Ernest Hemingway

When we think of Cuba, we picture the things we heard about but never saw - the sensuous Havana of the '50s, where Frank Sinatra sang at the Tropicana and Ernest Hemingway dined at El Floridita. Combine these feelings of nostalgia with America's obsession for everything Latin - from the first Latin Grammy awards to Cuban coffee - and it was only a matter of time before interior design caught Cuban fever. "Americans have always been fascinated with Cuba because there is a certain mystique about it," said Jackie Hirschhault, vice president of public relations for the American Furniture Manufacturers Association.

Grand Cru, a mainstay of Govan's Belvedere Square, is a quiet little secret of a good cocktail joint. You associate the place with wine, I'm sure. But they have a pretty nice little drink program and a team of bartenders who can make you just about anything your heart desires. But if you'd rather let the menu do the ordering for you, let me suggest you try The Old Man and the Sea - the drink not the acclaimed novel, though both are Hemingway crafted. Cuba 1935. As bartender Constante "Constantino" Grande's mixed drinks at his bar, El Floridita, "a scruff, bearish man entered and asked to use the bathroom.

In her historical novels, Annapolis author Erika Robuck invents everyday men and women whose lives intersect with those of acclaimed American authors. She figures that fiction is sometimes the best way of learning something true. "I'm interested in famous writers and how they used the people in their lives," Robuck says. "They take things, and they don't always ask permission. It's such a betrayal. " Robuck's current novel, "Hemingway's Girl," tells the story of Mariella Bennet, a young, half-Cuban housemaid who must negotiate the marital minefield created by Ernest Hemingway and his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer.

After watching the movie "Silver Linings Playbook," which is sure to garner lots of Academy Award nominations, I thought we should create another category: Best scene by a book. (If you don't mind spoilers, you can get a taste of the scene in the preview for the movie. ) The works of Ernest Hemingway figure into the plot of the movie, about the unlikely romance of two troubled young people. And "A Farewell to Arms," makes a hilarious appearance -- and exit -- in one key scene.

A private service is planned at Baltimore's Green Mount Cemetery tomorrow for John Cochran Buck, a bibliophile and literary researcher whose devotion to Ernest Hemingway prompted a trip to Cuba to meet the famed writer and years of searching to find an old Hemingway love.Mr. Buck, formerly of Mount Vernon Place and retired owner of a stationery business, died Sept. 8 of diabetes in a St. Petersburg Beach, Fla., nursing home. He was 75 and had lived in Florida since 1993.The trip to see Hemingway began with a telephone call.

It does the heart good somehow to see an inflated reputation reduced to a popped balloon by a few piercing words. In that spirit, American Heritage does solid service with its second annual list of the most overrated and underrated people, things, ideas, and events in U.S. history.You may find yourself lingering upon the "overrated" list, especially given the scathing treatment some of the subjects receive. Among those whose reputations are cut down to size: Gloria Steinem, Al Capone, Ernest Hemingway, Isaac Asimov, the 1960s, Shel Silverstein, John Adams, Boss Tweed, atomic power, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Hunter S. Thompson, Gary Cooper, the idea of progress, Alexis de Tocqueville, Yalta and the Beatles.

The small death notice in the New York Times evoked the poignant sadness that comes with the memory of all lost causes."We note with sorrow the passing of Martha Gellhorn, staunch supporter and devoted life-long friend of the International Brigades and the Spanish Republic. -- Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade."The volunteers of the Lincoln Brigade were Americans who went to Spain in the 1930s to fight the fascists of Generalissimo Francisco Franco and his allies, Hitler and Mussolini.

So you might celebrate Ernest Hemingway's 100th birthday today with suckling pig at Botin's off the Plaza Mayor in Madrid, or musing at the table in the Place St. Michel cafe in Paris where he wrote "Up in Michigan," or drinking daiquiris at La Floridita in Havana, where they were invented.But you might read a pretty good story called "Old Man at the Bridge."In a world inundated by bad Hemingway, much of which he wrote, sometimes published while he was alive ("Across the River and Into the Trees")

"A steep sandy road ran down the hill to the bay through the timber. From Smith's back door you could look out across the woods that ran down the lake and across the bay. It was very beautiful in the spring and summer, the bay blue and bright and usually white caps on the lake out beyond the point from the breeze blowing from Charlevoix and Lake Michigan."-- From "Up in Michigan"by Ernest HemingwayHORTON BAY, Mich. -- The first thing you should know about Ernest Hemingway and Horton Bay -- and maybe even about this sliver of northern Michigan, where the water is clear and blue, and where the wooded hills roll like gentle waves, is this: He got it right.

Grand Cru, a mainstay of Govan's Belvedere Square, is a quiet little secret of a good cocktail joint. You associate the place with wine, I'm sure. But they have a pretty nice little drink program and a team of bartenders who can make you just about anything your heart desires. But if you'd rather let the menu do the ordering for you, let me suggest you try The Old Man and the Sea - the drink not the acclaimed novel, though both are Hemingway crafted. Cuba 1935. As bartender Constante "Constantino" Grande's mixed drinks at his bar, El Floridita, "a scruff, bearish man entered and asked to use the bathroom.

In her historical novels, Annapolis author Erika Robuck invents everyday men and women whose lives intersect with those of acclaimed American authors. She figures that fiction is sometimes the best way of learning something true. "I'm interested in famous writers and how they used the people in their lives," Robuck says. "They take things, and they don't always ask permission. It's such a betrayal. " Robuck's current novel, "Hemingway's Girl," tells the story of Mariella Bennet, a young, half-Cuban housemaid who must negotiate the marital minefield created by Ernest Hemingway and his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer.

Born Frizzell Gray, Baltimore native Kweisi Mfume began his career as a political activist, first elected to the Baltimore City Council in 1979. After two terms on the council, in 1986, the Democrat was elected to the House of Representatives and went on to serve as the congressman from Maryland's 7th District for five terms. From 1996 to 2004 he was president and CEO of the Baltimore-based National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Since a failed bid for the Senate in 2006, Mfume has toured the country on public speaking engagements.

KEY WEST, FLA. // Only one road leads from Key Largo all the way to Key West, so you'll get wet before you get lost. For the directionally impaired, that makes things easier. Yet the 100 or so miles between Key Largo in the north and Key West on the southwestern end cover a lot of territory. The Keys comprise 1,700 islands, after all. Harry Truman visited 11 times between 1946 and 1952. Ernest Hemingway spent 11 years in Key West. I had two days to take it in. For the most part, U.S. 1 is two lanes -- sometimes highway, sometimes city street.

KEY WEST, Fla. -- For more than 40 years, they have lounged on Ernest Hemingway's bed, lolled in his garden and sipped water from the urinal he dragged home from his favorite saloon, delighting tourists from around the world. But now the nearly 50 cats at the Ernest Hemingway Home & Museum, about half of which bear a sixth toe on their front paws, are felines non grata - scofflaws who, the federal government says, must be caged, kept under guard or removed. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says the author's one-time home in Key West needs a license to exhibit the descendants of the original polydactyl, or extra-toed, cat he is said to have received from a ship captain in the 1930s.

The Breaking Point: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the Murder of Jose Robles Stephen Koch Counterpoint Press / 308 pages / $15.95 Koch proposes that the Spanish Civil War was a crucible for Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos, both in terms of their friendship and their literary fortunes. "It is a story steeped in intrigue, duplicity and nefarious figures, all told with a cynicism well matched to the age," we said in our review.

OCEAN CITY - Some people come here for the sun and sand. Some come because it's a family tradition. But this week, several hundred people are here because they hope to hook a million bucks. At the White Marlin Open, six-figure checks are the norm, and last year's winner, Doug Remsberg, walked off with $1.3 million for a 78.5-pound white. That's $16,611 a pound. "Not your average supermarket fish, is it?" says Jim Motsko, founder and director of the 31-year-old event, believed to be the largest and most lucrative billfish tournament in the world.

"All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they really happen and after you finished reading one you will feel that it all happened to you, and afterward it all belongs to you."- Ernest Hemingway,From "An Old Newsman Writes"Pub Date: 12/09/98

"Hemingway on Fishing," by Ernest Hemingway, edited by Nick Lyons (The Lyons Press, 242 pages, $29.95). Though he never fished seriously with dry flies -- the noblest form of the angler's fancy -- Hemingway was obsessed with fishing from childhood till death. His writing is full of the enchantment and challenge and ecstasy that men and women of a certain kind find in fishing. Nick Lyons -- one of the world's greatest living fly-fishermen, a scholar and an illustrious publisher -- has drawn all of that writing together in this marvelous volume, and written a strong and instructive introduction.

An interview with Nancy Berla, co-founder of the Vantage House book club. What is Vantage House? Vantage House is a life-care retirement center [in Columbia]. How did your club get started? I founded it with some of the residents. It was interesting because they had asked the [Howard County] library for support in setting up a book club, and I volunteer at the library in another capacity, and my mother-in-law had recently moved into the Vantage House. We started the book club in April of 1982.

"Hemingway on Fishing," by Ernest Hemingway, edited by Nick Lyons (The Lyons Press, 242 pages, $29.95). Though he never fished seriously with dry flies -- the noblest form of the angler's fancy -- Hemingway was obsessed with fishing from childhood till death. His writing is full of the enchantment and challenge and ecstasy that men and women of a certain kind find in fishing. Nick Lyons -- one of the world's greatest living fly-fishermen, a scholar and an illustrious publisher -- has drawn all of that writing together in this marvelous volume, and written a strong and instructive introduction.