Alexander Stuart

View from Coco Cab Havana. Photograph copyright  © Darcie Goldberg www.darciegoldberg.com When the Rolling Stones played their historic concert in Havana on Friday , it marked, for many Cubans, a major turning point: “This will be one of those weeks that people will use to measure other events. In the future, they’ll ask, was it before or after the Stones played,” predicted Tania Livia, a businesswoman attending the concert. “This is the biggest moment in my life,” said tattooed club owner Ferrer Castillo, who had travelled 200km by bus and taxi to see his heroes. (Quoted in the Guardian article, Pleased to meet you: Rolling Stones treat Cuba to spectacular and historic gig ) Likewise, President Barack Obama's visit of the preceding days - the first by a sitting United States president since Calvin Coolidge in January 1928 - underlined the huge changes in the US-Cuba relationship that Obama's policy toward Cuba has brought about: “Obama is doing this no

A squadron of pelicans in a feeding frenzy. All p hotographs Copyright  ©  2013 A lexander Chow-Stuart. Living and writing by the ocean - in a spot we like to call Aldabra (which in reality is a remote and very beautiful atoll in the Indian Ocean) - the beach figures large in my thoughts and daily routine. Usually I wake early, and on occasion I walk at dawn through the waves, past the occasional fisherperson, enjoying the darkness slowly transforming into light, the spray of the breakers, the pull of the tide around my feet, the constant barking of the sea lions, the damp of the ocean mist - and the sight of the sun breaking over the horizon to the east. Dawn panorama on the beach. P hotograph Copyright  ©  2013 A lexander Chow-Stuart. Running from the waves. P hotograph Copyright  ©  2013 A lexander Chow-Stuart. Recently, a few days before what would have been his birthday, I thought of my father as I trod the beach at dawn. He came from a tiny Scottish fishin