Recent Surprise Mentions

I'm not sure this blog shouldn't be simply folded into the one chronicling my day to day adventures, given that I haven't put anything up here in a couple of months. Neither does this blog seem to be achieving the original desired effect, which was to avoid using my "primary" blog for the constant and shameless pimping of Walking to Guantánamo. Oh well. Having just stumbled upon a couple of unexpected and flattering mentions of the book in the grand blogsphere, however, this would seem to be the place for them.

Jorge Gomez of Tiempo Libre gave abebooks.com, the massive used book website, an interview about his recent Cuban reading. I don't know Jorge or his music yet, but he totally gets it. Among other ego-boosters, he had this to say: "here is someone truly describing the Cuba of today, telling the story with affection and appreciation for the Cuban people, but without rose-colored glasses on." This is the sort of thing I would like to spout when people ask me about the book, except I'm too bashful.

Then Traci Joan MacNamara put up a review on her her excellent blog about literature, snow and climbing, and a commitment to outdoor living I can only dream about. We used to speak to her at 6AM every morning by radio when we were camped out in the field in Antarctica, just to let McMurdo Station know that all was well. I've been sadly out of touch with much of the Antarctica posse, so it came as a delightful surprise to read about my own book on a blog I regularly check in on.

The Big Apple Circus at Whitespace

Looking back over the past few months of posts on this blog, there seem to be a terrible number of photographs of yours truly orating before crowds of varying sizes, in dimly lit spaces. I really need to give some thought to how to make the Walking to Guantánamo blog a more scintillating reading experience, but in the meantime, just as I was getting ready to hit you with another dose of the same after two recent book readings at the Whitespace Gallery in Atlanta, I discovered they've done it for me, on their own blog!

The Sound Café, Bywater district, New Orleans

New Orleans is really the United States' only truly Caribbean city, and I felt going there with Walking to Guantánamo was a must. My good friend Martin Krusche, originally of Munich and Red Hook, Brooklyn, permanently resettled there shortly before hurricane Katrina, and then stuck it out despite having to evacuate just after his arrival. When I called him, he suggested a reading at Beth's books, in the Bywater.

Shortly after I met Martin, at the beginning of this millenium, he went to Cuba himself, taking his own bicycle and riding it the length of the country. In fact, I lent him the saddlebags I had originally had made in Trinidad, so those made a return journey. Martin was smart enough to take advantage of the prevailing winds, riding from Santiago to Havana, rather than the other way around, and said my advice, to take kevlar inner tubes for the bike, prevented him from having even a single flat tire. (I had dozens, recounted in the book in excruciating and, I hope, hilarious detail).

Hart McNee, doing his thing on the bass flute

One man doing the work of three: Michael Skinkus playing an entire set of batá on his own

To my surprise and joy Martin had put together a gang of musicians to introduce me and the book reading, and even cooked up a massive pot of Cuban black beans. The band launched the evening with a collection of orisha songs, invocations to the saints played on the trio of ceremonial drums called batá. Then I read from a chapter in which I had an encounter with the vodou lwa Gran Bwa.

Martin's friend Christine P. Horn was kind enough to host us in her home sight unseen, and when dropping off our bags there earlier in the afternoon I had seen a painting of Gran Bwa on the kitchen cabinet. It turned out that the painter and musician Hart McNee had painted it, and named one of his albums after that same spirit, a coincidence which seemed too great to ignore when choosing which chapter to read from.

Don't let Mr. Krusche's Bavarian regalia fool you; these were authentic Cuban black beans

The visit to New Orleans was full of coincidences; Tristan Thompson, who runs Beth's books and had done a fabulous job of promoting the event, turned out to have spent a winter at McMurdo station, Antarctica, about a decade ago...

Recent local and national press

Links:

Foreword Magazine

Atlanta's Creative Loafing

Q and A in Pine Magazine

Princeton Public Library, January 13th

The biggest crowd yet, perhaps not surprising given that this is my home territory, where I went to high school and college. Lots of familiar faces and family friends, thanks to my mother's indefatigable promotional skills! That's Mr. David Schrayer, front left.

That's me, the tiny speck in the distant far left center.


I read from a chapter in which I described eating a sandwich apparently filled with dirt before exploring the interconnectedness of the afro-Cuban mythology relating to the enormous ceiba trees, and the rare endemic Giant kingbird, a flycatcher that breeds only in them. Then I took questions and read a short and, if I say so myself, hilarious bit about contraband cheese sales beside the central highway.

Upcoming Events

January 13th Reading at Princeton Public Library on Witherspoon St. in Princeton 7:30PM

January 16th A solo exhibition of my photographic work from the walk across Cuba opens at Whitespace Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia. I'll be at the opening from 7-10PM.

January 18th at 4PM Reading at Whitespace Gallery, ATL

January 22nd at 5:30PM Reading at Beth's Books at 2700 Chartres St. in the Bywater district, New Orleans, LA

Hope to see you one place or the other!

Guantánamo to go into its second printing!

We had a lovely book bash last week at Idlewild Books on West 19th Street in Manhattan. It's a travel-oriented bookstore with a new and brilliant, but, once you have experienced it, obvious twist. Travel guides, travel literature, and carefully selected regular literature are grouped together by region and country, so that Walking to Guantánamo shares a shelf with, for instance, a biography of Che. I signed something like 40 books, and was very proud to announce that Guantánamo is already going into its second printing. If you want a first edition, act fast!

Pedro Giraudo, Aaron Halva and Jainardo Batista from Nu' Guajiro rocking the set in the bay window at Idlewild Books. Lots of delicious reading on the shelves behind.

The place filled up quickly, and I failed to take any more photographs once the mad signing of books had begun...

The next day, suffering from a mild hangover, thanks to one too many of St. John Frizell's stellar mojitos, I high-tailed it north to Cambridge on the trusty Fung-Wah bus. Laura scooped me up in her pickup truck and we headed for Maine, where I read on Saturday at Gulf of Maine books in Brunswick, land of the flowing gray beard. Brunswick is sister city to Trinidad, Cuba, and I read about that city to a standing room only crowd, mostly drawn from the large local retiree community. I felt a bit silly reading my descriptions of the aged, septuagenarian bicycle agent who had helped me continue my journey by Flying Pigeon once I realized that the average age of the crowd was certainly above sixty, and possibly right up there in the seventies with Rigoberto, the character in question, but nobody seemed put out. Gulf of Maine is another great independent bookstore you should check out if you are in the area.

Ms. Harmon browses the design section at Gulf of Maine books

Poet and proprietor Gary Lawless and his beard

Frantic signing

Until I got to Maine I had been suffering under the sad self-delusion that I have actually grown a beard worth talking about. There were at least three resplendent heavy growths in the house that put my tatty reddish frizzle to shame. I promised to try harder for my next visit.

All Maine photographs courtesy L. Harmon, except the one she is in