Santayana Jewelry at Cuba Nostalgia 2012 in Miami. Moments, people and new friends.
Cuba Nostalgia Check List
Santayana Jewelry has participated at Cuba Nostalgia since it’s inaugural year so we know a thing or two about being prepared for a full day walking, eating, dancing and enjoying Cuban culture. For me, enjoying a show this size is a matter of preparation. Here’s a list of what you need to get you through the day comfortably.
What to wear - Guayaberas are the thing to wear at Cuba Nostalgia. And they’re really a smart choice because it can get pretty hot after a few mojitos. If you don’t have one yet don’t worry, you can pick one up there. Last year a got a great straw Fedura to give my friend A.T. I hope to pick one up for myself this year.
Comfortable shoes - I often see ladies wearing their favorite platform wedges or other incredibly high heels to this event. Although they look absolutely fabulous, thirty minutes in, you’re ready to call it a day.
Un Abanico - My abuelo used to always tell us that it’s hotter in Miami than it was in Cuba. I don’t know if that’s true or not but, this is Miami, and it can get a little hot. So bring an abanico for extra style and function plus you get to be the envy of everyone there with your personal cooling system.
Accesorize - I notice every year how fabulously accessorized all the ladies in attendance are. So don’t be left out, this is the moment to wear all your joyas.
If you’re visiting Santayana - Every year we debut a new designs at Cuba Nostalgia. This year we are introducing new charms to our Cuban collection. I suggest you come see us early and if you see something you like, buy it. We sell out of everything at the show. It’s not the time to leave something you love to chance!!
Bring Celia Cruz to the Smithsonian
Celia Cruz was Miami’s most beloved artist. To this day, one canot attend a wedding or quince in Miami without dancing to at least one of her songs. For this reason, I feel it is our duty as Cubans to vote to have her image displayed at the Smithsonian.
The Smithsonian has asked the public to vote for which Iconic American will have his/her portrait composed by noted photographic artist, Robert Weingarten . Apart from Celia Cruz, there are 4 other Americans from which choose including: Audie Murphy, Alice Paul, Samuel Morse and Frederick Douglas. Celia Cruz is in the company of very great individuals so she is going to need much help from us. The winner’s portrait will be exhibited at the Smithsonian this fall.
Click here to Vote for Celia Cruz’s portrait to be exhibited at the Smithsonian. Voting is open May 11 to May 26th.
Click here to read Celia Cruz’s Biography
Instagram Gift Ideas For Mom
Here is a photo montage of our favorite gifts for mom as seen through Instagram!
Santayana Original Design Gold Ring with Wood Carvings
Gold Floral Bouquet Pendant with Diamonds
57 Chevy for Pandora and Chamilia Charm Bracelets
“Dale” (go for it!) Charm for Pandora or Chamilia Bracelets
18k White Gold Ruby Heart Charm
14k White Gold Amethyst and Diamond Pendant
Platinume Eternity Band with Emerald Cut Diamonds
!4k White and Yellow Gold Dog Charm Necklace
Silver with Diamond Wood Inlay Earrings
Rose Gold Diamond Cross
For more info contact:
Elena Santayana at
santayanapower@gmail.com
or call
305-361-2786
3:05 Cafecito on Key Biscayne
3:05 is Miami’s official cafecito break time, thanks to JennyLee Molina of JLPR. But what do you do when you’re off the mainland and need to get a cafecito fix on Key Biscayne? Below are three of Santayana Jewelry’s favorite cafecito break spots on the Island Paradise.
The Oasis- (19 Harbor Dr.) Belly up to the window at The Oasis for a cuban cafecito break and maybe a nice pastelito. Even if a hurricane comes, they’re open!
La Carreta- (12 Crandon Blvd.) You don’t much more traditional Miami Cuban than La Carreta. If you really want to try something different, order guarapo. What is it? Crushed sugarcane!!
The Island Shop- 654 Crandon Blvd) This is a locals secret. The Island Shop is Key Biscayne BEST gift shop. Go in whenever and the store manager, Sharif, will make you a lovely Nespresso espresso. That’s hospitality!! Thank you, Sharif!!
Instagram It!!
Instagram is the internet’s hottest new verb. How do you “instagram” something? You take a picture with your smartphone, run it through the application’s photo filters, and then send it out to your friends and followers.
Personally, I use Instagram to document the parts of my day that make me laugh, think, or just totally love.
Instagram makes everything look better. Who doesn’t want to look better?! It makes something new look vintage and something old look AMAZING! Below are some samples of my Instagramed pictures- before and after. Before on the left, after on the right. If you’re loving it and want to see more, find me and follow on me Instgram. I will follow you back!! It’s tons of fun.
Here’s a list of the Santayana’s on Instagram
Elena Santayana - @santayanapower
Rudy Santayana - @rudysantayana
Miriam Santayana - @miriamsantayana
Patty Santayana - @patris10
Monica Santayana - @moniomi
Heartache and Hope Made Dad a True Exile
This article was written by Fabiola Santiago and published in the Miami Herald on March 30, 2012. As the daughter of exiled parents, I relate very much to her experience.
My father was a true exile.
Although he loved this country deeply and the United States could do no wrong in his eyes, he hung on to his Cuban citizenship, carrying no longer the hope of a return but always and forever, until his last breath, the torch for his native island.
“I was born in Cuba and I will remain a Cuban no matter where I am,” he would say. “No one can take that away from me.”
On Sunday we buried my father, Aniceto Teodoro Santiago, 88, in a Miami cemetery where clusters of American flags flutter in the breeze, the same neighborhood where we have lived since 1973. He wore for his last trip, as was his wish, the suit he donned when he left Cuba on a Freedom Flight in 1969 to an exile he thought temporary.
“ Sastrería M. Reyes, Matanzas,” reads the label on his brown tailored suit.
Made in Matanzas, as was he; born to immigrant parents from the Canary Islands on April 17, 1923, a date that would prove fateful. He might have been arrested and thrown in prison for helping the Bay of Pigs invaders on April 17, 1961, he told me, had it not been that he was celebrating his birthday and only learned of the invasion when it was all over.
Orphaned at age 5 after his father died from pneumonia, my father started a food distribution business as a boy, fetching groceries for the neighbors on his bicycle for a dime a week to help his mother María support five brothers and sisters. He quit school at 12 to work full time and he and his little enterprise grew up together. He graduated to a motorcycle with a sidecar, then cars (which he bought and sold for profit), and finally to a truck he stocked with freshly baked bread and crackers every dawn to make deliveries to bodegas and cafeterias all over Matanzas and its surrounding rural towns.
All was ripped from him in an instant one day in 1965 when the Cuban government confiscated his small but thriving business. The olive-clad officials who took the truck keys and his contracts asked him to stay on as a state employee, but my father declined, telling them he’d rather leave the country. As punishment, he was sent to work in the agriculture fields in the countryside, harvesting root vegetables, picking tobacco leaves and cutting sugarcane until we were finally allowed to leave.
My father suffered the loss of Cuba, all that a homeland represents in history and loved ones left behind, deep in his heart. The sadness was always there in the small and large moments of the everyday.
Once, I treated him to a weekend in Naples for Father’s Day. I had booked an oceanfront room where the soft white sands and the clear waters were right outside our door, and he, my mother and I had a great time — until his mind flew home.
“If only we were in Varadero,” my father said, voice cracking, eyes tearing at the thought of his beloved beach near Matanzas. “There is nothing in the world like Varadero.”
At times like this I would enumerate all he had built here: Bought and paid in full a good home; lived through a myriad of health scares, including a quintuple bypass; raised my brother Jorge and me, who became professionals and married good people, Kim and Wayne, and gave him five grandchildren – Tanya, Marissa, Erica, Sean and Nicole – and a great-grandson, Devereaux.
Most of all, he had my mother, Olga Ruiz, who was his inseparable companion for 62 years, six of courtship and 56 of marriage.
Now that he’s gone after suffering for more than a year from end-stage congestive heart failure and I know the endless pain of a great loss as an adult, I understand his nostalgia better. I will miss him like he missed Cuba.
The pundits would call my father a hardliner, and he was. Once when I was on a business trip to Washington, D.C., during the Clinton years, I asked him what he wanted me to bring him back.
“A picture of Ronald Reagan,” he said.
I bought him a postcard with a portrait of Reagan.
He framed it and kept it on top of his dresser all these years.
“ Mi presidente,” my father would call him, as if Reagan had served just for him.
He was a hardliner, to the right of Reagan. I used to joke that I had my own private dictator at home. But I also saw my father in full, with all the nuances that make a man so much more than his politics, and he was admirable.
The memory that will forever stay with me is that of the burly, energetic man who woke up every day at dawn to the tenor voices of newscasters on Cuban Miami radio. He left the house holding his packed black lunchbox and thermos and drove south on Northwest 27th Avenue all the way to Liberty City to work in a window-painting factory.
Whenever he had to talk to his boss, he brought me so that I could translate for him. I could never be the journalist I am today had it not been for the experience of witnessing this proud man — who built his business in Cuba from nothing only to have it taken away by the cockeyed master plan of a tyrant — negotiate a few more pennies an hour to improve our lives just a little.
“Your father is the best worker I have ever known,” his boss, a Greek-American named George, would say to me.
My father could never earn enough at the factory, but on the weekends, looking dapper in black slacks and a white shirt and bow tie, he worked for extra cash serving weddings and quince celebrations, sometimes for the wealthy, sometimes for struggling exiles just like him spending their savings on a loved one’s big day.
Thanks to him, I don’t remember ever thinking that we were poor.
He wasn’t an educated man and he found it difficult to learn English beyond paint colors, but he followed the news closely on Spanish-language television and radio as if he were a journalist too, and oftentimes with the attention to detail of a commander in chief. I used to tell everyone he ran the Iraq war from his recliner.
He made simple yet poignant observations.
Recently, he had been so sick he had not stepped on his beloved backyard for months, but a new medicine seemed to give him some strength back, and he asked me to take him outside. We walked past the arecas, hibiscus and the mango and avocado trees he planted, past the shed (“la casita”) and his beloved dog Gator’s house to the edge of his property by a canal.
He looked at the dirty water and floating debris with sad, angry eyes and in few words said plenty about the state of local governance.
“Before, they used to come to clean up four to a boat, when it was a job for two,” he said. “Now, look at this disaster; they don’t come at all.”
But what my father cared most about was family.
With his Cuba stories and his insistence that our children and now the great-grandchildren be bilingual, he gave us, as Jose Martí famously remarked a parent must do, roots and wings (though he clipped the latter when he felt it necessary).
The tales of his beloved and beautiful seaside Matanzas often ended with this line: “If we had stayed in Cuba, if Fidel hadn’t ruined everything, you’d be ‘ la hija de Teodorito,’ but here, I’m ‘ el padre de Fabiola Santiago.’ ”
I would roll my eyes and fake a sigh.
He was wrong about that. I’ll always be la hija de Teodorito. And he will always be here among us, at home, in our forever exile.
(Source: miamiherald.com)
The Return of the Choker Necklace
Reappearing fresh off the 2012 runway shows of Ralph Lauren, Jean Paul Gaultier and Givenchy, chocker necklaces have been a staple in women’s jewelry arsenal since the dawn of time. Called chokers because they sit at the base of the neck, chokers enjoy reinvention time and again because of the elegant way elongate the neck.
Choker necklace are the favorite choice of brides, royalty, Masai women of Africa, Kayan women of Northern Thailand. Apart from being elegant and fashionable, chokers are also especially helpful at hiding hickeys.
Brass ring choker necklace
Masai Woman in beautiful traditional jewelry
Princess Diana in the 90’s wearing on of her signature choker necklaces.
2012 Ralph Lauren runway show
(Source: stylelist.com)
Where To Go Key Biscayne
For the next few weeks, tennis enthusiasts from across the globe descend on to Key Biscayne for the Sony Ericsson Open. What is there to do after Key Biscayne’s most famous event? Below are some of my favorite restaurants and hangouts on the Key.
Le Macaron (638 Crandon Blvd) - the newest place to open in Key Biscayne. Le Macaron offers authentic French cuisine and desserts so decadent they will make your eyes water. Order wine by the bottle and enjoy!!
The Golden Hog (91 Harbor Dr.) - Venezuelan owned, offers an arepa bar for breakfast.
Sir Pizza (712 Crandon Blvd) - the place to go for lunch in Key Biscayne without having to change out of your bathing suit!
The Lighthouse Cafe (1200 Crandon Blvd) - Located inside Bill Baggs State Park, TLC, offers seafood fare right by the water. It’s a great spot to watch sea life especially at sunset.
Novecento (620 Crandon Bvd) - Argentinean restaurant that offers, in my opinion, the best hamburger in town.
The Oasis (19 Harbor Dr) - Need a Cuban Cafecito break. Belly up to the window at the Oasis for a quick fix and maybe a nice pastelito.
Gloria’s Letters
I’m not that old but when I was a kid, I had a penpal. The kind of penpal whose response I awaited eagerly for in my mailbox. For weeks I greeted the postman with hope and smiles only to be completely dismayed when all I got was an armful of brochures, bills and Sedano’s flyers. By the time my penpals response finally came in the mail, I had completely forgotten what I wrote about and wished I had remembered to make a photocopy of my original letter.
Today the handwritten note is as dead as dinosaurs. I don’t even know of any young person with legible, let alone beautiful, handwriting. For a while there, it was more exciting to receive an email than it was a handwritten note. “You’ve got mail” was a glorious sound. Now I mute the computer volume to check the spammy emails I have delivered to my AOL account. And once again, I check my mailbox filled with hope and excitement for a letter from my 8 year old penpal, Mary.
I regressed and found myself a penpal. A kid one. I wanted to share the exhilaration of receiving an envelope with your name and a stamp on it. I bought expensive stationary just to write to Mary. I write to her about silly things. I write to her about sports and how boring it is to be an adult. I also write her about the amazing letters I received from her mom, Gloria, when she was just a cadet at the Air Force Academy and I was a girl.
Gloria’s letters were filled with adventure. Long hikes through the wilderness eating rabbits they caught from the wild and an eyeball on a dare. Stories of romps with the champion rugby team she played on, and the hundreds of times she parachuted from an airplane.
The letters I received live in a big box under the bed in the spare bedroom. Looking through them recently, I found $40 that an aunt sent with a note in French wishing me a happy birthday and hoping I kept up with my lessons. Every once in awhile I lug it out to reminisce on the wonder of being a kid. The letters are dusty and filled with a sincerity that simply does not translate the same in an email.
Although I haven’t done anything nearly as cool as my penpal Gloria, I try to make my letters as interesting as possible for my 8 year old audience. Maybe she doesn’t appreciate the nice paper now but I hope later she might. If she only gets one thing out of my letters I hope it’s that someone a few hours driving distance away really loves her.
(Source: santayanapower)
