ones and healthy ones, cases of mange and good shiny coats of fur.

My own photographic efforts betray my intense tourist's interest in being in a foreign country.  I record architecture I like and street scenes, monuments and especially Cuba's old cars, and people in public scenes and small groups of friends.  You can find animals in my pictures, but to nowhere near the extent they appear in Charlene's collection.

Is this really important?  Well, probably not, but any marriage is a long process of getting to know your spouse, and the photos clearly show me her lifetime of dedication to animals.  Mine, on the other hand, are the photos of a traveler in a very unusual, long isolated, historically important part of the world.  The animals are there in my pics too, but not with the same emphasis or frequency as in Charlene's.

I think also that our respective photo collections suggest something significant in my own make-up.  I suspect that subconsciously I am reluctant to document animals who show the ravages of homelessness, lack of medical care, and starvation.  I resist taking some pictures perhaps to avoid broadcasting unwelcome images of suffering.  It's kind of a karma thing.  Still, the central purpose of my trips to Cuba is to reduce animal suffering, and I'm sure we've made progress in that area.

The Humane Society of the US tells us that massive spay-neuter campaigns are the only effective long-term solution to reducing homeless animal populations.  On some of my later trips to Cuba, I have felt there were perhaps fewer animals on the streets than in earlier years.  Just wishful thinking?  I can't prove it as no one can take a census of the animals in a city of 2 million people.  But I think several years of large numbers of animals being sterilized by Aniplant have helped the situation noticeably.

Just this week I found another clue.  Havana's homeless dogs are rounded up by prisoners into trucks and taken to Arroyo where they are kept for a few days and then poisoned.  It sounds barbaric, and it is, but five years ago they were processing 15,000 dogs a year, and today the rate is down to 5,000 a year. That's 10,000 slow, agonizing animal deaths a year saved.

No, we can't count the animals in the streets, but really neither can we count the large numbars of suffering dogs who aren't there because of Aniplant's spay-neuter campaigns.

That's the number we are working to increase.

Les Inglis

Baggage Blues

In the waiting lounge in Miami's airport, Cubans and Americans going to Cuba gather   early in the morning to await opening the check-in desks.  Standing in the center of the lounge is a roll of blue plastic film about four feet wide next to a rotary platform.  I've been in hundreds of airports, but this is the only plastic film dispenser I've seen in a check-in area.

A traveler approached the dispenser with two bags, and the attendant placed one on the turntable and started a motor.  The film wound off the roll onto the bag as it turned around and around.  Each layer of plastic clung to the previous one until a tough, think plastic shell developed like a cocoon of a silkworm.  Then his second bag was encapsulated and the traveler paid the attendant.

I watched several people wrap their bags this way, and later, as I progressed through the check-in line, I wondered what was so valuable that it justified the blue plastic treatment.  I felt a little ashamed of my naked bags, but they contained nothing anyone would want to steal.  After getting my boarding pass, we went through security where X rays and sniffing machines checked us and our baggage for weapons, explosives, illegal drugs, and a bunch of items I can only guess at.  I wondered what the blue plastic people did if they had to open a suitcase.  I guessed they had gone through a search prior to the encapsulation process.

When I go to Cuba, I carry a suitcase full of out-of-date veterinary medicines.  There are never any controlled substances, and out-of-date stuff has no commercial value, so generally there's no objection. But a suitcase full of medicines can be pretty heavy, and I always have to pay an excess baggage charge.  I've been charged as much as two dollars a pound for weight over my 44 pound limit plus $20 per piece of checked baggage.  Even though my baggage has no commercial value, the airlines charge me like it is pure gold.  Curiously, while I routinely pay excess charges going to Cuba, they don't seem to charge me for excess on the return to the US.

After the X rays and sniffs, we are separated from our checked baggage, and I don't see any more blue plastic until I pass through Cuban Immigration in Havana.  In the large room where checked baggage appears, we wait for 10 to 15 minutes for the first bags to appear on the carousel.  Often only one flight is unloading, but the amount of baggage is incredible.  In addition to bags, there are hundreds of packages, cartons of consumer products, even large flat screen TV's and kitchen appliances—all inside blue plastic film wraps.

With the first bag, people crowd around the carousels so you have little hope of spotting your bags until some other travelers find theirs and leave.  Well, what did I expect; this isn't England where people cue up to take their turns in an orderly fashion.  This is a bunch of Americans and Cubans in a hurry to get home or to their hotels.  Finally, the mystery of the blue wrap is solved.  These are mostly people on family visits, and they all have gifts and purchases for relatives living in Cuba.  The carousel is a sea of blue plastic, and people are snatching bags from the carousel and loading pushcarts.  They all look like they have been on the shopping spree of a lifetime.

The plastic is to prevent theft by the airport baggage handlers.

I've never lost a thing in a checked bag, and I have no idea how much such theft occurs, but the suspicion that it does occur sells a lot of plastic.  Maybe that's what the handlers were doing in the 15 minutes it took for the first bags to appear.

Les Inglis