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Tuesday, July 23, 2024

Goodbye Cuba, Hello America the Beautiful

A whole bunch of years ago today my family boarded an airplane from Cuba bound for Miami.

We were supposedly on vacation - a typical two weeks to be enjoyed as a welcome break. My parents packed just enough clothing and toys to keep my little brother and me busy during the hiatus. I remember looking out the window and seeing the island where I lived disappearing from our viewpoint. 

And I remember both of my parents staring at the view with wet eyes and in my mother's case, tears down her cheeks.

For they were not going on vacation -- they were fleeing the socialist regime of a dictator whose name I refuse to write but figure anyone can guess. They had not told anyone in the family for fear of having someone thwart their plans. 

My parents disagreed with the man's policies, and his cruel methods. So they decided to escape while they could - hopefully to return when things "normalized."

But that never happened. My father (who had a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Havana and was bilingual) obtained a job in Rhode Island. The rest of us learned English, went to school and worst of all had to wear itchy woolen clothing that was unfamiliar. 


Today, while I reminisce about that lost life on a tropical island, I can't help but wonder what would happen should a dictatorship establish itself in the United States. My father and uncles used to chat about how they would fight tooth and nail for the USA, simply because they knew there was no place else they could go. Certainly not back to Cuba.

I worry about the USA a lot these days, most notably the past few weeks. I won't go into the gory details because there are so many points of view a lot of things get lost in the translation. All I know is that some type of change is happening here and I'm not entirely sure it's working.

What I am sure of is this -- there is nowhere else on earth like the USA. The country took us in and gave us a place to work and to live and to be free. It's a place worth fighting for, at least it is to me and the rest of my family - all of whom relocated to the USA and became citizens as soon as we were able.

Even though I have an emotional attachment to the land of my birth, it is my adopted home which I love best of all. Today I just want to say thank you to the USA, to the people who lived here before we got here, to Americans who helped us in those early years.

And yes, America, you are the beautiful and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.









 

Monday, June 10, 2024

And Now - The Hamster Launcher

    My father hated squirrels but loved hamsters. 

    He had an elaborate setup to keep squirrels from eating bird food from the various feeders in the backyard. The hamsters, however, were something else. He loved them. Dad adored how they stuffed their pouches full of whatever goodies he gave them. He kept a couple of the fuzzy guys in his workshop, where they happily went around their wheels as Dad worked. 

        Eventually, however, the rest of us in the house became weary of the endless squeaking of the wheels. No matter what time of day or night, it was “squeak squeak squeak squeak.” 

           We tried everything at the onset, including putting heavy towels on the cages so that they would sleep and not run themselves ragged. But no. 

    The little guys kept at it until my mother finally cracked and put down an ultimatum. 

    “It’s the hamsters or your wife and kids. Pick. We’re done.” My brother and I nodded in unison.


    Desperate to work something out, that night Dad, an electromechanical engineer with a degree from the University of Havana, hit upon a potential solution. He returned from the hardware store with a couple of small ball bearings. After a few hours, he successfully got them attached to the hamster wheels. 



    He then took one of the hamsters and put it into the cage and on the wheel. Dad was alone in the shop at the time.

And then – “Eureka!” he yelled. “Eureka! Come down here and see this!”

                

    The three of us ran downstairs, where Dad was staring intently at the hamster cage. He put one on the wheel and within seconds, the hamster had it going fast, fast, fast.


    Then the poor creature shot out of its cage and into my father's hands.

    

    Dad had accidentally invented the Hamster Launcher.

    

    “Hamster power!” he kept yelling. “Look, flying hamsters!”

                

    Sure enough, each time he placed one of them in the wheel (now with his hands protectively over the open door) the critter picked up so much speed it was launched out of the cage.

                

    Each and every time Dad would yell "Eureka!"  We were sure he envisioned millions of hamsters whirling in their cages and producing a new method for powering entire countries.


    We only tried the experiment several times since the pets were now freaked out and of course, none of us wanted them injured. We could not conceptualize how anything positive could come out of a homemade gadget that did nothing except launch unwitting hamsters through the air.


    Dad sighed. 

    

    My mother had drawn a line in the sand. He could keep the current batch of hamsters but there would be no more at our house. The squeaking was intolerable. Let’s not even talk about how we all figured the PETA people would be at our doorstep if they had any inkling of a house in which hamsters were being launched in the basement at Warp 9.9 speeds.


    The three of us went back up the steps, listening to Dad take the ball bearings off the wheel, all dreams of a new way of creating energy dashed. 

    

    Dad rehomed the furry fellows to someone who had a bigger house where the squeaks would not take over the entire place. 


    PETA never found out, and my father acquiesced to my mother for the sake of his marriage and our sleep. All of us were able to dream peacefully now that there were no more flying hamsters in our house.


    There was an incident involving a flying Thanksgiving turkey but that story is for another day.


    Amen, and pass the mustard.

               

Monday, April 22, 2024

RHODY ROTS: Now That I got Your Attention

Okay, I'm back.

I'm not sure what that means since on many occasions I have "taken off" from social media mentally out of sheer boredom.  

I spent two years living in the City of Miami -- NOT Miami Beach only tourists and silly college students want to spend any time there. I certainly did not.

That said I'm finding myself at loose ends here in Rhode Island again -- can't tell you how slow the place seems, crawling along at its usual lumbering pace. I see it every day. 

We've been struggling with a EPIC bridge repair issue right in Providence - meaning that folks are enduring major traffic jams because SOMEBODY didn't see a bridge falling apart before their eyes. That someone failed to spot the mess is frightening.

After returning I note people who have never left Rhode Island praising its virtues - shocked that those same folks don't see what I see -- the lack of anything new to see. That's because they don't look -- including at bridges that are falling down around them.

I had a blog in Miami which I called "Miami Moans." Clearly, if I'm living in the biggest little state of confusion I can't use that title anymore. And honestly "Rhody Rots" isn't exactly cool.

So I'm getting deep into the Wayback Machine and heading to the first blog I scribbled -- Anachronous Anaesthesia.

What the hell I'm going to write about now is going to be affected a LOT by living in a big city like Miami - it changed me. Completely. I realized that I truly love cities -- but REAL ones, not tiny ones like Providence or Boston (which people in New England "think" is a city because they've never been elsewhere. Or to a real city, for that matter.) 

The photo attached IS Brickell, part of the City of Miami. It took seconds for me to get accustomed to that view -- and it's forever locked in my heart. Why am I back in Rhode Island?

Good question, wish I had a good answer. Maybe it's in the deep recesses of my cranium. Hope I can get it out. Hope I don't fall down from one of the various bridges that are in dire need of repair. 

Amen, and pass the mustard.