Today is "Election" Day

If you can call that an “election”. Cuba’s National Assembly is meeting today to decide who will follow Fidel as the supreme leader of Cuba. His dominance over Cuba was just about to qualify for AARP status in a few months from now, so the surprising fact is that Fidel actually is stepping down before reaching such a big milestone. He probably hasn’t been reading this blog to be aware of all the benefits of AARP membership. That, and the fact that the first letter of AARP stands for “American” so he figured that the Cuban “revolution” would probably not qualify for the coveted status.

The question for all of us Cuban-Americans, and I’m sure also for Cubans everywhere and on the Island, is whether anything will change with the new leadership. Many argue that it’s just a new name in the same pedigree and that nothing will change until Fidel is truly out of the picture. Others more optimistically, hope for this to be the beginning of improved relations with the exiled community and democratic reforms on the island. Only time will tell.

Being a card-holding AARP member myself, and having left Cuba when I was just a few months old, to me Fidel is synonymous with Cuba. Like many other Cuban-born individuals of my generation, I was raised and educated away from the homeland, and knew only in theory what my parents tried to instill in me as love for the homeland, love for the family that we left behind and the hope of some day returning to a Cuba Libre.

So now that I’m facing a possibility that in my lifetime I may be able to visit a “changed” Cuba, I’m all confused as to how to react and what to expect.

It has been a lifetime of knowing about it, just as I know about other planets in our galaxy. There, floating in space somewhere, but not accessible, at least with our current technology. So it was with Cuba. I know it is there, just 90 miles south of Key West, but so mystical and elusive that it’s as real as Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. Everywhere, but really nowhere.

What do I wish for? On the island, I hope for democracy, for liberty to ideological prisoners, for food on the tables of all Cubans, and for freedom of movement and expression. With the world at large, I hope for a peaceful transition to improved relations with all Cubans around the world and for Cubans to be able to travel freely to and from Cuba without the many impediments and restrictions we currently face. From the community of exiled Cubans, to loosen the stronghold on the jugular vein of the island and use at least one hand to reach out to our brothers and sisters across the Straits of Florida. I don’t think that’d be asking for much after a lifetime of not knowing the true meaning of the word homeland.

The icing on the cake would be to make my father’s lifetime dream a reality. To be able to drive our own car to Key West, then on a ferry for the 90 miles journey to Havana. Drive southeast through the island to arrive in Santiago de Cuba. Reach El Caney, his birthplace and home until adulthood. There, meet the few enduring siblings and the newer generations, and finally start the healing process. Like an arm that had been severed and later found, still alive. And finally, allowed to reconnect to the rest of the body where it belongs. Would that be too much asking?.

As the day is about to close, I read the results of the “elections” and get a strong feeling that my hopes may be slow in materializing and that we need to plan for a very long life if I am to witness any of these wishes during my lifetime.

The pictures: Above, sunrise today. Middle, view from living room. Bottom: view from behind the house.

Over 100 Million calls for your attention…

We hadn’t seen any dolphins since we came back, but this last Saturday we had a show like no other one before it. Not to be outdone by the sea lions of Valdivia, our local dolphins decided to show up in style. There were at least two occasions where dolphins actually breached the water. At least one of those was a complete clearing of the water!. One time we saw the silhouette of three of them surfing together right under the breaking wave. We had at least 15 minutes of an uninterrupted show, and I was so mesmerized that it didn’t even occurred to me to get my camera out. It’d be too much luck to get a shot of a dolphin breaching, but at least in the video mode I’m sure I would have caught some of the activity. Maybe next time. But not today. Today has been warm (70F) but the strong southwest winds and the off and on storms are keeping the surf quite active. We have decided that dolphins just don’t show up when the surf if so rough.

As co-witnesses to the dolphin show this weekend we had our eldest son Milo and his wife which were visiting from Greensboro, NC. It’s not very often that we get to enjoy their visits. With school and work, their time is quite limited. Still, we appreciated them taking a break to be with their AARP (and soon-to-be-AARP) parents . We brought them news and pictures of his brother in Peru and caught up with all their activities since we last saw them. During their visit, we took a short drive to the Fort Macon State Park after a pizza lunch in Beaufort, at the No Name Pizza and Subs restaurant.

To me, the big reward of putting up with raising little ones and later, teenagers, is to be able to interact with them as adults. I truly enjoy engaging in deep philosophical conversations with my sons and Milo never disappoints me. This weekend he brought us a powerful documentary –he loves documentaries… a son of his father— about the Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars band which let us to conversations about how to help others. They gave B and I a white wrist rubber band with the word ONE printed on it, which is an organization chartered “to make poverty history” amongst other things. I promised to wear the band –although not very AARP—and to visit their website to learn about their goals and to determine if this is one way that we want to reach out to help others.

Their visit was short and by Sunday afternoon we were left watching out for dolphins all by ourselves. We plan to be here several more weeks, so we hope to get a few more dolphin shows between now and the time when we will be also migrating south. The remaining time will come in handy to finish some of my home repair projects in preparation for our summer renters. In addition, is time to start thinking on a strategy of how to put an end to my semi-retirement once we are settled in Miami Beach in a couple of months from now.

Thinking HOW to end my semi-retirement is really another opportunity of rethinking what the heck I want to do with the rest of my life. I have faced this question a number of times in my life. It happened several times while I was employed and unhappy about my situation at the time. A couple of times I reacted by going back to school, at least on a part-time basis. School has always been like my own personal security blanket. It’s challenging but it’s easy to follow the path and see the entire picture until graduation. Jobs are not that clear and straight lined. And with my new AARP status, selling myself to potential employers, in a new city and with an employment gap that continues to grow as I write, may prove to be yet again, another opportunity to revisit my security blanket, at least as a way to delay the inevitable. Except that this time I don’t have an employer to pay for it, so it may be challenging in more ways than one.

I am very grateful to have the luxury of at least two (or three) regular readers. There are over 100 million blogs that are calling for your attention and I know it takes effort to come back to this one from time to time. I’ll try to keep it brief and light-hearted for a quick read, but bear with me if I stray into topics that are more pertinent to me as I face our transition to our new home, new city, new community and (hopefully) new gainful employment. I’m learning that the more interesting books and blogs that I read, are those that are brutally honest and open about exactly what’s going on. Besides, with 100 million other blogs around, writing here is almost as private as writing in my own personal journal. I’m not quite there yet, but I’ll try to keep the icing to the bare minimum.

What a difference a year makes

The ocean has been quite lake-like in the last couple of days. The air temperature has been on the cool side but still quite manageable reaching over 60 during the day. I say “manageable” after I see the weather predictions for many other locations around the country which today were fairing a lot colder and wetter forecasts. Amazingly the seaside weather is so unique that it is different from even just a few miles inland. For example, this morning as we were getting ready to go on our daily 5-mile walk, the TV weather report claimed that it was raining and 38F in Havelock, NC, which is just about 10 miles inland from here. Here it was very cloudy but at least 10 degrees warmer. And still it hasn’t rained all day and the temperature went clear above 60F. However I do see a change coming. The winds are picking up and the surf is definitely indicating that there might be a southwest storm on its way for us tonight.

This afternoon I went for a quick drive to the Lowes Foods grocery store in Cape Carteret. As I was driving, I noticed several indicators that Valentine’s Day is just around the corner. First, several Helium-filled red balloons bouncing with each other in front of the Petal Pushers flower shop just a couple of blocks from here. Then, as I drove just over the bridge that connects us to the mainland, there was a big sign that advised readers to “order your flowers and plants early for Valentine’s Day". Once inside the food store, the signs could not be missed: Valentine’s Day cards, red balloons everywhere, chocolate boxes, more sweets than for Halloween and then anything red that could be packaged and sold.

Valentine’s Day does bring us a lot of memories. Just a year ago B and I were the proud owners of a fairly successful flower shop in Durham, NC. The stress of Valentine’s Day began just after the New Year’s celebrations. Reading the signs of the economic factors that could affect the demand for flowers a month later, making the estimations based on which day of the week would be the busy days –higher numbers if V-day falls on a weekday, not so good if it falls on a weekend--, recruiting additional staff, securing additional work space, marketing strategy, pricing scheme, delivery vehicles, placing the flower orders, ordering vases, ribbons, balloons, mechanical parts of arrangements and everything had to be in perfect working order ready for the day. V-Day is THE DAY for flower shops. Lots of stress, but if done well, this week could put your flower business in the black for the rest of the year.

This year, I almost forgot about V-Day, and what a difference it has made. In a small way I miss the rush of planning for V-Day, and of course, I miss counting the money at the end of the week. But everything in between, I’m happy to have almost forgotten. I wish the best of success to Kathy, the current owner of our shop, and let the US economy and the average consumer continue to support the small retail businesses around the country. As for us, this is going to be a quiet, relaxed, sandy and sunny, Valentine's Day at the beach. May we have many more V-days this way.

Where to camp out?... A favorite AARP topic.

The white-caps have been with us all weekend. The result of southwest winds at around 15 knots that are pushing the Atlantic Ocean waves onto the sands of Emerald Isle. Air temperatures in the 60s are still quite mild for February, but no complaints here. After three weeks out, everything seems as we left it. Knock on wood.

After two back to back overnight trips rewinding from Valdivia to Santiago to Lima, I finally caught up with B in Miami International from where we flew together to Raleigh-Durham where we had left our car. Then together with the 3-hour drive to Emerald Isle, it was a total of about 40 hours either moving or on lay-overs. The AARP bones and muscles need a little stretching after that.

At the Miami airport we caught some of the news for the day. A little politics and a lot about a terrible series of tornados and storms that had already killed over 50 people in a few states just west of here. Mother Earth is nothing to take for granted. And oftentimes calamities such as these happen so unpredictably that it’s difficult to find a spot on earth that would be safe from anything Mother Earth can dish out.

With the threat of hurricanes, you’d think that we would live in fear sleeping just a few yards from the Atlantic Ocean. But when you think about it, I’d rather have the predictability of a hurricane over the suddenness of a tornado. Even in beautiful Valdivia with it’s peaceful rivers and gorgeous views, it’s recent history shows that in 1960 it was almost completely destroyed by the Valdivia Earthquake with a magnitude of 9.6 on the Richter scale.

The topic of where to live comes up often in conversations with other AARPs. Just this weekend we were chatting with family that came to visit, about where it’d be fun to live next. We played with taking some factor out and seeing how our decisions would change. For example, we’d say: If the financial concerns were not an issue, where would you like to camp out for the next 10 years? If closeness to family was not an issue, then where? This could go on for hours. It’s almost as good a topic of conversation as talking about health and illnesses, but that’s for a more advanced AARP stage.

And the issue of natural disasters is always a factor to put in the equation. But where could we be the safest? Would it also be the most boring place on earth? How much do you weight availability of jobs or closeness to family to the potential to danger? Living in California for several years educated me that people there are aware of an impending earthquake but they seem to feel that easterners are a worrisome lot and that the price of living in the Hotel California is worth the small price. Who knows? They could be right. You could live a lifetime in between catastrophes, so why not take your chances to live in a beautiful and fun location.

The low season at the beach happens to coincide with the off season for hurricanes as well, so the best compromise might just be timing your stays according to where the weather happens to be the best for the season. Well, that’d work for hurricanes, but I’m afraid we’ll have to wait until earthquakes and tornados become more predictable or at least avoidable.

The picture at the top is the beach in Niebla near Valdivia, Chile; the tree is the common southern hemisphere tree, Araucaria; a volcano in the Lake Region of Chile; and finally the movie clip below is a pebbled beach in Lima, Peru.

Our stars are dropping like flies

If you had been very, very quiet, you might have been able to hear the sound of our stars falling down like meteors brushing past the earth. We have regressed from 5-Stars in Santiago, to 2-Stars in Valdivia and are now well in the negative realm in our “cabanas” in Valdivia. Since the AARP-in-training amongst us is now not officially at work this weekend, we are saving some Chilean dollars and are paying the consequences otherwise. For one, we are right beside the only bus station in Valdivia –one that operates 24 HOURS a day, and then there were the new guests arriving in at around 3AM just as if they were strolling in the middle of the afternoon with all their uproar and loud chatting. Also, without A/C we are forced to sleep with the windows open so there is nothing shielding us from the noises and city lights. But who’s complaining? We are in Valdivia.

After a 12-hour bus ride south of Santiago we arrived in Valdivia, a small city built around several large rivers and just a few miles from the Pacific Ocean. There is a beautiful riverfront walkway, several bridges that connect the different parts of the city, and then there is the waterfront market. This market is around 100 yards long and about 15 yards wide. On the section away from the water, you can find fresh fruits, vegetables and cheeses produced nearby, and on the waterfront side you can find all the fresh fish and shellfish you could dream about, and just beyond the metal fence that borders the river at the marketplace, you get what seems to be the local aquarium or zoo. There resides a family of Sea Lions and hundreds of seabirds looking for free handouts and droppings from the fish market. The sea lions hang out on some floating platforms provided by the city and they offer a lively entertainment on their own: the dominant bull taking care of his harem and chasing away all possible competitors. They are definitely livelier than the manatees in Florida, but still there is a lot of sleeping and eating going on.

With all the seafood available, Valdivia is a seafood eater’s paradise and we have sampled our share of fish and seafood to last us a year. I even went to the extreme of buying a piece of freshly smoked salmon to chew on while watching the fishermen prepare the catch of the day for display and sale --a little disturbing if you think about it-. During the middle part of the day, it is so hot (~90F today), that most everyone finds the shade of a lush tree near the river and just drop away until the end of the day. Sun sets around 10PM so there is plenty of time during the day to feel lethargic and spend most of its hours either sleeping or eating. I think the sea lions have it just right.

Day, evening or night, we continue to walk around the rivers and sitting in the plazas but there is one beast that could make the whole experience miserable. However we have yet to feel the annoying buzz of our familiar mosquitoes from back home. So their absence is making our experience with the negative-star hotels at least bearable. That, and the thought that soon we’ll be bicycling to the post office in the middle of a North Carolina winter once again.