The End of Tyranny!

People in my city knew it would happen some day. The day finally arrived right after Thanksgiving!

Fidel is dead! Hopefully the country of Cuba will slowly be able to make changes to their culture to allow democracy and free trade to happen. I'm not a political type of person so don't get me wrong. I'm not even Hispanic. But I am a human being and the things that have happened to the people of Cuba are inhumane. My sympathy for the Cuban people only started when I began dating a Cuban-American girl (now my wife!). Before that I really had little connection at all to what Cubans, especially Cubans during the sixties, had gone through. It wasn't that I didn't care, it was that it didn't affect me or my family. It wasn't my story. My story was about Jews trying to leave Nazi ravaged, war torn Europe and the shtetls of Russia and Poland. That I was totally plugged into. Fidel was just another evil dictator. It wasn't until the events of the early 20th century and the episodes centering around a young boy named Elian Gonzalez did I finally make an empathetic connection. And I felt that way because I saw the terror in a young boys eyes as he was ripped from the arms of relatives and sent back to the communist regime in Cuba. That hit me! It hit me because I had a young son at the time and a future step-son as well. Now I have an extended Cuban family that I am very close to, and I hear about the pain and suffering that goes with being exiled from your place of birth. One day you had everything you knew and loved and then the next you had nothing!

I started a picture few years ago that I keep painting on. In it I have created the beast and the end of days. In the mouth of the beast I paddle away futilely in a two man kayak. Next to me and my buddy is the gasping dictator, Fidel! He is drowning in his own greed and deceit! Of course if you look to the upper left corner of this detail photo you would see me depicted sitting with a drawing board. Apathy. What is my final destination? We are all hypocrites!

Long live the people of Cuba. And may those who lost their homeland find a bit of comfort and peace knowing they outlived a hand of the devil.