I would not have remembered the date if I were not currently watching a good Netflix series, The Cuba Libra Story, from which I have learned many things, including the audacious manner in which Batista came to power and that Fidel and Raul Castro were illegitimate and forced to live the early years of their lives with the poor cane workers who served his prosperous self-made father rather than in the main family house.
There are bad guys in the Cuba Libra Story. Unfortunately most of them are us.
Two days ago I finished re-reading for the third time one of my favorite novels, BALTASAR AND BLIMUNDA, by the Portuguese Jose Saramago. I knew of him long before he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, which has always been political and has recently degenerated to the point that it was given to Bob Dylan in what I assume was a pathetic attempt by elderly Swedish so-called intellectuals to seem relevant.
The novel is set in the 18th Century at the time of the construction of the convent at Mafra and is one of the great strange love stories in literature. If you can get past Saramago’s tendency to write paragraphs that run on for pages, it is a treasure.
After finishing BALTASAR AND BLIMUNDA I started rereading Barbara Tuchman’s THE MARCH OF FOLLY, which begins: ‘A phenomenon noticeable through history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests. Mankind, it seems, makes a poorer performance of government than of almost any other human activity...Why do holders of high office so often act contrary to the way reason points and enlightened self-interest suggests? Why does intelligent mental process seem so often not to function?”
She examines in detail and clarity four examples: The Trojans taking the wooden horse inside their city walls. The Renaissance Popes provoking the Protestant secession. The British losing North America. The United States in Vietnam.
The book was first published in 1984. You may have noticed that folly continues to march on.
While not reading and watching—sadly the Cubs are imploding—I have been writing. Last week I finished a piece for Latitude 38. This week I modified slightly the story of the gale as I reached New Zealand five years ago for YACHTING WORLD in the UK. And I have largely completed ‘Lessons of the Sixth’, probably for CRUISING WORLD.
While not reading, watching or writing, I have been healing. Even old bodies do. The doctor I saw said six weeks. Others have said two months. I am now three and a half weeks post-crack and am mostly pain free. Yesterday I climbed the stairs two at a time, a stretch that previously hurt, and I can even sneeze without excessive suffering. I am so improved that I am considering that I may return to GANNET in the second week of October.
