pt at large

Notre Dame In Tears

April 15, 2019

Gone..."the forest" of oak timbers that framed the  east end of the 850-year-old cathedral, the spire, the conical lead-lined roof, and lord knows how much of the interior paintings, relics, statuary, stained glass, in a fire that brought Paris and much of the world to its knees in sorrow.

Notre Dame...is it necessary to add "of Paris"? There is only one. If you've seen it, felt its history drape over your shoulders as you entered its cavernous Gothic interior, smelled the pungent aroma of incense and burning wax candles, often visible in the haze of a technicolor shaft of daylight slanting through the nave, you never forget it.  And how, you wondered, is it possible to feel so close to an almighty spirit in a church that can hold 6000...and learn that what are called flying buttresses along its exterior walls were necessary architectural devices to keep them from collapsing from the weight above. Where to look? At the vaulted ceiling a mile overhead? At the enormous pillars the size of sequoia trees that shoulder the weight. At the fierce faced gargoyles? And be overcome by a sense of serenity in the midst of the thousands of others who are in the massive cocoon with you. The tops of the two towers on the west end are barely visible behind the transept and the spire in the photo above.

The Notre Dame east end on the Isle de la Cité...April in Paris 2007...grace and symmetry, gravitas and grandeur, artistic architecture with the dual pulls of gravity and the celestial.

The most iconic view of Notre Dame are the massive twin Gothic towers (pictured in photos at bottom) that front the west end facade on the Isle de la Cité, a small island on The Seine River in the middle of Paris. The the apse at the east end (above) behind the two towers with its conical roof, intricate carvings and graceful flying buttresses steal the show. So impressive is the intricate stone work, statuary, graceful curves coaxed from limestone by the chisels of artisans for over nearly 200 years (1163-1345). The top of one the twin Gothic bell towers is barely visible behind the spire.

Prayers echo through the cathedral, rise like the wafts of incense drifting heavenward toward the vaulted ceiling.

Towering marble columns...

Ancient wooden pews worn smooth by constant use over centuries, with small chapels at each side of the center nave.

The radiating spokes of the South Rose Stained Glass Window, installed around 1260, 12.9 meters in diameter, 84 panes of  glass. One of the best examples of European stained glass construction ...the smoke of incense that day is benign, yesterday's conflagration, a savage accident. What has survived?

Has she survived?

A place of solace and individual contemplation, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of votive candles burn day and night, each one symbolizing a prayer...reports are that many of the votive candles were still burning after the fire in the cathedral was extinguished...think about that.

Entering the cathedral, I immediately felt safe and removed from the hubub of the outside world. If I had x-ray vision, surely I could see Heaven hovering just over the vaulted ceiling.

Alone, if not with God then with your spiritual core, and in the arms of a universal embrace in which religious affiliation is second to affiliation with your fellow human beings. An overwhelming sense of tranquility settles over my conscious state, a sense of peace beyond understanding.

Notre Dame, considered to be one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture, is the jewel of Paris, rising majestically on the Isle de la Cité, the Seine River the aqueous ring in which it is set. Its innovative use of the rib vault and flying buttress, enormous radiating stained glass windows and carved limestone has the stature of one of the architectural wonders of the world. 

The iconic view of one of the most famous Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages.

Notre Dame on the Isle de la Cité in the heart of Paris. The two 69 meter towers are visible behind the apse and 750-ton  295 foot-tall spire which sat over the transept and altar of the cathedral. Pont Saint Louis Bridge. The Palais de Justice, the French Supreme Court, is to the right.

Pont de la Tournelle with Notre Dame in background. 13 million visitors a year to this medieval cathedral...averaging 30,000 visitors a day!

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. April in Paris 2007. https://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2007/04/pt_in_pareean_a.html This sad news may bring more posts from Paris before this rueful day.

Unbearable loss...a test for Parisians and for all who have memories of "Our Lady".

Getty Images

 

Hemingway, Cuba, and Boston Connections In The News

April 12, 2019

San Francisco de Paula

Finca Vigía in the news...

The $1.2 million dollar conservation center built by the Boston-based Finca Vigía Foundation intended to preserve the legacy of Ernest Hemingway opened last week on the grounds of Finca Vigía, the Cuban villa on the outskirts of Havana where the novelist lived from 1939 to 1960.

https://www.wpi.edu/news/restoring-finca-vigia-hemingway-s-home-havana

The Finca Vigía Foundation was founded in 2002 by Jenny and Frank Phillips and Congressman James McGovern (MA). The late Jenny Phillips is the grandaugher of Ernest Hemingway's editor and longtime friend Maxwell Perkings. Board of Directors member Bob Vila, a Cuban-American, is well known as host of the home improvement TV program "This Old House."

https://fincafoundation.org/preservation-effort-makes-hemingways-cuba-home-look-like-he-never-left/

May 1960, only time the men met, Fidel scored first prize and won a silver trophy at Hemingway's annual marlin fishing contest.

http://www.cuba-hemingway.net/en/ernestfidel.asp

 

 

Hemingway, Cuba, Boston, and The Old Man and The Sea

Hemingway, Cuba, Boston and The Old Man and The Sea
Hemingway Museum, "Finca Vigía"
San Francisco de Paula
12 miles from Havana
April 7, 2019

Cuba and Ernest Hemingway. Just about everyone knows the names and has opinions about them. Few know about Finca Vigía, one of the man’s favorite refuges 12 miles outside Havana. 

It had everything that mattered to Papa…it was close to the sea, far enough from Havana for him to relax on his own terms, large enough to host parties with literati and movie stars with names like Ava Gardner, located on a rise that offered a panoramic view of Havana, and close enough to El Floridita , his favorite watering hole in Havana, where Constantino Ribalaigua would be waiting, shaker in hand, ready to mix a "Papa Doble." 

The main home, guest quarters, outdoor pool, his dry-docked yacht “Pilar,” have been an international tourist attraction for years.  Although Hemingway’s home on twelve-acre site is called a museum it’s the only museum I’ve ever been to that you can’t get inside. 

Along with other tourists piling out of tour buses on my visit in 2015, I walked around the back of the sprawling house gawking into windows and felt like an extra on the set of the TV series called  “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.”  I don’t know why a bathroom or living room once occupied by a larger than life character becomes a tourist attraction but there I was getting in position to photograph the orderly interior through the windows, closed to keep the interior climate controlled and the public from rummaging through the man's library, closets, and desk drawers.

Ernest Hemingway was a brand way before the term became fashionable. His handsome mustachioed face was on a black and white cover of the September 1, 1952 Life Magazine, the gold standard of the American Dream in the 1940s and 1950s. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He often wintered at Finca Vigía (Lookout Farm). Between 1939 and 1961, Hemingway spent more time in Cuba than in any other place on earth. 

Peering inside those windows, walking around the Pilar and the empty pool, I conjure the magic and mystique of the man whose books I read as a college student. I imagine the musty scent of those books that line the shelves and the hands that leafed through them. The artifacts in the house, all in a state as if he’d just left for an afternoon of banging down his favorite daiquiris at El Floridita, are vaguely connecting with an experience that began after my youthful reading of 'A Farewell To Arms' then later 'The Old Man And The Sea'.

The lookout tower, a few steps from Hemingway’s house, is open to the public. The one room at the top is a perfect Hemingway scene…ancient Corona typewriter, a telescope, bookshelves, and portrait of Hemingway on safari in Africa are juice enough to imagine the man, cigar clenched between teeth, clattering away on the vintage typewriter and taking occasional breaks to peer through that telescope to see the weather in Havana. I'm standing in a tourist attraction that feels more like a shrine. A sense of reverence seems to float over the site like the smoke from one of Papa’s cigars.

Cuba is changing and by Cuban standards, changing fast. The economic reforms begun in 2012 ended the days of everyone being equally poor and have begun an inevitable era in which people with capital can become a class of unequally rich. Tourism, an undeniable change agent, generated over 4.5 million arrivals in 2017, and is one of the main sources of revenue for the island.

I signed onto a Road Scholars trip to Cuba in 2015. Like others on the trip, I wanted to see Cuba before it might end up being gobbled up by Starbucks, Wal-Mart, become a consumer economy, and, for better or worse, lose what we thought to be its unspoiled Buena Vista Social Club ethos. 
(NOTE: as of January 15, 2015, “Educational Activities” is one of the 12 categories in which Americans can visit Cuba without prior permission of the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control)

Cuba has a rich cultural history but is not overly sentimental about it. Over the years, the architectural splendor of the homes along Havana’s north facing Malecón have been allowed to slide into elegant decay, unoccupied and crumbling from the effects of the Atlantic Ocean. Time, benign neglect, and tropical conditions took a similar toll on the buildings and grounds that comprise the Hemingway Museum. A recently found letter confirms that Mary Hemingway intended Finca Vigía, which became the property of the Cuban government after the revolution, to be a gift to the people of Cuba in memory of her husband.

In 2001, a near miraculous set of circumstances led to a collaboration between the Boston-based Finca Vigia Foundation and the Cuban group Consejo Nacional de Patrimnio Cultura. Massachusetts congressman Jim McGovern, who forged a positive relationship with Fidel Castro in 2002, facilitated the inter-government restoration that saved the property from ruin. The Finca Vigia Foundation painstakingly and respectfully restored the interior and its contents, and intends to open a paper conservation center on the property to preserve Hemingway’s personal papers, manuscripts, and his 9000 book library. It helped that Fidel was a Hemingway fan, especially after reading 'For Whom The Bell Tolls,' with its sympathy for the loyalists’ failed resistance to Francisco Franco’s fascist Spanish regime. 

Cuban and American preservation specialists, architects, engineers, restored Finca Vigia to look exactly like it did the day Hemingway walked away from it in 1960…and that’s the attraction I saw that day in 2015, totally unaware of its transformation.

Cuba’s history in the 2000s, the revolution that unseated a brutal dictator Fulgencio Batista and the U.S. embargo that followed the Castro years, is complex. Whether the socialist state of the Castro years was a sociological net plus or minus is going to be debated as the future unfolds. Nevertheless, with its mix of Spanish and African roots, Cuba is still the least commercialized island in the Caribbean. 

Hemingway wrote “The Old Man And The Sea” at Finca Vigia. Many believe that Gregorio Fuentes, the first mate on Hemingway’s boat Pilar that was moored in nearby Cojimar was an inspiration for the Old Man. 

World photographer Keith Cardwell’s photo of Gregorio Fuentes was recently gifted to me by a friend of Cardwell’s.  Cardwell’s book Cuba, The Buena Vista Years, 15 years in the making, shows the island, its everyday people, leaders, and way of life in poignant black and white photographs. His photo of Gregorio Fuentes is one of them. Perhaps my parlor is now the northernmost outpost of the Hemingway Museum.

Photo essay...

The main house at Finca Vigía, "Lookout Farm," built on a hill in San Francisco de Paula in 1886 . Hemingway spent time there between 1939 and 1960. The twelve acre property contains a guest house, a lookout tower, swimming pool that Hemingway used daily, and his dry-docked boat Pilar.

The master bedrooom and guest room. Evidence of Hemingway's pride in his hunting is in nearly every room in the  house. With its cream-colored walls, buffed floors, and handsome wood furniture, the low profile, single floor home has an aura of spare elegance and modernity.

 

Hemingway's study and library. The home has 9000 books crammed in shelves in every room including the bathroom...

along with works of art and trophies from his safaris in Africa and the American west.

Hemingway obsessively recorded his weight and blood pressure on the bathroom wall...

and that inspired this photo of me and our extraordinarily knowledgeable Cuban guide, Yohandra (“Jo”) imagining adding our heights to Hemingway's bathroom wall.

A former garage, then guest house and now office; the in-ground pool in which Ava Gardner is said to have skinny-dipped; Hemingway's boat "Pilar" now refurbished, sits in a cradle next to the pool. Pilar is the name of a heroic character in "For Whom The Bell Tolls" ; also the nickname of Pauline, one of Hemingway's four wives.

Here the elegant yacht sits, with varnished brightwork and meticulous detailing, its finely chiseled prow pointing toward the sea, as if waiting for Papa to come aboard for a day of fishing for marlins.Were it not for the Finca Vigía Foundation, Pilar may have been lost to dry rot and decay. Pilar was restored with technical advice from a consultant from Mystic Seaport and lovingly rebuilt by Cuban boat builders who removed plants and termite nests before restoring and added temperature and humidity gauges in the galley to monitor data when they finished.

 

The captain's chair in which Papa fished for marlin. Even when officials arrive for a viewing, NO ONE is allowed to sit in Papa's chair.

The lookout tower was built by Hemingway's fourth wife. On the third top level sits a typewriter, desk, a chaise-lounge, a painting of Hemingway posing cheerfully next to a kill on safari, a telescope, and of course, more  books. It is said that the man had a hard time throwing things away, certainly was the case with books.

He and his guests certainly enjoyed the glorious vista from the top of the "Lookout," with Havana on the horizon.

Tourists of all ages have reasons to visit and arrive by taxi and tour buses ...

and can relax in the shade of banyans, bamboo and celiba trees outside the house.

Next to the entry gate, remnants of a  small baseball diamond on which Papa, his sons, and neighborhood boys played the sport that has captivated Cuban boys for nearly a century...stay tuned for a story about Hemingway pitching to neighborhood kids on this lawn just inside the gate.

Keith Cardwell's photo of Gregorio Fuentes, the first mate on El Pilar, who is said to be the man who inspired Hemingway's "Old Man And The Sea." When Hemingway left, he entrusted Pilar to Gregorio. When Gregorio Fuentes died he left the boat to the people of Cuba. The vessel was lovingly restored as part of the Finca Vigía Foundation.

Photos,with the exception of the photo of the three-story lookout, by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

https://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2015/11/cuba-chronicles-cigars-and-rum.html

 

The Berkshire Athenaeum: Morphing from the 19th to the 21st Century

The Berkshire Athenaeum
Pittsfield’s Public Library
1 Wendell Avenue
Pittsfield, MA
March 14, 2019

The Berkshire Athenaeum on 1 Wendell Avenue…

A place for scholarly endeavors, a community center, a nexus for social interaction, a drop-in center, a quiet oasis of tranquility thankfully without a plasma TV in sight, rooms dedicated to local history…that’s a start to describe the Berkshire Athenaeum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

Not a drop of stuffiness here. The modern two story building wraps its arms around you as you walk inside, a spacious atrium, airy and well-lit, offers a silent handshake of greeting to the visitor. Surrounded by the usual stacks of books arranged with the Dewey Decimal, navigation is aided and abetted by signage, an efficient self-explanatory guide to the first time visitor.

Before you’ve even begun to take in the contents, your eyes are drawn to a powerful black and white photographic montage that plants you square in the historic and cultural ethos of Berkshire county.

Those large photos, printed on cloth and draped over the perimeter of the second level, give a visitors and locals a very specific sense of time, place, and people that are the fabric of Berkshire County. "Facing Berkshires Heritage" photographs by Nicholas Candida capture the spirit of the county.

I was born and raised in Pittsfield. Those photos hit a chord for me. I can smell the new mown hay, feel the chill air around Mt. Greylock, hear the lowing of cows and the voices of farmers in Savoy as I explored what was down the road as a 16 year-old with his first drivers license.

Facing Berkshires Heritage photographs by Nicholas Candida VIDEO

The staff keeps it real with displays as fresh as today's news. You’d have to have been living under a rock not to know that “The Green Book” was named the 2019 Oscar Best Film. A glass case just past the circulation desk contains an original copy of “The Green Book” with photos and details of how “Negro” visitors could find gas stations, hotels, and restaurants where they could be served and not shunned right here in Pittsfield.

Pockets of reading rooms and a food and drink room are tucked around the first floor perimeter. Two areas with banks of computers, being used by three generations of residents, are nestled toward the end of the first level. Spacious, well-lit areas to work or research or read whatever you need to read on the internet are arranged around the stairs to the second level. The Auditorium, located in the basement seats 175 people, and is often used to host meetings involving town matters.

An early definition of Athenaeum is “a place in the temple of Athena in Athens where writers and scholars met.”

Back in 1876, the city’s elite wanted to upgrade Pittsfield’s cultural standing by erecting a building with such erudite purpose. If they were to stroll through today’s athenaeum I’ll bet they’d be proud by the egalitarian way the pursuit of knowledge and social connectivity has evolved.

 

Berkshire Athenaeum Exhibit: The Green Book

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The Berkshire Athenaeum signage makes navigation easy for visitors

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Berkshire Athenaeum: A community destination

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Berkshire Athenaeum exterior on Wendell Avenue

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At noontime the library hosts a crowd composed mostly of senior citizens. After 2 PM, a younger generation will show up as students from Pittsfield High School, a five minute walk away, show up.

Original library, 1876 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkshire_Athenaeum

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

 

Willie: Life and Songs Of An American Outlaw, The Setting

Willie: Life and Songs Of An American Outlaw

PART 2; THE SETTING
Bridgestone Arena
Nashville, TN
January 12, 2019

There’s Red State America, Blue State America…and Willie Nelson America. 18,000 members of WNA crammed into every seat in the cavernous Bridgestone Arena to pay homage to the man who has been writing songs since 1962. If the event would have been on pay per view, Willie could have bought the state of Texas with the proceeds. The level of anticipation in the arena was as thick as those two long pigtails hanging from under Willie’s cowboy hat. 

Anyone who owned Willie merchandise was wearing it. The forty-ish woman wearing a light blue Levi jacket with a Willie Nelson portrait on the back was walking to her seat in the hallway ahead of us. “I had it painted especially for me last year,” she said. “The same artist painted that one of Johnny Cash on my husband’s.”  For the rest of us, our devotion to Willie and what he stands for is painted indelibly on a small cameo in an invisible locket hanging on a delicate chain around our necks. 

 

Listen and you’d hear people telling Willie anecdotes. The couple sitting next to us had driven two hours from eastern Tennessee for the show. Judging by the conversation with Willie as the fulcrum you’d think we’d known each other for years. 

 

WNA comes in all ages and income levels and is mostly white. They have their favorite songs, can tell you the first time they remember hearing it and can recite the verses. They are here to honor the man whose songs have been on their playlists for years. The fact that the man is 85 years old is another driving force for reasons that need no explanation.

 

The Tennessee accents I hear around me would be perfect for making a Jack Daniels Black Label Bourbon radio commercial. As the arena fills up, a good ol’ boy with a bushy beard and grey streaked pony tail poking through the back of his baseball cap is belting out a George Jones song much to the amusement of his neighbors. “I drove up to his house one day, knocked on the door and he answered it. I asked if he’d sign my fiddle and damn, he did.” 

 

Read the lyrics to Nelson's songs, listen to his own renditions. The man’s a philosopher, a poet, a seer, a romantic sometimes of the hopeless kind but has the sensibility to avoid the saccharine and write the core truths. If you’ve loved, loved and lost, or just plain lived, he’ll be singing your song.

 

His songwriting phrasing and timing can croon or swing or muse whether balladeering or country two stepping. The man’s not just a songwriter, he’s a storyteller. To say that he’s country… well you haven’t listened to what he’s written or co-written since 1962. Those 367 songs are not about pickup trucks. They’re steeped in his own life experiences. Can you name another Texas songwriter who covers Hogie Carmichael and, hold your breath, his next project will cover ol’ Blue Eyes himself. To think Willie is country misses the point. 

 

I’m thinking that Willie is the Buddha of American music, toking on weed instead of drinking tea. That unmistakable Willie voice, slightly nasal bourbon baritone, is best listened to neat, just the voice and his trademark guitar ‘Trigger.”

 

Check out the man’s catalogue. Chances are you’ve heard his songs covered by artists way better known, Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” for example, more than you’ve heard Willie singing them himself. Look at this list of 367 songs and categories.

 

Look at the range of songs the man’s written and sung. Willie’s sort of a one-man Rogers and Hammerstein or a singer with the range and sensibility of George Gershwin who wears cowboy boots and a red bandana. With his country lyricism, jazz influenced phrasing, and soulful sensibility, Willie doesn’t even fit into the category of Americana. “One of a kind” sounds about right.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

https://www.tennessean.com/story/entertainment/2018/10/30/willie-nelson-recording-academy-grammy-2019/1817954002/

The Bottlecap Cafe - The Cheers of Key West

COMPUTER MELTDOWN. PHOTOS WILL REAPPEAR AS SOON AS THE CLOUD RELEASES ITS GRIP

The Bottlecap Cafe
1128 Simonton Street
Key West, FL
October 26, 2018
http://bottlecapkeywest.com

An off-the-beaten-path cozy, utterly unpretentious Key West neighborhood bar that a tourist like me would never find without being invited by locals who hang out here.

The inviting warm glow of the Bottlecap Cafe isn’t coming from the lights. It’s coming from the other folks at the bar, like Samantha Tarracino Gonzalez and her husband Tony who invited us to join them as the Masquerade March ended around 7:30 PM.

This is an honest-to-goodness Cheers type bar where everybody, including Erin the bartender, knows not just each other's names, but their stories. Erin pours Samantha a glass of Prosecco and pineapple juice as soon as she walks in the door, no words necessary.

Any friend of Samantha and Tony’s is bestowed an informal membership to the Bottlecap Society. Within minutes, we’re yakking it up with Samantha, her friends, Tony and Tony’s cousin.

There are a dozen bars on Duval and Green Streets smack in the middle of the tourist zone. They’ve earned their stars, have good wait staffs, good food and what the heck, places like the Hog’s Breath Saloon, Fogarty’s, Captain Tony’s Saloon, and of course, Jimmy Buffett’s Margarittaville are part of Key West lore. They’re all worth visiting as long as you don’t figure that your bar crawl ends there.

Google 'bars in Key West'. NINE PAGES of them! Ask around. You just might find one like The Bottlecap Cafe that will wrap itself around you like a warm hug from a long lost friend.

The Bottlecap Cafe - where everybody knows your name

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OF NOTE
One of Key West’s less recognized features it its strong sense of community.

In early 2007, when the owner of The Bottlecap Café began working the Friday Happy Hour (5 PM-8 PM) shift, she was not comfortable taking tips from her customers. Check this heart warming story to see how she solved the situation by donating her tips to local charities - and giving her staff a cut of the proceeds from the Happy Hour sales. "Non-Profit Fridays" recipients are booked for about one year out! http://bottlecapkeywest.com/non-profit-fridays.htm

Several events during Fantasy Fest donate proceeds to area non-profits. Money raised by men and women vying to be named King and Queen of the annual Fantasy Fest is donated to A.H. Monroe that provides case managed healthcare; food programs; counseling; housing; clinical, and other supportive and volunteer services; increases affordable housing by acquiring, developing, and maintaining low income housing for persons in need; and conducting health education and linkage to care. This year's total raised by aspiring candidates - $275,000!

http://www.ahmonroe.org/about-aids-help/

Fantasy Fest 2018: Togas, Paint, and Do It Yourself Costumerie

Fantasy Fest 2018: Thursday, October 25, 2018

Just another day at Fantasy Fest: A Naughty Bike Ride (you figure it out) down Duval Street; Karaoke at Two Friends Bar; Dante’s 12th annual Halos & Horns Pool Party; local musicians playing at the Customs House; The History, Culture, and Politics of Bondage/Domination/Sadomasochism at the Customs House; Annual Headdress Ball at the new Key West Amphitheater at Truman Waterfront Park; Rockabily “Shake, Rattle & Roll Party at Sunset Pier; 3rd Annual White Party; Sandbar Sports Grill Annual Body Paint Competition; Sloppy Joe’s Annual Toga Party; Fat Tuesday Pink Party; Cowboy Bill’s annual wet T shirt contest; Pajama and Lingerie Party at the Bottle Cap Lounge; Irish Kevin’s 80s Party; plus all the fun you can have strolling up and down Duval Street. 

These goings on began on and around Duval Street after 8 PM, but trust me, dahling, the fun has been going on since Friday October 19. The grand finale will be the Grand Parade on Saturday October 27, attended by tens of thousands of your BFFs.

Oh, and Sunday October 28, for those who want to squeeze the very last drop out of this juicy piece of low hanging fruit, an 8 AM tailgate party to watch the Philadelphia Eagles play Jacksonville Jaguars in England (yes), dress in your best team pajamas, and a Children's Day at Bayview Park from 12 Noon to 5 PM and then.... TA DAAAA... "The Fat Lady Sings" Tea Dance at La Te Da Hotel,Restaurant, Cabaret and Bars way out on 1125 Duval Street from Noon to 5 PM.

Then start planning for next year. But I digress.

Three of a kind?

 
Poker? A pair of queens? A Royal flush? All kinds of costumes and participants of every inclination... spectators, revelers, plus a whole bunch of people who just got off the cruise ship in the harbor ("We aren't in Kansas anymore!). You are about to see the most incongruous collection of people you'll see until this time next year. People in t shirts and flip flops mingle with people in body paint, sequins, pasties and elaborate and inspired "Games People Play" costumes. Honest to goodness, it's sort of like a zoo without bars, spectators and participants checking each other out with curiously and a smile. Cameras and iPhones click and flash away, including mine.

Counter-intuitive? You betcha. What would be your normal reaction when a perfect stranger takes a picture of you in your birthday suit. Toss that out the window. Here, you flash a smile to go along with an acre of your exposed flesh - and pose. You got someone's attention! You certainly didn't come here to hide your light under a basket. You came ready for kleig lights. Flash away! Everybody is clicking photos of everybody else. The chances that someone back home in the plumbing, education, dentistry etc businesses back home will see you playing like a kid in a sandbox before you were taught that being nearly naked in public is inappropriate are slim to none.

Time to promenade...this couple packed real light for this stroll.

Silent slow rolling by golf cart on part of Duval Street above Caroline where the street is still open to vehicles...

  
where you can pose with Beetle...or Amazon Prime....

Here's the theme...the grand theme is to have a good time whether in costume or not.

And the TWAT Team is on patrol...dispensing verification stickers.

Kings, queens, clowns, emperors...

 
Rock n rollers, onlookers...

Way cool body paint and paraphernalia...

 

Indian Princesses and Key West Muff Divers!

Pretty much captures the jovial vibe on Duval Street.

Around Sloppy Joe's

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Duval Street between Caroline and Front Street is one moveable fantastical feast. The stretch of Duval from Caroline Street to Front Street is closed to vehicular traffic.

Caroline's

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Got the idea for Masquerade March from this guy.

 

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Caroline's on Duval Street, great place to join the party, fellow celebrants, good service, good food, good prices. How often can you dine while sitting with body painted, festively dressed and undressed other diners.

 

Duval Street jammed with celebrants and spectators

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Deep "C" Diving

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A much photographed pair of divers, probably hauled the equipment from their boat or rented from the local dive shop...big points for creativity!

 

Smile for the camera...

 

Around Captain Tony's

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Two Cousins: Accidental Tourists!

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  Two cousins visit Key West, had NO IDEA Fantasy Fest was going on. It didn't take long for them to get with the program!

Elsewhere on Duval Street

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• Getting into the spirit...and her blouse!
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Finish the night with a shot at Kelly's and a scoop from Mattheessen's
 

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Fantasy Fest 2018: Fogarty's Red Party Rocks

 Fantasy Fest 2018: Wednesday, October 23, 2018

A few of today's events: Disco at Duval Central, Tarzan 'n Jane at the Green Room, Pet Masquerade (furry, feathery or slithery pets, proceeds to the Lower Keys Friends of Animals) at Truman Waterfront Park, Cheraoke (yes, THAT Cher) at The Gates Hotel, Performance Art by local talents at  The Customs House, Dance Party at the Sunset Pier Mallory Square, Blue Party at Lucy's Retired Surfers Bar , Homemade Bikini Contest at Smokin' Tuna Saloon, Fogarty's Red Party, Sex Bull Riding Contest (at Cowboy Bill's of course), ABC Party at Sandbar Sports Grill for starters.

Every event has a theme. If you think there's a tsunami of crimson at an Alabama home game, check out the Red Tide at Fogarty's Red Party. A cocktail of techno/disco music gives partiers a reason to shake their booties. The bar is packed, shots of rum vie with cups of cold beer to put a flush on our cheeks on a gloriously warm Key West night. Wearing red is not required, wearing a smile will do just fine.

It's nigh unto impossible to walk by the street-side patio without being drawn into the energy field called Fogarty's Red Party.

You might even be greeted by princesses!

Wearing red is not required to enter the party, wearing a smile will do just fine.

The sedentary are in a distinct minority; dancing, solo or with a like-minded celebrant, spontaneously breaks out often...

Sometimes on the floor, sometimes on a table top.

Red, white, and blue, the doctor is in...and the crowd soaks in the vibe.

Hugh and his bunny; did i say dancing is breaking out?

Well, you get the idea...over the top (or bottom) costumes get guffaws; satisfaction reigns.

A disco king and his court; this guy had all the moves to act out lyrics of the songs, was happy to teach then pose with everyone.

 
The usual vast array of costumes and people wearing them; other parties on Duval Street are inside the pubs. The Red Party at the edge of the sidewalk, is wide open...and not many can resist the beckon to step through the gate.

Little Red Riding Hoods, no wolves, only admirers in attendance.

The Riviera without the sand...

No doubt about it, music sets a mood.

 

Yes, ma'am that calls for a photo - the guy attaches a string to his ding and bobs it around like a yoyo.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Fantasy Fest 2018: Red Parties, Green Parties, Cheraoke, Street Strolling

Fantasy Fest, Wednesday, October 24, 2018, Key West, FL

A few of today's events: Disco at Duval Central, Tarzan 'n Jane at the Green Room, Pet Masquerade (furry, feathery or slithery pets, proceeds to the Lower Keys Friends of Animals) at Truman Waterfront Park , Cheraoke (yes, THAT Cher) at the Gates Hotel, Performance Art by local talents at The Customs House, Dance Party at the Sunset Pier Mallory Square, Blue Party at Lucy's Retired Surfers Bar, Homemade Bikini Contest at  Smokin' Tuna Saloon, Fogarty's Red Party, Sex Bull Riding Contest (at Cowboy Bill's of course), ABC Party at Sandbar Sports Bar.

No way anyone can defy Newton's Laws of Physics and take in all of these. Park yourself on a good observation post and chances are you'll see people coming or going to most of these events.

 

Red Party, Green Party, Blue Party?  They've got it covered...well,mostly covered.

Promenading up and down Duval Street is a must do - and a must see!

 

Fun for spectators, fun for strollers in the limelight.
 
Whether you quietly observe or wear out your phone, it's all good.


The unofficial costume? A smile.

Everyone in a festive mood...

to pose for anyone who asks.

Amigos across from Captain Tony's Saloon is one of the best places to watch the goings on.

Rick's, Angelina's, Dirty Harry's... busy places.

Chilling and spectating; several blocks between Eaton Street and Front Street near Mallory Square are closed to traffic...a hot rod gets attention on Duval Street.

Pow wows and photo opps

 

YES...Cher!

A photographer all the way from Las Vegas and I have been wandering up Duval Street taking some of the same scenes of the same people. "Check out these folks who just walked by, you don’t want to miss that!" His smiling, good-natured companion? “We have been together since 1975 but she doesn’t think she knows me well enough yet to get official!“

 

Where to go next? Business in the miniscule sunglasses boutique is slow.

 

Ahoy there! The Captain Morgan float makes a nightly cruise up Duval Street.

 

Smile for the camera? Sure!

Spectating from Fogarty's

Caroline's, one of the best spots for food on Duval Street; How often do your fellow diners not dress for dinner?

 
Don't worry, the parades of people will still be there when you return to stroll down the street.

  
If you have a red Ts-hirt and some makeup, you're good to go. Whether you costume or get body painted or just wear your T-shirt and tennies, this is all about having an intention to have a good time; even an Easter Bunny makes the scene.
 
 
Pause to reorganize; then get rolling again.

 

Bazoombas on parade!

The games people play, checking  our the scene.

Top hatted and topless,,,

Heading home?

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Fantasy Fest 2018: TuTu Tuesday, What the heck, Plaid too

Fantasy Fest, Key West, Oh Yes, Florida, Tuesday October 23...
 

Fantasy fest is like the French Riviera without the sand. People are comfortable in their own skin, and I mean every-day people like your mailman or your kid’s teacher or for that matter your grandparents. Perfect 10 bodies are not necessary or required. Forget the ideals of classic Greek and Roman statuary. This is a celebration of the every-day anatomy of the 99% of the rest of us who vastly outnumber the mightily toned or endowed.

Attitude counts. Big time. And so does group mentality. This is why we are all here. And have permission to toss the norms of everyday street life out the window.

“My husband made me this chain link bodice for me,“ a radiant 60-something woman says proudly as she stands next to him obliging for a photo, radiant smile to complement lovely mature tatas.

I’ll bet they have been planning to come here for months. And that her husband, with gold Mardi Gras beads draped around his neck, was happy to indulge her to show off her beautiful features. A sense of playfulness has descended over Duval Street, transforming it into a Magic Kingdom for adults.

It is so wonderfully out-of-whack that when a perfect stranger asks to take your photo when you’re wearing next to nothing and you oblige. Heck, you take it as a compliment. Complimentary exclamations ring out from store front to store front in as heuristic an environment as there ever was.

With apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning…Why Do I Love Fantasy Fest, Let Me Count The Ways.

In these troubled times, it is a healthy temporary escape valve from the torrents of divisive political intolerance, murderous rampages, fragmented social media, and unsettling news every hour of the day. I didn’t read a newspaper or watch the news for 96 hours. My citizen self went on vacation with me. My psyche felt like a dolphin swimming in a sea of endorphins.

It is a most welcome antidote for our brains that have been branded with images of populating fashion runways and the pages of People and Vanity Fair magazines. With one stroke of a Key West magical wand we feel that our own images are cool enough to be splashed on glossy magazine covers, and boy oh boy are we proud of it.

I got in touch with my childish sense of play, felt like I was frolicking around in a huge Caribbean sand box, kissed by the sun, with a bunch of fun-loving new best friends.

The scenes around Captain Tony's Saloon...a necessary digression...

The spirit of the late great Captain Tony Tarracino is alive and well. It's not often that someone declared "the man, the myth, the legend" lived up to all of it. Fleeing to Key West to escape the Mob in New Jersey (not a good idea to cheat the mob by using a telephone to get early race results), Tony re-invented himself to become a shrimper, a charter boat captain, gun runner, became owner of Captain Tony’s Saloon on 428 Green Street in 1958 and one-time mayor of Key West. Not bad for a kid born to Italian immigrants.

In a small town known for its colorful characters, Tony was and is its most endearingly memorable. Tony's love life, also legendary, included four wives, 13 children and enough grandchildren to form a couple of soccer teams. His last child was born when he was 70. His most enduring legacy: the warmth, generosity, empathy for one and all, and uncanny ability to fully live every moment of his life, that exuded from every pore in his skinny body.

Of all the encomiums bestowed upon him, I’ll bet he was most proud of “the conscience of Key West." If you want to be transported into the life and times of a very human legend, a born raconteur with a big heart and an appetite for living in the moment, read "Life Lessons of a Legend," as told to tourist then friend Brad Manard in 2008.  The essence of that man's spirit still animates the personality of his beloved island.

No surprise. Many of the festival’s Queen Bees are hanging out in front of Captain Tony's Saloon. They're followed by a swarm of adoring worker bees eager to bask in the iconic aura of the saloon and take selfies to prove that this week hasn’t been a dream.

Could this happen anywhere else on the planet? What do you think? Personally I doubt it.

Photo section below...

A few of Tuesday's events: Tutu Tuesday Bar Crawl, Captain Tony's Party in Plaid, Green Parrot Green Party (It's Not Easy Being Green),  'Cocktails for Animal Tails' with proceeds to Florida Keys SPCA and a bunch more. Every day and night is filled with themed event, oh my... more

Tutus, plaid, green...Duval Street is a scene


Captain Tony's Saloon on Green Street is a magnet. Tony Tarracino (1916-2008) A legend in his own time, Tony's shadow still looms over his saloon and his spirit animates the goings on here. Captain Tony's Plaid Night at Captain Tony's is at a full boil.

Are we having fun yet? And how does that plaid stay put?

This pair of plaid partiers were deluged with asks for photo opps. 

My favorite pair of photos of the week...represents the range of people, the level of affection, and unaffectedness, displayed by people who come here to play and be free, not free from morality, because this is about fun, not debauchery.


Showing up with the right attitude is what counts. Captain Tony would second that idea.

 

The counter at Amigos, across the street from Captain Tony's Saloon, offers a fabulous people watching perch.The Masquerade March on Friday afternoon, the local's parade,will feature hilarious statements about the political opinions of residents of Key West. It will be the only manifestation of politics during the whole week. See Thursday's post when published.

  

The Smallest Bar in Key West lives up to its reputation, the most colorful closet-sized bar anywhere.

 

Rums like Sailor Jerry's are best sellers...sip is as you promenade up Duval Street...this is Key West, what do you expect?

 

Yes, we were here!

 

Sloppy Joe's on Duval Street; a proud plaid-ster.

Every bar along Duval Street is on the pub crawl list.

  

You gotta love the range of attire; NFL fans got a kick out of this metaphorical statement about referees.

People line up for a photo opp with this celebrant ; those tatas are the bomb!

Sure you can take our photo! Love the guy's smile walking behind the red tutu.

Spontaneous photo opp, fore and aft.


Clowning around for fun; doncha love the matching green suspenders and tutus:)

 

Everyone wants a photo opp with this pair of partiers; that extra pair of hands is hilarious.

 

"Kiss End of the Road Farewell Tour" will happen soon but there will be no farewells for anyone dressing up as Gene Simmons anytime soon; plaid paradise.
 
Pectorals and paint, a fine combination; a fast way to cruise Duval Street.

 
Spectacular people watching day and night.

 
The Bull and Whistle on Duval Street; of course we'll pose for a photo!

The body paint artists were busy; one of the many great people watching seats, the street side tables at Caroline's.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.
 

Fantasy Fest 2018: Tutu Tuesday Gets Rolling

Fantasy Fest 2018: TuTu Tuesday
https://fantasyfest.com
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
Key West, Florida

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_West
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conch_Republic

Passengers sitting in the window seats are laughing out loud. The ground crew marshal waving the orange baton to guide the pilot to the line where the jet will power down is wearing a lovely accessory… a pink tutu!

Whaaaat?

Fantasy Fest 2018 is in full swing. It's Tutu Tuesday...read on...

Way back in 1979, four business owners sat down around a kitchen table and did what business owners do, tossed around ideas how to put a charge in the island during a big lull before the snow birds arrived, as predictable as the swallows returning to Capistrano.

The idea they hatched is Fantasy Fest, a you-have-to-see-it-to-believe-it ten day street party. Thousands of those young at heart, young in spirit, will be parading around Duval Street by the time we arrive an hour later.

This year’s theme, “The Games People Play,” will dictate what thousands will wear …or not. Oh, and along with that there are annual events like Tu Tu Tuesday, Red Parties,  Green Parties celebrated all around Duval Street. It got a head start right here at the airport and it’s been rolling since October 19, the first day of Fantasy Fest 2018.

This seed of the idea did not come out of nowhere. Maybe it was blown onto the island on a soft Caribbean breeze with the faint scent of pineapples, coconuts and lush fields of cane sugar. More likely it was inevitable, created by the residents of Key West who once declared an intention to secede from the United States (1982), celebrates its own Independence Day every April 23rd, and named itself and the keys to its north The Conch Republic.

The most endearing part of the first Independence Day (1982) The platform of the founding organization, “A Sovereign State of Mind,”as to bring more “Humor, Warmth, and Respect” to the world. That’s a living creed...I’ve felt that spirit every one of my four trips to Key West since 2009.

It’s not a reach to see the roots of Fantasy Fest, watered by love, rum, and a streak of independent and wholesomely eccentric spirit. Key West is the southernmost part of the United States. It’s not just the miles that separate it from the rest of us.

Walk around the island. Talk with people, the ones who were born here and the ones who came here and never left. They connect with the world on their own terms. Sure they have opinions and political affiliations. But their first allegiance is to the well being of their island and the others who share it with them.

They are geographically and culturally far enough away from the rest of us to be splendidly unaffected, perhaps defiantly unaffected, by life as the rest of us know it. Sure they depend on us tourists to float their economy but that doesn’t mean that they bow to our dollars. It’s more like we bow to the Conch Republic when we spend them there.

The photos and stories on the following pages give you a faint idea of what the festival is all about. There is no way that pixels can transmit the humor, warmth, respect generated on Duval Street. If you could attach a chip reader to your cerebral cortex as you view a photo you might be able to feel the utter sense of play amongst the thousands of people along Duval Street during the 10-day festival. There is a Code of Conduct. Everyone abides by it.

People you would never think in 1000 years would doff clothing and wear wildly creative costumes,  mingle with each other as if they were at an annual Shriners convention. Tourists in Jimmy Buffett T-shirts and flip-flops are having a blast with their free spirited doppelgängers.

Key West is 160 road miles southwest of Miami by air. It might as well be on Mars.

 

 Welcome to Key West...

 

  
and in case you weren't aware of the island's live and let live philosophy, there it is over the airport portal into Key West...

 

Playful ground crew poses; a sign in men's room, R/x for over-indulgers...in fact, I didn't see one person in need of the services during my stay.
I

The theme of this years Fantasy  Fest: "The Games People Play"

The games people play...I was invited to spin the arrows...you'll have to guess what the results were!

 

Tutus on parade; "My husband made this golden necklace for me,"says this proud Tuesday afternoon stroller on Duval Street

 

Duval Street is abuzz...tourists, celebrants, locals; spectators love it.

The smiles say it all.

Get ready...the next stories will have scores of photos to go along with the text.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

2018 Dominican World Series: Drama and Obsession

February 25, 2018


Quisqueya Stadium Juan Marichal
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Baseball in the Dominican Republic isn’t a national sport. It’s a national obsession. Combine sport, soap opera, zealous conviction, tribal membership, and you begin to understand how embedded the game is in the national psyche.

January marks the end of the regular baseball season and the beginning of the playoffs to determine which of island’s 6 teams will represent the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean World Series. The rivalries are intense. The fault lines in allegiances are known to fracture family gatherings.

Teams from Santo Domingo (Tigres del Licey/Tigers) and Santiago (the Águilas/Eagles), the second largest city in the Dominican Republic are duking it out in a best of seven series. The winning team will head to Mexico to joust with winning teams from Venezuela, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Mexico. This is a heavyweight bout. Pride, loyalty, family honor, bragging rights, ride on the results.

Our host, Alex Martinez, used every connection he has to get great tickets to the fourth game in the best of seven series. The Santiago Eagles (Áigules) are up two games to one.

Walking up the ramp into the stadium feels like entering an alternate universe. Yes, I see lush green grass, the clay colored base paths and the pitchers mound and coaches boxes and dugouts and players in different uniforms so it’s a baseball game but, if I close my eyes, I would swear I was at a World Cup soccer match. The energy, cheering, and singing are awesome and unrelenting.

A run scores! Fans from the Tigers or the Eagles are on their feet. The stands become an open-air discotheque as 15,000 partisans stand up and joyously dance, hip-shaking Latin moves that look more at home on a sweat-filled dance club than a baseball park. I am smack in the middle of a sublime cultural experience.

Vendors selling hats, pennants and flags lined the streets on the way to the ballpark. Our host buys us hats and pennants, blue for the hometown team Tigers and, since his wife is from Santiago, yellow for the Santiago Eagles. We have become partisans. The stadium is jammed with them, a sea of blue with dots of yellow, like buoys floating on the Caribbean Sea’s surface, in perpetual motion.

Fervent energy in every row from top to bottom, joy on faces one moment then disappointment and heartbreak on the next. The game is a virtual roller caster ride with emotions rising and plummeting, people living and dying with each pitch and each hit.

Spectators rooting for opposing teams sometime sit side-by-side. The banter is non-stop after a hit, a walk, an error, a disputed call by the home plate umpire.The fans sitting in front of us are perfect examples. When a good play is made they leap up, wave their pennants and shoot "We're gonna win!" looks at their friends.

A sporting event creates instant kinships between strangers. Rooting for the same team, we are comrades in arms. Frank has brought his own sign that he unfurls at every moment of glory for the hometown team Licey Tigers.

“Please show me your sign,”says I.

“Boston, “I reply after he asks me where I’m from.

“Pedro Martinez!” Frank shouts after extending his hand to greet me.

“Just elected to the Hall of Fame,” says I.

“And Vladimir Guerrero, too!” says he.

 

Don’t think for a minute that everyone in the stadium does not know the names of every Dominican player in the big leagues.

A team makes a good play? Sections of the park look like scenes from Sir Walter Scott novel. Yellow or blue pennants are boisterously hoisted as if readying for battle.

You remember the word fanatic? Well, the word fan is in there somewhere and inside this ballpark we are in a world of fans and fanatics. The announcer introduces each player to come to bat in the same sonorous tones in which you would hear a prizefighter introduced a boxing match. Drama. Relentless. Drama. I love this!

This is the fourth game of the championship series. The Eagles from Santiago have won two games. The Tigers have won one in a seven game series.

The series rotates back-and-forth between the cities of Santiago and Santo Domingo. It is hard to estimate how much alcohol will be consumed, how many yellow and blue flags and baseball caps and other paraphernalia will be sold, how many friendly conversations and arguments will take place, how many newspaper stories will be written, and how many hearts will be broken.

Fathers and mothers bring their kids. Games like this germinate bonding experiences that could last a lifetime.

 
The Eagles hold onto a lead for the first part of the game and to the delirium of their fans, the Tigers tie the game in the ninth-inning. Extra innings. Fans are at the edge of their seats with every pitch, every play, every out. I can practically hear their hearts beating. At the end of the 10th inning the Tigers break through and score the winning run

Bedlam in the stands. Players from the Tigers swarm onto the field, a conga line of victors.

We say goodbye to Frank and our fellow baseball fans and head for the car. The Dugout and First Base (of course), two open-air bars on opposite corners are rockin’ with fans who watched on TV. The scene feels more like New Year’s Eve.

To define this as a baseball game would do no justice to what we just experienced: a cultural event of seismic proportions. History, heritage and honor on a baseball diamond.

PS

Edwin Encanation, Bartolo Colon, Dellin Betances, Melky Cabrera, Yoenis Cespedes, Cleveland manager Terry Francona are former Santiago Eagles players. There are dozens more who play in the American and National Leagues.

The Quisqueya Stadium Juan Marichal was re-named in 2014 after the Dominican pitcher, one of the first Dominican players to play in the big leagues in the US and the first elected to the Hall of Fame in 1983.

Oh, also cheerleaders who vault onto the field between innings. And karaoke at the seventh inning when a fan is invited to take the mic and, to the delight of thousands, belt out a popular song. I had to see this to believe it.

Photos and videos by Paul A.Tamburello,Jr.

 

The Dominican Republic: La Playita de Las Galeras

June 16, 2018

 text to follow...

 

The Dominican Republic: La Samaná, Off The Tourist Trail

La Samaná Peninsula, Dominican Republic
June 15-17, 2018

La Samaná is not on the A list of tourist wish lists.

The first location sun-starved tourists think about when considering the Dominican Republic is Punta Cana.

Most tourists gobble up the features of Punta Cana and it’s hard to argue with that. It’s easily accessible from Santo Domingo, has all-inclusive resorts, scores of hotels, 20 miles of white sand beaches, and the allure of the azure ocean at the eastern tip of the island. Tourist agencies tout Punta Cana vigorously as a world-class attraction. Many fly directly to Punta Cana, never see anything else of the island.

The Dominican Republic is the most popular tourist destination in the Caribbean region, and ranks 6th overall in the Americas. Tourism, through hotels, taxi services, gift shops, independent vendors, employs well over 100,000 people, more than a tenth of the country's population. When tourists leave the Punta Cana region, tanned and relaxed, they depart feeling that they’ve had a Dominican experience. Not quite.

Then there’s the under the radar La Samaná province and the little towns and beaches hidden away there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaná_(town)
http://www.godominicanrepublic.com/samana/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaná_Province

The province, the only peninsula on the Dominican Republic, juts out like a geologic afterthought from the northeastern shore of the island, Samaná Bay on its south coast, the Atlantic on its north coast. It’s a three-hour haul to its main city, Santa Barbara de Samaná, from Santo Domingo, 207 km drive on a recently improved well paved highway. Once you arrive, choices abound from active exploring to laid back touring. It has been called "a paradise of the Dominican Republic", justified even if the source is a tour agency. The scale of tourist development in Santa Barbara de Samaná, Las Galeras, and Las Terrenas is puny compared to the Punta Cana area. For now.

The trek gives you a geography lesson in the topical variety of the island - pastures, palm tree plantations, coconut forests, rice fields, sugar cane fields, a stubby mountain range formed from volcanic activity eons ago, intractable uneven landscape dominated by rocky outcroppings and a handful of blink and you missed them small towns. The steep terrain in the Sierra de Samaná is high enough to have its own micro-climate. It’s not unusual to enter in sunlight, drive through a thunderstorm in the highest elevation of 1000 feet, and return down to planet sunlight several miles later.

The capital city of Santa Barbara de Samaná is smoothed out around the edges, doesn’t have much local flavor but its bay, the second largest in the DR, is reputed to be one of its most beautiful (I have no idea how anyone can rate dozens of beaches on the DR without exhausting scores of synonyms for ‘beautiful’).

For eco-tourists, it’s a point of departure for a daily boat trip to Los Haitises National Park, a spectacular and limited access landscape of geology, flora, and fauna.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Haitises_National_Park

Santa Barbara de Samaná comes to life once a year. From January to March, the waters off the small city are on the migration route of humpback whales. Thousands of tourists take boat rides to witness the whales during mating and calving season. Most whale watchers return home without exploring the coastline that leads east along the coast to the north shore of the peninsula. Too bad for them because that’s where the island culture takes a bow. Considering its beach assets and unassuming rural beauty, it’s the most unspoiled area in the Dominican Republic.

The lay of the land:

http://ontheworldmap.com/dominican-republic/large-detailed-tourist-map-of-dominican-republic.jpg
https://www.google.com/maps/@19.2069664,-70.5750546,346134m/data=!3m1!1e3
http://samanacollege.org/samanaimages/samanapdf/lgsamanastar.pdf

I would never have known about or seen any of this fabulous peninsula without connections my travel companion has in the Dominican Republic. Her Dominican friends seem to know every inch of the island they love and are proud to share it. Oh boy, El Cabito, La Palapa, Playita des Las Galeras, Playa de Rincón, Caño Frio River, D’Víejá Pan, here we come.

To be continued….photos in a day or so!

Museo Fernando Peña deFilló: Tradition Meets Contemporary

Museo Fernando Peña deFilló
Calle Padre Billini, corner Calle José Reyes
Colonial Zone (Cuidad Colonial)
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
January 25, 2018

How’s this for pedigree? Santo Domingo is the oldest city in the New World, the capital of the Dominican Republic and its largest city. Its Zona Colonial, the Colonial Zone, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site with Spanish colonial palaces,churches and residences dating back to the 16th century. Tourists with maps in hand and residents shopping or sitting in cafes wind their ways through wide pedestrian walkways, sun bleached narrow side streets, broad plazas and commercial businesses.

Smack in the middle of this, the Museo Fernando Peña deFilló is across the street from the Regina Angelorum Church, a must-see destination in the city.

In a city bursting with art and culture, this little museum is unique: a creative combination of traditional and contemporary art.

You’d never guess it but the museum underwent a major transformation when the foundation overseeing it purchased the 17th century building next door to relocate the permanent collection of its namesake, the work of Fernando Peña deFilló into the newly purchased building.  The renovation was seamless. The entryway to join the two buildings looks like that’s the way it’s always been.

The new space is saturated with light and has an easy glide path for visitors to navigate through it. The de Filló space opens up to a gorgeous atrium with greenery at the perimeter, a view of Spanish style wrought iron balconies on the second level and the natural beauty of the Dominican Republic blue sky over head. A small library with reference books and photos of the artist that track his career and social friendships give a personal context to deFilló.

The size and proportions of the museum make it a delight to visit. You don’t need to pack a lunch to take in its contents. Having these two sections of a museum, one contemporary with emerging artists and another displaying and honoring the work of an established Dominican artist could be a case study in adaptation and re-purposing.

The most refreshing idea is what’s happening in the rooms in which deFilló’s work formerly resided…the work of leading edge emerging artists like Natalia Ortega Gámez.  Her show, “Soon I Will Be Done,” takes an eons-old tradition, making vessels from mud, the skin of the earth, and gives it a 21st century treatment.

Pottery can span the bridge from practical to aesthetically pleasing, sometimes in the same vessel. The rich soft terracotta color invites you to run your fingers along the smooth contours. “Pick me up and use me,” it whispers.

That’s precisely what happens.

The second room of her work is a revelation. Smart Pottery!

At first glance, the vessels placed on a low platform around the room appear unexceptional. After a moment I am surprised by low, haunting, dreamy sounds floating through the room that remind me of the under sea songs of whales. And soft percussive sounds that remind me of wind chimes. Finally, I spot a small white speaker unobtrusively set high in the corner of the room.

Ortega has built airways through many of the vessels. Her musician boyfriend created a resonant soundscape by blowing gently through them or tapping on them. In effect, the mud of the earth is singing to us! This is precisely the kind of imaginative fusion that emerging artists strive to create. It’s surprising, outside the box thinking and invites viewers to interact with it.

The artist takes one our iPhones and slides it into a slot in one of the vessels. The sound is amplified through the phone! (I have no idea how this works). Way cool.

Alex Martinez, the architect who transformed and renovated the two buildings, has his fingers on the pulse of the vibrant art scene in Santo Domingo.

“Everybody knows everybody else,” he says, “the art scene on the island is very small.”

He intends to invite emerging artists to show their work. Natalia is a member of a group called the “Sindicato”  www.instagram.com/sindicato.do

The curator of the show and one of the leaders of the Sindicato is Quisqueya Henriquez.
“There is no way to call an artist a contemporary artist if you don’t work from ideas that you translate to objects of some kind, so it’s all conceptual-based,” she says.

“We are an island. We want to internationalize the work we produce and show our work in Latin America and abroad. One or two of Natalia’s pieces of work will have its next stop in Madrid.”

The economics of working as an artist can be harsh. Why pursue it? Most enter the field because they have a passion to create and will endure whatever sacrifices are necessary. Being a member of a collaborative isn’t so much a safety net as it is a laboratory filled with the ideas and passions of like-minded and driven comrades that feed on the bubbling vat of wild ideas that percolate inside it.

When commercial galleries present the work of an emerging artist they take 50% of the profits. Artists can put up with that. They reinvest their profits into the collaborative to fund the artists in it. According to Henriquez, what they don’t like is that the galleries don’t do much give he artist a splash through social media and marketing.

The Museo deFilló is a dream come true for an emerging artist. No charge for exhibiting here and solid promotion of the exhibit. If the emerging artist sells work, 60% of the sale goes to the artist and 40% of the sale goes to the collaborative/syndicate in which they work.

The contemporary work draws traffic and a younger audience to the Museo Fernando Peña deFilló. Brilliant. Everybody wins.

Curator Quisqueya Henriquez documents the exhibit.

Photos of the  upper edges of the still wet mud collapsing against each other are printed on silk. Gentle breezes make the material slowly undulate, a Textile Tango.

Alex Martinez, Natalia Ortega, Quisqueya Henriques

Shapes and sizes, practical and fanciful.

Second room: an orchestral presentation of Natalia Ortega's work. The soundscape created by using the vessels is otherworldly.

Fernando Peña deFilló had a wide range of palette and subject.

ranging series of nudes and abstact work

 his work spills over into a small library

with photographs documenting his personal and professional career, including his friendship with fellow creator Oscar de la Renta.

Panorama highlights play of light over luminous polished ceramic tiles, replicas of tiles used in the 17th century building in which is is located

Architect Alex Martinez spent considerable time finding designs appropriate to the original buliding's  tiles, had them reproduced. He actively supervised the renovation of the 17th century building that now houses the de Filló works to respectfully retain the original floor plan of the building.

Elegant gateway leading to an open air atrium lush with foliage

Panorama, distorted, street scene. The buildings are painted different colors to differentiate then. Signage identifies them as well.

VIDEO TOUR https://www.youtube.com/edit?video_referrer=watch&video_id=OQVMRN6Dlzk

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

 

Museo Fernando Peña de Filló: Tradition Meets Contemporary

Museo Fernando Peña deFilló
Calle Padre Billini, corner Calle José Reyes
Colonial Zone (Cuidad Colonial)
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
January 25, 2018

How’s this for pedigree? Santo Domingo is the oldest city in the New World, the capital of the Dominican Republic and its largest city. Its Zona Colonial, the Colonial Zone, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site with Spanish colonial palaces,churches and residences dating back to the 16th century. Tourists with maps in hand and residents shopping or sitting in cafes wind their ways through wide pedestrian walkways, sun bleached narrow side streets, broad plazas and commercial businesses.

Smack in the middle of this, the Museo Fernando Peña deFilló is across the street from the Regina Angelorum Church, a must-see destination in the city.

In a city bursting with art and culture, this little museum is unique: a creative combination of traditional and contemporary art.

You’d never guess it but the museum underwent a major transformation when the foundation overseeing it purchased the 17th century building next door to relocate the permanent collection of its namesake, the work of Fernando Peña deFilló into the newly purchased building.  The renovation was seamless. The entryway to join the two buildings looks like that’s the way it’s always been.

The new space is saturated with light and has an easy glide path for visitors to navigate through it. The de Filló space opens up to a gorgeous atrium with greenery at the perimeter, a view of Spanish style wrought iron balconies on the second level and the natural beauty of the Dominican Republic blue sky over head. A small library with reference books and photos of the artist that track his career and social friendships give a personal context to deFilló.

The size and proportions of the museum make it a delight to visit. You don’t need to pack a lunch to take in its contents. Having these two sections of a museum, one contemporary with emerging artists and another displaying and honoring the work of an established Dominican artist could be a case study in adaptation and re-purposing.

The most refreshing idea is what’s happening in the rooms in which deFilló’s work formerly resided…the work of leading edge emerging artists like Natalia Ortega Gámez.  Her show, “Soon I Will Be Done,” takes an eons-old tradition, making vessels from mud, the skin of the earth, and gives it a 21st century treatment.

Pottery can span the bridge from practical to aesthetically pleasing, sometimes in the same vessel. The rich soft terracotta color invites you to run your fingers along the smooth contours. “Pick me up and use me,” it whispers.

That’s precisely what happens.

The second room of her work is a revelation. Smart Pottery!

At first glance, the vessels placed on a low platform around the room appear unexceptional. After a moment I am surprised by low, haunting, dreamy sounds floating through the room that remind me of the under sea songs of whales. And soft percussive sounds that remind me of wind chimes. Finally, I spot a small white speaker unobtrusively set high in the corner of the room.

Ortega has built airways through many of the vessels. Her musician boyfriend created a resonant soundscape by blowing gently through them or tapping on them. In effect, the mud of the earth is singing to us! This is precisely the kind of imaginative fusion that emerging artists strive to create. It’s surprising, outside the box thinking and invites viewers to interact with it.

The artist takes one our iPhones and slides it into a slot in one of the vessels. The sound is amplified through the phone! (I have no idea how this works). Way cool.

Alex Martinez, the architect who transformed and renovated the two buildings, has his fingers on the pulse of the vibrant art scene in Santo Domingo.

“Everybody knows everybody else,” he says, “the art scene on the island is very small.”

He intends to invite emerging artists to show their work. Natalia is a member of a group called the “Sindicato”  www.instagram.com/sindicato.do

The curator of the show and one of the leaders of the Sindicato is Quisqueya Henriquez.
“There is no way to call an artist a contemporary artist if you don’t work from ideas that you translate to objects of some kind, so it’s all conceptual-based,” she says.

“We are an island. We want to internationalize the work we produce and show our work in Latin America and abroad. One or two of Natalia’s pieces work will have its next stop in Madrid.”

The economics of working as an artist can be harsh. Why pursue it? Most enter the field because they have a passion to create and will endure whatever sacrifices are necessary. Being a member of a collaborative isn’t so much a safety net as it is a laboratory filled with the ideas and passions of like-minded and driven comrades that feed on the bubbling vat of wild ideas that percolate inside it.

When commercial galleries present the work of an emerging artist they take 50% of the profits. Artists can put up with that. They reinvest their profits into the collaborative to fund the artists in it. According to Henriquez, what they don’t like is that the galleries don’t do much give he artist a splash through social media and marketing.

The Museo deFilló is a dream come true for an emerging artist. No charge for exhibiting here and solid promotion of the exhibit. If the emerging artist sells work, 60% of the sale goes to the artist and 40% of the sale goes to the collaborative/syndicate in which they work.

The contemporary work draws traffic and a younger audience to the Museo Fernando Peña deFillo. Brilliant. Everybody wins.

Curator Quisqueya Henriquez documents the exhibit.

Photos of the  upper edges of the still wet mud collapsing against each other are printed on silk. Gentle breezes make the material slowly undulate, a Textile Tango.

Shapes and sizes, practical and fanciful.

Second room: an orchestral presentation of Natalia Ortega's work. The soundscape created by using the vessels is otherworldly.

Fernando Peña de Filló had a wide range of palette and subject.

ranging series of nudes and abstact work

 his work spills over into a small library

with photographs documenting his personal and professional career, including his friendship with fellow creator Oscar de la Renta.

Panorama highlights play of light over luminous polished ceramic tiles, replicas of tiles used in the 17th century building in which is is located

Architect Alex Martinez spent considerable time finding designs appropriate to the original buliding's  tiles, had them reproduced. He actively supervised the renovation of the 17th century building that now houses the de Filló works to respectfully retain the original floor plan of the building.

Elegant gateway leading to an open air atrium lush with foliage

Panorama, distorted, street scene. The buildings are painted different colors to differentiate then. Signage identifies them as well.

VIDEO TOUR https://www.youtube.com/edit?video_referrer=watch&video_id=OQVMRN6Dlzk

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

 

Fantasy Fest 2017: The Masquerade March

 Fantasy Fest 2017: The Masquerade March

In my book, the annual Masquerade March is one of the ‘do not miss’ events of the whole festival. 

Parade streets are closed to vehicles. At 5 PM, hundreds of marchers in the wackiest, imaginative, often flesh-baring costumes walk through usually staid neighborhoods from the Key West Cemetery to Duval Street. MAP

The route is lined with locals lounging on lawn chairs, hanging out on porches of single-family homes and grand three deckers, some of which double as guest houses. 

Residents applaud, snap photos, and shout out to costumed people they know. After what they’ve been through, they really needed to dive into the quirky culture that drew them to Key West in the first place. 

Who’s having more fun, the marchers or the spectators?

I step out of the march to take a photo of a group of spectators clearly enjoying the merry spectacle. By now, nothing should surprise me, but what happens next certainly does, a ten-minute history lesson. 

It gets complicated, is subject to my memory but fun to recall. Once I disclose that I’m from Boston, a woman who lives a few feet from where the gang is sitting at 526 Simonton Street decides to let me know that Key West has a pride in history not unlike Bostonians. 

History footnote: In 1521, Ponce de Leon was the first European to set foot on the island where he encountered the Calusa people already there. In 1822, a US Navy schooner planted the US flag in the sands of Key West, claiming the Keys as United States property. Not a peep from Spain, the Florida Keys became property of United States of America.

 For the next ten minutes, I'm told that a man named Robert Watson settled in Key West in 1847, fought in the Civil War and returned to Key West in 1865 and built the house next door.

A three-decker across the street at 525 Simonton Street opened a VRBO named The Grande Dame Key West – (The Watson House). The use of Watson’s name, ”usurped,” I believe was her word, was a rather tacky thing to do to promote the rental property, but locals knows better.

As I write this, I see that home listed by a local real estate agency lists 522 Simonton Street as “… one of the most historic and iconic homes in Key West. Built in the 1860’s and the Key West home of Robert Watson, officer in the Confederate Army and later Confederate Navy, and his family. Watson later served briefly as mayor of Key West. There have only been two families to reside here since the home was built.”

Hmmmmm, the Watson saga. Here’s the point of the story.  “Knock at my door next time you visit Key West. I’ll supply the wine and tell you more stories about the Watsons.” 

Key West warmth? You bet. 

A few houses away, as dusk set in, I walk by a woman on the sidewalk drinking a beer and overhear her say this was one of the best parades she has ever seen. 

“The annual Masquerade March is really a march for the locals,” she says. “Everybody went all out to create costumes and let loose because of the ravages of the storm,” she said. 

That registered. 

An hour before, I stepped out if the march to chat with a middle aged fellow and his wife standing next to a golf cart full of children. 

“I live up-island in Big Pine Key. My roof is still covered with a blue tarp while I work on fixing it up,” he says. “All I needed today was a cold beer and my family and I’m good to go.“

Over the next two days, I learned some of the darker effects Irma will have on the Florida Keys. Stay tuned... but for today...

The Conch Republic, bloody but unbowed, the tribe is still intact.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Fantasy Fest 2017: Togas, Tutus and Thingamabobs

Fantasy Fest 2017
Thursday October 26, 2017

Key West, FL

• ROCK AND ROLL REVITALIZING 1960’S POOL PARTY
• PET MASQUERADE
• CHERAOKE (Yes, that Cher)
• REDNECK PARTY
• SMOKIN TUNA HOMEMADE BIKINI CONTEST PRESENTED BY FREE LIBATIONS

•LUCY'S BLUE PARTY PRESENTED BY BLUE CHAIR BAY RUM
• 6th ANNUAL LUV2GLOW PARTY AT MARY ELLEN'S BAR
• FOGARTY'S RED PARTY
• SEXY BULL RIDING CONTEST
• DUNGEON of DARK SECRETS
• SWING N' FREAK FEST

Choices, Choices, Choices

Pack it up...ready for action

Pink and black; spectators and partiers

Costumes, simple and elaborate

Hail Caesar...party on

 

Happy Hour on Duval Street

Caged and untamed

Raunchy and classy
 
A moment of spontaneity, the spirits moves her

At the World's Smallest Bar; at a great take out shack on Duval Street

Vampirettes, Indian Chiefs, Blonde partier with bright smile, wonder where she's going?

Smiles by the mile, not to mention ta tas;  Duval Street is packed, lively would be operative word

Point camera, partiers smile...always; couple enjoys the view

   

A tall order draws lots of attention

 
It's not necessary to show flesh to be spectacularly attired; Harley's draped with skeletons, pt needs a photo of that!

 

Black,white and reversible~

I've said that before, too; a float cruises down Duval Street

Every bar and restaurant is jammed; photos by the thousands

Tiny bar behind Sloppy Joe's; porch scenes outside tiny bar behind Sloppy Joe's dance floor

 
When the spirit moves you, remove your top

 
Love this... ham & eggs!; and paint up and down


Group of partiers on the move, can you tell they're having fun?

pt joins the fun; matching boxers

 
Street festively lit; ballerinas tu tus and pt

There goes the flight crew; pink power!

   

Entering Fat Tuesday; switheroo ta tas; cycles and partiers

Time to head back to the hotel, tomorrow's gonna be a busy day, Masquerade March

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fantasy Fest 2017: Halloween For The Big Kids Warms Up

Fantasy Fest 2017
Key West, FL
Wednesday, October 25, 2017

2017 Fantasy Fest Theme - October 20-October 29, 2017

 

 Propeller plane from Tampa to Key West...maybe time is traveling backwards!

Santa  arrives from the North Pole...skip the cookies and milk, how about baring your ornaments?

Smallest bar, big time margaritas

Ringside seat at The Grand Restaurant on Duval Street prime real estate to watch celebrants promenade

 
I nearly dropped my margarita when this face popped up from the greenery

 
posing for the cameras and cell phones, sort of like the Red Carpet at the Oscars

 

skip the Oscar de La Renta flowing gowns, a few strategically placed greens or some whites for Toga Night tomorrow at Sloppy Joe's will do just fine.

dining or promenading

 

in all sorts of body paint and costumes

The sidewalk restaurants are viewing stands and everyone walking by knows the cameras will be chirping, heck, if no one laughs or takes your photo, you are probably disappointed!

 

Red Night at Fogarty's is coming up later tonight...Kris Kringles and Dingles.

so get ready...there goes Wonder Woman and Superman sans culottes

Master body painter Avi Ram and his equally adept cohort. Having the blues takes on an entirely different meaning here

 
Hey, I think I know where she got that lovely outfit!

My suitcase didn't arrive till Thursday afternoon so I chatted up  a couple recently painted up.  The body paint is waterproof, will last a couple of days. Heading for the Red Party...

The Red Party tonight... also Toga Night and a dozen other themed events going on. Pick your colors or pack for every theme.

 

Did I say there was a Red Party?

Fore and aft

No costume? Who cares. Sit down, have a beer and watch the action. I skipped a chance to pet a boa constrictor.

"How bout a photo of you two and my wife?" the man says. Everyone obliges. A Time Travels theme at Irish Kevin's

Enterprising bunnies...take a photo, put some folding money in their cleverly concealed tip wallet.

What's the plan?

Enough said...

The night would not be complete without at least one Elvis sighting. It would have been more fun if my suitcase didn't arrive until the next afternoon!

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.
 

Fantasy Fest 2017: Halloween For The Big Kids

Photos and more stories to follow~

Fantasy Fest
Key West, FL
October 29, 2017

Describing the annual Fantasy Fest in Key West is like trying to explain an out of body experience or a temporary alternate universe. Every idea of what you expect to see in public, fuhhgetabodit.

One part Nudity and two parts levity become the hydrogen and oxygen that waters this southern most outpost of the continental U S of A for ten days preceding every Halloween since 1979.

Duval Street is transformed into a clothing optional playground. Almost like a trip to the zoo where visitors take photos of the wildlife, except the exotic animals don’t usually strike a pose to best reveal their plumage, or, as is often the case during Fantasy Fest, their lack of plumage.

At first, I feel embarrassed to stop and take a long gander at a man, woman, couple or group of nearly naked people. It doesn’t take long to learn that everyone on the street WANTS to be seen in his or her finery, whatever that is.

They see me with a camera in hand, stop, flash a brilliant smile, and pose as if I’m paparazzi from People Magazine. I know how they feel. In the past three days, I’ve donned my Chippendale costume for the Masquerade March or my whites for Toga Night, or a tie, hat and speedo shorts for a daytime saunter down Duval Street.

You would think that this much display of flesh might lead to rampant pagan carnality. Au contraire. Remember how much fun you used to have in a sandbox or playing dress up when you were a kid? This is the adult version.

Every year since its outset 23 years ago Fantasy Fest announces a theme, this year’s is Time Travel Unravels.

For some, pasties, speedos and a splash of body paint does the trick. Others spend months dreaming up elaborate, kooky, creative costumes to match the theme. Some are ordered online and might cost a bundle but many are stunningly creative homemade affairs that make me laugh out loud. Exposing flesh is not required. As long as you’re having fun, you dress however you damn please.

Laughter is the Lingua Franca of the festival, levity is thick in the air. Fantasy Fest gives people permission to parade around in attire perfect for a beach on the French Riviera or dress up like King Tut, Cleopatra, Captain Morgan, Cher…they don't call it the "premier masking and costuming extravaganza" for nothing..the list goes on.

Body shaming? No way!

Fantasy Fest is a celebration of the human body in all its shapes and forms. In a world so obsessed with toned bodies this might be the most appealing vibe of the festival. A perfect example of the spirit of The Conch Republic.

Fantasy Fest 2017: A Key West State of Mind

Fantasy Fest 2017:
A Key West State of Mind

On October 23, Key West stuck its middle finger up to Mother Nature and staged its 23rd Annual Fantasy Fest http://www.fantasyfest.com. Six weeks before, it had battened down the hatches as Hurricane Irma tore through town. The need to reopen for tourism was the prod. So was the need to show the world people in the Florida Keys can take a punch.

To say that no festival in the world remotely resembles this is a monumental understatement. Fun like this doesn’t happen in a vacuum.  

On April 23, 1982, Key West declared itself “The Conch Republic” and made a picaresque attempt to secede from the United States of America. In 1994, a loyalist composed The National Anthem of the Conch Republic. It was recorded by the Key Lime Pie Band (yes) and accepted by the City of Key West Commissioners. I’m not making this stuff up.

The islanders celebrate April 23rd annually with a week of eccentric festivities, aptly named “A Sovereign State of Mind” with a mission is to bring more “Humor, Warmth and Respect” to the world. I’d probably walk to Key West from Boston for a slice of Key Lime Pie topped with those three toppings right now. I’ve always felt that vibe. In the next three days, I met islanders who personified it.
LINK https://www.keywestvacation.com/learn-about-the-conch-republic/

Given the declaration of the Conch Republic, Fantasy Fest was probably inevitable. The Masquerade March on October 27 is the festapalooza event of the ten-day Fantasy Fest. With this year’s theme of ‘Time Travel Unravels,” it was a way reassert the Conch Republic way of life. They needed the jolt from their famously politically incorrect parade as much as every hotel, gift shop, bar, restaurant, and art gallery in town needed the business it generates.

Some of the locals I talked to didn’t have a roof over their heads. But, miss a Fantasy Fest Parade? Are you kidding?  During the Masquerade March on October 27, I met a guy who was living proof.

When I arrived on October 25, its wounds were largely invisible in the Duval Street area, the hub of the tourist industry. But in neighborhoods blocks from Mallory Square there were signs of wreckage not witnessed by tourists. Key West took it on the chin – but Conchs roll with the punches.

 The Florida Keys are not your average bunch of islands strung like a strand of pearls.  This particular chain is known for having its own quirky tropical culture and going its own way. Being the southernmost territory in the continental USA, it’s adopted a tropical culture as Caribbean as American. And they’re not shy about telling you about it. 

Without exception, the themes that ran through every conversation I had during my 72-hour stay were Family and Tolerance, not a far cry from Humor, Warmth and Respect.

The revelations began Wednesday night a few hours after I landed and kept right on going until the hour I left. After a while, I wondered whether the Chamber of Commerce handed every resident a “What to tell tourists about Key West” pamphlet.

There was Dan, middle-aged, trim build, two day growth of beard with tinge of grey, managing the Mattheesen’s ice cream shop on 106 Duval Street just above Mallory Square.

“I came down to Key West from Chicago in October 1993 for an 8 day honeymoon and never left.”  This is not an uncommon story. Dan works here as his second job. Also not an uncommon story.

While spooning up some of the creamiest, tastiest Ice cream I’ve ever tasted, Dan says. “When my father visited many years ago, I said something derogatory about gay bars.”

“My father said, ‘Son, listen to me. Everyone needs someone to love and it doesn’t make a difference what sex they are, what color they are, or what religion they are, they are being who they are. And it’s none of your damn business.’ My father was correct and that’s the spirit of Key West.”

There you have it. Key West in 41 words.

What does appear to be everyone’s business is to keep their tribe intact. Recovering from Hurricane Irma is Exhibit A.

“How did you fare with Irma?” says I.

“People help one another out during times like this, it’s a cohesive community, nearly tribal, it takes care of its own.”

“I have a generator to keep all the electronics going. It’s not unusual for Duval Street to flood a few inches during heavy rains but it’s been happening more often. I saw people paddling down Duval Street in kayaks and one guy on a jet ski during the storm. FEMA came down and dispensed truckloads of water since our drinking water became contaminated.” 

Key West is 18 feet above sea level. Not good.

The Uber driver from the airport says that Key West had flooding but most of the damage came from hundreds of trees uprooted, squashing cars, clogging the streets and damaging homes. “ About 100 trucks with 500 men from power companies from Wisconsin worked nonstop to repair the electrical system,” he said, “that was a reason the city could re-open ahead of schedule.”  

There was a sense of urgency not only to restore essential services to residents but also to open Key West for the tourism industry, the backbone of its economy. And Fantasy Fest was just weeks away.

Eating ice cream at Matheesen’s is habit forming. Jack, at the Matheesen’s across the street from La Concha Hotel, came south from Atlanta during college days with a pal. “I met my wife here and have stayed here ever since.”  That was a few decades ago.

He’s as friendly and as genuine as they come with an easy smile, no pretense. Maybe the choice to embrace Key West is a self-selecting mechanism. If there are any Type A personalities here, they’re well disguised in an azure cloak of laid-back fabric. No matter how busy, the sales people and store owners never seem to be in too much of a hurry talk, especially about their bout with disaster.
. 
This is Jack’s part-time night gig. He also manages a T-shirt store a few blocks away. 
“There’s a sense of community here. Most of us who work here know each other.” 

Deborah, the night manager of La Concha Hotel on Duval Street adds to the recurring theme. “We took in several homeless people to sleep in the lobby during the storm and fed them and kept them out of danger. The hotel was full because locals who weren’t sure how their houses would fare took rooms here because it was safer.” 

Chrissie, the hotel administrator who took my initial reservation said the same thing about looking out for the homeless people on the island. “They don’t have to contend with frigid temperatures or desert temperatures. I’m not sure how many live here but they manage to survive.”

It’s not widely advertised but a few local restaurants give away unused food. One owner in a nearby restaurant called Cowboy Bill’s at 618 Duval Street has led the way toward this type of arrangement to feed the homeless. 

 “It’s a tight-knit community,” Deborah adds, “we look after one another and live and let live.”  

Maybe the sea that surrounds islands acts as a wrap around moat and gives them a sense of identity we just don’t feel on the mainland. It’s not enough to say that the Keys are in the T-shirts and flip flops tropics.

A disaster like Hurricane Irma was not going to erode the “Sovereign State of Mind” that binds the people of Key West together. 

 

 

Fantasy Fest 2017: Irma Takes A Swipe at the Florida Keys

Fantasy Fest 2017: Irma Takes A Swipe at the Florida Keys

Residents of the Florida Keys are a special, some would say peculiar, breed of people. 

They live on a chain of islands hanging on by a geological thread from the mainland. One road, US Route 1, is the only overland way to get from the tip of Florida through the “keys” to Key West. On a narrow two-lane highway. With 42 bridges. A traveler’s introduction to the Florida Keys begins right there. Have patience or turn around and head for Miami. 

If the traveler makes it to the 442 span of the 7-mile bridge in Marathon, there’s a decent chance the tropical climate has eased the frustration of driving behind turtle-paced trucks for mile after mile. Tropical is the operative word. Nothing in the Keys is going to happen at warp speed. And no one’s going to order the islanders to hurry it up. 

Hurricane Irma changed that.

By September 9, Governor Rick Scott had already ordered 5 million Floridians to evacuate and head north. Hurricane Irma bore down. Many packed up, some long time residents evacuating for the first time. Route 1 North from Key West up to the Florida peninsula was jammed with traffic. Images of Hurricane Harvey walloping Houston gave even the hardiest residents second thoughts about hunkering down. For the first time in a generation or two, Florida Keys residents felt fear.

On September 10, 2017 an uninvited guest tore through Key West and the Florida keys. 

The ones who stayed must have had second thoughts when winds exceeding 100 mph howled, turned lawn chairs, tree limbs and anything not chained down into dangerous projectiles.  

Shingles were torn off roofs one minute and the whole roof the next. Streets flooded. Windows were blown out, trees uprooted, boats flung ashore. US Route 1, the only road connecting the keys to the mainland was impassable, cluttered with cars, boats, sheds, and appliances. In a matter of hours, a tropical paradise became a disaster zone. 

Key West is used to raising hell but not having hell rained upon it.

A few facts:
• The vast majority of the Keys’ approximately 25,000 residents evacuated when ordered.
• Nearly 7,500 mobile homes parked on the island chain thrown about, flattened, ripped apart.
• 10,000 to 15,000 homes destroyed, thousands left homeless.
• Downed power lines, no running water and no cellphone service or electricity for a couple of weeks, a few days if you were lucky.
• Trees uprooted or tops snapped off, roads choked with sea grass, tree debris, overturned cars, boats driven ashore or sunk. Parts of U.S. Route 1 looked like a sand box.

Miraculously, most of the hotels on Key West escaped major damage. Many locals left their homes and rode out the storm substantially constructed concrete buildings like the La Concha Hotel on Duval Street. Much of the damage to Key West’s tourist infrastructure was repairable. Damage to homes in some neighborhoods up and down the Keys was substantial, in others minimal.

The $2.7 billion tourism industry in the Keys gives more than half the island chain’s workforce a paycheck. Key West’s most endearingly quirky “Fantasy Fest” is traditionally held in the last ten days of October. 

Thousands of men and women from all over the US have had their hotel rooms and airline reservations booked since a week after last year’s fun.

Cancel it? In Margaritaville? I don’t think so.

On October 2, 2017, Governor Rick Scott opened the Florida Keys again. Water and power had been restored from Key Largo through Marathon (which had been dinged up pretty badly) down to Stock Island and Key West. Internet service was shaky but islanders got to return home. For those who evacuated, not knowing the condition of their properties must have been nerve wracking. For some, arrival brought relief, for others, heartbreak.

Pride and commerce are precious commodities here. Islanders wanted to get back on their feet and tourism wouldn’t get up to speed until they cleaned up the mess Irma left behind. They did it weeks ahead of schedule.  What was never in doubt was that they would party on.

Jackson Square, Sunday August Bands Are The Choir

August 5, 2017

Audio, visual, and psychic senses are dialed up on Jackson Square on any given day, Sunday being especially high octane during tourist season.

 Brass bands, art vendors, tarot card readers, who will probably be relieved when the bands, who make a mighty and joyful racket, take a break and give them some peace and quiet to resume reading palms and minds. http://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2017/08/jackson-square-sunday-august-bands-are-the-choir-.html

 http://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2017/08/jackson-square-sunday-august-bands-are-the-choir-.html

Everyone has a hustle, figure that Jackson Square is as good a place as any to make a buck, tarot card readers, psychics, brass bands, painted pantomime artists, and now, tap dancers.

Photos and videos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Corner of Royal and St. Peter: The Sidewalk Swing Band Airs It Out

Corner of Royal and St. Peter: The Sidewalk Swing Band Airs It Out

Thursday afternoon August 3, Friday night August 4, 2017

 

Thursday afternoon August 3...a man of the street steps up to sing impromptu verses of "What A Wonderful World." He'd been clapping time as he listened to the music and sidled up in front of the band to sing the first choruses of the song. "I've been singing all my life,"  Rodney says when I chat with him afterward, "someday I'd love to sing with a group on the street."

It's a fair bet that he's never studied music but, like just about everyone in this city, feels entitled to express himself with a voice that makes up in conviction what it might lack in finesse. When you think about it, Louis Armstrong's own voice was honed in the streets, not the choir, and he made his gravelly voice one of the most distinctive in the world.

"Sing it, man!" says the trombone player as the fellow steps up to sing, and later, "Let's hear it for the man!" Only in New Orleans.

Friday night August 4, same corner, 9:30 PM. The last act at the Satchmo Summerfest at the old U.S. Mint concluded at 8:00 PM but music around here hardly ever takes a breath. Lo and behold, here's The Swing Band holding court in front of Rouse's Market again.

One by one, New Orleans' siren call drew members of this band into the streets of the French Quarter and Jackson Square last year. Kismet and a stew of years of the tradition of busking in the street collided by happenstance when they met and found a groove together.

"We met in New Orleans last year, played on the streets for about three months, then the trumpet, guitar, and drummer traveled the country in an RV busking tour around America. The band all met up again in February." So says Sarah Shaffer, wife of the trumpet player and artist of their lovely CD cover, as she chatted with me and kept an eye her three-year-old daughter.

All of them have moved to New Orleans, some share living quarters, and they're here to stay. Some of New Orleans' best known musicians got their start on the streets. It's hard to fathom this from afar. I would never have understood the power music has over this city had I not witnessed it myself.

Jim Shaffer, trumpet; Rob Montgomery, drums; Tyler Hotti, guitar; Vincent ?, trombone; name?, tuba player.

It may not be an easy life style but for young men and women like this, it's all about the music, and it's all that matters.

 "Louisiana Fairytale" composed by Haven Gillespie / J. Fred Coots / Mitchell Parish, 1936

 "Summertime," with an extended solo by the tuba player whose bass lines pace the song with deep, resonating, syncopated riffs.

"Bourbon Street Parade" written by Paul Barbarin

"Bourbon Street Parade," composed by Paul Barbarin, a staple of bands of every stripe in  New Orleans.

Friday night...

Photos  and videos by Paul A.Tamburello, Jr. and one photographer with a gift for photo bombing

Doreen Ketchens: Clarinet Royalty on Royal Street, New Orleans

Twenty four hours after Doreen Ketchens played, the streets of the French Quarter were flooded when 8-10 inches of rain fell in a three hour period. I was in the midst of it at Satchmo Summerfest, when the festival was canceled as torrential rain, thunder and lightning tore through New Orleans, the streets flooded, and the city’s pumping stations could not drain the water fast enough. Story to follow.

 

The remnants of Harvey are heading toward southwest Louisiana and New Orleans. Doreen’s version of “The Sun Gonna Shine On My Back Door Someday” (link below) may be a fateful and wishful foreshadowing for southwest Louisiana, and are certainly so for coastal Texas all the way inland to Houston, America’s fourth largest city and flood prone. Scary.

August 4, 2017
Corner of Royal and St. Peter Street
New Orleans, LA

You can hear some of the finest music in New Orleans right on the streets of the French Quarter. Free. Fabulous. Soulful. Traditional to Funky.

Once you’re under its spell, you’ll gladly reach into your pocket and drop some green into the tip bucket. You’ll be rewarded by a hearty ‘Thank you’ or a grateful nod as a musician is in the midst of singing or playing a tune that stopped you in your tracks. New Orleans has a music heritage as rich as any cream sauce you’ll get at the dozens of restaurants that serve to die for food every day.

In a city with scores of bars and clubs devoted to music, this is not heresy, it’s a fact.

Exhibit A:
Doreen Ketchens, whose spot on the corner of Royal and St. Peter Street is her permanent bandstand. Doreen’s Jazz New Orleans Band has played there so long and so successfully that it’s inviolable territory to any other act if she’s there.

Like many other New Orleans bands, Doreen’s band is made up of family. Husband Lawrence plays sousaphone and trombone and of late, teenage daughter Dorian Ketchens-Dixon sits in on drums.

Try to square this up, Since 1987, this stout woman rocking out in her camp chair in the street (literally) has played for four presidents, in every continent except Australia, and in concerts sponsored by the Jazz At The Lincoln Center and the U.S. Department of State.

She’s played before audiences of thousands. I’ve watched her play to a street audience of a dozen and I’m telling you, she still brings it with the pride, force, and heritage into which she was born in the Tremé neighborhood a few blocks away. Her energy is palpable. The size of the audience makes no difference to the volume of her voice and clarinet and her commitment to serenade the street with the vibrant music of her heritage.

It’s surreal. Cars roll past her band on Royal and St. Peter Streets, customers enter and exit Rouse’s Market ten feet behind her, destination-oriented tourists walk past and I feel like I’ve got a better seat than I’d have if I were watching her in Economy Hall at Jazz Fest.

Doreen’s made over two dozen CDs. Doreen’s Jazz Volume XX gives you an idea of her range, traditional jazz, Dixieland, gospel, popular, a good helping of Louis Armstrong covers, all of it stamped with her vocal styling that set her apart from other vocalists in New Orleans (and that’s saying something). She’s developed a touch of Armstrong gravel with a unique pitch that you can hear a block away. The signature sustained high notes she pipes from her clarinet make me hold my breath.

“Doreen's Jazz XX Triple Threat Series Part III 
Who Dat Playin On The Streets?”

1.  A Kiss To Build A Dream On

2.  Stand By Me

3.  Sir Duke

4.  I Can't Give You Anything But Love

5.  What A Little Moonlight Can Do

6.  My Girl

7.  Puttin' On The Ritz

8.  Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans

9.  Over The Waves

10. What A Friend We Have In Jesus

If you can’t make your way down to Royal Street, this gives you a good idea of what you’re missing.

Admirers chat after songs, many pose for photos and, more importantly, drop folding money in the tip jar - notice the three different labels on the jars! As culturally entertaining as the scene is, it's a main source of income for Doreen and other musicians who busk in the streets here and on Frenchmen Street, a fifteen minute walk away.

Sales are usually brisk here. CD sales are musician's bread and butter; Husband Lawrence Ketchens on tuba and daughter Dorian Ketchens-Dixon on drums. Doreen and Lawrence bring the culture and music of New Orleans to classrooms across America and the world as they travel.

"Saint James Infirmary" Listen to the clarinet at the 2:30 mark.

As sweet and gracefully swinging version of "The Sun Gonna Shine On My Back Door Someday" that you're gonna hear.

The corner of Royal and St. Peter Streets - note that one lane of the street is marked off for musicians to set up and play...ever see that anywhere else? Several bands play in that space, Doreen's Jazz New Orleans, one of its most widely known acts, has a lock on that space any time they want it.

And when rain threatens, Doreen's band, Doreen's Jazz New Orleans, moves under the porch across the street, in an intense version of "Home of the Rising Sun," complete with her signature solos.

Hours later, a flash flood would cancel Satchmo Summerfest and flood the streets.

Photos and Videos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

"The Sidewalk Swing Band" on Royal Street: A Satchmo Warmup

"The Sidewalk Swing Band" on Royal Street: A Satchmo Warmup

Thursday afternoon, August 3, 2017, French Quarter, New Orleans

One of the most popular corner for street buskers to play, corner of Royal and St Peter. It's the permanent spot for the iconic Doreen Ketchens, whose camp chairs are stacked on the side of Rouse's Market. "Little Miss Liza" is a staple of swing and brass bands all over town. My singing on the video will not get me invited to sing along with the band anytime soon. The enthusiastic fellow in the black cap and New Orleans T shirt (clapping along at around the 4:45 mark and throughout) will become a self-appointed vocalist for the next song. Things like this happen in New Orleans, where from time to time it seems like music is the glue that holds the city together.

A man from the streets named Rodney, who's been dancing along with the music, steps up to render his impromptu version of "What A Wonderful World," at the 1:28 mark a band member shouts out, "Sing it..." in acknowledgment. The spirit of Louis Armstrong still casts an upbeat life enriching shadow over many parts of this city, especially the French Quarter.

Video by Paul A.Tamburello, Jr.

Satchmo Summerfest: Sunday, August 7, 2016, PT volunteers

South entrance to Jackson Square Park

Saturday afternoon, August 6, 2016

"Would you take a minute to take a survey with me?" asks a smiling fellow as I sit on a bench in the shade of the trees in Jackson Square Park. Clipboard in hand, Richard Eglé from Lafayette now lives in New Orleans, is associated with the French Quarter Festival Board of Directors, and makes it easy

"Why don't you volunteer tomorrow, we can always use the help," he says after we compare notes about the lively music scene in Lafayette. He is so good at it that I want to take him up on the offer. Besides, I loved the fabulous blue volunteer T shirt he wore and figured this was a good a way to snag one (an admittedly lame reason for volunteering).

1 PM Sunday, August 7, 2016

I arrive at the volunteer tent, offer to take surveys and am greeted with a cheer from the women at the desk.  A fellow named Tucker Mendoza hands me a clipboard, explains the survey sheet, and dispatches me into the park. But not before handing me a bright blue "Volunteer" T shirt, identifying me as a bona fide volunteer.

In the outside world, approaching a perfect stranger and asking for their time to do a survey, or actually anything, has a high rate of refusal (trust me, I've refused to talk to strangers who ask me to do this kind of stuff myself).

But here, in the confines of this lovely park with fabulous music and singing echoing in the background and the gregarious spirit of Louis Armstrong as strong as the sunshine overhead, people are much more receptive.

After a few tries, I develop my own introductory patter. “Good Afternoon. I wonder if you'd mind taking three or four minutes to take a survey that will help the organizers of this event make it even better next year and convince the people who are sponsors that it will be worth their while if they continue sponsoring next year.” I was an official volunteer, who could refuse such an entreaty?

No one declines. The next two hours are a blast. I survey 20 people, young and old, black and white, local and from afar. My first is with a woman that went so well that daughter asks to take a survey too. I’m on a roll. I spot her sponsor tag, she works for Chevron. They ask me to take their photo. I'm out of the gate and rarin' to go.

On a day like this, finding candidates cooling off in the shade is a breeze.

Hmmm, there's a young woman relaxing on a bench in the shade - thus begins a survey with one of the most important people at the festival, the professional piano tuner who keeps every piano just the way the performers want them to sound.

“I get up early to tune the pianos in the morning. The keys go sharp because of the humidity, 85% today, and I tune pianos several times a day.” Kimberly Gratton came here from the Florida Keys via Atlanta five years ago, doing what she called, “a rebuild of my life… and what a better place to do it!” www.Kimberleykey.com

The six degrees of separation story of the day: a woman with her daughter, relaxing in the shade, agree to take a survey. Marta and her daughter are scouting colleges.

“Ah, you’re Italian!” she says as she spots my name tag. “We are from Rome!”

Marta and her daughter Elena (my mother’s name!) have been on a major road trip, driving “on the shoestring,” she says. Elena, 16, is applying next year to Harvard, a few miles from my hometown. They’ve been on the road from Miami to Cambridge and were heading back but, after 4000 miles of listening to music on radio, they veered off to listen to the real thing in New Orleans.

“This is like a dream!” Marta says.

Marta listens to popular music in Rome. “You can’t listen to radio without hearing Louis Armstrong at least twice a day,” she says. “I grew up with this music and had a piano in house that continually needed 'a doctor' to tune it and was costly!” Harvard could be even more costly.

We trade addresses. I’m on the lookout for a place that covers Satchmo's catalog and know some great places to hear music in Cambridge. If Elena is accepted to Harvard, we'll all be singing, "What A Wonderful World"!

All you need to know about Satchmo Summerfest

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Satchmo Summerfest Sunday, August 7, 2016 Comes to a Close

Sunday, August 7, 2016

Leroy Jones, a veteran horn player, New Orleans ambassador, and man who’s good at connecting the dots in this historic city. "Give Me a Kiss That I Can Dream on"

“This is the kind of song that played a part in our rebuilding efforts after Katrina,” he says as an intro to this well-worn song. “Lots of the songs in the Armstrong catalog were made before we were born!”

“Paradise on Earth For Me,” a love song to the city Jones was born in, written by The Helsinki Connection, with local references to Donna’s Bar, and Creole food that tastes so good. Jones sang and played trumpet on this catchy number. originally recorded in New Orleans in the 1920s, and must have been known to Armstrong  - Leroy Jones has plenty of respect for this song written in 1914.

This year, he’s the recipient of the Harrelson trumpet presentation, a handmade trumpet by the famous   instrument maker Marcy Schramm (French Quartet Festivals, Inc) is one of the presenters (photo to follow)

Wendell Brunious  Chop Suey Stage NO PHOTO

There are many trumpet princes in this town, Brunious is one of them, with a deep sense of New Orleans culture, history, and the legacy of Louis Armstrong. This isn’t a cursory acknowledgment, it’s coming right from the man’s heart. He knows how damn hard this city is for poor people and Louis was one of them, grew up the streets, was sent to reform school, found finding food in garbage cans. The whole story is improbable and true. And incredibly unlikely. No one on any stage today, including Brunios, will reach the status of a Louis Armstrong.

Brunious is still amazed that Armstrong was invited to play in Copenhagen in 1932. “Imagine that…being invited to travel and play that far away in that day and age!”

"That was Armstrong - What else can you say? My God!"

Ironically, Louis was derided at the end of his career, berated for being an Uncle Tom in the decade of the activist 1960s. Being an entertainer who could mesmerize an audience with his impromptu patter, inventive scat singing, saying paragraphs with the contortions of his eyes face and mouth, camaraderie with guests and his musicians. This is not to say he didn’t experience racism, see it, hear it, feel it. Listen to his song, “Shine.”

Red Beans and Rice Stage Last act of the day, James Andrews and the Baby Dolls and a bunch of all stars who’ve graced the stages all weekend long.

When a New Orleans band leader says, “Are you ready to sing?” it’s is a rhetorical question – you join a few thousand others and chime in on “Happy Birthday” to Louis Armstrong (a ten foot tall white birthday cake has been on stage all day) and “Ooo Pa Pa Do” and a score of other songs I've heard all weekend long.

Music is it participatory Sport here. Kid Merve, Yoshio Tamaya, a few trumpeters from Tremé Brass Band and between all of them they sing and play the most delightfully disjointed rendition of “Happy Birthday” you've ever heard.

My goodness, there's Yoshio Toyama, who just performed with James Andrews, walking from the Red Beans and Rice stage after the finale. I ask a spectator to take photo, priceless memento.

 Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr and one friendly stranger

Satchmo Summerfest: Saturday August 6, 2016, Sun and Song

Out of the archives, written last year and never posted. I'm here again on August 2, 2017 for this year's edition of Satchmo Summerfest!

16th Annual Satchmo Summerfest

Walk to Jackson Square in the heat of the day. Upper 90s feels like 100F, this is New Orleans in August, baby! Here's a sampling of today's music.

1:45 PM Catherine Russell, Red Beans and Ricely Yours Stage
http://www.metrolyrics.com/catherine-russell-lyrics.html

"Give Me a Kiss That I Can Dream On" wafts over the lush grass in Jackson Park. Great day to begin a Satchmo Fest. More of Russell’s songs like "Everybody loves my baby (but my baby don't love nobody but me)" get the afternoon off with just the right calibration.

3:45 PM Red Beans and Ricely Yours Stage
Yoshio Toyama and wife Keiko and the New Orleans Jazz stars. Toshio and Keiko discovered and fell in love  with New Orleans jazz while they were studying music in New Orleans in 1963. They werevbefriended   by their neighbors, learned to enjoy Creole food and were invited to return by then owner of The Preservation Hall Jazz Hall, Alan Jaffe, to return and get deep into it. The story is the stuff of legends and certainly a documentary film. Their Wondeful World Foundation has been gifting instruments to New Orleans high school bands since post Katrina 2003.
Toshio has known some of the band members for 30 years. Clarinet player Mr. Fischer brings his band to Japan every year.

Yoshio does a great job of mimicking Satchmo's gravelly voice and incredible trumpet style with "Wonderful World" followed by "When the Saints Go Marching In," two Armstrong covers he sings to an appreciative crowd every year.

Yoshio, trumpet, Keiko piano and banjo, Mr. Fisher, clarinet

Incredible how many versions of the songs are played today, each one a blend of the spirit of Louis Armstrong and the imprint of the New Orleans artist covering it. I have heard versions of some of the songs a dozen times and each one has the spirit of Louis and the style of the artist. Louis did the same thing himself – put his own stamp on songs written before him but with a style and delivery no one had ever heard before.

In the midst of all this, I meet  Richard Eglé, who asks me if I will volunteer to do a survey tomorrow.

4:45 PM Chop Suey Stage Topsy Chapman and Soul Harmony

“Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams,” This was one of Louis’s favorites,” she says. Then a quick march to check out the Pinettes Brass Band.

 
5:30 PM Red Beans and Ricely Yours Stage The Original Pinettes Brass Band
http://www.nola.com/jazzfest/index.ssf/2009/05/pinette_brass_band_puts_female.html

"We’re Gonna Rock Tonight, Everything Is Going to Be All Right" followed by a cover of Amy Winehouse “Be My Baby” which they call renamed "Baby." http://www.metrolyrics.com/be-my-baby-lyrics-amy-winehouse.html
Now,we're talkini'! Like Louis, New Orleans bands find material that appeals to them, reshape and remold it into something familiar yet decidedly different. I've heard it all day long and that's why I keep coming back. If you’re turning the dial on your radio, you’ll recognize one of these songs by its distinct New Orleans flavor and stop right there. Amy would love the sassy upbeat New Orleans treatment by this band of young funksters.

"We're going to change it up on you again!" says the bandleader and they romp through a bunch of samples of their songs. I don't know the names of the songs but I know they're playing with an incredible amount of energy skill and talent and the audience is eating it up like grits and gravy. Today we’ve got one guy playing triangle/symbol and snare drum player has symbol strapped to his chest.

6:30 PM Chop Suey Stage Charmaine Neville
The woman sings vocals and plays the percussion rack at her place in front of the stage. She does an amazing version of Satchmo's voice – when I was walking to the tent, I thought one of the men and her band was singing "What a Wonderful World." Next surprise, Charmaine sings "Somewhere over the Rainbow" that ends up with a few funky verses that celebrates Louis Armstrong's powers of interpretation.

"Louis Armstrong brought music all over the world," she says, "It's important that people keep it alive all over the city.” It's no secret that New Orleans is a troubled city. Tourism is ramping up after Katrina but crime rates are also up, education is in flux, politics is messy and most politicians are not held in high regard. The black communities relationship to the police is tenuous. The recent wave of gentrification is leading to displacement of close-knit neighborhoods and the culture and history of generations.

Music remains the lighthouse, the beacon people gravitate to keep steady over troubled waters. Musicians, mostly black, are at the core of what makes this city so special, so unique and performers like Charmaine make sure we remember it.

"Little Liza Jane,"with Charmaine doing a great river on percussion and inviting dancing James whose birthday was August 6, to dance on stage. to the stage. She rolls on with "Mac the Knife," "Gangster Freeze," "This Is a Man's World,” and somehow,"Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead, " upbeat with an ending that has a touch of Broadway in it.
Charmaine signs off, "It doesn't hurt to be kind to each other, Just be nice," then rolls into a rendition of "Altogether Right Now," and leaves the stage saying "God loves you… Peace!" And thanks for volunteers, the police, the organizers, and us in the audience.

Time to head home

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Satchmo Summerfest: Jackson Square, Friday, August 5, 2016

Getting ready for this year's Satchmo Summerfest with posts from the archives, written in 2016 but for some reason, never posted!

Satchmo Summerfest: Jackson Square, Friday, August 5, 2016

With the reconstruction going on at the former U.S. Mint, home of the previous Satchmo Summerfest, the French Quarter Festivals Inc. had to get creative and fit the whole shebang into Jackson Square.

16th Annual Satchmo Summerfest

12 PM Friday, August 5, 2016
Red Beans and Rice Stage, the Preservation Hall Brass Band.
This is the most widely known and popular traditional jazz band in New Orleans. As with brass bands, the rumble of the bass drum and the oomph of the tuba laid a foundation for the harmony of the trombone, trumpet, clarinet, banjo, and saxophone.

The 2016 Satchmo Summerfest has officially begun. Every band today will play songs made popular by Louis Armstrong. The last song of the Preservation Hall Brass Band is a salute to the legacy of Louis Armstrong with the unique flavor, often imitated but never quite matched - quite the same way as it is played in the bars, parks, and dancehalls from Frenchmen Street two out-of-the-way places all over town.

1 PM Chop Suey Stage: Miss Sophie Lee, popular singer at The Spotted Cat on Frenchman Street accompanied by piano, guitar, piano and bass serves up a wonderfully tapas of traditional songs.

"That's When The Heartache Begins," slow tempo; "Blue
Skies," up-tempo, with a great guitar solo, remind me that the guitar and banjo have status in traditional New Orleans music. The whole set features the usual tight New Orleans arrangement.

"Why Must You Be Mean to Me," slow swing. Sophie introduces the band. During the entire day I cannot write fast enough to remember the names and instruments of musicians.
"I Will Love You" followed by "I'm Just Found" followed by an upbeat "A-Tisket A-Tasket". By the time she gets to an upbeat "When You're Smiling,” we are all smiling and sweating and feeling the Louis Armstrong vibe.

Next, an upbeat "It Don't Mean a Thing.” No drum set on the stage, the standup bass, deep and resonant, sustains the beat. The sound system for this act and all similar bands is just the right volume, no need for your plugs and the standup bass and guitar do a great job of pulsing the beat.

A taped announcement by trumpeter Leroy Jones acknowledges a long list of sponsors, takes two minutes to read. The weekend is supported by organizations of all stripes all over town.

About 26,000 attended from Friday afternoon until Sunday afternoon.
http://www.nola.com/festivals/index.ssf/2016/08/satchmo_summerfest_2016_attend.html

1:45 PM Red Beans and Rice Stage, Dirty Dozen Brass Band.

When you get near New Orleans brass bands you don't just hear them, you feel them right down to the marrow in your bones. I could feel The Dirty Dozen Brass Band all the way across Jackson Square as I entered the park. Trumpets are king down here but those big ass bass and snare drums and tubas are alpha instruments. Trumpets feed off them. Brass bands down here don't feel they're doing their job unless they see you dancing.

"Get up, you're in New Orleans!" The leader says to the crowd, many of whom are sitting on the grass or in camp chairs, as he peers from the stage. It's 90°F and the humidity is so high that when you walk if feels like you're wading through a bathtub. No matter, this guy wants us to get up and shake our booties. All of a sudden, we are in a call and response mode and for all the world we could be testifying at a Sunday morning church service.

"Say Satchmo," he shouts over the ratatatat of the drums and pealsof trumpets. "This is New Orleans! We make music in the hot! We make food in the hot! We make you know what in the hot!" Not long after that the music inexplicably stops – there's a call for a doctor, a musician has collapsed. Later, the leader says, “Kurt has been with us since he was 16, it's 100° out there, make sure you all drink water.”

2:45 PM Chop Suey Stage, The Tornado Brass Band

“The Rebirth Brass Band can blow the shingles off of a house, “ says the leader with chuckle. "We call this the quiet band," he says as a way of introduction.

Their songs included smooth versions of “Wonderful World,” “You Are My Sunshine.”
When it comes to "When the Saints Go Marching In" this band is not so quiet. The repartee between the band members between numbers is hilarious sometimes even during the songs. This kind of banter is one of the endearing things about music in this town, at least between traditional bands like the Tornados.

3 PM Bill Summers and the JazzSalsa Band, Red Beans and Ricely Yours Stage

An Afro- Caribbean Latin funk band switches genres with great elan. They finish with "Caravan" and Carlos Santana’s "Jingoloba." The African call and response chants incorporated into the music gave the performance a resonance that must have been familiar to many in the audience.

4:45 PM The Shotgun Jazz Band at the Chop Suey Stage. OOPS NO PHOTOS!

If Odetta Sang is kind of music she might sound like band leader Marla Dixon. In a city with hundreds of female singers, Dixon has a style all her own. Dixon on trumpet is accompanied by trombone, clarinet, banjo, bass. “Breathe,” easy swing tempo; "I'll Take You Home Cathleen" an old Irish reel that has been around a long time and this kind of genre jumping is one of the reasons Dixon is in a league of her own.

“How about some blues?” Dixon asks rhetorically, “I think it was by Tampa Red,” and indeed it was. Old time lyrics, it swings low and hard and Dixon’s got the lip to torch these songs into embers. If this did not get your hips moving you might be dead. I can probably say that for most of the music I heard today. There is no linear set list, Dixon glances down at a list then takes a stab.

Along comes ‘In the Gloaming” Stand up bass player Tyler Thompson sings "My Old Kentucky Home." “We might be running a little late, I think it will be OK, they probably already cut the check."

Next, an awesome sax solo (I wish I could remember the song), the bass player and the banjo player hold the baseline and underpin the beat. Next, "Shake It and Break It," the original version, Dixon says. She directs solos and signals the end with a wave of her hand. Next, "Whenever You're Lonesome, Telephone Me." With that, she concludes by thanking Louis Armstrong, the sponsors, and us in the audience. She’s the bomb.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34VJzHT9nuk

5:30 PM The Soul Rebels, Red Beans and Ricely Yours Stage

 

Cross a New Orleans traditional brass band with a side of funk and you get the Soul rebels. By now we’re bathing in a blanket of humidity at about the same temperature as our own bodies. All day long people have found respite in the shade and one of the positive assets so Jackson Square is that there are plenty of trees under which to get it. A given in New Orleans is you just never hear them complaining about the heat.

Spectators fan themselves the old fashioned way As they stand around the stage or sit in the ubiquitous camp chairs or spread out on blankets all over the park. My hands are so wet with perspiration that ink is smeared all over my notebook.

Can you imagine a brass band like The Soul Rebels can sing a song like "sweet dreams are made of this" and that by the end of the song, the bandleader as us all singing along. It is beyond me how the band can switch gears and tempo and play as tight as they do – brass, reeds, percussion– The bandleader flashes his hand with different number of fingers, sort of like a quarterback, and a band sees what he wants and who is going to solo and when the song is going to end.

6:45 PM Chop Suey Stage, The Original Tuxedo Jazz Band


Talk about making a homage to Louis, "Muskrat Ramble," "is a peach of a rendition.

Who are these guys? Here comes "Down the Mississippi to New Orleans" in four-time?
Yolanda Winter begins to solo, totally awesome. She introduces "Shine," the lyrics are important, the bandleader said it was one of Lewis favorite songs. Louis was ahead of his time with this not so subtle song about his skin color, one that he certainly felt and certainly lived.

This band is having fun, they joke around when they mess up an introduction, The leader says "We haven't worked together for a week. It's a good thing you can't hear what we're saying appear off mic!”
Bandleader says they're going to play a Louis Armstrong classic but with a different groove and play "What a Wonderful World" with a Rumba beat…really fetching.
“The next song is one of my favorites, my grandfather wrote it,” says the leader and here comes "Why Don't You Go down to New Orleans" upbeat almost with a waltz beat.

Wonders never cease around here.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Satchmo Summerfest August 3 - 8, 2016: A Look Back

Out of the archives, written last year and never posted. I'm here again on August 2, 2017 for this year's edition of Satchmo Summerfest!

Satchmo Summerfest August 3 - 8, 2016:
A Look Back, August 20, 2016

It shouldn't surprise you that I'm heading there again in a few days...

August 20, 2016
Louis Armstrong is as much a presence in this city as the live oaks that line St. Charles Street and the tip jars that are plopped alongside of every busker in the French Quarter. He was born in one of the poorest most abject parts of New Orleans yet left a legacy that is priceless. The annual Satchmo Summerfest is a huge thank you note to the first important soloist who changed the course of jazz in America.

Every band in Jackson Square from Friday through Sunday, each in its own way, paid homage to Louis (August 4, 1901-July 6, 1971). Along with traditional Dixieland and New Orleans jazz, I can’t tell you how many times I heard songs like “Shine”, “Give Me A Kiss That I Can Dream On”. “What A Wonderful World”, check notes for more were played and sung.

What I can tell you is that the songs were interpreted differently and sounded glorious every single time. My weekend favorite was The Tuxedo Brass Band playing  “What A Wonderful World” to a rumba beat.

The range of voices and instrumentals/band was fabulous. Men and women sang and played their hearts out. All of them, from traditional jazz bands to kick ass brass bands, took time to say what an effect Armstrong’s style and creativity had on them. Louis broke the mold in the 1920s by playing trumpet solos the likes of which had never been heard before – and have become standards since.

Armstrong’s influence is the amniotic fluid in which these musicians were born. The beauty of New Orleans music is that it is informed and inspired by the past but always sounds fresh. These musicians are no copycats. Each is driven to put his/her own stamp on the music. Jackson Square became a petri dish for celebratory creativity.

No nation of musicians can get a crowd going like these in New Orleans. When they shout, “Stand up and shake your butts!” people stand up. When they shout, “You know the words, sing ‘em with us!” Damn if everyone doesn’t sing along, and with gusto. You could probably make a case that Louis Armstrong had something to do with this since his connection to his audiences was filled with humor and a sense of playfulness. Each and every one of the 40 bands who played at two stages in Jackson Square proved that hour after hour.

This was fry an egg on the hood of a car temperatures with humidity suited for hot house tomatoes. In fact, on Sunday, one of the members of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band collapsed on stage from heat exhaustion.

Normal summer. Every patch of shade was occupied but hundreds brought their camp chairs, spread out on blankets, or just sprawled in the grass in the midst of the square. Music alternated between two stages. The Jackson Square is small enough so if you camped out in the middle, you could easily hear the bands all day long. At $5.00, it is the best music value in Louisiana.

No outdoor festivity here goes without food. Vendors from the city’s famous food emporiums sold po boys, red beans and rice and collard greens, jambalaya, fried catfish, and more. Ice cream, snow cones…yep… one of my favorite – a banana and nutella crepes. And cooling alcoholic beverages from beer to margaritas, rum and daiquiris. If you weren’t prudent in this heat, you might have snoozed and missed a bunch of music after a couple of pops.

The people of New Orleans, at music events and beyond, are a sub culture to themselves. I have struck up conversations on a street car, at a bar, in a diner, at a music hall, a park bench and after five minutes know where they live, their favorite foods or places to eat or listen to music, an explanation of a cultural or historic or social custom, and tip about the best way to get where I’m going and possibly where to stop off on the way.

On the way to the Louis Armstrong International Airport on Monday, I’m in the front seat talking to the Airport Shuttle driver. She says people keep in touch after such random meetings, still keep in touch because they trade cell numbers. Or that locals invite visitors over for a barbeque on the spot and stay in touch after that. She says that Kermit Ruffins and Jeremy Davenport, two of the best known trumpeters in town, are good friends, that sometimes after a show at Kermit’s place, the former Ernie K Doe Club on St. Claude, he will say, “Come on everybody, let's go over to The Ritz and listen to Jeremy Davenport!” But I digress.

The last time I initiated a conversation on a Boston trolley, the person next to me put his earbuds back on to signal he wasn’t interested.

Altos de Chavón School of Design: Creative Summer Thunder In A Micro-Climate

Altos de Chavón School of Design

Daily temperatures in La Romana hover around 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

Two minutes after entering the lush grounds in which classrooms are located, the air immediately became more moist and smelled like a giant green house under a giant bell jar. Gentle humidity clung to the skin in an embrace. Visually, it appeared like a well maintained jungle dotted with small cement white washed buildings with terracotta roofs and surrounded by shade trees.

 

 

While tourists posed for photos in the village in which the stones soak up the sun, participants in the summer intensive classes enjoy the benefits of a micro climate a few hundred yards away.

 

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Altos de Chavón School of Design: Creative Summer Thunder, Part 2

July 10 - July 14, 2017

Altos de Chavón School of Design, Altos de Chavón, La Romama, Dominican Republic

Summer school heats up with five intensive one week classes from July 10 - July 14, 2017. "Introduction to Museum Studies," taught by Katherine Jones, Director of the Graduate Program in Museum Studies at Harvard Extension School, marked the first collaboration between Jones and Arlene Alvarez, Director of the Altos de Chavón Regional Archeological Museum on the grounds here.

 

Here we go...Monday, 9 AM in a classroom in the student village.

 
Jones distilled aspects of her extensive experience including collections manager, media specialist, board member, museum registrar and administrator into one week!

 

  

A week of classes began Monday, July 10, 2017...the next four days were filled with focused engagement, sharing of information and two field trips. Jones introduced concepts detailed in The American Alliance of Museums and The International Council of Museums.

The range of museums in the American Alliance of Museums covers every type of museum in which participants are affiliated, helps develop standards, best practices and shares ethical, aesthetic, scientific and technological knowledge. The International Council of Museums covers subjects from ethics to a handbook of museum standards and terminology.

Participants asked questions about how to maintain databases, collect data about their visitors, involve visitors interactively, compose mission statements and reassess them over time, how to preserve dolls, dresses or similar items in the humid Caribbean climate, increase the diversity of their audiences, license items they sell in their gift shops, how to loan objects to another museum. even how to make plans to prepare for hurricanes and contingency plans if they strike.

 

Director of the Regional Archeological Museum at Altos de Chavón, Arlene Alvarez, explains the museum's effective methods of engaging students with materials from the museum's collection. With a combination of design and intuition, their methods mirror subjects Jones had earlier explained about Howard Gardner's work about multiple intelligences and George Hein's ideas about making meaning about what visitors see by starting with their own experiences. Powerful stuff!

 

 

Museum teacher Lenin Paulino explains the museum's two educational outreach programs, in-house and traveling programs. For visits to the museum, public school teachers and students are given materials to prepare their students. The materials provide scaffolding so students can better absorb what they are about to experience. Alvarez and Paulino take traveling exhibits, called "Museum in a Box" to schools in rural areas and send ahead the same kind of previews.

Visual learning and thinking strategies are an essential part of their approach. "What do you see?" "What do you think this is for? "Have you ever seen anything like it?" These are the kinds of questions they ask as they pull out items in boxes during their traveling museum classes. The questions do not require prior knowledge, perfect for kids in rural areas. There are no wrong answers, they can respond based on their own knowledge.

Jones reviewed the theories of Howard Gardner and George Hein during the week. The museum outreach programs are knee deep in practices described by these authorities. George Hein has said that the viewer plus the museum equals a new experience, what you see, what you feel, leads to a deeper understanding. Based on their approach, Paulino and Alvarez are on that wave length.

The major goal of the program is to give children a sense of pride and ownership of their culture. One good example: Students are shown a mortar and pestle - "There's one in our kitchen!"  they say. Then they will learn how their forbears made them, learned to use them, how old they are, and that they've been part of their culture for eons. Arlene Alvarez says the treasures in our past help us know ourselves better and this  is a prime example.

Different colored boxes represent different topics. One box, used in both museum visits and visits to schools, contains a map of migration to the Caribbean. Questions in each box are open to interpretation. Children speculate, talk about sea travel, learn how different cultures have arrived and thrived (or not) in the Dominican Republic. 

Alvarez and Paulino say that this kind of teaching is different from public schools where students may be able to read but have no tools to interpret critically - compare, contrast, and synthesize. Paulino says that he does two or three concepts at a time so as not to overwhelm students with information.

As the lessons conclude, Paulino and Alvarez divide the students into teams to present what they have learned. Everyone on the team participates, every kid has a role. Students may role play, use puppets, artwork, dance, sing, and read. They own the show. Jean Piaget, George Hein, John Dewey, and Howard Gardner are somewhere in the wings applauding.

One of the program's weaknesses is that the school teachers often do not follow up and reinforce what has been learned. (In truth, this can happen in American schools as well.)

Arlene Alvarez says that colleges and universities preparing teachers are now incorporating Gardner’s concepts about multiple intelligences in their curriculum so the new teachers will use the concepts as they begin their careers. We're talking about using "best practices," leading edge stuff. Alvarez and Paulino should make a video of how they teach these traveling classes and make them required viewing in teacher education school.

 

One day was dedicated to learning about exhibition design from the ground up.

Santo Domingo architect Alex Martinez Suarez, former student of Katherine Jones, is currently in charge of redesigning and reconstructing of the Museo Fernando Peña DeFilló, a museum he constructed several years ago in Santo Domingo. He cites the importance of  constructing additions that respect the original architecture and design. He had the tiles in the original museum reproduced to match the floors of the museum's new rooms he is designing.

Showing how he arranges artwork and manages flow through the museum is one key to keeping giving visitors a positive experience. The slides gives participants a chance to ask questions about their own floor plans and ask questions about managing flow and arranging artifacts and art in their own museums.

 

Martinez translates for two participants. Alvarez translates for Jones when necessary.

 

 

 

Alvarez does not distribute mountains of materials. Participants need to take notes, ask questions, relate their own experiences to what is being taught.

Everyone's paying attention.

 

Participants ask questions, gather information.

 

Guest lecturer Luisa Peña, Director of the Memorial Museum of Dominican Resistance in Santo Domingo. The museum, opened in 2011, is  "An unflinching manifestation of the darkest corners of national memory, the Memorial Museum of Dominican Resistance honors the men and women who fought the dictatorial regime of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo and continued to push for change during the chaotic years of political transition under Trujillo’s successor Joaquin Balaguer."

Between 1930 and 1961, the Dominican Republic was under the ruthless thumb of Rafael Trujillo. The country today bears no resemblance to the barbarity that snuffed out the lives of more than 50,000 Dominicans during his reign of terror.

 

 

Classes moved to the library on Thursday and Friday.

Thursday afternoon...here comes the final project assignment cooked up by Jones and Alvarez: Present a concept for a museum using everything the class had learned about all aspects of a museum from the programmatic side and the operations side.  Alvarez divided the group the classic "count off by twos" method. The "uno"  programmatic (creative) team had to determine the theme and coordinate with the "dos"  Operations team to formulate a vision… and present it at the end of the last day of class Friday...tomorrow!

The two teams came up with a brilliant choice...

Museo de la Gastronomía Dominicana!

 

Their museum concept showed a deep command of what they had absorbed all week...

 

and they had a ton of fun presenting what their two teams worked on all night...

followed by graduation, complete with certificates of participation.

Altos de Chavón School of Design: Creative Summer Thunder, Part 1

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

 

Altos de Chavón School of Design: Creative Summer Thunder, Part 1

Altos de Chavón School of Design: Creative Summer Thunder
July 10 - July 14, 2017

Take the summer off?  Not at the internationally acclaimed School of Design at Altos de Chavón in La Romana, D.R. An ambitious program of five intensive workshops and classes took place from July 10 to July 14 and more are slated right into August. 

Arlene Alvarez, Director, Altos de Chavón Regional Archeological Museum and Carmen Lorente, Director of Special Programs organized the summer intensive classes. Both could function well in a small Fortune 500 company.

Students from all over the Dominican Republic signed up for July’s classes taught by teachers from Santo Domingo, Spain, New York City, and Boston.

• Commercial Photography led by Diana Baldera of Santo Domingo
• Introduction to Music Videos led by Pablo Lozano of Santo Domingo
• Anatomical Drawing led by Anna Wakitch of NYC Academy of Drawing
• Travel and Adventure Photography led by Juan Carlos Vélaz of Spain
• Introduction to Museum Studies led by Katherine Jones of Boston, MA

With skilled focus and pace, Katherine Jones, Director of the Graduate Program in Museum Studies at Harvard Extension School, distilled aspects of her extensive career experience including collections management, media specialist, board member, registrar and museum administrator into one week! As an invited guest, I realized how much more there is to the museum experience aside from looking at the artwork on the walls or on pedestals.

Many in the class were affiliated with Dominican museums in administration or operations or sometimes both. Others enrolled to get a deeper grasp organizational structures that would support their work. Topics they wanted to learn about included use of technology and social media to widen their audiences, techniques for fund raising, developing earned income from gift shops and rental of space, matters of governance regarding board development and staffing policies.

The class was a perfect fit.

The first day was a doozy: an overview of all a museum’s functional areas: Administration, Collections Care, Exhibitions, Education, Fundraising and Membership, Governance, Communications and Marketing, and Operations (Technology, Facilities), and Collections Care. 

As the week progressed, her Power Point slides were translated into Spanish. Jones spoke in English. Most of the participants were bilingual. Arlene Alvarez translated for two who were less fluent and for Jones when necessary. 

A Power Point presentation has no impact unless it is backed up by cogent, appropriate information and active engagement with an audience. Jones’s was all of that. Her students ate it up.

The creative energy was as thick in the classroom as the tropical heat and humidity outside their walls. We’re in the heart of the Caribbean but make no mistake - their curiosity and thirst for knowledge began to thrive in those first six hours under the terracotta tile roof of the classroom.

“How would you define a museum?”  Jones’ first question gave her a sense of her audience and set the tone for a week of engagement. Rich responses ranged from educating via online museums, pop up museums, traveling museums, brick and mortar museums and reasons each contribute to enhancing or maintaining culture and history.

When Jones noted that a museum’s mission must be clearly understood by everyone from board members to the greeter at the door, a woman who administers a museum in Higuey said that the cleaning lady had the best grasp of the mission of anyone she surveyed, including the higher up administrators! That’s a big aha moment for an administrator of a museum of any size.

The two complementary components of a museum are programmatic (mission driven) and operations (sustainability driven).  The programmatic includes collections and their care, research, exhibitions, programs including tours, school groups, lectures, and courses. The operations component includes fund raising, marketing, technology, janitorial and security.

Each has a range of employees who, except for docents, volunteers, security, and gift shop workers, are not often encountered by the typical museum-goer. Flow charts showing the differences between staffing of large, medium and small sized museums set the stage for participants to assess and refine their organizations. 

Jones's first morning overview got conversations going right out of the gate. Questions about security and theft, a museum’s values, how to preserve objects in the humid Caribbean climate, how to make a museum’s audience more diverse, how to measure success, preparing children and teachers for a museum visit, what makes a museum financially sustainable, contingency plans in the event of a hurricane - all this in the first 6 hours!

The topic citing the importance of having in place a clearly stated policy of accession (accepting a piece of art) was a hot issue. Several participants reported that donors were upset when their offers to donate an item were politely refused. If they had a specific policy in place that explained the reason they could not accept the gift, they maintained good relationships; if not, they risked offending important supporters or donors to their museums.

On subsequent days, hands-on experience and field trips were illuminating experiences. Jones demonstrated how to use archival paper to wrap items in the museum’s collection and showed a tool for making cradles for delicate objects using EthaFoam.  

The five day course was enriched by offers from the participants who invited the class to visit museums with which they are affiliated. The class piled into vans to take a field trip to the Museo Altagracia operated by a participant and visit the amazing basilica it represents in Higuey.

After class another afternoon, a participant invited the class to tour a small museum incorporated into a jewelry store operated by her family. Located in the heart of the Altos de Chavón village, it features jewelry made with Larimar, a semi-precious stone found only in the Dominican Republic. It's a satellite museum of the original museum in Santo Domingo.

Alex Martinez Suarez, a Santo Domingo architect and former student of Jones, engaged students with the story of how he oversaw construction of the Fernando Peña DeFilló Museum in the Colonial Zone in Santo Domingo, and described his experience of designing and constructing an addition to this museum. His  slides illustrated best practices in exhibition planning, design, ways visitors flow through a museum's exhibits and examples of how to hang art in the exhibitions.

Monday’s homework - Jones asked participants to tell about their most memorable museum exhibit.  One student talked about The Museum of Impossible Conversations, an exhibit that imagined a conversation between a current and past fashion designer.

Thursday’s homework assignment was a brilliant way to evaluate how much information the students had absorbed and how to apply it - present a concept for a museum using what they had learned about all aspects of a museum from the programmatic side and the operations side.  The programmatic (creative) side had to determine the theme and coordinate with the Operations team to formulate a vision… and present it at the end of the last day of class Friday.

Archeological Museum Director Arlene Alvarez made two teams using the good ‘ol count off by twos method and they went to work. They must have worked on it all night because they came up with a beaut. Museo de la Gastronomía Dominicana!

A one-week intensive course at the world-class School of Design was perfect for working professionals. By the time the week ended, participants got deep into the weeds of what makes a museum click and found ways to apply them to their own organizations or businesses.

Altos de Chavón School of Design: Creative Summer Thunder, Part 2

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Books, Records, Food: Something for Everyone at The Westport MA Friends 55th Annual Used Book Fair: The VIDEO

The Westport Friends 55th Annual Used Book Fair

The yellow and white striped tents that are erected the first week of July in front of the Westport Friends Meeting House on Main Road in Westport, MA, signify one thing: the annual Westport Friends Used Book Fair is about to take place as usual, the second Saturday of July. Around dawn on Saturday, volunteers load thousands of used books on tables under the tents. At 11 AM sharp, the colorful pennants that surround the tents are dropped, hundreds of book lovers swarm inside.

Bargains, camaraderie, home made goodies abound. Here's a peek at noon, one hour after the first wave of shoppers have loaded up.

The book fair continues for over a week. During the final days, shoppers pick out what they want, leave dough in a collection can. The white Meeting House as a backdrop, this is a New England scene in full.

For the whole story - http://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2017/07/books-records-food-something-for-everyone-at-the-westport-ma-friends-55th-annual-used-book-fair.html

The 56th Westport Friends Used Book Fair will be on Saturday, July 8, 2017

 Video by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Books, Records, Food: Something for Everyone at The Westport MA Friends 55th Annual Used Book Fair

Let this recap of the fabulous book fair last summer serve as a reminder for the Westport Friends 56th Annual Used Book Fair Saturday, July 8, 2017! This will be the first one I'll miss in over ten years!

VIDEO

Westport Friends (Quaker) 55th Annual Used Book Fair
938 Main Road
Westport, MA


July 9, 2016

Spirits and expectations were sky high. Thousands of books were so close you could smell their musty odor after months of being packed away in the book shed next to the Macomber Community House. Collectors and beach readers, they're here in force.

"Have you ever read Nelson DeMille?" asks one man to another as they wait behind the colorful pennants surrounding the tents, itching to move in the moment the opening whistle blows at precisely 11 AM. "I've read nearly all of his books and am looking for more."

Book Fair Clerk Greg Marsello prepares for the countdown. He's unflappable, organized, and the main cog in the book sorting process. Just about every book on the tables has had to pass through his hands - thousands that do not pass muster are recycled or passed along to other book sellers. Want to volunteer to help during the year-long process?

Bargains galore await eager book lovers. Prices? Ridiculously affordable...some at 6 for $1.00, gorgeous coffee table books at the high end for $5.00 and the vast majority at one tenth their original cost. The book fair has come a long way since its inception 55 years ago. The parsonage needed a new roof, the parson suggested organizing a book fair to pay for it. It was such a success, the Friends decided to repeat it...the rest, as they say, is history.

For a moment, the scene resembled a "Door Buster" sale at WalMart. A record-sized crowd surged into the Macomber Community House for a record collection bonanza! 2,000 records, LPs and 45s were recently donated by the estate of a local record collector - and another 1000 from other donors. Records pressed on vinyl have been making a comeback - many collectors knew exactly what they wanted and still have the equipment to play the records on.

By the end of the first two hours, thousands of paperbacks, hard covers, albums, records and DVDs had found new homes, at least till next summer. This is easy to imagine since a staggering 20,000 books were stacked on tables and cartons underneath them, ready to surface as soon as the first books had been carted away. For the first year, credit cards are accepted!

"The Book Fair raises about 32% of our yearly operating costs," Greg Marsello says. "The money is allocated for property upkeep expenses, religious education, and a Helping Fund, which supports In-Need members of the community."

The Children's' section of the tent behind the refreshment tables opened for kids exclusively at 10:45 AM. When every kid seems to have an iPhone or iPad, it's refreshing to see them poring over titles and filling their arms with books in all categories.

11:01 A.M. the tents are jammed...

 

The jovial intensity of shoppers is unmatched. If you could bottle it, you'd achieve Peace on Earth. Here's an entire community focused on acquiring books to read for pleasure and  the serendipitous prospect of finding books that open their horizons or complete their collections.  There are serious book collectors here who search for and usually find books for their inventory.

Says one collector: "My main interest is in 20th century literature and history. I have a Masters degree in literature so I know the canon. After 12 years I have a feel for what will sell and do business online."

Joe Gracia on the prowl for Clive Custler books. Joe has list supplied by his wife, a fan of Custler's. Joe says the author actually has a staff that helps him churn out books. His wife buys 300 to 400 books a year at yard sales and fairs. They sell books at the American Legion. Indeed, there's something for everyone here.

A new wrinkle this year: thousands of vinyl albums from donated from a collector's estate.

Bookfair coordinator Kevin Lee: "The announcement about a collectors trove of LPs and 45s drew many collectors. One fellow appeared at the community house at 8:45 AM to ask when the doors opened. He returned at 9:20 AM to be the first in the door that opened at 11 AM. The collectors handled albums very carefully, examining for scratches, and holding them at the edges."

Three generations of music fans peruse...

A shopper proudly displays a Brenda Lee album, tells me that her 4'9" height earned her the nickname "Little Miss Dynamite." Lee stormed the charts with her rockabilly and country songs, had 47 US chart hits during the 1960s.

 "I worked hard today," says a collector. He was looking for originals, not reissues, sells on Amazon, looks for albums from the Norman Luboff choir, Tom Petty, Brenda Lee and albums on vinyl which he says are coming back in popularity, some for nostalgia and others because artists are beginning to record on vinyl again after years of forsaking for CDs. He has a 98% approval rating on Amazon.

 Some of the best stories aren't in books but are the ones I hear from the shoppers themselves...

 

Tom Maguire: "I've come here because I read about the albums for sale by reading your blog. My mom was born in 1910, she used to sing to me all the time. She always had a happy smile and was fun to be around. People tell me I smile a lot because of her. She used to sing some of the songs in this big bag of records I just bought. They bring back happy memories of her. I'm not a kid anymore so I really enjoy these memories from the LPs."

"Look at this album of quadrille songs. When she was younger my mom loved that dance. When she was 89 years old and got around with two canes she went to listen to a quadrille dance. A fellow took her hand and she was sitting down and danced quadrille moves with her. Can you imagine that?"

"And look at this album by the Irish Rovers. During the war a bunch of us went into a Vietnamese bar and a song on this album called 'The Black Velvet Band' was on a jukebox and we must of sung that song 20 times one right after another!"

A collector from Dartmouth, MA."I love this book fair. I've been coming here for the past five years after my daughter told me about it. When I bring books home every year there is no late fee, it's almost like I'm renting them for a year. If I don't keep them, I re-donate them or give them to friends."

"This is my favorite book fair in this region," says Luke Wallin, says retired University of Massachusetts Dartmouth professor.  "Literature used to be my favorite category now it's mostly about painting which I've taken up after retirement. My daughter's favorite is the book fair in Little Compton, Rhode Island. She checks for book fairs online, we often go together. The Little Compton Rhode Island library has its used book sale on August 6 this year."

  
Longtime (really!) readers from Dartmouth,MA, examining their haul: Woman says, ”I remember coming to the very first book fair with my mother who was a ferocious reader. We bring books back or give them to friends. I'm 80 years old now so I've been coming here for 55 years! It appears that there is something about the Westport weather that's good for you!"
Man says, “We read aloud to each other on Horseneck Beach."

"On a cross-country trip a long time ago my girlfriend and I read the book 'The Wind in the Willows' to each other, says I. The man smiles.  "My second wife wouldn't marry me until I read that book  to her out loud. I guess I passed because we did get married."

Beginning readers try out a spelling game photo R.

 
Bring your kids!
 

This family's third time around.

 

Satisfy your book cravings for a good long time.

The steps of the Friends Meeting House were a perfect place to read, eat lunch, and compare notes. For this day only, the Meeting House was packed with paperbacks priced at 25 cents and 6 for $1.00 and opened for business at 10 AM. At dusk, the remaining books were set up under the tents. The weekly Sunday service begins at 10 AM. The only books in sight will be hymnals.

Photo R: "We saw a flyer advertising this book fair at the campsite were staying at on Horseneck Road," says the dad of the two girls intent on their books.

The flow of the first days predictable," says Kevin Lee, event coordinator and photographer, who can be counted on to add humor to the day's proceedings. "There is quite a rush for the first two hours then a lull till late in the afternoon when the crowd picks up again. Most of the crowd today are casual shoppers with a variety of tastes and interests. We do have collectors to our very specific in their shopping."

Food tent: Says one volunteer: "Today being cool, we sold lots of hot coffee and hot dogs first. We usually make one earn of coffee for the day, today we were on fourth pot by 2 PM. Our fabulous tabouli was a hit as it is annually."

The outreach coordinator, who happened to be working at the food tent, said that they used social media and other methods of outreach this year and attracted people from as far away as Cape Cod. She also noted a more diverse crowd, hungry too since they cleaned out the entire table of home made baked goods - mouth watering cookies, brownies, cupcakes, pies, scones, pumpkin bread.

Here's a tip:  Ask for Deana’s apple pie: wow not sure of kind of apples probably macintosh, plus  australian ginger which she bought in chunks and ground up into small bits, cinnamon, cranberry juice, sugar, and tapioca. The pies is so good  an admirer paid her to drive to her house to show her how to make the pies herself!

The book fair ended on Sunday, July 17, 2016.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

New Delhi Wedding Diary: Clothes Shopping For A Wedding

February 27, 2017

India is a confounding country. Everywhere you look there are disparities in every aspect of the human condition...wealth distribution, class, economics, living conditions, transportation, education. These may be head turners to visitors from abroad.

For Indians, they're the way things are, now, in the past, and for the foreseeable future. pt at large was lucky enough to be invited to the New Delhi wedding of a good friend's daughter, was part of the wedding party that geared up with four days of pre-wedding festivities and planning. The two-day wedding  began with a traditional "Henna Ceremony" for the bridal party at 10:30 Friday morning March 3 (post to follow) and finished Saturday afternoon March 4...with 500 (not a typo) invited guests!

Young woman working in Atlanta meets graduate of Georgia Tech... journalist meets engineer, Connecticut meets New Delhi, proposals are accepted, a wedding is planned, New Delhi is ground zero for the wedding.

2 AM Monday: the East coast contingent lands in New Delhi, is greeted by the groom's father in as lively a greeting as you can have when the visitors deplane after nearly 24 hours at 32,000 feet. Vans drive us to our hotel.The heck with jet lag. There's clothes shopping to do.

East coasters leave their suits and black dresses and heels home. Time for saris, bangles and shoes for the women, kurtas, churidars and shoes for the men. We're all into merging cultures, a microcosm of what's happening between the groom and his bride.

When we're not shopping, we're being treated to lunches, dinners and tea. The only touring we do is what we see from the vans as we careen through the New Delhi traffic - which is another story all together.

New Delhi is building a Metro right through the bustling Lajpat Nagar Central Market, where the groom's wedding suit is being made by a store owned by a friend of his mother who runs the business. The dust and crazy parking don't seem to bother anyone.

  

Strolling to the store, entering Parampara Clothing store.

 
The groom's mother and her sister relax with the owner while the groom tries on his wedding suit. This is a small family owned business in an area jammed with brick and mortar stores and vendors peddling their wares in the street. The groom checks his outfit. Soon we'll be shopping for our own.

While waiting, I venture out the back door. The alleys are alive with the rhythmic chants of street vendors hawking their wares  as they carry them around by hand or stand behind makeshift tables.

The alleys are jammed with street vendors plying their wares. Streams of shoppers bargain for goods, vendors bark out sales pitches for  their products, the place is alive with commerce.

Incongruous mix of brick/mortar stores, street vendors, some legal, some not. Huge age range of shoppers, families, singles, couples, groups of young men and women, all looking for a good deal. The chanting of vendors hawking their wares is glorious nod to the practice carried on in open air markets of the world over and certainly in markets in the middle and far east.

 Shoppers appear friendly as this camera toting westerner with the big smile wanders about.

 

All of a sudden, some street side vendors appear to be in a panic. Later I hear that the police are on the way. Vendors with no permits hustle to hide their merchandise and disappear. I'll bet they'll be back in a few hours.

 

The groom's father tells me the back story of the Lajpat Central Market and, in perfect script, writes this into my notebook.

"Lala Lajpat Rai was a freedom fighter of India, was later charged during freedom movement by Britishers he bled to death.”

He says that after the freedom movement, the original Indian National Army members were given shops when they retired so could make a living selling merchandise.

The groom and two other men in the wedding party couldn't find shoes that fit in the big time stores. And  hit paydirt when they returned to Lajpat Nagar and found a shoe store the size of a school bus that was packed floor to ceiling with an astonishing array of shoes for the occasion.

My jaw dropped when I caught a glimpse of the next stop.

 

The DLF Promenade is one of the most slick, granite, marble shopping malls you'll find anywhere in the world.

 

If it weren't for the predominance of saris, I'd swear this mall was in suburban California.

 

The comparison between the two places where we shopped is jaw-dropping. I suppose there are such disparities all over the world. In India, they're over the top.

 

Photos and videos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

 

 

Post Cards from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Part 1

February 10, 2017 A Day in the Colonial Zone

If you're going to get a tour of a city, what better than to have it from a man with the eye of an architect, the knowledge of a historian, and the sense of joy of a kid showing you his new toy. For  us, that would be  architect and teacher Alex Martinez Suárez.

Today we're heading for the Zona Colonial, the oldest part of the city, and the first permanent establishment in the New World.  En route, we pass the National Palace of the Dominican Republic that houses the offices of the Executive Branch (Presidency and Vice Presidency) of the Dominican Republic.

Alex, born and raised in Santo Domino, points out older traditional homes with traditional architecture he predicts may be torn down as gentrification spreads throughout neighborhoods in Santo Domingo especially around the colonial zone. The zone is on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

It won't surprise you that Santo Domingo has its share of traffic congestion downtown.

A musical interlude like this might surprise  you VIDEO

Neighborhoods with small shops; ubiquitous street vendors as we continue toward the Colonial Zone

Our tour of Santo Domingo begins as Alex drives us through the narrow streets toward the Zona Colonial, properly named Cuidad Colonial, 'Spanish City". It's loaded with historic buildings and Alex knows the history of every one of them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciudad_Colonial_(Santo_Domingo)

"Ciudad Colonial (Spanish for "Colonial City") is the historic central neighborhood of Santo Domingo and the oldest permanent European settlement of the New World. It has been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.^[1] It is colloquially known as "Zona Colonial" (Colonial Zone). The Ciudad Colonial is located on the west bank of the Ozama River, which bisects the city. It covers less than 5 square kilometers.

It is an important section of the city due to the high number of landmarks, including Alcázar de Colón, Fortaleza Ozama, Catedral Primada de America, and others. Ale

Dating back over 500 years, the Colonial Zone was founded by Christopher Columbus' less famous brother, Bartolmeu. Stone has proven to be the building material of choice (or perhaps, necessity). "

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Travel-g147289-s201/Santo-Domingo:Dominican-Republic:Architecture.html

Park on Hostas Street at the Ruinas De LaIglesia Y Hospital De San Nicolas De Bari, the first hospital in America, built in 1503. The Order of Franciscans arrived in 1502 with Governor Nicolas de Ovando (a name we'll see often). We are a ten minute walk to El Condé, the main street of the Zona Colonial.

Admire El Convento de los Dominicos, begun in 1510, completed in 1538, it became the first university in the New World, known as Universidad de Santo Tomás de Aquino.We didn't enter but inside, the Chapel of Nuestra Señora del Rosario is one of only three chapels in the world whose vault is decorated with the signs of the zodiac.

On to a grand Promenade on El Condé Street, a must see for visitors and favorite destination for residents.

"El Conde street is one of the first streets built by Europeans in America and dates back to the founding of the city of Santo Domingo. By Frey Nicolás de Ovando In 1502.With a distance of approximately one kilometer, it begins at Las Damas Street, topped by an old staircase that goes down to the Ozama River and ends at the Puerta del Conde."

Like Charles Street in Boston or La Rampa in Barcelona, the street has been the site of important political, social and, in the case of El Condé, religious events. And like the others, they are now home of commercial enterprises of all kinds and fabulous places for people watching.

Our guide Alex Martinez knows every meter of this street. He was chosen to design this historic plaque to honor the Edificio Baquero.

El Edificio Baquero: Built in the 1920s, Alex says it used to be the tallest building in Santo Domingo and boasted the first elevator in the city. The curved front of the building with its carved balconies partially seen on left are gorgeous.

Informative signage lines the street, a boon for tourists, especially if you have a smart phone app to translate.

 

Sidewalk vendors on every corner; wildly colorful artwork as almost as numerous as the tables and chairs in front of cafés and restaurants.

 

There's always time and certainly lots of places for a drink and conversation; endless opportunities for people watching.

El Condé Street ends at the Ozama River about a mile away. Shop, sit, talk,eat, drink...meander all the way the Ozama River at the end of the x mile street LINK

Saviñon Building, headquarters of the National Lottery, 1946. Lottery systems seem to be a global enterprise

Edificio Cerame, The ground floor was used to store fabrics, clothes, shoes, tablecloths, perfumes, etc. It was the first time that street displays were used in the country. "Why are  they painting it that color!" Alex exclaims.

The architecture includes influences from Spanish wrought iron balconies and more modern concrete structures.

Sederias California, sort of the Marshalls of Santo Domingo, but duty free. It carries a mix of price categories on three floors, lots of clothing from expensive to more affordable but with good quality.

https://www.keeptravel.com/magazin-sederias-kaliforniya-v-santo-domingo
  

But no need to enter Sederias California if some of this clothing appeals to you. El Condé Street is a window shoppers dream...and if you get hungry, pizza!
 

For Alex, the Colonial Zone is like his back yard, he knows every street, every building and great places to eat.

Next, a tour of the Museo Ferdinand Peña Defilló, a museum Alex is in the process of remodeling.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Altos de Chavón: Design School, Architectural Gem, Cultural Touchstone

A photo essay that chronologically follows a 5-Star guided tour of the Altos de Chavón campus in La Romana, D.R., by Stephen D. Kaplan, director of the Altos de Chavón School of Design located there. Kaplan's association with Altos de Chavón dates back to its creation in 1981.

The visit was initiated when Arlene Alvarez, Director of the Altos de Chavón Regional Museum of Archeology, invited Katherine Jones, Director of the Graduate Program in Museum Studies at the Harvard University Extension School, to view the museum on the school's campus in La Romana, D.R. 

This is a world class oasis of culture, history, education and luxury in La Romana at the eastern end of the Dominican Republic.

Entrance to Casa de Campo, a replica 16th century Mediterranean village on spacious grounds in La Romana on the eastern end of the Dominican Republic. An architectural gem, the property contains privately owned villas, restaurants, boutiques featuring clothing and jewelry, and an amphitheater seating 5000 people!

The crowning jewel is the Altos de Chavón School of Design with an enrollment of 125 students from across the world and a renowned Artists in Residence Program that deepens the school's academic offerings.

The Museo Arqueológico Regional, rich with displays describing the island's prehistoric culture and artifacts of its indigenous inhabitants, is centered in the midst of the village. Its outreach program for school children is robust and, in fact, offers inspiration to the youngsters as well as to the students of the School of Design

Security checkpoints leading to Altos de Chavón School of Design and surrounding villas.

The School of Design offers instruction in Fine Arts, Graphic Design, Digital Design, Interior Design, Photography and Fashion, with a teaching staff steeped in experience, dedicated to academic excellence and nurturing a hotbed of young creative talent. The architectural ambience is breathtaking.

Under the leadership of Museum Director Arlene Alvarez, the Museo Arqueológico Regional has an aggressive outreach program to introduce students to their island's historic heritage.

Students welcomed to the museum by their guide. Their teachers have been given pre-visit information that provides them with context for what they and their students are about to see.

A future post will describe the mission of the Museo Aqueológico Regional.

Calle di Las Piedras (Street of the Stones). This replica of a 16th century Mediterranean village is a stunning work of art all by itself. Dominican architect Jose Antonio Caro and Italian master designer and cinematographer Roberto Coppa planned the village stone by stone. Variations of texture, color, shape, architectural design  produce an inspiring environment and source of creative energy for the School of Design and a sense of history surrounding the museum. Every detail of Altos de Chavón was handcrafted by local artisans.

 

Commercial enterprises for villa owners and tourists on the Casa de Campo.

 

To achieve the look of antiquity, cinematographer Roberto Coppa and architect José Antonio Caro created buildings with bricked up windows to make them appear abandoned.

Breakfast Club! Director Stephen Kaplan invites several students to join him for breakfast once a week. The interaction between staff, artists in residence and teachers creates a sense of community and adds a jolt of vitality to the program.

Since the village is also a tourist destination, some areas are for students only. The school takes security seriously.

The academic setting includes a set of nine classrooms, many of which we toured, student lounge (not visited), library, computer lab and sculpture studio, as well as administrative offices. The school enrollment: approximately 125 students in 40 units furnished with capacity of 2 to 5 students in each one.

Disciplines taught: Fine Arts, Graphic Design, Digital Design, Interior Design, Photography and Fashion, with a teaching staff dedicated to academic excellence in the world of art and design.

Mark Lineweaver (left, chatting with Kaplan) has just concluded an art class as we enter. Invited to be an Artist in Residence of the Altos de Chavón Cultural Center Foundation in 1993, he has taught there ever since. LINKS

Lineweaver has tasked his students in his drawing class to explore contrasts in light.

Class dismissed.

Christina Sanchez-Kozyreva, Maria Inéz Rodriguez, and Yan Xing are some of the current artists in residence.

A new screening room is nearly complete, the latest addition to the school, will add a dimension of digital visual arts to the school.

Katherine Jones, Director of the Museum Studies Program at the Harvard University Extension School, was invited to the tour the school and the museum's collection by Arlene Alvarez, the Museo Arqueológico Regional Director. Director Stephen Kaplan has been associated with the school since 1981.

Student residences. The School of Design maintains two beautiful buildings that house approximately 125 students in 40 units furnished with capacity of 2 to 5 students in each one.

Installation created by students uses traditional straw brooms used by indigenous people. 

Jones, the master painter Rafael Salomon of the maintenance staff, Kaplan, Alvarez.

Believe it or not, these are watercolor portraits.

Proud artist, self portrait by Haitian student Maiker Avila Lopez.

This is the only class we saw in action during our tour. Artist Elsa Cáceres (black slacks, chatting with Harvard Museum Studies Program Director Katherine Jones; students are drawing an object that appealed to them in a visit to the Museo Arqueológico earlier in the day.

Confluence of technology and good old fashioned hand produced art...

as students capture photos of objects that interested them on iPhones then draw the objects in class...

and are thoroughly engaged...from iPhones to paper then who knows... digitized, instagrammed, hologrammed, redrawn?

Thank you, Elsa Cáceres...from Stephen Kaplan, Arlene Alvarez and Katherine Jones!

School of Design Library contains 12,000 volumes.

Arlene Alvarez and librarian Diogenes Alcala.

 

Kaplan explains that the library includes rare volumes with hand drawn frontispieces and an ancient map (shown here) of the Dominican Republic.

Stacks and rows...12,000 volumes packed into this compact library.

Continuing a Five Star Tour through meticulously managed environment by Director Stephen Kaplan.

Sculpture studio: this bust has been created over a wire armature.

Art seems to grow out of the ground here. The synergy between earth and art is ever-present.

A discotheque and karaoke joint...even artists, maybe especially artists, need a place to blow off steam.

Admiring the construction of the beautiful archway interrupted by the blonde giving me the eye on the way through the campus.

 

 
Ceramics studio flooded with natural light from above; three  directors - Arlene Alvarez, director of the ceramics program Damar Castaño, Katherine Jones

 

From this piece of clay...to this vase.

"The potter is an extension of the clay," says Director Stephen Kaplan.

 

glazing and paint...inspiration awaits; a reproduction of a Taino bowl

Electric kiln (above), gas kiln with massive door ready to be shut tight during firing ( background); director of the ceramics program, Damar Castaño.

 

Stonework and flora merge to create a step back in time.

Close up views of the stonework, all done by local craftsmen, in this recreated 16th century Mediterranean village are just as arresting as the art work in the art gallery on the grounds. The distinction between artisan and artist is quite porous. Stonemasons are probably the most under-appreciated artists of all.

 

Arresting views everywhere reinforce the creative endeavors of the students in The School of Design...

including the walkways!

The hefty iron handles (and perhaps the chains) on this gate were forged by hand by local artisans.

Hail, Caesar! A big surprise in this small scale village - a 5000-seat amphitheater with a grand view of the Altos de Chavón River.

Who knew that the amphitheater in this little village is a major venue for musicians and singers. Jennifer Lopez was scheduled to perform here later in the month. If people in the Dominican Republic had never heard of Altos de Chavón in La Romana, they will soon!

So many design elements so well maintained...

and such a vibrant community of students...

eager to learn.

 

The silk screen printing studio...Arlene Alvarez and head of the silk screen lab.

 

The smell of fresh ink is like perfume to aspiring silk screen artists...

preparing screens for the next layer of paint.

 

Classrooms for fabric and design

Shopping al fresco...

 

with a reminder that this is an international destination.

And in case you forget you're in a Caribbean island with a deep connection with music, here's a band in the main plaza.

 

Martha Victoria, Funding Office; Carmen Lorente, Director of Special Programs; Arlene Alvarez, Director of Museo Arqqueologico; Stephen Kaplan, Director of Altos de Chavón in La Romana, D.R.; Katherine Jones, Director of the Graduate Program in Museum Studies at the Harvard University Extension School.

View of the Altos de Chavón River from the terrace above.

  

 

Directors Stephen Kaplan, Katherine Jones and pt at large; well-rounded students need a well-rounded social life!

 

Self-portraits show the range of students in the School of Design.

 

Hallways and offices are filled with artwork.

Artwork in one of the galleries...

and in one respect, the village of Altos de Chavón is one huge piece of art.

Charles Bludhorn, the man behind the creation of the village and the school, is worthy of a Hollywood documentary. Bludhorn was president of Gulf & Western, the company that owned a huge chunk of land in the Dominican Republic, and popularized it as a tourist destination, and advocated for island's inhabitants, including certainty that local students had equal access to the prestigious School of Design. Oh, he also owned Paramount Pictures, whose artists helped create the village of Altos de Chavón.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. 

Cuba Chronicles: Buena Vista Social Club Reincarnated - The Videos

The Buena Vista Social Club, aka Café Taberna, Havana, 9/30/15

Buena Vista Social Club, aka Café Taberna, Havana, 9/30/15. "Chan Chan", the opening number of the revue that will feature singers, dancers, musicians, ensemble and solo,  and often involve the audience. OK it's a little touristy but lighthearted and a ton of fun. Compay Segundo, one of the original members of the Buena Vista Social Club movie, performed Chan Chan in Paris in 1999! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q61JRKpWg-s

Buena Vista Social Club, aka Café Taberna, Havana, 9/30/15.  At the 1:29 mark the voluptuous singer walks into the audience and begins to dance with a surprised patron - and keeps right on singing! -much to the delight of the audience, while musicians and dancers perform on stage. Everybody gets involved in the show!

Buena Vista Social Club, aka Café Taberna, Havana, 9/30/15. Everybody gets involved!

Buena Vista Social Club, aka Café Taberna, Havana, 9/30/15. An 80-year-young singer shows that perhaps music is the fountain of youth! Music on this island is a language all its own and personifies the spirit of the people and the country.

Buena Vista Social Club, aka Café Taberna, Havana, 9/30/15. A feisty drag queen takes to the runway.

Buena Vista Social Club, aka Café Taberna, Havana, 9/30/15.  A vocalist performs a lovely ballad, accompanied by the troupe behind him on stage. The entertainers are giving us a big time Cuban revue, with an ever changing variety of singing, dancing, musicianship.

Buena Vista Social Club, aka Café Taberna, Havana, 9/30/15. This drummer has to be the crown, and perhaps clown,  prince of percussion in Havana...you'll see...

Buena Vista Social Club, aka Café Taberna, Havana, 9/30/15. I didn't manage to film the funniest part of his act but this drummer was a showman extraordinaire... a born showboat.

Buena Vista Social Club, aka Café Taberna, Havana, 9/30/15. "Is anyone here from Mexico?" the MC asks. Lots of fun ensues when a Mexican fellow steps up on the stage.

Buena Vista Social Club, aka Café Taberna, Havana, 9/30/15. The MC makes sure we all get into the act...and we love it.  In a few minutes, we'll all be on stage!

Videos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Cuba Chronicles: Buena Vista Social Club Reincarnated

Buena Vista Social Club: Incarnation at Café Taberna in Havana

September 30, 2015

The Buena Vista Social Club…everyone on the Road Scholar tour knew about an iconic collection of music made famous by the album produced by Ry Cooder. Produced on the fly in 1997, it hit the shores of America like a tsunami with the quintessential and definitive beat of pre-revolutionary Cuba.

For a few years, songs from the album got airplay on an amazing array of radio stations. If you weren’t aware of it by then, you got under its spell in 1999 with the release of the documentary film of the same name. For months, the lyrical, playful, nearly mystical arrangement of reeds, strings, piano and percussion dominated my inner airwaves. Check this out. http://www.buenavistasocialclub.com/video/

Most of the original artists have passed away but there is indeed a place called The Buena Vista Social Club in Havana. As our bus headed back to the Melia Cohiba Hotel after a full day of touring, our unflappable group leader Carole Cloonan reminded us it was our first night with no planned itinerary, that we were on our own.

From the back of the bus comes, “How about we go to the Buena Vista Social Club!”

What happened next is now legend amongst us. Cloonan pauses. Moments of silence as we rumble down the Malécon, the 100-year-old seawall to our right, and crumbling, still colorful, mostly abandoned residences on the other.

“Well…it’s not included in the tour…but I suppose we could consider it educational…” She pauses again. “If you can be in the lobby ready to go at 6:30, we’ll board the bus and go to the show.” The cheers that erupted made a busload of AARPers sound like a bunch of excited teenagers.

Thirty minutes after we returned from nine hours of touring, there we were ready to go.

The original Buena Vista Social Club was widely known for it’s music and closed in the 1940s. These days, the Café Taberna markets itself by that name, doing its best to trade on the aura of the original club. After I learned of this reincarnation, I couldn’t have cared less. We were treated to a full blown Cuban music club revue. If it got a little touristy, who cared. Certainly not the hundred or so spectators from South America and Europe (and one couple from India with a woman wearing a traditional sari) and us, the only Americans in the joint.

After climbing a set of stairs, we walk into a modest sized room with a stage runway that projects into the middle of the room and is surrounded by tables filled with diners who’ve paid 35 CUC (Cuban Convertible Peso, equivalent today of about 35 USD) for dinner, drinks and the floor show. I've dreamed about breathing the air and feeling the weight of Cuban history inside such a place for years. Just sitting down in the high backed wooden chair, taking in the sight of the ruby red curtains and anticipating the show, I barely hold back tears of joy. It's not the only time it happens in the next 7 days.

I have no idea who the performers were. I do know we were entertained in grand Cuban style. Musicians, dancers, singers, an MC with a flair for the dramatic, even a drag queen with a deep voice and saucy dance moves. A few minutes in, I was transported back to the aura of the original club and happy as hell.

In the coming years, Cubans will have the first chance in their history to create their own destiny from the grass roots to the head of the government. The spirit of the people seems bound to the rhythms and words of their music, a nearly sacred art form impervious to politics. Perhaps its spirit will help Cubans resolve to remain free of outside influence and chart their own future.

 
Dinner is served on the second floor of a surprisingly intimate space; the runway in the middle of the room will soon be filled with performers...

a singer steps off the end of the runway to dance with an unsuspecting, but delighted, patron; the energy level is high.

Solo singers often parade down the stage with a range of saucy songs and traditional ballads; at the end of the show, the ensemble asks the audience to step up to the stage - in minutes a conga line starts at the stage and snakes around the room.

 Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

VIDEOS

UPDATE: Video from 1997 with several members of the original Buena Vista Social Club movie, featuring Compay Segundo, an absolute JOY to watch!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIzUc9t7oS8

 

Cuba Chronicles: The Perlis of Post Castro Cuba

An ongoing chapter that will post links to stories deliberating the cultural consequences of the impact of tourism, especially American, on Cuban culture.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/columns/2016/11/26/fidel-castro-footprints/LLk3BHpDa4HW0pf9emzNTI/story.html

Why Fidel Castro mattered. The last paragraph is sums up 50 years of Cuban history. "Fidel Castro mattered for the world and for his people. For some, he was a demon; for others, a hero. He once compared himself to Don Quixote, righting wrongs, fighting against giants. Some of those giants, for him as for Don Quixote, were imaginary. Many of those efforts led to senseless death and cruelty. Many of those endeavors also stopped South African apartheid and sent health care personnel to serve without charge in Haiti. He mattered above all because it is difficult to render a single, simple assessment of his worth as a human being."

https://apps.bostonglobe.com/graphics/2015/07/cuba-on-the-cusp/

A MUST READ: "Cuba has spent more than five decades largely isolated from America, yet unable to escape its shadow. Cubans freely admit that the ideology and economic constraints of the past 50 years have left the socialist country with a fractured economy. At the same time, they’re fiercely proud of their gains in education and health care, and are determined to safeguard the soul of the country they love. This rare moment of transition, as diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States resume, provides an opportunity to see old and new Cuba, past and future, through the same lens."

https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2016/05/20/vin-diesel-chanel-spark-fast-and-furious-debate-cuba/HJKLYazNJW5LImaYgSALAO/story.html

Mixed emotions about who will benefit from increased tourism

http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=122290

"HAVANA TIMES — Fifty years after it was implemented to protect refugees who were escaping the Communist regime, the Cuban Adjustment Act (CAA) has been subject to serious questioning and its permanence could be on the table as a result of immigration restrictions that president-elect Donald Trump promised during his campaign." A detailed commentary.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/fidel-castro-apologists-is-your-position-principled_us_583de476e4b048862d73fbd0

"As the son of Cuban immigrants it is nearly impossible to avoid having a visceral reaction to all of the reports and articles being released in the wake of Fidel Castro’s death. Admittedly I have tried to avoid reading anything that would appear even remotely objective on the subject. Although I take pride in working hard to understand perspectives that differ from mine, it is simply impossible for me to accept that there can be anything but repulsion for a man that by all accounts ended the lives of thousands of his own citizens." A detailed denouncement of Fidel's reign.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/11/26/boston-area-cubans-remember-castro-with-mixed-and-complex-emotions/pKUDFjJbiDBdlOIBtouqyH/story.html

"A bottle of sparkling cider had waited for two decades at El Oriental de Cuba restaurant in Jamaica Plain for the day Fidel Castro would be no more. Saturday, the cork finally popped." Exiled Cubans rejoice.

http://translatingcuba.com/recipe-for-forgetting-fidel-castro-14ymedio-yoani-sanchez/

http://www.reuters.com/article/cuba-economy-idUSL2N17P0KJ

Analysis of evolving Cuban economy (April 2016) Excerpt below.

"The new food rules will make some items more accessible to more Cubans, reducing some prices at hard currency stores by around 20 percent, including for chicken products, hamburger meat and cooking oil. At peso stores, rice and chickpeas will become cheaper.

Local residents welcomed the measure but said it was not nearly enough."

"It is good they reduced prices a little, but this measure does not completely meet the needs of a large segment of the population,", said Migdalia Calderon, a retiree from the the education ministry with a pension of 280 pesos a month, equivalent to just under $12.00."

Government attempt to lower food prices.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2016/12/08/cuba-surge-tourism-keeps-food-off-residents-plates/GTMCgzKaMhPVPi3wpPAxtJ/story.html
Distressing fallout from increased tourism in past few months...excerpt

'But the record arrival of nearly 3.5 million visitors to Cuba last year has caused a surging demand for food, causing ripple effects that are upsetting the very promise of Fidel Castro’s Cuba.

Tourists are quite literally eating Cuba’s lunch. Thanks in part to the US embargo, but also to poor planning by the island’s government, goods that Cubans have long relied on are going to well-heeled tourists and the hundreds of private restaurants that cater to them, leading to soaring prices and empty shelves.

Without supplies to match the increased appetite, some foods have become so expensive that even basic staples are becoming unaffordable for regular Cubans.'

to be updated as stories emerge.

pt

Cuba Chronicles: The-Merger,Three Artists, An Artistic Brain Trust

The-Merger
Ave 31 # 6602 e/ 66 y 66a.
Playa. Ciudad Habana. Cuba
September 30, 2015

You probably have to travel all the way to Havana to find a gallery like this. Three artists actually put their individual egos on the back burner and put the production of fine art bubbling vigorously on the front burner. They began collaborating in 2009, found that the resulting work was pretty damn good by their standards and those of the discerning public and they stuck with the program.  

Sculpture is their main medium but they play with watercolor, acrylic on canvas, gouache, drawings, silkscreen, tapestry and photography before committing a piece to black steel, stainless steel, bronze, aluminum, fiberglass, translucent silicone,  glass, marble, and wood. That’s quite a vortex of creativity at this small studio at Avenue 31, also known as The Vedado.

The three musketeers in the collective are Alain Pino Hernandez, Mario Miguel González Fernández, and Niels Molerio Luis, all in their mid 40s. Hernandez graduated from the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana; Mario Fernandez and Niels Molerio are self-taught. Art is supported in Cuba. In 1959, printmaking became a subject in the art education system, becoming an independent specialty later. The legacy probably benefitted Fernandez and Molerio. Their sculptures are signed as “The-Merger” with their three names inscribed. The public knows who they are. Pretty amazing.

The Merger artists have permission to travel abroad, says our Cuban guide Yohandra “Jo” Perez. They have exhibited all over the world and are part of permanent collections in America. Their works in progress show a voracious appetite for subject matter, style, and materials to play with.

The arts are a big deal in Cuba. For example, men can now aspire to become members of the ballet. If a young child has a special aptitude for art, his/her parents can have the child apply for art school in elementary school. They are given an aptitude test and if they pass they may enter. In addition to learning art, they also learn math, science and other basic subjects but their focus is on art.

The same thing applies to other disciplines, our guide says – music for example. Students in the music program study the basics of music, along with the core subjects, in high school they study classical and jazz and learn to improvise. At the University of Havana they continue. The days are long and demanding and some students drop out. Students may be in an arts program from the age of six years old to 17 years old.

As in galleries the world over, interpreting the art is often a personal voyage but there’s no denying the beauty of the sculpture we see (only a portion of their output).

I realize later that the inspiration for their out-of-the-box creativity comes from every Cuban’s experience of having to make do with what they have. From scarcity, they have become resilient and resourceful. When something breaks, whether a car part or washing machine or bicycle, there are no hardware stores to buy replacements. They fabricate something that will do the job. And it works

As with the Casa de Abuelos and Muraleandro we will visit later in our tour, they often do it as a community.

The way these three artists create is a reflection of how Cubans live their lives. I suppose you could call it an elegant socio-political statement. 

The range of media shows the artists' resolve to stretch their artistic boundaries.

Work is carefully placed inside - and in the small courtyard outside.

 
Even jewelry is part of the work; gallery director Sandra Hav explains how work is done.

 
Stainless steel, bronze, aluminum, fiberglass, translucent silicone, glass, marble...these artists love to mix it up.

and the finished product, as in the tool above, reflects Cuban need to re-purpose and reinvent.

 
"Revolución": The stainless steel and quartz glass sculpture was the show stopper for me - an ingenious metaphor using a common tool  to show how the revolution cut two ways in Cuba, liberated them from one form of government and subjected them to another.

Black and white photos of Revolución in The-Merger catalogue.

Thank you, gallery director Sandra Hav!

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Cuba Chronicles: Lunch at Paladar Carbon with a side of history

Al Carbón, a paladar in Old Havana, and The Granma, the small yacht that helped launch a revolution
Road Scholars, “People and Society - Havana and the Countryside"
Thursday, October 1, 2015 Day 4 of tour

The death of Fidel Castro, November 26, 2016 at age 90, propels me to resume my Cuban Chronicles.  Two views about Castro that I think are fair based on my limited experience in Cuba - first and second. A video with this Reuters story compares the gap between two generations of Cubans.

Cuba's future is uncertain but the people we met appeared to be accustomed to a way of life in which self-reliance, resourcefulness, and government safety nets, including medical care, offered a level of constancy and predictability to daily life. First 8 posts about Cuba begin HERE.

Today's activities: Morning lecture in our hotel, the Meliá Cohiba, from music professor Alberto Faya, tour Plaza de la Catedral, tour El Taller Experimental de Gráfica de La Habana, tour Plaza de Armas, lunch at the paladar Al Carbón in Old Havana, tour Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, tour the "hot corner" in Havana's Parque Central, visit La Floridita, finish with a fabulous night at the Buena Vista Social Club.

pt at large reviews: Plaza de la Catedral, El Taller Experimenta de Gráfica de la Habana, Habana Parque Central.

After a 9 AM lecture and slide show detailing the history of Cuban music, a tour of the Plaza de la Catedral, the Taller Experimental de Gráfica de La Habana, and Plaza de Armas, the  cheerful band of Road Scholars enjoy lunch at the paladar Al Carbón in Old Havana. The original restaurant was an intimate little space in a dining room on the second floor of a home around the corner. Food at the old paladar was like food at a B&B but uniquely Cuban in taste and preparation.

Piece entitled “The prophecy’s triumph” by young and versatile artist Jesús Lara Sotelo. This work was unveiled on August 13, 2010 during the gala “For a truthful friend,” held at the Jose Marti Culture Society, main venue on the occasion of the Commander’s birthday.It hangs in the Museum of the Revolution across the street from the restaurant.

The restaurant today, says our cool Road Scholar group leader Carole Cloonan, is one of the finest upscale restaurants around, and still operated by the same family. The family's 29-year-old son has spent three years at the University of Havana learning how to become a chef. A handsome lad, he talks with pride about the food he’s been helping prepare since he was a kid in their home.

Paladars, illegal until 1993, were allowed when the government made economic reforms to ease the food shortages that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union beginning in 1990. Cuba suffered scarcity of food to a degree they’d never known. Cuba’s oil for sugar trade with the USSR dissolved like so much sugar in hot Cuban coffee. Fidel Castro called it Cuba’s Special Period.

The country lost approximately 80% of its imports, 80% of its exports. Food and medicine imports stopped or severely slowed. Perhaps most immediately impactful, however, was the loss of nearly all of the oil imports sent by the USSR; Cuba's oil imports dropped to 10% of pre-1990 amounts.

Transportation, industrial and agricultural systems, anything that relied on oil and supported food production, collapsed. Persistent hunger, food rationing, and malnutrition, became facts of life. The young woman who would give us a tour of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes after lunch would tell us stories of stressful hardship she witnessed as a child.

To have endured those years of scarcity and, rather than revolt, endure with resolve and ingenuity, gives an idea of how the Cuban people may make their way through the post-Castro era.

An excerpt from Cuba's Special Period "Cuba: Between Reform & Revolution" by Louis A. Pérez, Jr.

All through the early 1990s Cuba faced unprecedented difficulties. Commercial relations with the former socialist bloc had all but ceased. Cubans found themselves increasingly isolated and beleaguered, faced with dwindling aid, decreasing foreign exchange reserves and diminishing resources, confronting the necessity to ration scarce goods and reduce declining services. Most of all it became increasingly difficult to go about normally in one's daily life, where so much of one's time and energy were expended in what otherwise and elsewhere were routine household errands and ordinary family chores, where days were frequently filled with unrelieved hardship and adversity in the pursuit of even the most minimum needs of everyday life, day after day: hours on line at the local grocery store, hours waiting for public transportation, hours without electrical power. Vast amounts of ingenuity were applied simply to meet ordinary and commonplace needs-to resolver and inventar became the operative verbs of a people seeking ways to make do and get by.

A country that survives this near decade of intense economic hardship has to be a tribute to the character of its people and the steadfastness of their leader Fidel Castro.

As usual, we start lunch with mojitos and dig in to the specials of the day (I have no notes about the food but remember leaving with my taste buds smiling).

As we approached Al Carbón, our fabulous Cuban guide Yohandra “Jo” Perez, pointed out the Granma, the boat that took Fidel and his revolutionaries from Mexico to Cuba in 1956, in a small park next to the Museum of the Revolution across the street.

Between courses, I zip across the street. Gates surround the park. It takes a few minutes to figure out that the only way to enter is through the doors of The Museum of the Revolution around the corner (which is where I take a photo of the portrait of Fidel Castro).

I check out the exhibits and scoot back in time for dessert. It feels like I’ve visited a holy shrine.  Every country has places like this in which the narrative of history, culture, and national identity intersect. Compared to America's historic sites of that mark our fight for independence, this one is quite modest but makes its point with artifacts from its own revolution and its tenacity to hold onto it during the American attempt to overthrow it at the Bay of Pigs.

Old Havana neighborhood; entrance to Al Carbón - photo R door across from blue sedan. Like Americans, Cubans watch a ton of TV. A favorite in the 1990s was a Brazilian soap opera in which the heroine operated a chain of restaurants named Paladar (Spanish for plate). Cuban popular culture used the word to describe the new restaurants that opened. There are scores of such restaurants in Havana today.

Al Carbón, a well-known paladar in Old Havana. The Road Scholars enjoy lunch; the owner's son explains the menu.

The Museum of the Revolution and the Granma Park is across the street from the Al Carbón paladar.

 
The Granma in its final berth in an airtight enclosure. In Mexico in 1956, Fidel and Raul Castro, Ernesto "Che" Guevarra and Camilo Cienfuegos, all leaders of the revolution, loaded the Granma, whose maximum capacity was 25, with 82 men and supplies, endured engine problems and high seas and miraculously reached the Cuban shore near Santiago 1500 miles away. After two years of insurgencies, Castro overthrew Fulgencio Batista in Havana.

Relics from the thwarted and disastrous American Bay of Pigs attack in 1961: a Soviet tank that fired on the mercenaries ships; remains of a B-26 US bomber shot down in 1961; a launch used to carry mercenaries from the mother ship to the shore of the Bay of Pigs. The Museum of the Revolution (photo at R) was formerly the Presidential Palace for Cuban presidents up to and including Fulgencio Batista.

    
It is amazing that this small island nation could retain its sovereignty by remaining out of the  immense political gravitational pull of the United States and the USSR for over fifty years. Raul Castro steps down from office in 2018; elections follow. Cuba's future will be decided by Cubans. How will the island's rejection of foreign interests fare? The world awaits the answer.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Fantasy Fest 2016: Masquerade March Daylight till Dusk

Fantasy Fest  Friday October 21 - Sunday October 30, 2016
Key West, FL aka “The Conch Republic”
Thursday, October 27, 2016
Masquerade March Daylight till Dusk And Then Some

For an event that begins at the Key West cemetery on Frances Street, the Masquerade March is as lively a march as you'll ever see. It takes its sweet time winding through Old Town at 5 PM. By the time dusk descends at about 7 PM, thousands of locals and out of towners will sashay, prance, amble and preen their way to Duval Street. Food and merchandise vendors line the street (closed all day to traffic). Every café and restaurant is jammed.

Masquerade March has to be the most glorious off-beat, costumed and flesh flashing promenade known north of the equator.

This year's theme is “Political Voodoo & Ballot Box Barbarians" but, as usual, marchers by the thousands are in no way shape or form bound to adhere to such limitations when it comes to masking.

As you see...

posing for photo opps...

Republican Party, Democratic Party? Not at Fantasy Fest...how about Cocktail Party...

celebrating from above or below...

with self-described "Friar F_ck and Nun Tonight" and others...red white and blue, or,what the heck, just red...

from perambulators to gladiators ...

marching leisurely through residential streets...

wearing smiles and costumes all the way down Fleming Street...
 

passing bemused residents and spectators...

 
exuberantly, creatively...

from Star Trek to hanging Chads to trailer trash...

tens of thousands of photos are taken as thousands of marchers take two routes from the cemetery to Duval Street...

and a huge chunk of the city's 25,000 residents and thousands of others appear to be marching or spectating...

and, being in Key West, no one is in any particular hurry...

 
marching from the Key West Cemetery...



all the way to Duval Street until dusk at 7PM...and then marinates there for several hours...

where not everyone agrees with the spirit of the festival, but when the year's theme is "Political Voodoo and Ballot Box Barbarians" and you're decked out in red white and blue, you're merely expressing your rights in the Conch Republic.

And the fun keeps rolling...

 
 

until the body paint, or the celebrants, begin to fade.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

 

Fantasy Fest 2016: Sidewalks Open for Fantasy Zone, Oh Boy....

Fantasy Fest 2016
Key West, FL aka “The Conch Republic”
Thursday night, October 27, 2016
Fantasy Zone opens up on Duval Street sidewalks

Here you have it. The free-wheeling, extroverted, playful, expressive, indulgent, non-judgemental extremes (it it's possible to use that word when discussing Key West) during Fantasy Fest: two bodacious body paint artists and a pair of middle-aged middle Americans (posing with your intrepid reporter), all having a ton of fun and equally fabulous in their quasi birthday suits. 

May as well add Body Image Sanctuary to the term "Conch Republic." Smiles, not hours spent in the gym, are the only requisites in the street. The acres of bare flesh and hundreds of wildly colorful costumes and the acceptant bemusement of the clothed spectators, sprinkle the town with Peter Pan's light-hearted pixie dust that the outside world, with all its political and social toxicity, cannot penetrate.

Got to love the comparison...in Key West, where some things just don't matter as much as they do everywhere else.

Laughter, not leering, is what's going on here. The sex we're accustomed to in film and certainly on the internet, ain't going on here. What is here is people having a whale of a time, given permission to play in a way not possible anywhere else in the continental United States of America. Sustained levity reigns supreme.

Everyone's having fun...

 

since Fantasy Fest is a natural mood enhancer...

fore and aft...

where Johnsons and Elvis live on...

and themes of 'Political Voodoo and Ballot Box Barbarians' live side by side with togas, Indian princesses and  whatever other costumes celebrants can dream up...

 

and every year some guy comes up with a supreme idea to have fun...

"OK, Ladies, climb up on the bar!" the DJ at The Lazy Gecko shouts...presto, there they go...

 
and outside everyone's taking in the spectacle or photographing it...

and smiling or making a politician the butt of a joke...

and SuperWomen and Super Body Paint artists roam the street...

in paint or tux and feathers...

where high flying roller skaters command attention from aliens..

and others thinking what the hell, or Hail Caesar...

jello and vodka shots, yummmm, protesters and preeners...

and Duval Street, liberated from customary norms and conventions, blooms heartily in the spirit of Fantasy Fest.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Fantasy Fest 2016: The Annual 10 Day "Party in Paradise for Adults"

Dear Readers,
Way back in 1978, an intrepid member of the Tourist Development Association in Key West had an idea as he walked Duval Street on Halloween Day.

The weather was gorgeous, the sky blue, but the town’s hotels but restaurants were in a moribund “off season’ mode. Key West has always been known for its laid back vibe.

Why not throw a carnival or some kind of festival that will draw fun-loving people like a magnet and energize every business in town. 1979 - Key West advertised its first masking and costuming celebration, called it Fantasy Fest, and made sure it lived up to its name and fit right in with the little islands slightly off kilter and eccentric sensibilities.

People came in droves. As of 2016, it draws tens of thousands of revelers and is the biggest week in Key West’s season.  Everybody wins.

Note: costumes may be outrageously funny and outrageously skimpy. There are rules that govern the event, everyone follows them. The sense of fun, naughty and/or wacky, is pervasive. CNN and Fox News takes a back seat while you’re in Fantasy Fest’s orbit. It’s the most sustained period of light-hearted, all ages revelry I’ve ever experienced.

Fantasy Fest 2016
Key West, FL aka “The Conch Republic”
Thursday, October 27, 2016

“On Friday, October 28 and Saturday, October 29, 2016, portions of Duval Street and adjoining side streets will be designated as a Fantasy Zone.”  And that, dear readers, is where Key West becomes an alternate universe.

Fantasy Fest in Key West is a Disneyland for fun-loving people with an exhibitionist streak. And boy oh boy do they ever take advantage of it. And so do visitors who want to witness the fun and walk among the celebrants.

The organizers of Fantasy Fest call the annual 10 day party in Paradise for adults  “Florida's premier masking and costuming celebration.” If understatement is possible here in the southernmost point in the continental  USA, this qualifies.

Every year’s fest has a theme. This year’s is “Political Voodoo & Ballot Box Barbarians.” After walking down Duval Street, it’s clear that some have been planning their appearance since the theme was announced.  Elaborate, creative costumes are show-stoppers.

Then there’s body painting. If you’ve never seen a woman decked out in body paint and a tiny something-or-other covering her lower bits, you’ll be forgiven for doing a double take. It’s sort of counter intuitive but the atmosphere is as far from walking around an R-rated movie as "Toy Story" is from "Keeping Up With The Kardashians." You won’t confuse this with college vacation week in Fort Lauderdale. Everybody behaves.

Maybe it’s the tropical weather, or the turquoise waters surrounding the small island, or the fact that this is the home of “Margaritaville” and a former playground for Ernest Hemingway, but the vibe envelopes you with a wink as soon as you walk off the plane and see the sign “Welcome to the Conch Republic” painted across the roof of the tiny Key West airport terminal.

Since its founding in 1978, there’s a clearly stated Code of Conduct for Fantasy Fest. Total nudity is illegal, men have to cover their privates. Painted female breasts are allowed. A tide of liberated breasts of every imaginable shape and size with painted with exotic designs is on display in the Fantasy Zone.

Every time I see a group of people who’ve congregated on Duval Street (which is closed to traffic Friday and Saturday), I know there’s a man, woman, couple, or group with spectacular costumes or lack thereof posing for photos in the middle of it. Spectators, clothed or costumed, hand their cameras or phones to friends or total strangers so they can pose with the glamorati. If pixels could be translated into miles, Fantasy Fest would easily reach Pluto.

If everyone else in America thought like these revelers, glamour magazines would go out of business. For every lean and toned participant whose body fat numbers are minuscule, there are a dozen who haven’t seen the inside of a gym in years…or ever.  Nobody gives a damn. This is as egalitarian a celebration of body image as exists on earth.

Six-pack abs and buff smooth butts are seriously outnumbered by people whose bodies might remind you of ones belonging to your mailman or local librarian. Aside from a beach in the south of France where people are comfortable in their own skins, there’s no place like this on earth. If I were a psychiatrist who had a patient with a body issue, I’d write them a two-day prescription to Fantasy Fest.

College kids and people who are their grandparents’ age mingle with ease. The Conch Republic is a pretty laid back place to begin with. If you’re here this week, you’re in an alternate universe that pretty much puts up a deflector shield worthy of an Imperial class Star Destroyer to ward off lewd behavior and allow frolicking.

The Masquerade March from the Key West cemetery to Duval Street tomorrow afternoon will draw thousands of marchers. What ensues will be the wildest collection of wacky, skimpy to elaborate costumes worn by individuals, couples, and groups. I will be in the midst of it… as spirited a party in motion as you’ll find north of the equator.

Thursday: Duval Street is open to vehicular traffic. The sidewalk?  Free range costumerie and fantasy.

Let the people watching begin... dinner at Caroline's on Duval Street at a street side table...celebrants are more than happy to smile for the camera...

 

 

the fun has barely begun...the woman in pink is a breast cancer survivor...

 

and early evening strolling is beginning to roll...

no costume, no problem, remove shirt, apply pasties; rain forecast, no problem, don transparent slicker...
  

and everyone is more than happy to pose for the camera.

Have you ever seen happier near-naked people?
 

Spectators and participants side by side... The Conch Republic and The Rest of the World!

Coming next - a post dinner Thursday night walkabout, then...The Masquerade March on Friday.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Louisiana Flood of 2016: Historic, Unprecedented, Catastrophic

August 29, 2016

The Flood of 2016 (photo of Lafayette, LA, from the air August 20, 2016)

I returned last night after a week volunteering with Our Savior's Church, a non-denominational church in Lafayette, LA, gutting houses damaged by what is now called The Flood of 2016. Areas of some parishes (counties) are still under water.

Chances are you don’t know much about this under-reported disaster.

What happened?

• From August 11 to August 13 a massive weather system dropped the equivalent of 7.1trillion gallons of water over Louisiana from Baton Rouge to Lafayette.
• Over 146,000 homes were damaged or ruined.
• At least 30,000 people were rescued from cars and homes by local law enforcement and volunteers (informally known as the Cajun Navy) manning boats over the flooded areas.
• More than 11,000 were forced into state-operated shelters.
• In one of the 20 parishes (counties) affected, it is estimated that 75% of homes were “a total loss”.
• Thirteen died in the flooding.
• 1,400 pets have since been rescued from the deluge
• Because many of the areas that flooded were not in "high flood risk areas", the majority of homeowners affected by the flood did not have flood insurance.
• As of August 19, losses were estimated at $20.7 billion

Virtually every aspect of life in 20 parishes has been affected: agriculture, schools, police and fire departments, commerce and businesses, roads and highways, public transit, hospitals, government offices and services. Thousands are hurting, displaced, have no place to live, and still in shock.

Why did I go?   

Lafayette is one of the most unique cultural areas I've experienced. I love to dance. The music is exceptionally diverse and exceptionally well-played by musicians who, for the most part, were born and raised here. The grub is a foodie's dream. For a dancer, Lafayette and surrounding cities and towns are paradise.

But what sets it apart from anywhere else I've ever visited is the people who live here. They are friendly, outgoing, proud of their heritage, and over the eight years I've visited, have made a Yankee like me feel welcome, introduced me to their friends, and invited me to their barbecues. That's just the way they are.

They may not share the same politics with each other or me, but when someone needs help, they show up.

I wanted to give something back to this special place and these special people that have given me so much.

As I worked with crews from Our Savior Church, I saw the faces of men and women whose material lives are now on the roadside in front of their homes in a mountainous pile of debris dragged outside their gutted homes.

Time is of the essence. Mold is the enemy. When moisture remains inside a home, mold begins growing within 24-48 hours. When our crew chiefs detected water/moisture in or behind sheet rock, insulation, ceiling and floor moldings, floor coverings, wall coverings, furniture, kitchen cabinets and counters, and bathroom vanities, we tore them out.

The week I worked was the last one in which we could enter with only an N-95 approved face-mask that filters out mold spores. The home we gutted on Thursday and Friday August 25, 26 had visible mold growing inside. Our crew chief said homes that had not been gutted and aired out would be overcome by mold and have to be quarantined. Work done after that needs to be done by people wearing Hazmat suits and respirators.

As for me, considering I found a link to Our Savior's Church in Lafayette after searching for hours online, and that it offered me a perfect opportunity to volunteer with them,  it’s probably not an exaggeration to say there were a few small miracles involved. This church was one of the best organized, well-led organizations leading the charge to support an entire parish in crisis. I’ll get to that in the next post.

 Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Satchmo Summerfest: Jackson Square, August 5, 2016

Getting ready for this year's Satchmo Summerfest with posts from the archives, written but for some reason, never posted!

Satchmo Summerfest: Jackson Square, August 5, 2016

With the reconstruction going on at the former U.S. Mint, home of the previous Satchmo Summerfest, the French Quarter Festivals Inc. had to get creative and fit the whole shebang into Jackson Square.

16th Annual Satchmo Summerfest, August 5-7. 2016

12 PM Friday, August 5, 2016
Red Beans and Rice Stage, the Preservation Hall Brass Band.
This is the most widely known and popular traditional jazz band in New Orleans. As with brass bands, the rumble of the bass drum and the oomph of the tuba laid a foundation for the harmony of the trombone, trumpet, clarinet, banjo, and saxophone.

The 2016 Satchmo Summerfest has officially begun. Along with their own catalog, every band today will play songs made popular by Louis Armstrong. The last song of the Preservation Hall Brass Band is a salute to the legacy of Louis Armstrong with the unique flavor, often imitated but never quite matched - quite the same way as it is played in the bars, parks, and dance halls from Frenchmen Street to out-of-the-way places all over town.

1 PM Chop Suey Stage: Miss Sophie Lee, popular singer at The Spotted Cat on Frenchmen Street accompanied by piano, guitar, piano and bass serves up a wonderfully tapas of traditional songs.

"That's When The Heartache Begins," slow tempo; "Blue Skies," up-tempo, with a great guitar solo, remind me that the guitar and banjo have status in traditional New Orleans music. The whole set features the usual tight New Orleans arrangement.

"Why Must You Be Mean to Me," slow swing with a gentle sexy roll to it. Sophie introduces the band. During the entire day I cannot write fast enough to remember the names and instruments of musicians.

"I Will Love You" followed by "I'm Just Found" followed by an upbeat "A-Tisket A-Tasket". By the time she gets to an upbeat "When You're Smiling,” we are all smiling and sweating and feeling the Louis Armstrong vibe.

Next, an upbeat "It Don't Mean a Thing.” No drum set on the stage, the standup bass, deep and resonant, sustains the beat. The sound system for this act and all similar bands is just the right volume, no need for your plugs and the standup bass and guitar do a great job of pulsing the beat.

A taped announcement by trumpeter Leroy Jones acknowledges a long list of sponsors, takes two minutes to read. The weekend is supported by organizations of all stripes all over town.

About 26,000 attended from Friday afternoon until Sunday afternoon.
http://www.nola.com/festivals/index.ssf/2016/08/satchmo_summerfest_2016_attend.html

1:45 PM Red Beans and Rice Stage, Dirty Dozen Brass Band.

When you get near New Orleans brass bands you don't just hear them, you feel them right down to the marrow in your bones. I could feel The Dirty Dozen Brass Band all the way across Jackson Square as I entered the park. Trumpets are king down here but those big ass bass and snare drums and tubas are alpha instruments. Trumpets feed off them. Brass bands down here don't feel they're doing their job unless they see you dancing.

"Get up, you're in New Orleans!" The leader says to the crowd, many of whom are sitting on the grass or in camp chairs, as he peers from the stage. It's 90°F and the humidity is so high that when you walk if feels like you're wading through a bathtub. No matter, this guy wants us to get up and shake our booties. All of a sudden, we are in a call and response mode and for all the world we could be testifying at a Sunday morning church service.

"Say Satchmo," he shouts over the ratatatat of the drums and peals of trumpets. "This is New Orleans! We make music in the hot! We make food in the hot! We make you know what in the hot!" Not long after that the music inexplicably stops – there's a call for a doctor, a musician has collapsed.

After a brief pause, the leader says, “Kurt has been with us since he was 16, it's 100° out there, make sure you all drink water.” Kurt was dehydrated, we are urged to keep ourselves hydrated.

2:45 PM Chop Suey Stage, The Tornado Brass Band

“The Rebirth Brass Band can blow the shingles off of a house, “ says the leader with chuckle. "We call this the quiet band," he says as a way of introduction.

Their songs included smooth versions of “Wonderful World,” “You Are My Sunshine.”\

When it comes to "When the Saints Go Marching In" this band is not so quiet. The repartee between the band members between numbers is hilarious, sometimes even during the songs. This kind of banter is one of the endearing things about music in this town, at least between traditional bands like the Tornados.

3 PM Bill Summers and the Jazz Salsa Band, Red Beans and Ricely Yours Stage

An Afro-Caribbean Latin funk band switches genres with great elan. They finish with "Caravan" and Carlos Santana’s "Jingoloba." The African call and response chants incorporated into the music gave the performance a resonance that must have been familiar to many in the audience.

4:45 PM The Shotgun Jazz Band at the Chop Suey Stage. OOPS NO PHOTOS!

If Odetta sang this kind of music she might sound like band leader Marla Dixon. In a city with hundreds of female singers, Dixon has a style all her own. Dixon on trumpet is accompanied by trombone, clarinet, banjo, bass. “Breathe,” easy swing tempo; "I'll Take You Home Cathleen" an old Irish reel that has been around a long time and this kind of genre jumping is one of the reasons Dixon is in a league of her own.

“How about some blues?” Dixon asks rhetorically, “I think it was by Tampa Red,” and indeed it was - along comes "When Things Go Wrong It Hurts Me Too" recorded in 1940. Old time lyrics, it swings low and hard and Dixon’s got the lip to torch these songs into embers. If this did not get your hips moving you might be dead. I can probably say that for most of the music I heard today. There is no linear set list, Dixon glances down at a list then takes a stab.

Along comes ‘In the Gloaming” Stand up bass player Tyler Thompson sings "My Old Kentucky Home." “We might be running a little late, I think it will be OK, they probably already cut the check."

Next, an awesome sax solo (I wish I could remember the song), the bass player and the banjo player hold the baseline and underpin the beat. Next, "Shake It and Break It," the original version, Dixon says. She directs, solos, and signals the end with a wave of her hand. Next, "Whenever You're Lonesome, Telephone Me." With that, she concludes by thanking Louis Armstrong, the sponsors, and us in the audience. She’s the bomb.

5:30 PM The Soul Rebels, Red Beans and Ricely Yours Stage

 

Cross a New Orleans traditional brass band with a side of funk and you get the Soul Rebels. By now we’re bathing in a blanket of humidity at about the same temperature as our own bodies. All day long people have found respite in the shade - one of the positive assets so Jackson Square is that there are plenty of trees under which to get it. Complaining about the heat would be downright un-New Orleanian...that's only for tourists

Spectators fan themselves the old fashioned way As they stand around the stage or sit in the ubiquitous camp chairs or spread out on blankets all over the park. My hands are so wet with perspiration that ink is smeared all over my notebook.

Can you imagine this?  A brass band like The Soul Rebels can sing a song like "sweet dreams are made of this" and that by the end of the song, the bandleader as us all singing along. It is beyond me how the band can switch gears and tempo and play as tight as they do – brass, reeds, percussion. The bandleader flashes his hand with different number of fingers, sort of like a quarterback, and a band sees what he wants and who is going to solo and when the song is going to end. Musicians have a language all their own, including sign language.

6:45 PM Chop Suey Stage, The Original Tuxedo Jazz Band


Talk about making a homage to Louis, "Muskrat Ramble," "is a peach of a rendition.

Who are these guys? Here comes "Down the Mississippi to New Orleans" in four-time?

Yolanda Winter begins to solo, totally awesome. She introduces "Shine," the lyrics are important, the bandleader said it was one of Louis' favorite songs. Louis was ahead of his time with this not so subtle song about his skin color, one that he certainly felt and certainly lived.

This band is having fun, they joke around when they mess up an introduction, The leader says "We haven't worked together for a week. It's a good thing you can't hear what we're saying appear off mic!”
Bandleader says they're going to play a Louis Armstrong classic but with a different groove and play "What a Wonderful World" with a Rumba beat…really fetching.

“The next song is one of my favorites, my grandfather wrote it,” says the leader and here comes "Why Don't You Go down to New Orleans" upbeat almost with a waltz beat.

Wonders never cease around here.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Summer in New Orleans: Flash Floods, Thunder and Lightning

Thursday August 4, 2016
Inside Deja Vu Bar and Grill at the corner of Dauphine and Conti when all hell breaks loose from on high.

3 PM Fabulous mid-afternoon breakfast at Deja Vu Bar and Grill just finishing when a crack of serious thunder shook the place...sounded like a ton of ice cubes heaved into a humongous empty oil drum. I was the only one that flinched. The regulars at the bar kept on their chatter as the sky blackened and rain fell in torrents. Zigzaggy bolts of lightning followed by foundation-shuddering thunder commenced like a furious parade from on high. 

Within 45 minutes the street flooded then drained as the storm spent itself. People on the street scrambled for cover or ducked under storefront entryways to keep from getting soaked, which would have happened in five seconds flat. My cell phone buzzed with an ominous weather alert, later I learned a tornado funnel was sighted over the city. This is normal New Orleans summer weather these days.

Lightning, thunder, then rain cascades in sheets.

Traffic comes to a standstill...

 
as streets flood.

  
After thirty minutes of steady downpours, the rain abates to enough for pedestrians to make a break for it.

These two New Orleanians saw me taking photos from the window in Deja Vu where I just finished eating. Their response is pure New Orleans.

Funnel cloud over New Orleans...page 1 Metro section of The New Orleans Advocate, August 4, 2016.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.