Happy Birthday

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, beat poet, is 100 years old today. An amazing survivor of a generation that included Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs he co-founded the City Lights bookshop in San Francisco. So I dug out my battered copy of Penguin Poets No. 5 bought in 1971.
 Some great love poems but also this gloomy prognosis of Fidel Castro's prospects in the teeth of a CIA forever devising more and more outlandish plots to assassinate the Cuban revolutionary. Fortunately Ferlinghetti underestimated the resilience of the Cuban people and Fidel. 
Now they have a new target, Venezuela's Maduro in their sights. Lets hope they are as unsuccessful iwith a President, whatever you think of him, who won a large majority in an election judged fair by international observers, and whose country has been devastated by US sanctions.