AMH 1041: Images for Exam #1

AMH 1041 - Tuesday/Thursday 1:05 class*
You will have 3 Big Questions that have an image and 4 ID terms that you'll need to connect.
Images will come directly from the ones posted here, so use these to study and practice.
It'll be fun ;-)

AMH2020 MWF class -- Exam #1 Images

5 Days in Cuba: Thursday Part 4: Che Guevara and Songs of Pain

 In any other city we would have steered clear of an orange-haired stranger wearing red fishnet stockings on the corner in the middle of the day.

Today, here in Cuba, we are rolling with whatever happens. Since the universe sent this nice lady directly into our path holding a menu and asking us to lunch JUST as get hungry and thirsty, we say yes and follow her down a steep tourist-lined street and through a small doorway into a tiny restaurant. 7 tables of varying shapes are turned and tucked and twisted into approximately 1000, square feet.

A man with a blondeish ponytail sings to a table, surrounded by vivid art of pink horses and topless blue women.  I like it immediately, and we allow the woman with the crazy pantyhose to seat us at a small two-top table just outside the kitchen door.

Next to us was a long table of English speaking tourists.  Mom tells me to sit facing the door so I can see more of what is going on. This is perfect, I have the back seat corner, the best view for a writer.

Before I can look at my menu, before I can even absorb everything, I listen to the tourists at the table next to me speak loudly and freely, maybe thinking English was a secret language here, tantamount to Harry Potter's invisibility cloak.

 A man talks about how heavy he feels, and how much he's lost over the last few years just from walking.  A lady shares a story about taking Alli and instead of losing weight she just pooped on herself. Mom and I keep a straight face. She reads the menu while I type into my iphone a memo "Lunch. Americans talking about Alli.  Poop." confident those  cues will help me remember the story for you.

The owner, a man in a pink shirt and plaid pants who speaks perfect English with only a mojito-sized mouthful of a Spanish accent visits with the table next to us.

They ask him questions about Cuba and Cienfuegos and Cuban History and he doesn't really know the answers and tells them so, but the room is so small his butt is practically on my shoulder and it's taking every bit of restraint to not just answer the questions.   This must be what it feels like to be undercover.

Mom listens too. A thin lady asks about race relations and segregation on the island and intermarriage on the island. The man in the plaid pants says that there's a good piece on race in Cuba and it was just on TV.

He pauses.  It was just on PBS, just last week.

I can't take it. I could move my elbow and bank him in his back and answer this quickly.  It's Africans in the Americas, I know this series, the new one, t is delicious.

He bangs his hand on his forehead, asks the cieling in English, "What is that series on... race..... on PBS.....:

I can't take it now, for real. I tug a the bottom of his plaid shorts, which rest just above my table.

Excuse me? Africans in the Americas.

His face lights up. YES! THANK YOU! You all should definitely check that out.

Someone at the table coughed and after that they talked in mumbles with each other, split their check and turned sideways to slip out of the restaurant.

Mom and I decided on the paella, testing our luck. It came with a salad, which we knew Mom would eat.   I ordered tostones "for research purposes" and to take this picture. Oh wait, this is the paella. The tostones went quickly. My bad.

As Mom and I ate, we listened to the man with the ponytail sing, and as soon as I recognized it was a song about Che Guevara I got an awful knot in my stomach.  I felt the sting of every exile who left this island every time Che's name came up, and I knew not to enjoy this song.

 But I had to document that it happened, that I live in a long imagined future where Cuba is open enough that I have visited a Cathedral, museum and private restaurant in communist Cuba.

The songs I've heard about Che are long and wailing. They are sad songs of lost heroes, like what the Irish brought to the US with them during the potato famine. This is Richie Perez and the guy in the plaid pants singing.





The restaurant clears and the singer comes closer to our table.

He asks if we would like a particular song and she asks if he knows this Cienfuegos song. His eyes light up. He does know it. It's a city song about itself, not quiet as delightful as what Jose Marti wrote about Guantanameras, something like the fight song.

Here you go.


The tostones were ridiculously wonderful, for the record.  They were on the thin side and extra crisp.  All and all delightful.

 The paella tasted of curry and seemed to have no identifiable seafood or pork. It was  basically dry yellow rice.  We didn't say anything and saved room in our stomachs for the other paella, later.

Richie the singer talks to my Mom for a couple of minutes, about things they remember and places and buildings. He is a Scorpio, and every piece of his jewelry means something.  The more he talks the more I see him as an artist stuck like Gilligan on an island.  He offers a CD for $5 and I think Mom pays him $20.

After that, we get up and turn ourselves sideways and slip out of the restaurant to the crowded street. It looks like schools have gotten out; a girl in a blue jumper goes this way while a pack of boys in brown pants sticks together closely, walking in perfect synch with the story that one of them seemed to be telling.

A few steps up that street and Mom took me down street lined with Victorian storefronts.

  We go in grocery stores, tiny ones that make Circle K look posh.  There is nothing To Go, no drink machines, no fast food counters.  One store has toilet paper under glass lockdown in display cases. Most of the stores  we tiptoed through had  plastic goods that look straight out of the dollar store -- bright colanders and stacks of pastel cups and pink baby toys.

I saw this and couldn't help taking a picture for you and yes the Cubans shopping in the tinyunairconditioned store did give me weird looks for taking this picture. Here you go.

 I saw a stack of sandals for $5 each and a corner of store that had shoes almost-as-cute-as-Jessica-Simpson-pumps.  They were $22.  This makes me let go of the idea that Cubans have no stores, no fashion. They have some.  I a few cute shoes but they barely compared to store after store filled with rows of mu-mus in flowered prints, and stacks of dark blue work pants.  In one of the stores I see rum for $10 and 2 liters of cola for $25.  Communism has not lead to price controls. Remind me to write a book about that.

After the stores we find ourselves on a crossroad with the Prado, the street that TiaLourdes lives on.  We walk about a block down the middle of the statue, tree and bench lined street.

A statue calls me, it is dedicated to a singer who was born in colonial Cienfuegos and sang songs of great pain. Her fashion statement is atrocious but I like her soul so I took this for you.

Do me a favor. Pretend you can't look behind her and don't see a pizzeria in communist Cuba.

We are across the street from TiaLourdes house; we could go there and say Hi and maybe stop by the bathroom. Like I told you, I don't want to share my Mom, and who knows what would happen once we cross that threshold.

I remember there's a coffee shop next to Teatro Terry, on the other side of the Cathedral.  Mom thinks that would be a nice place to go for a few minutes and on our way there we pass by the side of the hotel.  It is after 3pm, and Mom is worried people have been trying to reach us. 

Duh, of course people have been trying to reach us, I know not to say this, but the moments the two of us can be completely anonymous and just together are precious. I'm sure that if she checks in there will be messages and if there are messages there will be responses needed and I'm usually OK with that but today and just today I want my Mom all to myself.

Mom peeks into the our hotel from a wrought iron side window. We should go in she says. Again I tell her there is someone waiting, in a pink shirt, with a purse on her lap. 

Mom looks again and proclaims the lobby is empty.  

Fine, fine, we will go to the hotel and freshen up and figure out what to do from there.

As soon as we enter the hotel, I see I'm right. She's there, pink shirt, purse on her lap, posed at the first chair, wondering where we have been all day.  

I take a picture to prove I'm right and then slip off myself upstairs, so they can talk.

Which starts the next part of the whole adventure. 

5 Days in Cuba: Thursday Part 3: The Part Before it gets Awesome

One of the hardest parts as a storyteller is to forget where the story is going, forget that I know what the rest of the trip holds, and go back and be present in the small things that unfold in early Thursday.

After we finish taking pictures in front of the statue of my favorite Cuban-American, Jose Marti, I follow my Mom across the street. A large sign reminding Cubans of the 5 Cuban "spies" that have been held in the US glares at us.  Mom tells me she  heard one of them is free, that he lives in Hialeah and is happy. I believe her. 

The problem with the picture I took standing outside the Teatro Terry is that I cut off the rest of the tour buses that line the street. On this particular day, Thursday, I know that a tour from my college campus is somewhere in Cienfuegos doing something. This time with my Mom is too precious to share so I didn't share my itinerary or ask where the group might be. In my head, they could pop up around any corner. 

The first building we go by is the school of arts where my Abuela attended. This isn't a public place for tourists so we just walk by and smile, knowing we are walking in her steps, reminding ourselves of Abuela's happiest most carefree days.

Then we try to enter Teatro Terry, a building named after it's benefactor who also gave money to several other municipal enterprises and resources including an asylum for the aged. Those things have been taken over by the state since the  Revolution that hit Cienfuegos in 1957.  Post-revolutionary Cuba sees no citizens with the resources to be community benefactors, I understand that, and love learning about those who chose earlier to give their money to make this city great.

Many years ago my Abuela danced at this theatre. I think Abuelo was in New Orleans at the time, studying English at Holy Cross High School, literally 100 yards from where my father -- a stranger to him -- would grow up and later attend the same school. Cienfuegos and New Orleans are twisted together like that, like my DNA.

Once we enter the building I am enthralled.  

The lobby is lined with flyers from the heyday in the 1920s and 1930s.

 Mom and I take pictures by the ones we've heard Abuelo mention, and giggle at the pack of tourists who are looking around and asking each other quite loudly where they are and why this place is important.  

A very very skinny college-age-looking girl in skimpy shorts pouts to her boyfriend (husband?) that she's bored and he tells her they can go back to the bus after he takes  a few pictures. 

They're in a different Cuba than we are. 

Mom and I take pictures by the stage where we are sure Abuela performed. 

After that we get  into the chairs and take pictures.  

The bottom of each chair is marked with a sticker from a United Nations fund to protect the arts and history.

 For once I hope this is my tax dollars at work. 

The ceiling still has original painted late 19th century art.

I can't help but wonder how the social and racial segregation of this town played itself out in pre-Revolutionary society.

There is a big entrance to one floor that comes from one street and another entrance to a higher floor from a side street.

Is that how people kept themselves apart? Or is it a coincidence?

I don't know who to ask so I send this out to you.

 We leave the theatre and walk around the corner.

There is a center for artists that I'd love to go into, but it's not for us, not today.

 I take this picture for you so you can see the walkway we are under.

Around the corner Mom and I find an art shop with postcards and tshirts outside. At this point we could be in New Orleans or Key West or Jacksonville.

The shop is filled with brightly colored crafts that, if I didn't know better, I would recognize as Floridian or Creole.

Three steps past the art shop and Mom and I find ourselves at a museum of the history of Cienfuegos. 

She asks me if I want to go in and I give her this look like I could imagine wanting anything MORE than to go into a museum today. 

The lady at the front is wearing fishnet stockings and some sort of official uniform and is straining her brain to figure out if we are Cuban and whether to charge my Mom an admission fee or not, based on the fact she was born in Cuba. 

Before a minute can pass we offer up a donation for our entrance and walk into this huge building. 

If I'd known there was a building so close to my hotel -- not a block away -- full of historical artifacts I would have been here sooner. But because I refuse to plan, refuse to map out my time, here I am. Maybe I'm late, but maybe I'm just at the right time. 

One of the first rooms to the right is supposed to reflect a Spanish colonial dining room. It looks so exactly like my Tia Lourdes' dining room I can't help but take this picture for you. OK, maybe TiaLou has a 1920s fridge in the corner of her dining room, but that's the only difference. 

Around the corner from that room there was a row of statues that came from Spain. I can't imagine the trip these statues have had through Cuba -- colonial, Republic, Revolutionary -- but as an artist I'm delighted to meet them and take pose for this silly picture. 

  On the wall beyond that my Mom has stopped speechless.
There's the peacock gate, the one that was in front of mom's cousin Nena Becker's house from before the Revolution.  We stand in front of it in awe as the lady who works here explains it was all made from one piece.  Mom turns to the lady and says this is from my cousin's house, we're just so happy to see it's OK, that it wasn't destroyed.

No, it wasn't destroyed, the lady says, the adds, it's part of our history.

Past the gate we go to stairs and on the stairwell my Mom shrieks. 

OK, she kinda shrieks, maybe she laughs. She's found the street name from the preRevolutionary street they'd lived on. Before this we had no idea where those signs might have gone but here they are. Someone had the sense to say that Cuba is having a revolution but that doesn't mean everything that happened before now isn't real and didn't matter so they kept it. Thank you, whoever you are. 

 From there Mom and I walk through exhibits of Cienfuegos history from pre-Spanish times to the modern era. I'm most struck by the bones they excavated and displayed to show a native tradition of burying dead infants with adults to guide them through the heavens.

The guide explains to me that an adult would offer themselves to be sacrificed to be with the child. I nodded, silently. If you look you can see the reflection in the glass of her pointing to the bones.

 From there we went through rooms of memorabilia from the sugar boom, the 1920s and the revolution. I took 100 pictures that I won't bore you with here.

The guide offered to take us to a room of art, and we followed her. I see a statue and take a selfie with it -- that's our guide in the back with the fishnet pantyhose.  My mom asks why I took a picture with THAT statue and I tell her it's Jose Marti. The muustache and hair tell me so, along with the fact he's saved here in a city art gallery.

After we finish at the museum Mom and I realize we are thirsty and hungry.
Mom asks if we should go back to our hotel but I say no, I have a deep strong feeling that someone is waiting for us at the hotel, that it will disrupt our time together.

No joke, I feel towards my Mom like the US felt towards Cuba before 1959. I want her undivided attention.

I take a deep breath as we pass the side of our hotel and announce to Mom that someone is definitely there waiting for us. She's wearing pink and has her purse on her lap.  I'm sure she's in the first chair, as soon as you walk in.

Mom squints at me and asks me if I'm sure I don't want to go to the hotel and check in and check our messages.

I'm sure I tell her and we take a few more steps and are accosted by a woman with bright orange hair who is wearing red fishnet stockings.

(Continued) 

5 Days in Cuba: Thursday Part 2: The Trophy Shot

  When Mom and I planned our trip we decided that Thursday would be completely free, just us, just doing whatever we feel like, no deadlines no plans.

This, to me, is heaven.  I cannot tell you what I want to do five minutes from now, much less what I'll want for dinner tonight or where I might want to spend Spring Break.  

Around 10:30am on Thursday, our 4th day in Cuba, Mom and I stepped out on the street in front of the hotel onto D'Clouet, then took a right on San Fernando then turned again on Santa Isabel.   

We head straight into the  Cathedral de la Purisma Concepción (Immaculate Conception of Mary).  The cathedral was completed in 1869, which makes me think it would have been done 5 years earlier if the US Civil War hadn't tripped up trade in the region.  

Considering the Cathedral was built in the colonial era during the reign of Isabella II of Spain (remember her? the one who was forced to marry her first cousin? the one whose children were rumored to all have had different fathers?) I'm not surprised it celebrates Mary and not a male saint. 

 While the cathedral was under construction in 1854, the Catholic Church announced it to be official dogma that Mary, mother of Jesus, was specially chosen by God to be born free of the taint of original sin. One woman spared for blame for what Eve did to us all. Something worth celebrating, and also a way to elevate the status of all women as pure mothers, capable of a higher love than men. 

Before we even enter the heavy wooden plank doors I get an overwhelming feeling this spot has protected generations of tight matriarchal circles of faith lead by women whose men were gone for months and years at a time to work in plantations, sail the seas, search for riches and fight their way home.  

The entrance to the cathedral feels awkward; when we step in we do not see the altar but are faced with a wall of planks that have flyers asking for money to restore the building.  I dip my fingers into the huge marble font so I can bless myself before we enter more sacred parts of the building.  The font is empty. 

Mom and I enter, holding hands. I've spent many hours over many years in cathedrals in New Orleans and Tallahassee, lighting candles and kneeling and working my way through endless rounds of the rosary, so I expected to walk in on people sitting in prayer. 

The pews were all turned to face the entrance. A few were turned at odd angles.  Construction braces were here and there and all over that side.  A tourist -- his plaid pants made me guess he's German -- snaps a picture of something behind me and says to his friend 

something like that's all, let's go.

Normally you can't (shouldn't?) walk directly down the main aisle of a cathedral without genuflecting as you cross the crucifix but I'm thinking these rules are turned around in this place. 

It's still here, Mom proclaims and I nod my head ready for a picture. Here is the baptismal font, here is where generations and generations of babies in our families had their birth-sins blessed away in a family ceremony.  I stick my hand in the baptismal 

font and it's dry. 

Mom poses for a picture, I pose for a picture.

 Then I step away from her and really look around.  I know the columns in here are supposed to have some Chinese in them, offering simple translation to Chinese workers 

on the docks and plantations. 

I take a few pictures of this, that and then of a gorgeous statue of Mary, mother of God, standing on top of the earth, barefoot. That image is so contrary to the patriarchal economic and political system it almost makes 

me giddy. 

I take pictures of the organ, of the stained glass, and restrain myself from taking pictures of the other tourists there. We visit the small garden outside where AVE MARIA is spelled out in foliage.

Without much discussion Mom and I agree that now isn't the time for us to sit and pray. 

Anyway, I want the trophy shot, the photo I came here to get. 

On my first trip to Cienfuegos we didn't stop by this park, so I only knew there was a park named for Jose Marti, a poet-philosopher who worked tirelessly in the US stirring up exiles to stick together for the cause of Cuban independence. 

What I didn't know, until I saw in my Mom's photos from her earlier trip to Cienfuegos, was that there was a second figure in the statue celebrating Jose Marti in Parque Marti -- Lady Liberty.  Many web images of the park cut her out, but no, there she is, there she has been, representing Cuba's birth as a Republic in 1902.

Ever since I realized the Statue of Liberty was in Cuba, I wanted to take my picture with her. So I race across the street, less cautiously than I would have been in the US, but also not afraid of the mopeds and bikes weaving around the corner in my direction.

I stand outside the fence that protects the monument. Mom takes one picture, another, another. I am pleased.

 We have the trophy shot. 

We can relax now.

What's that? I ask, and point to an ornate building.

Mom grabs my hand and our adventure continues. 

5 Days in Cuba: Day 4: Part 1: Eggs, etc

On Thursday, the day after our trip to Havana, we sleep in a teeny bit late and arrive at breakfast 9:25, five minutes before it says the restaurant closes.

The doors are huge and ancient and I try them but they don’t budge. Mom tries them too but they seem locked and we are a little sad. 

We walk back to the hotel elevator (although I’m suggesting taking the stairs after Tuesday’s “elevator event”) and before we can hit the UP button a red headed woman with a blunt haircut stops us and asks if we’d wanted breakfast. Yes, yes, of course. She introduces herself as a manager and invites us to follow her back to the restaurant.

Our waitress is Yamila (remember her?) and she greets me with a well practiced “Hello SONshine” and we hug. 

Mom and I go right to the buffet where cracked eggs and boiled bacon look ready to be interred. 

I ask the chef to make me 2 fried eggs (huevecitos, of course) and to pan-toast the piece of stale French bread I hand her. Mom asks for her eggs to be scrambled with ham.

Even though there is a large black “regular” coffee urn, Yamila understands me. I did not come to Cuba to have bad coffee. Before I can ask, brings me a tiny cup of Cuban coffee and a pitcher of heavy creamy milk to mix into it.

Like the best service in the world, she knows to disappear until we need her.

We eat quickly, peacefully, almost silently.

Mom blurts out, “I remember this necklace… now that I think about it, I’m sure I do.”

I nod, take a few bites then blurt back, “I really snagged that iPhone, gangster style?”

We don’t really answer each other but continue to say whatever crosses our minds, mostly about paella and how lucky we are to have today together, just us. This is only our second trip alone in our entire lives and it is delicious.

Yamila clears the table then returns with two small white gift boxes.

I am beyond delighted; I know better (emotionally, spiritually, karmically, financially) to keep track of gifts and expect gifts (aside from love) back from people I give things to. I must put forward some image that I need ‘nothing’ because people generally give me no gifts. I’m beyond surprised and giddy with delight.

I open my box

I see a long thin silver strand connected to a thicker one with heavy balls at either end.

I look up at Yamila, puzzled.  She waves at me to continue, so I take it out and try to figure what it is, then gesticulate (and my mom translates,) “Is it for a belly piercing?”

No.

Is it for nipple piercing?

She laughs hard, no.

Is it for…???

Mom looks at me wide-eyed.

 We don’t know what the heck this is.

Yamila puts an imaginary earring on, punctuating the click of two pieces with a clucking of her tongue.

Earrings!! I half shout (I had Cuban coffee, forgive me) and she nods her head.

I take my earrings off and slide her silver, hip, artistic earrings into the holes. I am monogamistic when it comes to earrings; I wear the same pair for months until I lose one or it breaks, then I wear another pair until they meet their demise.  I loved these seed-pearl chandelier earrings, they were perfect, but now they are not mine any more.

 I offer them to Yamila and she refuses, but then I insist and she takes them. They shake and shimmer and dance while you talk, I tell her (and my Mom translates) so she will love them. Mom opens her gift; earrings and a ring. Equally awesome. So thoughtful.

After breakfast we go back up our hotel room and try to prepare ourselves for what is coming next.

 Mom asks me over and over what I want to see, but my answers are vague. I want to walk this way, then that way.  I want to see the cathedral and the Statue of Liberty and whatever else we stumble on.

Besides that, Mom knows who I really am. I don’t plan things out, I like to follow whatever invisible strings present themselves and pull me.

If we plan too much we won’t be free to wander and feel and just be part of Cienfuegos, Cuba, today.

My mom puts on something comfortable and I commit the horrible sin of wearing the same outfit as I wore yesterday (who would see me??). I slip on my slightly broken sandals and then fix my makeup.

We count out an envelope of American-dollars-turned-Cuban-cash to bring – this much for incidentals; this much in case we want to buy something; this much for lunch. We both have purses, we both have hotel keys. Alright, ready to go.

Last year when I visited Cuba for the first time, the best I could do look out hotel windows and watch people on the street. Mom tried to take me for a short walk but after a few yards I begged to go back to the hotel.

This year, I’m ready for an adventure.