The Cuban Mulatta

The great contribution of the Spanish in Cuban culture and civilization was the appearance of this sort of woman. This is a mid white and mid black woman. In Yoruba culture, she is the image of Occhun, the female Deity of fecundity and sexuality. She is the Deity that makes mad other male Deities, like Chango, the male Deity of thunders and war. Every Cuban woman has inside the soul and sensuality of a Mulatta.  So, when you visited Cuba, you wanted to remain in it!

Christine

Cristina / Christine

This is what we call a classic beauty. I took this picture some decades ago when she was 18 years old. She was then my French student in Guanabo Beach, in Havana. It's nice when we have had so many female friends. Because of this, one of the poetic books I've written in French language is called “Femme” (Woman). As I could not find a photo of Cecile, the woman I once loved so much and lived with the most, in her youth a very beautiful woman, the Queen of Beauty in her town of Guanabacoa at that time, the mother of my youngest son, (by the way, the mother of my oldest son was also a Queen of Beauty in her town of Cotorro), I decided to use Christine's picture as title page of my book “Femme”.

Happy New 2011

All my Friends,

I pray the Supreme may all your dreams come true as you wish, and that in this new 2011 everything around you and your family be better than in 2010.


And thanks for your every day beauty, elegance, love, friendship and relationship, personality and work loving.


Angel,

May this Two Thousand Eleven

For all my friends be

On Earth as being in Heaven

Guided by the Almighty

Where happiness and health

Would be common award

Like everybody's wealth,

A simple thing to afford

Angel

« Beyond the Adventure: A beautiful love", a story within my family

Four French planes, F-60, type "Goliath", in Cuba, in 1921

Following the interest of Cuban millionaire Anibal de Mesa in developing his country on commercial aviation at the beginning of the XX e century, in 1919 some French nationals came to Cuba to create the Cuban Aviation Company using six French planes, two Farman F-60 planes, the “Goliath”, and four Farman F-40 planes. These latter F-40 planes had participated in the WWI, as these French nationals had too, who three of them, Lucien Coupet, Léon Coupet, and Camille Jousse, had even fought in the Battler of Verdun during World War I. They were the combatants who were members of the aerial unit “l'Escadrille F-25”. This French aerial escadrille played a great role from the beginning this war, mainly during the Battler of Verdun, and afterward.

The French national Guy de Roig with two Cubans  in Havana, Cuba, in 1921

Once WWI had ended, these French people, National Hero of the Republic of French, were part of a crew who had been considered dead, due to an aerial accident while they had been performing the first long distance flight of the Farman giant plane “Goliath” from Paris to Dakar. They spent two weeks lost in the Saharan desert without food and water.

Léon Coupet and Camille Jousse in Cuba

In Cuba, they remained a litter more than a year, and the most important location during their stay in the Cuban territory was the Aerodrome of Colombia de La Havana, which became a real aeronautic fair because of the presence of the French planes. For these French people, after the battlers of WWI and the testing flight of the “Goliath” to Dakar, all these events being done without any rest, their stay in Cuba was like an adventure which took place under relaxing and warming atmosphere plenty of affection and happiness.

Guy de Roig and Geneviève's son and daughter

A Cuban woman, who was the person charged to cook for these French pilots, was the most important woman in that aerodrome of Columbia. Her name was Genevieve. She was married to the owner of a little restaurant built within the aerodrome where the French pilots and other technicians used to eat. The owner of that littler restaurant was a black Cuban man, and his wife, Genevieve, a beautiful woman of mixed race. They had two sons, Gustavo and Amelia. They were black too. The name of Genevieve's husband was Gustavo, as well.

Geneviève

One of the French people, Leon Coupet, and Genevieve fell in love each other. As a result of this loving relation, a girl was born. She was not black. Unfortunately, she was born the 4th of September of 1921, after the French nationals had left from Cuba. She never met her father. Maybe, Léon never knew that he was the father of Rosa, Genevieve's daughter.

Dramaturgy and Impression Management to fight Obesity

Dramaturgy and Impression Management to fight Obesity


Dramaturgy refers to a micro-sociological approach that pioneered Canadian sociologist and writer Erving Goffman in which social life is analyzed into terms of drama or the stage. He said that social life is like a drama or a stage play where an individual presents himself to another based on cultural values, norms and expectations. It means that an individual must be aware of his or her social performance or behavior.

Birth ushers us onto the stage of everyday life, and that our socialization consists of learning to perform on that stage where the “self” lies at the center of our performance. We have ideas of how we want the other to think of us, and we use our role in everyday life to communicate those ideas. Impression management means that we effort to control the impression that other receive of us.
Dramaturgy and Impression management are two sociological categories that people perform in a given social context, most of the time aware of the importance of public image. In rare occasions, only people with a poor self-esteem do not perform social dramaturgy as they might not understand the meaning of having good public image (Impression management). And perhaps, it's their poor self-esteem one of the reasons why they overeat too much getting the possibility to have the eating disorder of bulimia. For these people, the sociological concept of “the looking-glass self” is not meaningful at all, as not only they do not imagine or care how they appear to those around them, but also they do not interpret other's reactions regarding their public image. In fact, they do not develop a self-concept.
In the past, people were not so concerned about being obese as social concurrence was not too much standard. However, currently, due to a rapid demographic development along with an immense technologic and industrial achievement needing better prepared white and pink collars employees, people are really highly concerned about being overweighting.
Regarding obesity as a social conflict with implicit psychological effects, the media, I think, plays a wrong role. Due to the high statistic amount of obese people, particularly in the United States, instead of promoting educational programs to teach people who suffer from being overweighed how to control and reduce their obesity, or avoid it, television commercial and advertisement only focuses on promoting cosmetic and lab products to lose weight and body size with an open profitable goal. Not only people must be learned how to control and reduce their obesity, but mainly how to avoid it by teaching them what obesity* is and what its main causes are.
In sum, obesity is already a social concern, as obese people might acquire psychological and pathological disorders. Thus, in this current world, obesity is a major social issue being focused not only by nutritionists and by physical health specialists, physicians and surgeons, but mostly by psychologists. The branches of psychology within which obese people might be cases of interest are clinical, developmental, environmental, health, personality, social and sport psychologies.

*Obesity is a condition in which the natural energy reserve, stored in the fatty tissues** is increased to a point where it is risk factor for certain heath conditions or increased mortality. Obesity develops from the interaction of individual biology and the environment (external factors).
**Adipose tissue is primary located beneath the skin, but is also found around internal organs. In the skin, it accumulates in the deepest level, the subcutaneous layer, providing insulation from heat and cold. Around organs, it provides protective padding. It also functions as a reserve of nutrients.
If humans do not burn the energy stored in the adipose tissues, this energy stored logically increases.
Some of possible causes of obesity are: overeating (bulimia), heredity, metabolic disorder, hypothyroidism due to a too little thyroid hormone production and sedentary behavior.
Excessive body weight has been shown to correlate with various diseases, particularly cardiovascular.

A Day, A Happy New Year

One day, Europeans reencountered an Indian civilization in a land during their way to the unknown. Some years later, they brought the blacks from Africa. Afterward, an unimaginable civilization arose by the mix of whites and blacks, with the traits of native Indians living in the region. Yet, this mix of race did not occur without pain and sufferance. It was Cuba. Unfortunately, since 1959, this genuine civilization began its decline, and that lasts still. Meanwhile, Cubans, as they flee the country, have spread their talent all over the globe. Cuban Music is part of this spread talent.
In another, in a new year, already not so far, we will reencounter all each others in our Holy Land, once the Mephistophelian tyranny has disappeared.