7 Color Lagoon

Leica cameras were a help to the German war machine of the Second World War. However the family of Ernst Leitz II. During the period leading up to the Second World War, acted righteously. They were yet another group of strict Christians who acted humanely in a time like ours when violence was threatening to rule the world. The actors have changed. The violence still maims, hurts and kills. There are still good guys and bad guys but, as always, it is not always so easy to know which are which.

As much as I admire and always wanted a Leica and Leitz optics, especially the venerable M-series rangefinders and their outstanding (and horribly expensive) lenses, there was always that nagging worry about supporting Nazi companies that supported the German onslaught against the world in the mid-1930s. Why, I wondered, should I or can I give money to the surviving war criminals who successfully killed tens of millions of people in the name of Aryan superiority?

I now drive a Jetta even though most of my life was spent driving Volvos (the Swedes were good guys after all) and then my beloved Bronco. It was Hitler’s vagon that was one of his only positive contributions to man, this car for the volks.

In the world of photography the Germans, no matter how savage their history, have been in the forefront of precision, quality and near-perfection. Leitz, Schneider, Rodenstock, Rollei, Zeiss. These have been the summit of photography. In a life-time of looking at cameras and pictures, enlargers and loupes, I had to grit my teeth over supporting the European savages in order to admire their optics. Shamefully, America has seldom made anything to compare and, when the cameras did, they had Schneider or Zeiss Tessar lenses attached.

Now there is a report going around and awards given for Ernst Leitz II, who headed the company in the 1930s as the Germans opted to revel in killing and war, torture, slave labor and genocide He managed his company in a manner that has earned him the title, “the photography industry’s Schindler.” He was recently described as acting as a gentleman with ” uncommon grace, generosity and modesty.”

The writer on photography, George Gilbert, recently spoke at a convention of the Leica Historical Society of America in Portland, Oregon. The company, he said, begun in 1869 earned a reputation for its “enlightened behavior” regarding its employees. The Wetzlar- based company provided modern benefits far earlier than most. Leitz provided its workers with pensions, health coverage and sick leave. Many of its workers were traditionally, for generations, Jewish. (more…)

Miami is America’s melting pot of a city. Like New York with its neighborhoods for Russians, Ukrainians, Rich People, Famous People, Puerto Ricans, artists (most, I hear, moved elsewhere when the Rich People took their lofts), and every other brand of exotic creature, Miami has room for many tongues and growing businesses. All those cultures melting away in the pot leave a residue of different dishes, ingredients, spices and cuisines. Florida may once have been fed by fried fish, fried chicken, and roasted pig with some collard greens and a few oranges but, today, the pot runneth over.

Like New York the melted pot is bubbling with once exotic foods and tastes, many from Latin America, to which Miami is America’s gateway. Yes, I know there are those who think they should all go home, wherever home is. But home is often here. Many Cubans may speak Spanish or only Spanish but have been here since Fidel came out of the mountains of Oriente Province. In Tampa my mother used to complain of Cubans who had come after the Spanish-American War and not learned English by the 1950s. Some people are not proficient in languages, others adapt more quickly.

Miami has its Cuban base as well as Haitians speaking Creole ( a sort of French with a twist of this and that), Japanese and Chinese, French and Peruvians, Salvadorans and Basques, Pakistanis, Indians… Each bring the tastes of their cultures. The only cuisine that is primarily a bore is American unless you like fried chicken from plastic chickens, chain hamburgers from factories and computer-scheduled drive-throughs or Chuck E. Cheese, whatever it may be (I saw one but there were too many tots slobbering to get in for me to look in).

My relationship to restaurants here is eclectic although it tends toward the nearby (I am relegated to public transport in a city of Maseratis and Porsche SUVs), the Chinese which are my favorite and the affordable while visiting my country which has become astoundingly expensive. Therefore, this episode in Travels With Howard, has a few places for those who are in or coming to the sunshine if they can get out from under the 200 inches of some odd, white stuff of which I have nearly forgotten the lovely feel.

I would have added pictures but I came here partly to have a cataract removed. The eye works again and will focus a camera but it is too soon to stick heavy, metal Nikons up to it. Let your imagination run free as it always should. Being alone I don’t get to try enough of the dishes anywhere although I peek at every tray that goes by and, peeping Howard, check out what eveyone else is eating especially if they look contented.

According to one site on Peru Peru has the largest Chinese community in Lating America. In the period from 1849 to 1874 100,000 Chinese immigrated to Peru. Chinese restaurants, called Chifas adapted and became an important part of Peru’s cuisine. Check out Alejandro’s blog on Peruvian cooking with its videos. In the last 40 years 2000 Chifas have opened in Peru and the Chinese restaurants of their communities became part of the Peru scene. (more…)

The time came again for me to sail off into the turquoise sea and land in Miami, which is actually in America. Really! People may speak a lot of Spanish with Cuban, Peruvian, Columbian, Spanish, Basque, Nicaraguan, and even Mexican here; but America it is. There is French and Creole and myriad languages from Pakistan (Urdu, I think), India, and the sun and style-seeking Europeans.

America is a grand melting pot still. Versace was here, after all, but gone now — which sadly happens in our world that has embraced so much violence.

Miami is international. Tampa, where yours truly comes from, is not. Pensacola and Tallahassee, pretty as their Indian names are, are not. I am, I guess a little international, since I am presently expatriated and speak some of this and that. Luckily I still remember my English (well, American English) pretty well.

It is not my first visit in the nine or ten years I have not lived back here, back home in my native land. I may still be 110% American more or less, but this new America always comes as a surprise. It has changed - my America, the South, Florida. Maybe the world has changed as I aged and not perhaps for the better, even if there are iPods and iPhones and an I-Net.

This gives me a chance to write a bit of travel and a bit of art criticism (Miami is growing its cultural identity almost as fast as the condos are being jig-sawed together with big cranes and tons of pre-formed concrete panels), some restaurant reviews and, when the cataract is sucked out, I will be able to photograph again.

So this is Miami. These are the thoughts of an American seeing America anew, a Southerner back home in the South, my mobility limited to public transport in a world of the car culture from which I came, who drive at least one car at a time. Judging by the horrendously growing traffic, some may be driving two or more at a time. I haven’t seen that yet, but something must fuel those eight or more lanes of revving monsters just waiting for me to slow down as I (gasp!) walk across the highway.

The restaurant reviews that may come later tend toward the affordable, the Chinese (my favorite cuisine), and the Cuban on which I grew up. However there is a Japanese-Chinese with a Shanghai dish that I plan to note, the Peruvian-Chinese where I ate a Szechuan dish the other night, and my favorite luxury restaurant in Coconut Grove at the Ritz-Carlton (which is not affordable, just perfect). Later, you hungry readers - first the eye and the mind.

Finally, after meaning to during a number of trips here (filled with hospital and medical chores), I went to the Miami Art Museum in Government Center, an easy-to-reach downtown location. Only half the galleries were open (two) but “Modern Photographs: The Machine , The Body And The City ” was worth the train trip on Miami’s clean and quick Metrorail elevated system. (more…)