In Obamamaniac website news, Yes We Can (Hold Babies, Obama in full politician mode holding/kissing/shaking hands with babies and other kids.

It made me think of Havana, too, Barb. I love those cities and places that get stuck that way.

The history geek in me loves the idea of it, the other history geek in me is saddened by the reasons why something remains that way. And of course, for me, Havana and Cuba as a whole are going to touch a whole other nerve. One time, at an RWA national conference, I had another writer come bopping up to me, all eager to talk to me because I was first-gen Cuban-American. She seemed shocked that I had no interest in traveling to the country. (She herself was Arab, emigrated to Canada, so she held Canadian citizenship and was at the time, living in the Caymans, so she had easy access to Cuba.)

She seemed to think it was okay and even the only way to experience tourism, by seeing a city that hadn't evolved since 1958 and she had a hard time understanding why that unnerved me as much as it did. She even had a list on her website that answered questions about why she enjoyed traveling to Cuba so much where she acknowledged that yes, Cuba was a police state, but wow, it was soooo cool and the shopping was awesome because you could buy the authentic cigars and take them home and resell them at a 300% markup and the ultimate in gansta cool was a $1.00 Ché hat, and really, people didn't have it so bad at all, despite the fact that there were soldiers with guns watching over everything and people had to be careful what they said.

And when I asked her if she'd been anywhere that tourists weren't allowed or if she'd noticed that most natives weren't allowed in the places she visited, unless they were working there, she looked at me blankly and replied, "Why would they want to? They live there."

::facepalm::

Yet, this was the same woman who got offended that people couldn't tell the difference between Arab and Persian and that of course, everyone should know the way you could tell them apart was that Persians spoke Farsi.

L.A: The Rockford Files. Chicago: Hill Street(even though I found out later it was a cross between Chi and Philly) New York: Rhoda Morgenstern(not the show so much. Her.) London: I think when I was a kid, I thought it was still 1934 there because of all the Poirot adaptations, which were very cool and stylish, but I didn't exactly grok how time had passed. James Bond.

The history geek in me loves the idea of it, the other history geek in me is saddened by the reasons why something remains that way.

Well, undoubtedly colonization and weird politics crimes againt humanity are always behind such cities. But they still fascinate me because they capture in physical space (and sometimes in time) those very political and cultural tensions.

The travel writer, Jan Morris, wrote a travelogue to a fictional city Last Letters from Hav that emphasizes those overlays of colonization and stasis and the raw mysteries in such cities.

eta: From Ursula K. Leguini's review.

It is not an easy book to describe. Hav itself is not easy to describe, as the author frequently laments. As she takes us about with her in her travels of discovery, we grow familiar with the delightful if somewhat incoherent Hav of 1985. We climb up to its charming castle, from which the Armenian trumpeter plays at dawn the great lament of Katourian for the knights of the First Crusade, the "Chant de doleure pour li proz chevalers qui sunt morz". We visit the Venetian Fondaco, the Casino, the Caliph, the mysterious British Agency, the Kretevs who inhabit caves up on the great Escarpment through which the train, Hav's only land link to the rest of Europe, plunges daily down a zigzag tunnel. We see the Iron Dog, we watch the thrilling Roof Race. But the more we learn, the greater our need to learn more. A sense of things not understood, matters hidden under the surface, begins to loom; even, somehow, to menace. We have entered a maze, a labyrinth constructed through millennia, leading us back and back to the age of Achilles and the Spartans who built the canal and set up the Iron Dog at the harbour mouth, and before that to the measureless antiquity of the Kretevs, who are friends of the bear. And the maze stretches out and out, too, half around the world, for it seems that Havian poetry was deeply influenced by the Welsh; and just up the coast is the westernmost of all ancient Chinese settlements, which Marco Polo found uninteresting. "There is nothing to be said about Yuan Wen Kuo," he wrote. "Let us now move on to other places."

Achilles and Marco Polo aren't the half of it. Ibn Batuta came to Hav, of course, all the great travellers did, and left their comments, diligently quoted by the Havians and Morris. TE Lawrence may have discovered a secret mission there; Ernest Hemingway came to fish and to carry off six-toed cats. Hav's glory days of tourism were before the first world war and again after it, when the train zigzagged through its tunnel laden with the cream of European society, millionaires and rightwing politicians; but whether or not Hitler was actually there for one night is still a matter of dispute. The politics of Hav itself in 1985 were extremely disputable. Its religions were various, since so many great powers of the east and west had governed it over the centuries; mosques and churches coexisted amicably; and indeed the spiritual scene was so innocuous as to appear feeble - a small group of hermits, reputed to spend their days in holy meditation, proved to be cheerfully selfish hedonists who simply enjoyed asceticism. And yet, and yet, there were the Cathars. Late in her first visit, Morris was taken in darkness and great secrecy to witness a sitting of the Cathars of Hav - a strange ritual conclave of veiled women and cowled men. In some of them Morris thought she recognised friends, guides, the trumpeter, the tunnel-pilot . . . but she could not be sure. She could not be sure of anything.

Detroit has a bit of that stasis too, and it is very sad. Beautiful, but sad.

But they still fascinate me because they capture in physical space (and sometimes in time) those very political and cultural tensions.

Undoubtedly. I think what fascinates me the most about Havana is that so much of what's been preserved stands as representation of the excess and corruption the Revolution was allegedly working to destroy. Yet, there it stands and the government goes out of their way to preserve it and uses it as testimony to the culture.

The dichotomy is absolutely mind-boggling.

Detroit has a bit of that stasis too, and it is very sad. Beautiful, but sad.

Yeah, the core has collapsed and is returning to a feral state.

Detroit has a bit of that stasis too, and it is very sad. Beautiful, but sad.

The city started tearing down a lot of the burned out buildings around the time they started building the new baseball stadium. I haven't been back since then, but I suspect the neighborhood across Woodward from the Fox theatre is less war zone and more parking lot now.

One of my first impressions of NY was from It's Like This, Cat.

In random news, you know what was an exciting part of my trip? The Zappos OUTLET STORE.

The Zappos OUTLET STORE.

WHERE???