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On Sunday, Raúl Castro announced that he would serve as Cuba’s president for one more five year term, as had been widely predicted (including here). And almost as anticipated, Ramón Machado Ventura, his First Vice President, was kicked to the curb in favor of a fresh face, Miguel Díaz Canel.

The naming of Díaz Canel to be the country’s number two caught most observers by surprise. He was widely rumored to be under consideration for the post of President of the National Assembly, roughly equivalent to the U.S.’s Speaker of the House, and few had imagined him in the Biden role. (The presidency of the National Assembly went to Esteban Lazo, a longtime loyalist, the first Afro-Cuban to reach such a high post, and the assembly’s first new president in 20 years.)

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There’s a chance this blog might be a little sloppy. As I write, I’m a mess of tears. And these aren’t soft poetic tears but real sobs.

My friend David Hernández had a heart attack at dawn today and died.

David Hernández — that David Hernández — the poet, the city’s unofficial poet laureate, the playful dude in the fedora, the guy with the perennial smile. The famous poet.

The street dude who took this little Cuban kid who’d grown up in Indiana and introduced her to the beauty of the city more than 30 years ago, infected her with his own enduring love for the muse that hurt and thrilled Nelson Algren and Gwendolyn Brooks and David himself and, eventually, all of us too. I was one of thousands: the writers and poets and musicians and painters who twirled around David, our magical imp, our towering barrio bard.

Let me tell you what happened when David reached up and cupped your face in his hands: You felt like heaven itself was shining a light on you, like you had to be good.

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Raúl Castro, Cuba’s president for the last seven years (since 2006, though not officially until 2008) sent tongues a-wagging yesterday when he suggested that he’ll address his retirement on Sunday, during the National Assembly’s meeting, when the nation’s president will be selected.

“I’m going to retire,” the 81 year-old Cuban president told reporters, grinning.

And, of course, sparking wild speculation about what should be a pretty predictable government meeting, as nearly all the National Assembly meetings in Cuba have been since the Castros -- Raúl and Fidel before him -- came to power.

But anyone expecting anything other than routine tomorrow is bound to be disappointed.

Raul Castro is not going to retire on Sunday.

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The last time Sen. Marco Rubio and President Barack Obama squared off over immigration, Obama swept the floor with the junior senator from Florida.

Which explains, at least in part, Rubio’s evolution on immigration. And explains too why, though Rubio and Obama’s immigration proposals are practically identical, Rubio will not only distance himself from the president because of internal GOP politics but also because the man is rightfully wary.

I’m referring, of course, to the fight over the DREAM Act, which the president supported, Rubio opposed, and Congress rejected -- setting Obama up to use executive power to suspend enforcement of deportation rules and allow millions of young people from all over the world to legalize their status.

Obama’s move came not in the wake of congressional action but just as Rubio -- who had been hounded by Latino activists for his anti-immigration positions -- announced that he was going to propose his own DREAM Act, one that did not include amnesty or a path to citizenship but would “accommodate” these undocumented young people.

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María Irene Fornés has gained three pounds in the last two weeks.

Not a big deal, or maybe a big deal in some quarters, but for one of the greatest living English-language playwrights, those three pounds are a very good sign.

"If you made a list of the most influential English language playwrights of the 20th Century, it seems to me you have the vein of writers who descend from Beckett (his lineage includes Pinter, Mamet, Churchill), the poetic naturalists like O'Neill and Williams, all the various kinds of expressionists, and then there is Fornés,” said Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas, who was mentored by Fornés and is best known for his play, Blind Mouth Singing (staged in Chicago by Teatro Vista in 2005). “I don't know how we get to Paula Vogel or 13P or the ethos or aesthetics of off-Broadway today without Fornés. Why she is lesser known then playwrights that she is just as important as is an interesting phenomenon and seems connected to gender and ethnic bias to be sure, but this phenomenon is also compounded by what an iconoclast she was. How difficult it is categorize her ... She is the ultimate playwright's playwright.

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Everybody’s having fun with Sen. Marco Rubio’s big gulp, even Rubio himself, during the Republican rebuttal to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union. And perhaps it’s moments like that parched, wild-eyed lunge of Rubio’s for the Poland Springs that will justify keeping the circus going but, honestly, can we just cut the crap?

The State of the Union is constitutionally mandated, no matter who the president is: a war criminal like George W. Bush or a socialist fool like Obama.

It’s right there in Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution: “He shall from time to time give Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”

But here’s what’s not constitutionally mandated: the opposition response. In fact, it’s only been a real thing since the 1966, when Republicans decided to talk back to Lyndon B. Johnson on TV.

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Fifty years ago today, my family and I arrived in the U.S.

The night before, we’d gathered just outside of Havana, my parents, my brother and I, joined by 40 other people to board a 28 foot boat to escape from Cuba.

For my parents, it was goodbye forever to the life they'd known. For my brother and me, a transformation of the promise of whatever life we'd had, or could have had, under any circumstances, in Cuba.

For this queer girl (in every sense), that's been a gift.

Over the years, I’ve heard often enough about my parents’ courage in embarking on this journey. Those were and remain a treacherous 90 miles that now, so many years later -- and regardless of whatever politics we espouse -- are a grave of bones, the last refuge of all the people who didn’t make it.

But as an adult, I’ve also heard some less charitable takes on my parents’ decision. They were reckless, I’ve been told, to risk our lives like that.

The truth is that, as a parent myself now, I can’t imagine bundling my son and taking him on such an excursion.

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