Pablo Neruda liked helicopters

by philg

One of the delights of Valparaiso is visiting La Sebastiana, one of the houses owned by Pablo Neruda.  In addition to his fondness for Communism, Stalinism, Stalin, Castro, and accumulating property (the guy owned a lot of prime real estate throughout Chile), Neruda asked that a rooftop heliport be incorporated into the design of his 1961 Valparaiso house.


p.s.  Happy New Year to all!  The fireworks display last night in Valpo/Vina was the largest that I have ever experienced and filled the harbor across a stretch of several miles with rockets from maybe 20 barges.  Chileans know how to throw a good party.

16 thoughts on “Pablo Neruda liked helicopters”

  1. I love Pablo Neruda’s poetry. How lovely to be able to visit his home. Helicopters? Now that’s something I didn’t know about the man. 🙂

    Happy New Year
    Bon Voyage
    🙂

  2. In addition to his fondness for Communism, Stalinism, Stalin, Castro, and accumulating property (the guy owned a lot of prime real estate throughout Chile)

    What’s wrong with this picture?? Was he going to donate the real estate to “the cause”??

  3. Look how the senior members of the Politburo and the others high up in the nomenklatura lived in Russia, then get back to me about what is wrong with this picture. Hint: Commies are either hypocrites or psychopaths. Che Guevara shot a 12-year-old in the face that they caught stealing bread – declaring solemnly that the starving 12-year-old was an “enemy of the Revolution”.

  5. The men you refer to are “hypocrites or psychopaths”, yes. But they just abuse “communism” for their own gain and justify their misguided actions.

    What you are saying is equal to saying all muslims are psychopaths simply because some of them commit terrorist attacks and claim the Koran tells them to.

  6. Actually Bas, the Koran DOES tell Muslims to kill unbelievers. Have you ever read the Koran? Tell me though, what communist country ever had a result other than what I described?

  7. No, have you? I mean really read it, front to back, an official translation, not some “Koran for dummies” propaganda version? It’s all just up to interpretation, that book is no doubt as vague as the bible and if you go back a couple of hundred years (or less, even) power hungry “psychopaths” interpretted the bible in the same way. Crusades, anyone? Not much different from what muslim extremists are doing now. Not everybody who is a muslim condones killing non-believers, which was my point.

    As to your second question: None. Again, this is with the leadership; there are many abusive, oppressive regimes who don’t claim to be communist. So if you change your statement to “most communist leaders”, rather than just “Commies”, I would agree.

    Besides, there is about as much hypocracy and useless killing in the name of “the cause” by our own great western leaders these days. So much so that some “pro-life” leaders can spent billions on killing in one place, but appeal to the people to donate money to save lives elsewhere. Go figure.

  8. Thanks Bas….I agree with you…I CAN say Crusades and I can also say “Eye Rack”…they fit together quite nicely!

  9. Happy New Year All!

    So, the topic o’ the day is Beliefs and the tyrants that abuse them.

    I do not think that there is any more correlation between the concept of Communism and the tyrants that abused their people during revolutions than there is between Islam and the true believers that are willing to bomb other Muslims that dare to ‘collaborate with the occupiers’.

    One (Islam, Communism) is a set of beliefs and the others are attempts to use peoples’ beliefs to justify violent revolutions against exiting powers.

    Sure, its easy to confuse the purges of Stalin with the cause of Communism or the actions of bin Laden with the tenants of Islam, but to do so only demonstrates that a person has been suckered in by somebody else’s inflammatory rhetoric.

    And all of us here are certainly above that.

    Happy New Year, ad many returns.

  11. Incidentally, there’s no such thing as an “official translation” of the Koran; it’s only the Koran in Arabic. There was a guy in the 20th century (Rashad Khalifa) who believed he was a modern prophet and put out an “authorized English translation” since god told him it was OK, but he was assassinated due to fatwa.

  12. I was wondering if you had ever visited Russia, Phil? I bet Moscow is lovely this time of year. Red Square especially if it’s snowing as I am sure it is. I hope your trip is progressing? Seems to me your last post has sparked some political debate….which is wonderful, if you like that kind of thing. 🙂

    Bon Voyage
    snow

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