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4 " Travel to CubaGenerally Tourist travel to Cuba is prohibited under U.S. law for U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and others subject to U.S. jurisdiction. The hard and fast rules have been relaxed some and exceptions are now made for certain travelers who can show an acceptable reason, to visit the Island Nation in which case a “Tourist Visa" is required and available. US Citizens must have a valid passport with two blank pages available, for entry and exit stamps, at the time of entry into Cuba.United States issued credit and debit cards do not work in Cuba so travelers should plan to bring enough cash with them to cover all the expenses they might incur during their trip. Authorized travelers to Cuba are subject to daily spending limits. See the Office of Foreign Assets Control page of the U.S. Department of the Treasury.The export of Cuban convertible pesos (CUC) is strictly prohibited, regardless of the amount. Travelers may only export the equivalent of $5000 in any currency other than the Cuban convertible peso (CUC). Anyone wishing to export more than this amount must demonstrate evidence that the currency was acquired legitimately from a Cuban bank.Cuba has many Hotels and Resort Areas, most of which are foreign owned; I counted 313 of them. Many are Canadian or European owned with Meliá Hotels International in the lead with twenty-eight hotels in Cuba alone. Being a Spanish hotel chain, it was founded in 1956 in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. The photo show the internationally known “Nacional Hotel.” Some Cruise Lines including Carnival now offer cruises to Cuba and advise guests as to the entry requirements. Follow Captain Hank Bracker, author of “The Exciting Story of Cuba” on Facebook, Goodreads and his Web Page as well as Twitter. His daily blogs and weekend commentaries are now being read by hundreds and frequrntly thousands of readers. Send suggestions and comments to PO Box 607 Elfers, FL 34680-0607. "

9 " I noticed that a woman on Goodreads said something like, “I was reading along in the beginning thinking, okay, a woman wrote this, there’s her picture, she’s a white lady, the narrator’s a white lady. And then suddenly she says something and you realize she’s a he. And then a few pages later you realize he’s ‘brown.’ I think the author could have been a little more up front about this.” :) It made me happy because in fact I thought everybody would pick the book up, read the back cover, and know they were dealing with a woman writer speaking through a male narrator. Which is a drag, actually, because if you didn’t know the author was a woman, you’d probably assume that an unmarked first-person narrator was a man, but if you knew she was a woman you’d assume her narrator was too. And if you didn’t know the race of the author, you’d probably assume the narrator was white. That’s pretty insidious, of course - it’s the way sexism and racism work. I’m not saying this woman on Goodreads was racist or sexist, I’m saying the fact that we make these assumptions signals that we live in a world that presumes that an unmarked voice is white and male, and that women and people of color will generally be writing from a limited perspective. I guess that’s obvious. But what I was saying about this comment was that it made me realize something else about ebooks - because I can only assume she read it as an ebook if she didn’t get the back jacket copy that explains who’s narrating. I love books, print books, and my own optimal experience of reading this book would be in print, with short breaks to periodically check out the Internet connections that the narrator’s making. But I do think that decontextualization is an interesting side-effect of the ebook… "