Political Affairs #105 - Is the minimum wage enough? Plus an interview on the Honduras coup
On this episode, President Obama fires back against Republican obstructionism of health reform. The minimum wage goes up July 24th to $7.25 per hour. And we play excerpts of a recent interview with Dan Kovalik a United Steelworkers union staffer who traveled to Honduras earlier this month to observe pro-democracy protests against the military coup.
HAVANA, Cuba, Aug 3 (acn) – American writer Ernest Hemingway was forced to leave Cuba suddenly on July 25, 1960, by the US ambassador in Havana, asserted a Cuban expert on the work of this outstanding figure of American literature.
Much has been speculated about Hemingway’s death in the US and also about the causes that led him to leave Finca Vigía (his house in Cuba), leaving behind all his belongings including unfinished manuscripts of some of his novels.
Biographers of the novelist have said that he decided to leave Cuba due to his frustration for the triumph of the Revolution; however, expert Ada Rosa Alfonso Rosales, director of the Havana-based Ernest Hemingway Museum, assures that Philip Wilson Bonsal, then US ambassador to Cuba, made Hemingway abandon the Island, reports Juventud Rebelde’s website.
The director of the Museum, located in Hemingway’s house in the outskirts of Havana, bases her hypothesis on facts found in the book ‘Correr con los toros’ (Running with Bulls) written by Valery Danby Smith. “In that book, Hemingway’s last secretary (who, after the writer's death, became his daughter-in-law as she married his son Gregory), made it very clear,” said Alfonso.
“Another element supporting my statement is that when Hemingway arrived in the United States on July 25, 1960, he did not go to his cabin in Sun Valley but stayed in New York and a few days later, August 4th, he traveled to Spain.
“Besides, he left here all of his unfinished works, and a writer would not leave behind his work, much less a writer like Hemingway,” Alfonso stated and added that the famous American writer always thought of coming back.
He left behind not only his material belongings but also Finca Vigía, which he loved and became his favorite place to write, explained the expert. He would proudly talk about the 18 varieties of mangoes and that it was close to both Havana and Cojímar, where he used to go sailing in his yacht Pilar.
Alfonso noted that Hemingway never had problems with the Cuban government. He even communicated with some friends while he was in the US to find out if he was allowed to return and was told that he could come back whenever he wanted to.
“In one of his books we found a bracelet of the July 26 Movement and bonuses of the Guanabacoa’s Popular Socialist Party which he contributed to with cash donations.”
One year after his sudden departure from Cuba, Hemingway committed suicide on July 2, 1961. Two shots on his mouth put an end to the life of the winner of a Literature Nobel Prize 1954 and Pulitzer Prize in 1953. Such facts are still under debate.
