Sleepless in the Colestin

Cigar factory, late 1920s






Another late night, campers, and no sleep in sight. No rest for the wicked. Are any of you chronic insomniacs like me? I come from a long line. After my mother died, I found some old letters in her trunk written by my grandmother Nellie, who died when my mother was nine. Nellie’s letters describe her days as one long ordeal after another: laundry (hauling the clothes to the spring house to be soaped in lye, ,scrubbed on a washboard and rinsed in a tin tub), gardening (digging, planting, weeding, hoeing, harvesting), preparing food (canning every day in the summer, making molasses, slaughtering hogs) tending poultry (almost every letter mentions her “chix”) in addition to the daily chores of cooking, cleaning, and tending 10 children. Apparently, after working like a field hand, putting the children to bed and tending to my notoriously grouchy grandfather, she was still awake, writing letters to her brother by the light of a kerosene lamp. Insomnia must run in the family.

I’ve been watching cockfighting videos on YouTube while researching Santeria, which isn’t as notorious as it sounds. I’m directing the play Anna in the Tropics at the college, and both subjects apply. I can only imagine the grilling I’d get if Homeland Security got ahold of my web browser history. In your travels on the internet, if any of you ever stumble across information about the Cuban dance forms son, rumba or danzon, especially examples from the 1920s and 30s, please forward them along. I’d be particularly interested to find silent films from the 20s that feature Cuban dance, landscapes or actors. I also need to learn how to roll a cigar.

It’s true campers: I’m a woman of eclectic tastes and short attention span.