People: U.S. group helping preserve Hemingway’s documents in Cuba
A U.S. foundation will ship nearly $900,000 in supplies to Cuba to build a state-of-the-art facility to preserve Ernest Hemingway’s books, letters and photos – the first major export of construction materials to Cuba since President Barack Obama loosened the trade embargo on the island.
The Boston-based Finca Vigia Foundation has been trying for years to help Cuba stop thousands of pages of documents from slowly disintegrating in the baking heat and dripping humidity of the sprawling home where the American writer lived and worked outside Havana from 1939 to 1960.
Officials with Cuba’s National Cultural Heritage Council, which runs the Finca Vigia, have been enthusiastic about building a conservation laboratory but said they didn’t have the funds or supplies to do it. High-quality building materials are virtually impossible to find throughout much of Cuba.
The foundation’s proposal to send four shipping containers with as much as $862,000 of materials ranging from nuts and bolts to tools and roofing was approved by the U.S. government in May, after Obama created a series of exemptions to the embargo.
Cuban architects, engineers and workmen will use the American supplies and Cuban cement blocks and mortar to construct a 2,400-square-foot, two-story laboratory where thousands of photos, roughly 9,000 books and a huge number of letters to and from Hemingway can be treated and preserved.
“It will make a tremendous difference,” said Mary-Jo Adams, executive director of the privately funded Finca Vigia Foundation, which was founded in 2003. “They’ll be able to be kept for decades, if not longer.”
Diddy arrested on UCLA campus
Hip-hop music mogul Diddy was arrested Monday afternoon on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles, where his son is on the football team, police said.
Diddy, 45, whose real name is Sean Combs, was arrested at UCLA’s Acosta Athletic Training Complex on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon shortly after 12:30 p.m., according to a statement from campus police.
The deadly weapon was a kettlebell, which is used by athletes in weight training.
No one was seriously injured and campus police are investigating. Officials did not identify the victim of the assault or say what led to it.
Combs’ son Justin Combs is a redshirt junior defensive back on the UCLA football team, which has been practicing on campus. He has played in just a handful of games in his three years with the team.
Football coach Jim Mora thanked his staff in the statement for their professionalism in handling the situation.
“This is an unfortunate incident for all parties involved,” Mora said.
The birthday bunch
Former “American Idol” judge Randy Jackson is 59. Actress Frances McDormand is 58. Singer Chico DeBarge is 45. Actress Selma Blair is 43. Singer KT Tunstall is 40. Singer-songwriter Jason Mraz is 38. Actress Melissa Rauch (“The Big Bang Theory”) is 35.