Dispatches

From the Philippines – Dispatch 4

Following the devastating typhoon in the Philippines in November, ET staff member, Gregg Butensky, initiated a fundraising effort to bring assistance to the people of Aklan on the island of Panay. Gregg has strong connections in Aklan having established a public lending library there over 15 years ago. Earlier this month Gregg travelled to the […]

From the Philippines – Dispatch 3

Following the devastating typhoon in the Philippines in November, ET staff member, Gregg Butensky, initiated a fundraising effort to bring assistance to the people of Aklan on the island of Panay. Gregg has strong connections in Aklan having established a public lending library there over 15 years ago. Earlier this month Gregg travelled to the […]

From the Philippines – Dispatch 2

Following the devastating typhoon in the Philippines in November, ET staff member, Gregg Butensky, initiated a fundraising effort to bring assistance to the people of Aklan on the island of Panay. Gregg has strong connections in Aklan having established a public lending library there over 15 years ago. Earlier this month Gregg travelled to the […]

Greetings from The Philippines

Following the devastating typhoon in the Philippines in November, ET staff member, Gregg Butensky, initiated a fundraising effort to bring assistance to the people of Aklan on the island of Panay. Gregg has strong connections in Aklan having established a public lending library there over 15 years ago. Earlier this month Gregg travelled to the […]

Burma on the Mend – January 2012

Last year, as we prepared to leave Bangkok for Rangoon, my girlfriend Bo contemplated bringing her rollable luggage. My foster daughter – who is from Burma but was then living in Thailand—laughed. “You can’t roll your luggage in Burma—the sidewalks are too broken!” That’s not the only thing broken in Burma, I thought to myself. […]

Cienfuegos / 28 June 2011 – Ché’d Out

“In a real revolution, you either win or die.” – Ernesto “Ché” Guevara (who managed to do both) I was twelve years old when Ché Guevara was shot by a firing squad in Bolivia. That was in October, 1967. The Argentina-born Guevara had left Cuba, and was fomenting revolution among Bolivia’s farmers. He was ambushed, […]

Comunidad Las Terrazas / 22 June 2011

Let me level with you, readers. I came here with big plans for writing concise, revealing dispatches, in 800 words or less. But Cuba is one of the most complex, nuanced societies I’ve visited, awash in delights and frustrations. It would be a maddening place to make sense of even if it wasn’t in the […]

On the Malecón

A weathered individual stood against the sea wall of the Malecón, holding a battered guitar. He made a comment as I walked past him, chatting with Amanda and Cristina. We’d just come from dinner at El Patio, an architecturally lovely restaurant, with unusual stained glass windows and divider screens, on the Plaza de la Catedral. […]

Havana, Cuba / 19 June 2011

In 1960, right after the revolution, Fidel Castro and Ché Guevara met on the grounds of the Havana Country Club, a golf course in the posh suburbs of the Miramar district. They posed together for pictures, played some golf and brainstormed about what they were going to do with this gorgeous monument to bourgeois manners. […]