it is a very strange August...the weather on Long Island signals a climate apocalypse...did Dorothy land in Atlantic Beach?...the President speaks of ballroom while balls are absent in Congress...and us...well, we are binging The Americans...in Season 4...please no spoilers...but it definitely jogs my memory of the early 80s...and I do remember a successfully stoked fear of the "red" monster abroad...weaving in and out of bad hair choices and the advent of linebacker shoulder pads...yet here we are 2026...with a not so successfully stoked fear of everything different...and a warped embrace of socialism laced with communism...in the middle of all this we made our way to see the Broadway sensation "Buena Vista Social Club"...2 hours and 10 minutes of musical joy woven in the terrible tapestry of the fall of Cuba...in all its ugliness...at first I shook my head...thinking once again...maybe I should have chosen Spanish in 6th grade and not French...but it didn't matter...the music and emotion were universal...heartbreaking and uplifting all in one...and the audience...these days the theater audience is often...how can I put it?...an ugly sidebar of the Broadway experience...but not this time...I was surrounded by so many rapt in memory...bittersweet...softly singing along...thunderously applauding masterful musicianship and soaring vocals...tears for what was lost and salvaged in Cuba...through its people and its music...and so later...watching another episode of The Americans...and more murder for the motherland...more CIA false bravado...I thought I heard the plaintive notes of "Chan Chan" in the background...any musical that can make you feel all that is...bueno...
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