A senior day care Center in Havana

By Muriel J. Smith

Visiting a senior day care center in the heart of old Havana was an unforgettable experience. As the oldest in our group of six spending five days in Cuba, and being short of four score in years myself by a couple of months, I was particularly eager to see the health, care, and welfare of senior Cuban citizens.

In spite of the best efforts of caring people, and the inherent happiness of people who have known far better times, it was pathetic.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Tweet

Cuba: art and music, race and Joann Chesimard, income inequality

By Muriel J. Smith

Photos by Tricia Curtin and Nancy Zockoll

Part Three of a series 

They’re a musical group, the Cuban people. They love to dance, are proud of the salsa, automatically start to move rhythmically whenever they hear music, and can dance at outdoor restaurants on cobblestoned streets with abandon and joy.  There are plenty of discotheques and nightclubs in and around Old Havana, and it seems that 90 pesos, about $10 American, is the going fee for entry. The one evening our group of six Americans and eight Cubans decided to go, the club had had a fire earlier in the evening, so the club part was closed. The restaurant, however, was open, but we opted to move on.

There is no doubt there are two different and distinct styles of living in Cuba.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Tweet

Cuba: It’s more than cars!

By Muriel J. Smith 

(photos Tricia Curtin and Nancy Zockoll)

Indeed, they really are all there, those classic American-made cars of the 1950s. They’re all over the well paved and not so well paved roads of Cuba, and most of them are taxis.

There are thousands of them, all brightly painted, the sun bouncing off shiny chrome; all with their windows down…pre-air conditioning days, remember…their interiors either plush or vinyl cleverly patched or taped to look good, and who knows what under the hoods to keep them purring, or growling gently as they navigate the streets.  The cars presumably date back to the 1950s when they were new, Cuba and the USA were friends, and Cubans enjoyed a middle class status that enabled them to purchase foreign cars.  For good reason, most chose American rather than Russian vehicles, though some of them were also available during ‘the special period,’ the time in the 1960s when Russia was the alleged friend of Cuba. The vehicles have been handed down from father to son, and with an embargo prohibiting the import of car parts, have been kept in running condition through ingenuity and a strange conglomeration of makeshift and re-made parts.  Cuba is on good terms with Venezuela, so fuel for the vehicles is no problem. Nor do they spend a lot of time or effort on repairing windows that no longer rise or close, given those 90 degree sun-filled days.

But there’s so much more to Havana than cars.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Tweet

Five days in Cuba

By Muriel J. Smith

Perhaps the best solution to the problems between Cuba and the United States is to leave it up to the teenagers. Especially if they are teens like Catherine Curtin of Atlantic Highlands and Ava Zockoll of Bay Head.   Because while negotiations are going on at high levels between the bureaucrats of both nations, and compromise and trade-offs are slowly making it easier for Americans to travel there, 16-year old Catherine, a junior at Red Bank Catholic High School designed a week long stay in Cuba’s capital to interact with Cuban teens on the volleyball court. Eager to join her on the expedition were RBC’s girls’ volleyball team captain Zockoll, Ava’s mother, Nancy, and Catherine’s parents, Dan and Tricia Curtin. And me. The Curtins asked me to accompany them on the trip so I could report it for newspapers and magazines.

Life is certainly good.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Tweet

Barack Obama’s Frenemy: Democratic Senator Bob Menendez

Just across the Hudson River from Manhattan lies Union City, New Jersey. With 68,000 citizens it’s gritty, working class and a beautiful piece of Americana. For decades it had the largest concentration of Cuban-Americans outside of Miami. Some came to the town before the Cuban revolution in 1959 that put Fidel Castro and his Marxist government… Read the rest of this entry »

• Tweet

Christie Demands Chesimard’s Extradition

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has written to President Barack Obama demanding that fugitive Joanne Chesimard be extradited from Cuba as a condition of the United States normalizing relations with the communist island nation 90 miles from our border, according to a report on FoxNews Sunday.

A video of the FoxNews report was posted on Christie’s Youtube channel and was promoted by twitter by the Governor.  Christie posted his letter to the President on twitter two minutes prior to the FoxNews report.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Tweet