The Gray Lady is, in part, responsible for Havana being "frozen in time." So it's nice of them to rub in our faces what a half-century of communism -- helped along by their reporting (and fidel-sycophancy) does to a country.

Of course, they'll say it's us, not them. Oh, well, plus ça change, plus la meme chose.

You know, I read that article and wanted to comment on it, but the only thing that came to mind is what i wrote in the title of the post. Short, concise and to the point.

for fuck's sake....

What do you expect from the Red Lady?

So these castro whores find a spot on the Malecon that isn't falling apart and polish up some glitzy photos to sell. I came across a ships log of a few guys who decided to go to Cuba. Putting aside their politics,here's some of what they observed on the island:

Throughout our walking tour, on many street corners stood police, looking bored and tired. Museums seemed to be everywhere. Art galleries were frequent – very poor quality art. People were walking the streets and lounging in the hot shade in a number of parks and squares, hundreds waiting for buses -- thousands of them in the city, many with young children. At one point we saw men filling plastic buckets with water from a hose emerging from the side of an old building in a narrow side street and young boys on homemade scooters, crudely built of wood scraps. The streets were clean – no trash or paper scraps. We could not see inside the old apartments – they were on the second story and above -- but they had to be sweltering, dark, dank and crowded.

And this:
Poverty – the countryside was almost universally deep, very deep, poverty. With but very exceptions, houses – really small huts, about twelve or so feet wide and maybe fifteen feet deep, almost all wood and most unpainted, by far, most without electric power – were everywhere, near the roads in small clusters and solitary and deep into the fields and mountains – the same "houses" as on impoverished Rum Cay in the Bahamas. Fidel's revolution has apparently done nothing for the peasant farmers – they seem to be living as their ancestors in the early 1900's or even earlier. Oxen were seen pulling plows and cultivators in the fields and in rice paddies.

And this:
On the way to and from lunch and the cave we passed through a small town – poor, crowded with ill maintained houses. Here, as elsewhere along the highways and roads, tens and maybe even hundreds of people, some with small children, stood along the sides of the roadway, waiting for someone to stop to give them a ride. Their transportation was almost always open bed trucks, jammed with adults and children and others in small, enclosed truck beds or "buses" that were long two level "cabs" towed by a tractor. Commonly seen were all manner of broken down motorized vehicles – trucks, cars, buses, motor cycles –hoods open or jacked up with men working on them. And the smoky exhausts – thick black smoke – was universally seen (and smelled). And people walking in the hot sun, sometimes carrying very small children or large sacks of things, often far distant from any houses or anything else that was visible from the highways or roads. And bicycles and horse drawn, two wheeled wagons, and some men on horseback with only a blanket under the riders – riding small and skinny horses. I was continually impressed by the utter failure of Fidel's "revolution" to reach in any way the farmers and their families.

Val, sorry for such a long comment. Too bad they didn't bother to visit the Real Cuba.

They give out the NYT free at my university and I take it home every day. Before you bite my head off, I don't read it. I use it to start the fireplace, and to keep the fire strong until the wood catches on......My husband and I feel it is the best use for the NYT

Who the heck is Mr. Schrager ?????? He talks like the idiot he probably is-

Tony Trischka
Albums
My Birdcage Needs A New Paper (Because My Parakeet's Already Read The One That's In There)


From the album: Bluegrass Light