SEND A PIANA TO HAVANA

A New Yorker campaigns to gather up boatloads of pianos and ship them to Cuba. In 1993 he was having a drink at the Tropicoco Resort in Havana and heard a hotel pianist try to tinkle out “Strangers in the Night.” He found out how awful all the pianos in Cuba, the most musical of islands, were—ravaged by the salty air and the comegen, the deadly tropical termite that “likes to mate inside piano wood from cold climates like Germany.” From that moment on, Benjamin Treuhaft vowed he would improve the piano situation, and formed his not-for-profit group. Village Voice