Perhaps Raúl Castro’s accession doesn’t count as a “coup attempt” (since it was successful), let alone a “rank-and-file” mutiny, but the plain fact remains that, for the first time in a Communist state since Gen. Jaruzelski seized power in Poland in 1981, the army has replaced the party as the source of authority.
 
The even more grotesque fact that power has passed from one 79-year-old brother to a “younger” one who is only 75 may have assisted in obscuring the obvious. So may the fact that—continuous babble about his “charisma” notwithstanding—Fidel Castro has never taken off his uniform (except for the tailored suits he dons for appearances at international conferences) since the day he took power. Even my distinction between the army and the party may be a distinction without much of a difference. Cuba has been a garrison state run by a military caudillo for most of the past half-century. More than anything, the maximum leader always based his legitimacy on his status as commander in chief. The dynastic succession of his brother only formalizes the situation. As was once said of Prussia, Cuba is not a country that has an army but an army that has a country.—Christopher Hitchens, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of the Castro Dynasty,” Slate, August 7, 2006

Ten years ago today, Fidel Castro, the leader of Cuba via a variety of titles since 1959, announced through Cuban media that “days and nights of continuous work, almost without sleep, took its toll on my health, put me under extreme stress and my health was affected,” so that he would hand over the duties and titles of First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, President of the Council of State of Cuba, President of the Council of Ministers of Cuba, and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces to his younger brother, Raúl Castro, who had been minister of defense since 1959.
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“Heaven is lying at Buddy Guy’s feet while listening to him play guitar.”—Jimi Hendrix

Buddy Guy is 80 today.

The great blues player maintains a heavy touring schedule: about forty dates between tonight (live with Jeff Beck in Rochester Hills, Michigan) and mid-November. He is one of the lucky few artists to have been discovered, and then re-discovered, and then re-discovered by a third generation.
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Bob Dylan injured his back when he crashed his Triumph Tiger 100 motorcycle 50 years ago today on Striebel Rd. in Bearsville, New York. The road is a mostly straight connection between Tinker St. and the Glasco Turnpike, but something took him out. Only he and his then-wife, Sara, who was driving behind him in the family car, saw the accident.

Dylan gave different stories to different friends about the incident over the years. He told his friend Sam Shepard that the sun blinded him and the bike threw him. To Robert Shelton, who wrote the Dylan biography No Direction Home, Dylan said that he had hit an oil slick. To another, he said his brakes had stuck. (In the photo above, Dylan is on his bike in the center of Woodstock, New York.)

Dylan cracked a vertebrae in the crash, and he decided to have a slow healing process. In his 2004 memoir Chronicles, he writes about the crash: “I had been in a motorcycle accident and I’d been hurt, but I recovered. Truth was that I wanted to get out of the rat race. Having children changed my life and segregated me from just about everybody and everything that was going on. Outside of my family, nothing held any real interest for me and I was seeing everything through different glasses.” He performed live only four times over the next eight years.
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