rears its head again.Last week I was in Cat Island for the Rake 'n' Scrape Festival. No, there is no web site for it. The weekend was good stuff -- more from the point of view of Cat Island than of the Festival, which was a let-down for all concerned. The Festival Committee recognizes the need for assistance, and now that the responsibility for heritage festivals has landed in our Ministry's portfolio it's our job to offer that assistance.What Ministry, you ask? Well if you haven't been following the post-election updates and if you aren't in The Bahamas, there's a new Ministry of Education, Youth, Sports and Culture and there's a Minister of Education, a Minister of State for Youth and Sports, and a Minister of State for Culture. An interesting turn of events, potentially very exciting. Normally people who work in culture the region around consider the placement of the department responsible for culture in a ministry like Education the kiss of death -- education is so big and unwieldy that it sucks the life of everything else out of it. We have received several condolences. But with a Minister of State it may not be bad; and there are rumours that this is a preparatory move towards the establishment of a full Ministry. That would be good -- as long as it's not one of those ephemeral Ministries that appear and disappear with administrations. Barbados had one of those for a while, but now Culture is under the Office of the Prime Minister. What is good is that all the related agencies are for the first time under the same umbrella, and that my section is now being called a Department, not a Division. That is a real step forward.This weekend I'm travelling again, this time to Cuba for a meeting and a conference. My first time in Cuba, peeps. I'm mildly excited, though I have been feeling the challenges of working in a Ministry again (rather than under the Office of the Prime Minister) -- the speed of official business has slowed down once more. Not sure how much more I can say; blogging about one's work is a risky business at the best of times, and when I'm working under General Orders it may be riskier than many. But it should be interesting for people to know what working for the Bahamas Government is like -- too many people have the misconception that when politicians change, things in general will change. There's a saying in the Civil Service: Politicians come and go, but civil servants remain in place -- even civil servants like me who do not want to retire from the government after decades of service. Often things are blamed on the elected representatives that should be blamed on the civil servants -- and vice versa, and so to know a little about the Service might be enlightening.Anyway, I started this post to say I'll be in Cuba over the weekend, and running around like a madwoman while I'm there, so if (when) the look of the blog changes, you'll know it'll be fixed next week.One more note. If you post a comment to this blog in my absence, know that it'll be held in moderation till I get a chance to get online and the time to deal with it. This blog's been getting too much spam lately, and the spam's been getting through, so I'm moderating all comments. Please be patient, and don't post the comment more than once! I'll see it eventually.Have a good weekend. I intend to do the same.