Conexión Miami / Foolish words
The antics — not to say foolishness — of the Indiana Pacers’ Lance Stephenson will be remembered with contempt when the NBA Finals begin Thursday between the San Antonio Spurs and the Miami Heat.
I don’t know if you know what I’m talking about. But you probably do remember Stephenson blowing into LeBron James’ left ear, or slapping the face of Norris Cole, the Heat’s guard. However, it is possible that today, celebrating their advancement to the Finals and focused on the games, the Heat players have even forgotten Lance Stephenson.
This writer, blessed with an arbitrary memory, remembers Lance’s words to The Palm Beach Post after the Eastern Conference semifinal. Referring to the Heat’s Dwyane Wade, Stephenson said: “I think his knee is messed up, so I’ve got to be extra aggressive and make him run and have him running around and make his knee flare up or something.”
RIP, Gustavo Lezcano
Cuban-American musician Gustavo Lezcano, former member of the Miami Sound Machine, died May 28 of an apparent heart attack. He was 59. A teacher at the Gratigny Elementary School for more than three decades, Lezcano died there while participating in a talent show. The composer of “Eyes of Innocence” was not only an extraordinary harmonica player (he played with the Bee Gees, Jorge Drexler and others) but also someone who gave tone and personality during the 1980s to the band led by Gloria and Emilio Estefan.
A message from someone who cares about libraries
Miami-Dade County Commissioner Rebeca Sosa has been warned in a manner somewhat invasive, cowardly if you will, about something very serious: “A vote against libraries is a cult to ignorance.”
Sosa does not seem interested in the subject of the warning but rather frightened, after finding a newspaper page taped to her front door with those words in red ink. Also on that page, an article about possible cuts in funding for libraries was circled in red.
Sosa is not the only one who doesn’t seem to worry that libraries, with all the culture they preserve, might slowly disappear. Just as disinterested seems to be Univisión, which first reported the news and then limited itself to giving a decaffeinated police account of the incident.
Science museum is under way
What’s novel about the Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science being built in Miami is that it will be constructed in an environment-friendly manner. The materials for the construction of the 250,000-square-foot building are local, reusable and will not affect the environment, said construction manager Ezra García.
The space will save energy because it will utilize natural light and collect rain water for use as a wetland for local flora and fauna. A garden on the roof will provide some plants that will be sold for food by the museum’s restaurant.
Pam Bondi is on the wrong side
To believe that recognizing gay marriage might “impose significant public harm” is to assume too much. In the first place, it assumes that we know what that “public harm” is, an ambiguous concept often used as a political wild card without clear or defined purposes.
It also assumes that we know the public, the people, as if everyone had been polled simultaneously, without any bias.
That is why, when I hear an opinion like the one expressed by Pam Bondi, Florida’s attorney general, I get worried, experience disbelief, and think about Barack Obama when he said that there are people and events “on the wrong side of history.”
