It's been over ten years since my photos were shared on Virtourist.com.
Please click here if you want to take the tour
http://virtourist.com/america/pinardelrio/index.html
If you have comments, write to me at RLGranda@yahoo.com
Friday, November 2, 2012
Ten Years on VirTourist... Pinar del Rio
It's been over ten years since my photos were shared on Virtourist.com.
Please click here if you want to take the tour
http://virtourist.com/america/pinardelrio/index.html
If you have comments, write to me at RLGranda@yahoo.com
Peace
February 15, 2006
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| a photo from Ramon's photostream |
Mr. Joe Oglesby
Editorial Page Editor
The Miami Herald
Dear Mr. Oglesby,
I spent the better part of ten years advocating (in Cuba and Miami) that we Cubans were responsible for our conflicts and Americans were good people that had nothing much to do with our troubles. In 2004, President Bush made it illegal for me to travel to Cuba and made my views irrelevant. The President brought his “intelligence problem” to me.
In the conduct of the Cold War the U.S. sponsored political groups that it created and those that have failed became institutionalized and then fed back into the system creating a permanently false picture of the world. This is what I believe we face in Miami, a small part of a bigger institutionalized problem. In 1998 I wrote the essay that follows with the hope that it would be published in my native city by the Miami Herald. It was not and I got on with my efforts concentrating on Cuba (my pictures of Pinar del Rio can be seen atwww.virtourist.com). However, others continued to make efforts with those that replaced the previous editor including a U.S. Ambassador to the O.A.S. who took my essay by hand to the then new editor and again it was not published. Sadly, this debate is still not taking place in the country and my small part of it is not important outside of Miami. If the debate is ever to take place it is my view that it must happen here and hence my effort with you. Nothing has changed from what I wrote in 1998 as far as reasoning but the situation has undoubtedly gotten worse and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Waiting for Fidel to die and pandering to the fears and failures of our elderly is not a policy. Proposing that Americans go to war in Cuba (where we are now) would be criminal folly. Even if my work is not used I think it is critical that this debate take place.
Best regards,
Ramon Granda
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June 18, 1998
Sue Reisinger
Viewpoint Editor
The Miami Herald
Essay – Peace with Cuba
I want to make peace with Cuba. I am not alone. Our conflicts have been going on for generations. They began long before the Castro brothers were born and will likely continue long after they are dead. This is not good.
Since the 1840’s Cubans have been involving the United States government in Cuban affairs. 150 years of data indicate that neither Cubans nor Americans are happy with the results. In my view it would be prudent for us to ask ourselves what we want from each other and then arrive at answers we can all live with. Now is a good time to do this.
I come from a traditional hard-line exile family. I went to Cuba against the expressed wishes of most of my family (in Miami) because I wanted to see if reconciliation could ever be possible and to check if my lifelong assertion of being Cuban meant more than just having a taste for expresso coffee and my own recipe for ‘picadillo’. The answer to both questions is Yes. These are my reasons.
If we are to demand justice for our cause then justice demands that we start with ourselves. This is painful but necessary. If you doubt me just ask any human you happen to know.
I come from a political family. My father, grandfather and great-grandfather were Congressmen of the former short-lived Republic of Cuba. My father and grandfather supported Batista as dictator. This was plainly wrong and brought tragic consequences. They did not respect the liberties of others and so they lost their own.
My maternal grandparents supported the revolution. After its triumph they were appalled by the results. My maternal grandfather became a CIA agent. He was caught and my maternal grandparents became political prisoners of a communist country.
The man who imprisoned them and hunted my father out of the island was my uncle, Comandante Dermidio Escalona. This uncle was on the defending side at Playa Giron while another uncle, Raul Muxo, was on the invading side as a member of Brigade 2506. What is the case in my family, I have found, is also largely true throughout the whole of our society whether in Cuba or outside. At human scale this is the picture of the current round of our many sided ongoing conflicts which I call ‘the Family Squabble’. The Cold War came and went and just made our unsolved problems worse.
There are 54,000 dead as a result of our disputes. 12,500 were executed by the Revolution but the largest numbers are Cuban soldiers who died in Africa. The veterans of those campaigns represent to Cuban society what Viet Nam veterans did to U.S. society. The Cuban soldiers who died were mostly black while 90% of Cuban exiles are white. If we ever want to live together we have to get to know each other and talking is a good way. We are one people close to 15 million strong. We have never achieved a healthy civic society. That task is before us and as one people we have ample resources to attend to all of it. Cuba won the Gold Medal in baseball and Miami won the World Series.
The dirty secret of our politics is not that our governments are oppressive but rather that they are popular. In our politics no murder has gone uncheered, no abuse unsupported and no act of repudiation unattended. Cubans believe in leaders and in limiting the liberties of opponents. Our governments reflect our beliefs. Learning is always an option. I believe we can learn that the way to liberty is to respect the rights of all while putting limits on leaders but that can only happen if enough of us agree and live that way.
I was born in Miami, the penalty box for the ruling classes of the Americas, but I want to live in Cuba. I went to the island, fell in love with her beauty and knew I was home. I want peace, reconciliation and reconstruction. It is time to make the ultimate sacrifice for liberty and speak to our own relatives.
Why not write to Ramon? RLGranda@yahoo.com
La Clave
The quiet of a lonely room. A skittish protest at
the hassle. A gauntlet of two governments, a hand
outstretched to pull one through. Emerging from the
womb of custom, a sea of waiting faces. Familiar night
of stars and moon with taxi talking (oye, si me
resuelves lo del celular te llevo de gratis..)
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| See Ramon's Virturist.com tour |
Light beams through darkness; peeling paint on a column, a small dog sleeping on a porch, the puffs of
diesel exhaust from a rumbling truck, long avenues of
sparse traffic, an arrival to season's cheer. Andrew
leading 'la negra' in a snaking conga line at the
Saratoga Christmas party. Washing machine salesman
fleeing, arms flung up, audibly muttering, "alabao..Yasmina!..Escondanse!"
And what of the Russian follies?...the register of irritation on Carlos Manuel's face as he faced the music and she danced a jiggle and shake. A gasoline sports car pulling in for 'petroleo' but no hose in that tank- "I'm wery nerwous...I've nehhwwer done this
before" said for the tenth or twelfth time. Midnight
swims at Gatsby mansion. No woman, no cry.
Said I remember... tours of the Old Havana. Many,
all experienced as one loving caress of eyes, hand and
being. The Saratoga, el Parque de la India, the school
and lamp-posts like me all bearing testament to rescue
from ruin.
Can you find la clave? Many good dinners and
trips to Pinar. Dawn rising o'er a sleeping Vinales,
the sun pulling a blanket of mist from the rich red
earth and her up thrust mounds so gently
revealed… Hello my beauty… awake!
All the crowded incident set to a leisured
pace, unfolding as a picnic of delight. And you in all
this,' la clave' pulsing rhythm.. marking pace.. always
you. Me, you... always... "Thank you".
Love,
Ramon
From 2008 November 28
Shie Moreno brings dust to life
In old Tibet it was considered that childhood ended at 7 and the first steps and training of adult life would then begin. Shie Moreno's early years were spent in a Havana society in the throes of a Stalinist period amid the decaying splendor of a once grand city. At 8 he endured a crowded, nightmare passage forever known as the Mariel boatlift. He arrived in a hostile city to a foreign culture. The family quickly moved to Los Angeles and then, years later, returned to Miami.
The harsh bright light of the tropics, the intensity of color, the forced blindness of night in a crowded vessel, the elements, the sense of drifting and of place, all served to forge the sensibility of an artist.
A fascination with iconography, calligraphy and the strength of titles is also evident in the artist's work. He strives for the clarity of "morning water drawn from an undisturbed spring" (Quotations from: 'Orin Orisa - Songs for Selected Heads - Copyright 1992 John Mason).
The phrases and deeper meanings of Yoruba spirituality as lived by the Lukumi sing throughout his life. A sense of command comes from "the proposer who wields the sceptre" and "the owner of rivers and life". Marrying the strength of titles and the formalism of calligraphy Shie Moreno brings dust to life with the breath of a divine creator in the form of pigment to canvas or other media on the surface to hand.
The artist has summoned forces and unleashed them as animating spirits, elementally free and giving freely. Shie Moreno is a living tendril connecting ancient spirituality, the fecund tropics and contemporary American art.
The artist is not hindered by material constraints; any surface and material will do for creating expression. Paint, collage, tar, marker, wax, aerosol, keepsakes and even fire will be used to create a surface effect on canvas, wood, paper or glass. An earnest examination of color, letter forms and composition inform the work. This leads to Shie Moreno as an inventor of forms, ever expanding the techniques and range of his expression.
He is a superb draftsman with an organic sense of color who chooses to work in the forms he creates. Early series reveal his skill at drawing as well as his wit. As an example is his graphite and mixed media work where the half portrait of an elegant woman looks like a manipulated photographic image but is entirely drawn by hand.
Any artist, particularly one as attuned as Shie, is also an instrument subject to the confluence of diverse energies; cultural, geographic, temporal and those not subjugated to the constraints of time.
Open to these influences, Shie Moreno's show 'New Paintings 2009' presented a response to the times that is a form of commentary that is also an end to commentary and marks a change of movement in the music of his work. The artist has been exhibiting in galleries for close to twenty years.
The news is of war and decline, a collective obsession with collapse and the end of things. The artist responds with organic images such as 'Butterfly Dreams' or the exercise in roseate hues 'Birds and Bees' and with grand works in the Eternal Drifter series. The latter, a 72" x 144" triptych on large wooden panels, 'Eternal Drifters III', as well as the smaller triptych on paper 'Abyssal Empire' are abstracted organic forms without beginning or end, alive and adrift in eternity, indifferent to the viewer but rewarding attention. It is unclear if the organic elements are suspended in air or water or other but one sense comes through clearly, life is alive and adrift in space, the fleeting now is also eternal.
There are recurring motifs and an evolution in the technique with which they are used. A pattern on a curved surface is used in the large double panel painting 'Africana'that appears with more sophistication and painterly brio in 'Mundo Nuevo' and finally in a mastery of effect and technique that shows no effort in 'Eternal Drifters III'.
In his body of work are also found delicate nature studies executed with great sensitivity as in his portrait 'Heron' or his study of fish in a pond 'Koi', as well as religious iconography as in his 'Santa Barbara' paintings.
Finally, there is a fluid command of design, color and form done with a swing that is his own. Even the 20th Century graphic design of militant politics is defanged by being rendered at a remove and set free to be. The drums are sounding. Shie Moreno's heat is cool.
From 2009: Rolling with Shie Moreno
There is an intimacy, and a sense of privelege, in having access to the atelier of a working artist. A library can reveal the formation of a writer but the painter's studio is a peek into something else; objects from a human scale life as well as the manifestation of a conceptual universe and a view into the source of creation.
A collection of drums, panels, rolled canvasses in stacks, artifacts, notebooks, sketchpads, jars, cans of paint, buckets of markers, sponges and keepsakes are on view in addition to funky chairs that seem to excercise free will by showing up or not and moving as they wish. Giant paint-marked wheeled easels (10ft. x 12ft.) are prominent. The paint serving as birthmarks from previous works or simply from regulating quantity on a brush. Looking closely, one can see marked in small print on one side 'Vence Batalla'.
An ebb and flow of works and objects exists, with any one view of the contents providing only a snapshot portrait of an artist's life in progress. An acute sense of loss is felt when the work you saw being made is no longer there, one sees the ghosts of paintings past...a diaphonous 'not there' in front of what is there. Such is what I felt when I could no longer see 'Cosmic Dust' and the other new painting that had struck me deeply 'A Drifter in the Depths of Olokun'.
Getting to the studio is itself a trip. Shie will roll around and pick me up in Little Havana. Even the weather is a protagonist..more than once I have had to run through heavy rain and the rumble of thunder..with on one occasion a lightening bolt striking so close that 'Chango' made me jump.
In the artist's world there is no such thing as A to B and near never is the same route used. Only our delusions are linear. An awareness moves in of moving wheels on the curved surface of a planet, itself in motion in systems and space that are themselves curved and in motion. To perceive being as concrete and finite is to bury the self in vastness, cursed that as consciousness expands the vantage point becomes ever more insignificant and never connected. The artist's attitude is humbler and organic, both connected to and subject to, greater forces. He is ever respectful to the imperatives of living things.
"It is what it is" being a favoured phrase of the painter.
There are preferred spots. Guarapo (pressed sugar cane juice) is taken at a place on Flagler. Fresh coconut water is bought from a Haitian Lady who works the same spot on a city avenue in Little Haiti. She also sells roasted ears of corn and is always accompanied by a small coterie of sitting observers. Places for fish are an excercise in Shie's personal history in the city with many old favourites. The current one is in a strip of warehouses in an industrial zone in the North West. Spots for Cuban coffee are divided by zone, budget and mood. Noteworthy among them are the Latin Cafe on Biscayne, Ocoa's Breeze on Washington or David's on Licoln Road when there is time and mood for fancy...but there are many, many more.
Miami is conceptual and visual. There is among us; a love of place, a sense of a home if not home, a regard for the quirky and a wary view for slithering, poisonous creatures and currents. The city is a strange platform product of violated nature. However, many things are greatly appealling.
The trees that grow here all tell a story.
"Mango City," said Shie.
Miami has more mango trees than any other big city. All of them exist on residential plots. None were planted by farmers or developers but rather all were lovingly planted by immigrants to the city whether Haitian, Brazilian, Jamaican, Bahamian, Cuban or from somewhere else. I would point out the Maleleucas and their part as soldiers in a war on place.
We both share an affection for Royal Poincianas and would laugh at cross-cultural confusion caused by early Shie referring to the trees by their anglicised spanish name 'flamboyants'. Talk of trees would then move to signs as we roll along NW 20th Street whose stores prospered on Caribbean export business in good times and survive on local purchase in lean times.
"You have to see this" and he would point out a billboard for 'LevantaCola' (Buttlift) Jeans. We laugh and riff on the subject. Later the cuban/spanish word for jeans (pitusa) would trigger a memory of 'La Salida'.
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| Poster by Shie Moreno |
"Lechusa, Lechusa..SE VENDE POR UN PITUSA" the mob would shout and continue with "ESCORIA" (scum), "GUSANO" (worm). The artist would remember without anger but with some puzzlement at the things Cuban people will do...shouting at an 8 year old child and his grandmother, holding hands as they walked from the Electric Company 'doblando en Reina' to their home in long ago Havana. A bus to 'Mosquito' and then 'Mariel'. The houses left behind picked clean in minutes. A sour acknowledgement that many of those same people would also move but only to change masters and not vocation..abject servility posing as power and disguised in noise.
A 'Guiro' for 'Eleggua'. Music is played to please God through the spirits.
"Eleggua opens doors and is the owner of crossroads".
Shie is an accomplished musician. His sense for the rhythmic is as acute as his feel and command for the visual. He picked me up and we drove to a small house next to the Palmetto Expressway in the South West of Miami Dade. We met Marquito who would lead the group in the Guiro for Eleggua. The experience had charm and served as a good introduction. In a break in the music, Shie sat next to me. I noted the mirror in font of the door and
said,
"Bad feng shui."
He looked at me. I'm like that. A phrase ocurred on the nature of character and destiny.
'Ache' (ahhh-che)is an important word for the artist. It is a fused meaning word composed of personal power, a blessing, and a gift from God. One can have 'ache' for art, for writing, for music, and or other things.
"You have to meet Pedro" Shie said. So, one day, under a grey-blue sky and a drizzle of rain we drove to South Beach to pick up Pedro.
The slight figured older man inhabits his stories animating them with his spirit. Out would pour anecdotes of bands, spoken essays on the nature of music, seemingly random bits of wisdom and the occasional sharp laugh. On our return to the studio, Pedro sang. Shie played the drums and they alternated on la clave. It was recorded.
Music as living code. Civility. Imperial pasts. Cities by the sea. This living thing stretching from Yorubaland to the the tropics. It would start slow then build, and pick up, then pick up some more.
"Vence Batalla" Pedro would sing.
"Vence Batalla eh.."
"La rumba me esta llamando"..."Vence Batalla!"
When it was over the old man offered a final insight, a wisdom offered as love, "hay que darle con melao". Give yourself to what you do. So true of Shie Moreno, his work and of life.
LINK
Observations ... "just like Ted."
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| Shie Moreno poster |
I once derived pleasure from being a regular at bars and clubs. Naturally, there was always a preferred vantage spot. My earliest meomories are from accompanying my father in forays to heavily air-conditioned dark places, all of which had little, nylon-meshed, red candles that illuminated ashtrays and nothing else. Bars like that were all over town. I learned the protocol for paying a bookie at 'The Office', ... it is a skill I have never needed.
I started clubbing on my own at fourteen and remember wearing a three-piece YSL suit with a thick, red velvet Pierre Cardin tie and platform shoes as I danced for the first time to Van McCoy's 'Do the Hustle' at the 'Widow McCoy' in Coconut Grove. It was the first discotheque in Miami. In my early teens I would also sneak into 'The Mutiny' by entering through the kitchen.
Later, I lived on the Beach when it was near impossible to spend 50 bucks on a night out. A cocktail was at most $2.00 and all the bartenders were friends. 'The Clevelander' on Ocean Drive, Monday nights at the 'Island Club' and any night at 'Scratch' were the venues of the time.
Apropos of nothing, the best bartender I have ever known was Ted when he worked at 'The Strand' on Washington Avenue. He may have been the guy that invented the Cosmopolitan. For many years that followed, whenever I encountered exceptionally good service I would think "....just like Ted".
These observations were prompted by attending the opening of 'MI-6', a club that aspires to something grand. Nightlife has changed but a time has come for something old to be new again. Although I overheard comparisons to 'Studio 54', it was another New York club from another time that came to mind. It reminded me (by repute) of 'The Stork Club', a place for media personalities, moguls and star athletes to have a favorite table and discretely see and be seen. It is a setting that requires elegance in its patrons. The music, lights and high spirits did generate an energy similar to that of the dance floor at Studio.
'MI-6' (which they spell with Roman numerals, MI-VI) is the perfect venue to bring back the slow dance as a regular part of the mix. It is forgotten that slow songs were always included in the disco era. 'Studio 54' played them as did 'The Embassy' in London, a place of racy glamour. A generation has grown up without knowing the warm, tingly bliss of dancing cheek to cheek to a slow, loving tune. It is time again.
Finally, recently I accompanied Taissia, the VIP Director at 'MI-6' to the high tech hangout 'Mynt' where a memorial was held for Gilbert Stafford, the legendary doorman. It was important to notice and moving to see that, among other things, much love and loyalty can be found in the community of people that make up the night.
http://www.facebook.com/notes/ramon-l-granda/observations/306072707064
Original post
Link to the Shie Moreno Poster
From 2010... Maurice Ferre for U.S. Senate
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| A poster by Shie Moreno |
A bullet riddled, corpse strewn city dismissed by the National Press as 'Paradise Lost' coupled with a small-minded political establishment and a police force inadequate to the task of facing a drug war, race riots and a man-made humanitarian crisis involving 125,000 refugees were among the challenges faced by Maurice early in his career.
The gunmen are dead and the city he led has matured to a metropolis. It is the quiet courage and humane vision of Maurice Ferre (and those like he) that has prevailed.
There is a special grace to leadership that lets others make a successful vision their own. A good leader such as Maurice has known when to step aside and let people shine, as many have done and rightfully so.
The Ferre Vision of Miami as a center of international trade, culture, finance and travel hub has become a mighty engine in the development of Modern Florida. The city has been a fountain of capital and expertise for the expansion of business in Ft. Lauderdale and Palm Beach and the explosive development of Orlando and the I-4 Corridor from Tampa.
He sacrificed personal interests to implement policies whose economic benefits to Florida are so vast that they cannot be accurately calculated to the closest one hundred billion dollars. Compare 1973 and 2010 and in the difference you can find a picture of Maurice Ferre.
He has not been heard on all subjects.
His soft-spoken, scholarly tone is easily eclipsed by the noisy ephemera of political life. He has been a longtime advocate of energy independance and the importance of developing cleaner fuels and technology.
Maurice understands the opportunity to be found in challenges and sees the immense advantage to the United States in developing the new first and best. His wisdom stands out when looking at comments made in response to crisis over the decades, whether in 1973, '81 or at any time to date.
We must confront oil dependance (particularly from foreign sources) and do so in a way that creates opportunities and jobs for Florida and the United States.
Listen Now!
He has always been speaking for you.
Early Vote
Maurice Ferre
Democrat U.S. Senate
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