There was a time in which “pocket” transistor radios were a novelty. People walked around holding their small radios to their ears, listening to their music of choice or a baseball game. For those who had lived in the era of vacuum-tube radios as large as a piece of household furniture, it was surprising to see how a device the size of a soapbox could perform the same functions.
In response to the remarks of her adversaries, who pathetically tried to portray her as a defenseless, deaf and blind woman ruthlessly taken advantage of by the “reds”, Helen Keller would ironically ask them if they had ever had the opportunity to experience what “exploitation” was all about.
What happened to the Rosenbergs pisses me off. I’ve known their story since the time I was in high school (they made us read a number of documents about their trial, carefully selected for the 10th grade history textbook).
Many years ago, the US dollar – then on a par and freely exchangeable with the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC) – was valued at 20 Cuban pesos (CUP). With time, the value of the CUC went up (or that of the CUP went down).
I had met with some friends at the park in front of Havana’s main bus terminal. It was hot, and I headed down to the station to buy a bottle of pop. I asked the clerk for one the way I normally do where I live: “Could I have a “shell” of Tu-Cola, please?”
That whole business of “partisans of federalization” is a politically correct phrase used by Russia’s official media to refer to activists (some of whom have formed armed contingents) currently fighting the Kiev government in eastern Ukraine.
My mom had asked me to buy some tomatoes for lunch, but a big combat helicopter had just landed on the field of the baseball stadium behind our apartment building. It was a camouflaged Soviet chopper with insignias that aren’t used by the Cuban military.
Much of the data collected during Cuba’s last Population and Housing Census, conducted in 2012, has now been published. One of the questions in the census was the place of birth of those surveyed. There was a space on the questionnaire where the person’s country of origin could be registered.
In this day and age, where we co-exist with an Internet that is too virtual, slow and expensive for Cuba, we have become accustomed to having readers that are, in some way, just as virtual as the web. She is one of my readers.
The world we see in the news today is a world torn by civil conflict. I ask myself: what could someone who is professedly opposed to war and to leaving things in the hands of the powerful do in the face of all this? Can one do anything at all?
