Bahamas Writers' Summer Institute

You know, it's about time I blogged about this topic. It's been coming for a good long while, and now we're in its third and middle week, and it seems to be going really really well.What is it? you ask. Well, I could give you a long answer, but I'll spare you that. Here's the short answer, culled from the FaceBook Group page:

The Bahamas Writers Summer Institute, in collaboration with the College of the Bahamas’ School of English Studies, is a Caribbean-centered creative writing program that brings together beginning and established writers in an exploration of craft, theory, and the relationship between imagination and culture.

It started two weeks ago, with classes in various areas of the craft as well as a class in Caribbean context and literature and special seminar events where the students enrolled in the various disciplines can come together to talk about writing and literature as a whole. These take place on Mondays, Tuesdays and Saturdays. On Monday evenings there are conversations about the business of writing, on Saturdays there are readings and discussions with practising writers about their craft, and on Tuesdays are the discussions about the Caribbean context and literature of the region. Wednesdays and Thursdays are the craft-specific workshops.I'm teaching playwriting. I have a class of four students, and so far it's been a blast! The other workshops are creative non-fiction run by Marion Bethel, fiction run by Helen Klonaris, screenwriting run by Maria Govan, and poetry run by Obediah Michael Smith.It's the brainchild of Helen Klonaris, supported by Marion Bethel, and grew out of the movement that began with the establishment of the Bahamas International Literary Festival by Alesha Hart last year. If I had more photographs I'd show them, but they're all on Facebook.But I started this because last night's discussion (at the Hub) was about blogging. The discussants were Ian Fernander, Lynn Sweeting, Angelique Nixon and myself, and we spoke to an audience of writers and others many of whom read blogs, but virtually none of whom blog themselves. The discussion covered the value of blogging -- and of course with people like Lynn and Angelique and me there we talked about the radical power of blogs and bloggers.The Institute continues till the end of July. The Monday and Saturday sessions at the Hub are open to all (they start at 7 and end around 9). If you're interested, drop by -- and if you like the idea, I'm sure Marion and Helen would love to let you know what's happening next year! One thing, though -- next year's Institute should have its own open blog, so that people who aren't on Facebook can see what it's doing.Here's the schedule, courtesy of Bahamas Uncensored, which is the only place you can find it on the open web.

Strong institutions, not strong men

"Africa doesn't need strong men -- it needs strong institutions." -- President Barack Obama, Address to Ghanaian Parliament, July 11, 2009

It's been two years now, and there's been all kind of noise in the public sphere about Bahamian party politics and who bears responsibility for the difficult times we have faced for most of that time, and who will deal most effectively with the difficult times we will face. Most of the time I leave the discussions and the debates about personalities (which is most of what the discussion addresses, even now, mid-term) and political party up to politicized pundits. There's enough noise out there, and it really hasn't done us any good.

And it seems to me that every moment we spend focussing on small tings -- like which colour tie the majority of the members of parliament wear, or which initials we can attach to the administration (and what is the difference, anyway, in real terms?), or whether Perry Christie or Hubert Ingraham is better cut out to lead The Bahamas through the twenty-first century (the answer, of course, is neither -- both men were shaped irretrievably by the third quarter of the twentieth and neither has demonstrated the ability to recognize the current environment we face and find ways that are relevant to today to meet its challenges) -- is time wasted. Our whole political campaign in 2007 was an exercise in time-wasting; because I believe with all my heart that, like Africa, what The Bahamas needs is not strong men, but strong institutions.

Yesterday was independence day here in The Bahamas. Normally I write that title with capital letters, like a proper noun; but today I'm not capitalizing the first letter of the date because I don't think we truly understand the challenges and responsibilities of being independent. Too many of our leaders, no matter what party to which they apparently pledge allegiance (which, for too many of them, changes with a dizzying flourish anyway), do not value our independence, but prefer rather to wait for strong men from elsewhere to solve our difficult problems. Development by dependence is the model they appear to prefer. It's so much easier, after all, isn't it, to allow a monolithic investor to come in and provide short-term happiness. But the hollowness that results in our own society hurts us all. For instance, while Atlantis was employing thousands in the 1990s and early 2000s, our own institutions were growing weaker and weaker and more and more irrelevant, and no strong-man leader had the guts (or the vision) to tackle that fact. The result? We have, if we're lucky, perhaps five more years of functionality within our public entities. We're already beginning to see the crumbling of public services -- from our inability to handle the renewal of passports to the apparent impossibility, despite hundreds of millions being spent in borrowed money on road improvements, to keep our traffic lights working. And the answer does not easily lie in privatization; governments have responsibilities to all their citizens, and one of those responsibilities is to ensure that the smallest and weakest of their citizens is not placed in a position of vulnerability to rapacious private enterprises which have no allegiance to their clients beyond the amount of money they make from them.

Our problem? Like Africa and many other post-colonial regions of the world, our focus has for far too long been on electing strong men instead of demanding strong institutions for ourselves. We have not built our nation in any way that can be guaranteed to last into the future. And our debate continues to ignore that fact.

So my hat's off to Barack Obama today. Let us take heed from those countries around us who have invested in strong men at the cost of building strong institutions. Let us learn from those nations where for years and years good government continued even when the leaders of those countries were people whose names have been easily and quickly forgotten because the institutions that governed those nations were stronger than the individual weaknesses. And let us recognize that there is value in creating and maintaining the institutions that we need.

Caribbean Tourism: it's the same everywhere

One of the stories on the news last night (that's right, ZNS news) was a longish feature on the sufferings of Atlantis, Paradise Island, as the result of the recession. I really didn't write down the figures, but they were enough to elicit weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth -- 3% down in occupancy from projections (it's important to get these titles right) overall this year until May and June, when the occupancy was 20-something % down from projections.I wept, I tell you. Wept.What I found fascinating, though, was that the news didn't go beyond Atlantis and find out what the overall tourism economy was like. Atlantis has always had significantly higher occupancy rates than the national average, for a number of reasons that I'd rather not go into here and now (though one of them is that they don't promote the fact that they are in The Bahamas all that much, and that they suck tourists right off the face of the rest of New Providence and swallow all their money so that ordinary Bahamians don't get anything other than crumbs from the master's table -- don't believe me, go watch After the Sunset, the Big Movie our Ministry of Tourism landed half a decade or so ago to much fanfare and celebration, and tell me if you ever hear either the word "Bahamas" or even a recognizable Bahamian accent in the whole thing. I can tell you now you won't -- the place it's set in is called "Paradise" and the main location, despite some forays onto the main island of New Providence -- was Paradise Island, aka the home of Atlantis. But I digress.) Perhaps, on National Pride Day (the Friday before Bahamian Independence), the news would be too grim.So anyway. I thought I'd take the liberty to cheer us up by sharing the misery a little, and by sharing maybe too a laugh or two. This is thanks to Nicholas Laughlin, whose tweet directed me to this post. Let's look beyond our shores and cast our minds upon our sister B'Island (I mean Barbados, in case you didn't know), where tourists and tourism are addressed by one Ingrid Persaud. There's unity, after all, in shared suffering.

Times are hard and money is too tight to mention. If you can still afford a vacation we really want you to come to our small rock. Never mind the scandalous treatment of undocumented workers or the huge hike in water rates because the water company failed to put aside funds for depreciation. None of this will perturb your paradise. You must come here for the exquisite beaches, superb restaurants and friendly people.Well the beaches are fantastic but maybe best to avoid Mullins Beach because the extensive building works in that area have directly caused severe beach erosion. Restaurants are world class but once you are prepared to pay London prices your digestion will be easier. And the friendly people you might meet on the beach are very friendly if you want to buy shells or get your hair braided. The rest of the population will treat you as if you have had a longstanding quarrel or more likely ignore you.But these are minor matters. I really, really want you to choose Barbados rather than Bali for the summer or winter hols. Maybe you have been put off because there are questions you have but were too afraid to ask. I have gathered a number of such questions that the Tourist Board have neglected to address and provided answers to the best of my ability. These are authentic, hearsay inquiries. If you have others please drop me line.

--Notes From A Small Rock: WE PROMISE YOU PARADISE

On the need for cultural capital - Richard Florida on Montreal’s Creative Class

I've already blogged about why I think that our government's cancellation of CARIFESTA was a bad idea. (I think the word I used was "terrible"). Now the rumours I am hearing about the future of Bahamian culture and its development are as bad or worse. Rather than serious investment in the development of our cultural identity, "economics" appear to be inspiring the exact opposite -- the dissolution, real or effective, of the Cultural Affairs Division of the Government of The Bahamas.Now there may be not much wrong with a government's decision to gut the only agency that is even vaguely (if poorly) equipped to deal with cultural development. At the very least, it moves us one step away from the hypocrisy that has inspired cultural decisions throughout the 21st century (lots of lip service paid, no money, personnel, or real plans to back it up) and allows the Bahamian people to see the true value of our culture and identity to the people who we have elected to make decisions for us. There is something to be said for ending the pretence; honesty is good, and encourages honest decisions.However, it betrays once again what the cancellation of CARIFESTA made clear: that our politicians and our leaders, the people who make those decisions, have no comprehension whatsoever about the world, about history, or about what will keep our nation successful.Just in case people think I'm making this stuff up, here's a little something-something from Canada, where the citizens have sussed it out better than we have. (The highlights are mine).

We are living through a great turning point in world history. In just a few short months, our economy and our society are on their way to being transformed.The U.S. and Canadian stock exchanges have lost as much as a third of their value. Gone are the days when regions will grow wealthy from ephemeral finance capital. Only those that build their real economy from the only true capital we possess – the creative energy of our people – will enjoy sustainable prosperity.Gone, too, are the days when one’s identity can be purchased literally off the shelf through designer brands and a Sex and the City lifestyle. Times are tight, credit is no longer freely available, and the house is no longer an infinite piggy bank that can be used to finance luxury consumption. The regions that will succeed and be attractive are those that offer history, authenticity and realism – and where the price tag is more affordable.

via Richard Florida on Montreal’s Creative Class « THE INCUBATOR

You will note that the above has very little to say about harbour extensions or road improvements. The capital that Florida is advocating is not infrastructural; it's human.

And to say that our most recent track record in the development of our human capital is poor would be kind. From the Minister of Education's statement that the College of The Bahamas will not become a university for "two to ten years" to the Prime Minister's assurance that the only things he has not cut from this coming budget are the hundreds of millions of dollars his government will spend on roads and on dredging the harbour, while everything else, everything that has to do with laying the foundation for social or human development, has been slashed, our leaders are dancing us into obsolescence.

The solution? We, the people, need to show them they are wrong -- and we need to do that without waiting for 2012. We, the people, need to develop ourselves. We need to change the discussion, and we need to invest in the human capital that our leaders refuse to amass.

How do we do that? Pay attention to the world, to what our tourists tell us we want, to what we know we need in order to survive in the twenty-first century, in order to sustain our wealth. Invest in our own culture. Think out of the box. Support the initiatives that cultural artists are taking. Spend our money on Bahamian creative activities. Call Ivory Global Promotions this week and buy your ticket to one of this weekend's events during Jazz Summer Festival. Skip a movie or two and buy a ticket to see Light, or Guanahani, or Treemonisha, or the concerts put on by Eurhythmics Dance School or any one of the National Cultural Entities. Contribute to the discussions on Nassau's revitalization going on here and here, invest in the development of Creative Nassau, believe in the festivals that will occur as this year and next year develop. Spend your cultural money at home; believe in our culture, and support the music festivals that will take place on the Wharf this summer, attend the Seagrape Bahamas Literary Festival in September, Shakespeare in Paradise in October, Islands of the World Fashion Week in November, the Bahamas International Film Festival in December.

There's a good Bahamian saying that we'd do well to take to heart, especially if we believe that the world has changed, and that culture now lies at the heart of economic prosperity. I'm referring, of course, to the statement "I could show you better'n I could tell you." If you don't believe me now, believe me when you see the fruit -- Bahamian cultural artists are taking that attitude as we move forward. CARIFESTA may have been officially cancelled, but the festivals that will unfold as 2009 and 2010 go on will demonstrate that even though our leaders have committed themselves to wasting our money on frippery and nineteenth-century foolishness, we know which century this is.

Back to Montreal and the creative class, and imagine what could happen if we believed this here at home (again, I've highlighted what I like):

Creativity is in the region’s DNA. More than just about any other region, Montreal has the underlying capacity to broaden the reach of the creative economy to service business, manufacturing plants, and even agriculture.

But the city and the region need a government that can help get them there. Governmental structures in Montreal and most other places are not up to the task. They are fractured and fragmented and filled with contradictions – complicated and clumsy. Hardly anyone who isn’t involved full-time can understand them. In Montreal, there are local boroughs, municipalities, the agglomeration council, and a regional administration as well.

I saw similarly overbearing structures in Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., and many other places. It leads to what people in Montreal call “immobilisme” – the tendency for nothing significant to happen because governments, business, social groups and unions are so at odds and so stuck in their ways that no one can provide clear direction and make anything happen.

Many people say a strong leader is the answer. They look back to Mayor Jean Drapeau and the successes of Expo 67 and other landmark projects. They ask what’s happened and worry that Montreal has become gun-shy. How does the region get its mojo back?

But today’s regions are too complicated for top-down, single-leader strategies. The key is to create a broad shared vision that can mobilize the energy of many groups – an open-source approach that can harness the energy and ideas of  networks of people.

Some may say the region needs a large-scale marketing or branding campaign to overcome this legacy. In the creative age, the best marketing is viral.

We live in an age of true democracy -- where power truly resides in the actions of the people. Let's not complain about our government -- we after all get the governments we want. Let's focus once and for all on changing ourselves.

Interview - Antilles: the weblog of the CRB

I count Nicholas Laughlin as one of my cyberfriends, though I think we really met over the telephone during the last CARIFESTA (such arts festivals are always, truly, such a waste of time, are they not? They make no connections, advance no careers, clearly, and they are so much a waste of money that we prefer to spend our millions on, oh, Miss Universe. But I digress.) Since then we've been communicating and collaborating online, and he has been a champion of tongues of the ocean.Anyhow, Nicholas is the valiant editor of the Caribbean Review of Books, which he continues to publish in the face of opposition, failing finances, exhaustion, fed-upness, etc.In the spirit of massive support that he'd already established, he recently interviewed me about tongues. Go check it out.And then, if you like it, go subscribe to the Caribbean Review of Books.Antilles: the weblog of the CRB.

Many Antilles readers are familiar with tongues of the ocean, an online poetry journal based in the Bahamas, which was launched in February 2009. Edited by poet and playwright Nicolette Bethel, and focused on poetry from the Caribbean and its diasporas, tongues plans to publish three issues per year, with the contents of each issue appearing gradually week by week.Soon after the second issue of tongues — dated June 2009 — began appearing, Bethel answered some questions via email about the journal’s background, influences, and modus operandi.

"On the Wreck of the Henrietta Marie"

Accepted by The Caribbean Writer.Now this is a poem that has been hanging around my Writing folder for four years or so. Inspired by a conjunction between the travelling exhibition of the slave ship that re-opened the Pompey Museum after the 2001 Market Fire and an in-depth poetry workshop session over at the Poetry Free-For-All, it made the rounds of the appropriate journals. I thought -- wrongly -- that it might get picked up two years ago, when commemorating slavery and its detritus was a year-long affair, but it didn't. I'd almost given up on its being published, not being too sure what was not-right about it and not knowing what to do about it. I'm a big one for letting a poem be, of knowing when something's finished (or ought to be finished), of letting the time pass when it ought to, and after several years of honing and tweaking it seemed to me that "Henrietta Marie" was finished. This year, I pulled it back out, dusted it off and polished it a bit, and then sent it off with four others to The Caribbean Writer. And last month, managing editor Quilin Mars let me know they wanted to publish it.Well, yay, I say. And to others inclined to see rejection slips as always being about the quality of the work (sometimes they are, but not always; sometimes the work doesn't fit the publication), I pass on the writer's advice: never give up, never. The one that publishes you is almost always the last one you try.Here's a bit of it:

I.  Vendue House/Pompey Museum, Nassau, BahamasCome. Stand in a place to sell slaves where planters, farmers, businessmenbought planters, farmers, businessmen.  Just there, a crier stoodbefore a block.  An African stood upon it.  Shackles and lockstrammelled black legs that ached from the straightening.

Go buy The Caribbean Writer Vol 23 if you want to read more.

Something to think about

via Willow Walk: Stealing from our Children - Fragano Ledgister

Stealing from our Children

John Maxwell

I was a reporter in parliament half a century ago when Norman Manley shepherded through the House, the bill to create the College of Arts, Science and Technology. CAST, now the University of Technology (UTECH) was the intellectual godchild of people as various as Manley, members of the Legislative Council including my own father, and before them Marcus Garvey and others who had for years agitated for a University of Jamaica. The university was a plank in the first PNP Plan for Progress in 1958, At the time the CAST was being debated, the Opposition JLP was waging a campaign which proclaimed: "Saltfish better than education." The Opposition opposed among other things, the government's secondary scholarship programme allowing thousands of poor children to go to places like Jamaica College and Munro. The money would have better been spent on food subsidies, they said. A few years later the same arguments were used to oppose the building of the National Stadium. This opposition was given a macabre twist on the first Independence Day when one Edward Seaga, then minister in charge of the celebrations, attempted to eject Norman Manley from the Royal Box in the Stadium he built. "What is that man doing here?" he shouted, only to be slapped down by the new Prime Minister, Alexander Bustamante, who had a somewhat clearer idea of Jamaican history than Seaga. With all this in the background you may imagine my shock at the attempt this week by the UTECH to capture the Trelawny stadium for its campus. 'If we don't get the stadium, UTECH whines piteously, you will be denying 5,000 children the chance to get an MBA or some other meaningless decoration stamped out by the academic mill. I don't mean that degrees are meaningless, simply that bean-counters in academe have no more right to design the future of this country than anyone else. We can be sure of one thing: of the 5,000 new graduates few if any will have degrees in agronomy, nursing, or any of the practical skills we most urgently require for real development rather than the construction of elegant Ponzi schemes and other scams.

On what Independence is supposed to be

from Geoffrey Philp's Blog Spot

I came of age during the birth of Reggae under the government of Michael Manley. As one of the oldest schools in the Caribbean, Jamaica College, like many schools in the region, was caught flatfooted after the island gained independence.Many of the teachers, masters as they were called, had not thought through the implications of independence in education. For independence is not merely the lowering of one flag and raising another. It is supposed to bring about a change of entire systems and assumptions--the way that the American revolution led to an American form of democracy or even Webster's dictionary: the realization that there was a distinctive American character and worldview. Instead, the masters at Jamaica College continued the same system of education that had been designed to keep the brightest minds in "mental slavery" and to hold the population under the domination of the British Empire.

Geoffrey's right, and we would do well to heed and consider this.

Fear: 4 packs, 10 oz. each

Fear is the name of an art exhibition mounted and curated in Canada, but produced in Trinidad and Tobago. It's the work of Christopher Cozier, whose bio notes that he is

an artist and writer living and working in Trinidad [who] has participated in a number of exhibitions focused upon contemporary art in the Caribbean and internationally [and who is, among other things,] a Senior Research Fellow at the Academy of The University of Trinidad & Tobago (UTT) and ... Artist-in-Residence at Dartmouth College during the Fall of 2007.

What's exciting about his exhibition is the way in which it's produced. It might be perplexing for most of us, who are used to the prettiness of art, the decorative quality of paintings, the controllability of our response to them: it consists of "a rubber stamp and 3x3x3-inch cardboard boxes that gallery viewers could stamp and take away with them from the exhibition." (Fear, 2009: 5)  But that is entirely the point. The boxes and the stamp symbolize the state of the world at this end of the first decade of the 21st century: consumers of the fear exported by the USA that justifies and legitimizes the way in which that country exercises its authority as the last superpower on earth. It's exciting, collaborative and subversive all at once. As Andrea Fantona, curator of the exhibition, explains:

The addition of this participatory element to the exhibition was exciting. Furthermore, producing theelements comprising Available At All Leading Stores resulted in a fascinating reversal of the production-consumption chain that generally defines North-South relationships. Here I was in Canada, producing awork of art for consumption here in the North that was conceived and designed in Trinidad. The irony ofthe process rang loudly for me. It seemed that the age-old system of capitalist development that favouredthe North had been turned onto its head, as I was now adding value to an idea, turned into commodity,conceived in the South, yet produced and distributed in the North. (2009: 5)

What's even more exciting, for me, is the way in which Nicholas Laughlin, fellow Trinidadian writer and editor, responded to Cozier's work. For J'Ouvert (for those of you who don't know what that is, follow the link and look it up) this year, he created his own riff on it: a cardboard box turned into a headpiece for the festival, on which he wrote

PARADISE100 PACKS 10 OZ EACHMADE IN CHINADISTRIBUTED IN T&T

As he says:

For three or so hours on J’Ouvert morning, Paradise is an empty space, an absence, in a cardboard box Ibalance on my head. Watch me, turning into a metaphor for a nation bearing the burden of false advertising and false hopes. If anything and everything is for sale, if art is just another product with varying profit margins, if Cozier can taunt us with the joke of commodified Fear, then I can re-commodify, re-sell, re-brand. (2009: 15)

Oh yes oh yes.

Charlie Rose - A conversation with Indian author V.S. Naipaul

Charlie Rose - A conversation with Indian author V.S. Naipaulhttp://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?showShareButtons=true&docId=1909892151423659108%3A1844000%3A1438000&hl=enFound this interesting. The man is Trinidadian, not Indian!The sound's low, so you'll have to pay attention.I'd be interested in people's comments.

The Cuban Revolution, Fifty Years On

It's not fashionable these days for a writer to support Castro's Cuba. Communism, after all, is supposed to be dead, a failed experiment that was roundly defeated, when the Soviet Union disintegrated 17-odd years ago, by the oh-so-superior capitalism and its apparent corollary, democracy.Let me say right now that I am sceptical, and deeply so, of those who denigrate Castro's Cuba, especially those of us in The Bahamas who do so. In most cases the arguments offered to display the inferiority of the Cuban revolution are not arguments at all, but knee-jerk condemnations that ignore the success of the revolution. They usually refer to material goods, or else they assume that the only possible way that Castro should have retained power for half a century is through the total subjugation of the Cuban people.The truth, however, is far more complex. It usually is. Cuba's revolution was, its critics notwithstanding, very much a popular one, as Russia's was in the beginning. If its popularity has faded within and without, that fact has as much to do with the reaction of the capitalist world around Cuba, which is hostile to it, as it does within Cuba. I'm not saying that the revolution is perfect. I am saying, though, that it isn't, as some would suggest, the worst thing that could ever have happened to the Cuban people in Cuba (though it may well have been the worst thing that happened to the exiles who still survive). Castro and his supporters overthrew a dictator who was in every way as bad as Castro's detractors claim he was, or more; but that fact is rarely shared.  It's convenient for people who are comfortable, or who (perhaps uncomfortably, if they think about it, for them) benefit from the suffering of others to resist revolution; it keeps them feeling safe, it keeps them from changing too much, it keeps them from questioning the corrosion that comes with greed. In many ways the Cuban revolution parallels Haiti's, which succeeded 155 years earlier, and the success of each revolution depended as much in many ways on the reactions of the countries beyond as it did on the will of the people within the nation. Haiti's revolution ended in abject poverty and long-term chaos for that nation -- not because of some inherent flaw in the idea of freedom for slaves and descendants of Africa, but because of the intolerable demands placed on the nation by the slave-owning countries around it. Cuba's is sliding into poverty, but despite the best efforts of the Cuban exiles in Miami, and despite the fondest wishes of those who believe Communism is an unworkable system, chaos has not yet begun.But on New Year's Day, the Cuban revolution turned 50. The future of the revolution looks bleak. I doubt very seriously that Raul Castro will be able to stem the tide of global capitalism that has already affected his country, and which is changing even Communist China from within. But before we celebrate, before we extol the fundamental glories of "democracy" and capitalism, let us remember that there are riches that go beyond the material. It's not surprising that we don't remember; our nation is particularly hollow in that regard. But success cannot be measured only in material goods, or in the protection or the advancement only of the privileged and the rich.All that said. I want to salute the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, and refer you to this article from Caribbean Beat. Viva Cuba Libre, for however long it has left.

It was to be a New Year’s Eve party with a difference. Fulgencio Batista, dictator of Cuba, traditionally invited his most trusted generals and political allies to his Havana home, near the military base of Camp Columbia, each December 31. There, among drinks, canapés and cigars, he would shake their hands, offer a small gift, and ensure that his circle of confidants and cronies remained loyal. He had been running Cuba since 1933, sometimes as army chief, sometimes as “elected” president, and he knew how to spot a potential usurper.The gathering on New Year’s Eve 1959 was smaller and more subdued than usual. Batista’s power was visibly ebbing away, as guerrilla groups closed in on Havana and other major cities. Batista boasted that the Cuban army had routed the guerrilla forces at Santa Clara, but few believed him.And, crucially, the US Ambassador had visited Batista on December 11 and told him that the Eisenhower administration could no longer prop him up. It was perhaps only a matter of time before the forces of Fidel Castro, after three long years of fighting, would be at the gates of the capital itself.

Caribbean Beat: Current Issue

Friendship Around the World Award (Part I)

Geoffrey Philp linked me in this some time ago, and I'm going to try indulge in it now. 

Friendship Around the World AwardJack Mandora, whose blog I admire, has passed this award along to me with the mandate of sharing it with friends whom I’ve met through blogging. I will add that they became my friends because of the remarkable content of their blogs.

I have to say my blogging practices have changed lately, and I haven't done as much reading as I should, but let me start. So here are mine - part I.Geoffrey Philp's Blog Spot - Geoffrey PhilpThere are lots of Caribbean blogs out there, but not so many that deal with literature. Geoffrey's one that I read, partly because I know him in person, but also because I like his observations.Heraclitean Fire - Harry RutherfordOK, I'm a poet in my spare time, and I read lots and lots of poetry blogs, many of which I visit on a very regular basis. But Harry writes about more than poetry, and his links are always interesting. Unless he's talking about some sport or another, I find every post of his fascinating, probably because he's able to synthesize material really well. It's a skill that I admire and to which I aspire. Bahama Pundit - Larry Smith, et al.The idea behind this blog is to bring Bahamian columnists together in one online spot and give us a platform that reaches beyond the newspaper circulation. I like and admire Larry as a reporter. He does his homework and makes observations that hold up after some scrutiny, and his fellow columnists are also pretty interesting. (I was one of them for a while, and hope to be again, but that's not the reason I picked this blog!) Maybe it's a little to localized for most people, but it's worth a look in my books.Weblog Bahamas - Rick Lowe et al.I read Rick's blog because he and I hold opposite views of the world in just about everything except the potential and the need of human beings to make their own realities. It's good to see what libertarians, and especially white Bahamian libertarians, are thinking, even if I disagree from the pit of my stomach with 99.999999999% of what they think. But Rick doesn't only talk about politics and economics. He also reads some pretty interesting stuff, he has eclectic taste in music, he takes some cool photos, and he doesn't let you go away without having been provoked in some way or another. And some of his co-authors are almost as good.Signifyin' Guyana - Charmaine D. Valere's blogI read this blog because Charmaine doesn't just write about Caribbean issues, she also reads and reviews work by Caribbean (primarily Guyanese) writers, and her perspective is an interesting one. She's part of the diaspora, lives outside the region, but she's part of the global Caribbean that is going to transform our nations in years to come. Go Charmaine.Carter's Little Pill - Julie Carter's blogAs I said, I read lots of poetry blogs. Julie's, like Harry's, isn't all about poetry, though it could be because her poems are kick-ass. But there's a lot about Julie in it too, and I like what I see of Julie online. It's because of her and what she wrote that made me suspect Ohio was going to vote for Obama. Well worth a read.Savage Minds - Group blog about anthropologyYes, I'm a poet and a Caribbean woman, but don't forget I'm an anthropologist as well. There are other anthro blogs out there, but this one strikes closest to me and my particular training -- social anthropology with a distinct UK/European bias and a deep admiration and love for (though not always acceptance of) the theories of Claude Levi-Strauss.I'll stop there for now, but I'll be back. There are some people I missed. But you have to excuse me -- Obama and the world's changing are taking up some of my time.If I've called your name, go spread the meme!

Why Obama matters to all of us, everywhere

Four Fingers and a ThumbOn a hot day in a school in Laventille, I am reasoning with a student. This beautiful young woman of 17 years or so. I say to her, what do you want to be? She laughs and says a stripper.Her classmates laugh too, because to them it is a joke, as funny as their lives being lived out in predictable boxes.On a hot day in a school in Laventille painted in colours disturbingly similar to the wall around the Royal Gaol, this beautiful young woman sums up the totality of her potential in saying that she wants to be a stripper.I am not amused. I am also not surprised that she doesn’t hesitate to respond in the negative. I fight the urge to run from the room screaming and crying because she is living proof that you can build buildings but if you don’t build the people, your social fabric will crumble and then what is the point of phallic concrete edifices in you city?I suggest to her that she creates her own reality. I suggest to her that words have power and if you call yourself a whore enough, the ease of the words on your tongue will numb you to the dread reality of your actions.I ask her again what she wants to be. She says that what she wants for herself is not what other people want for her.She says she wants to be a hairdresser and a singer. And I wonder who has told her that she can’t be anything she puts her mind to.

This is from a blog by Trinidadian writer Attilah Springer, who wrote it on Saturday while engaging in the "escapist fantasy" that Barack Hussein Obama might win the US election. I posted it because it is so fundamentally true in so many places that are growing young people of colour.The "No You Can't" mentality is pervasive throughout the world, not just in the USA, and it's in part because our leaders swallowed wholesale and without critical examination the concept that there are first and second and third class citizens in this world, and people of colour never break into the first group, and it's also in part because the popular media really only promote images of non-white people engaging in sex, drugs, violence and angry, nihilistic music. It's also in part because our leaders see no value in supporting an economy or a culture that enables us to create alternative images for our own young people.Until now.The fact that Obama has been elected President of the United States of America means something. It means something to all of us, and it's far more than just the fact that he's African-American (and when we apply that to him, it means something real, it's not just another synonym for black/negro/nigger/ex-slave). It means that the people who elected him, who are overwhelmingly under 30, of all backgrounds, ethnicities, genders, beliefs and class are the people who are creating new realities for us. And maybe it also means that something of that hope, of that new reality, will trickle down to the rest of us in the African diasporic world.  It isn't going to come easily, and it isn't going to come automatically. But what it does mean is that we can no longer fool ourselves that our destinies are out of our hands. And it means too that throughout the Caribbean we must make our own futures. We have to confront those politicians who have nothing but old ideas, stuff fed to them by imperialists and racists and people who didn't even realize that they were imperialistic and racist but who were force-feeding those worldviews anyway, and tell them it ain't like that anymore.And we have to kill the "No We Can't" attitude stone dead.Dare to dream. America just has had its dream come true. Time for us to dream big too.

Friendship Around the World Award

*ahem* - Thanks, Geoffrey, I think ...

Friendship Around the World AwardBlogworld: Nicolette is not only a scholar and poet, but also someone who writes critically about the state of Caribbean life and letters....Now, fellow awardees, you all have a job to do. Tell me about your favorites

Give me some time and I'll do so.

CARIFESTA X - An Alternative to the same old, same old

wonder of the world: CARIFESTA X - An Alternative to the same old, same oldThe Bookman, a blog from Trinidad and Tobago, muses on art, CARIFESTA, and society.  It's not coincidental, I think, that this week I've been to two talks already about the same thing:  one on Wednesday at PopOp Studios about CARIFESTA XI to be held in The Bahamas, and one last night at Chapter One Bookstore about the role of the writer in society.  At the end of the panel discussion from last night, where six of us, writers from very different backgrounds and with very different bodies of work, spoke about that role, we were answered in the discussion that followed by a visual artist who told us that our conversations were not isolated, that they were happening all around the country.   Something is happening nationwide about the Caribbean arts.  Perhaps we are coming into ourselves.  The Bookman suggests that perhaps this something is happening regionally.  Because I believe in the latter, I'm going to quote from The Bookman's comment on CARIFESTA X to illustrate, just a little, what I mean, and what I hope:

One cannot help but feel that art is held as a fringe. That artists are at the edges of society, almost invisible, except for moments when society is engaged with it and comments on talent. It is always the same trite comment at that, that there is so much talent in Trinidad and Tobago…and? What are we doing about it?

...

So I am going around in circles with my point. The public need to be educated about what is happening in the arts locally and regionally. The corporate world needs to get more involved in the arts and make it much more relevant to their own business mandates, and the artists themselves must start to hold themselves to the highest standards, look at their profession as deserving of much more than handouts and government support and we need to be very loud and clear about just how much we mean to our society by having alternative spaces to show our work and encourage the society to see that we mean business and that it isn’t business as usual.

Nah, ya see ...

It isn't a frivolous thing to protest against the way in which people expect to view Africa (and the rest of the third world for that matter, where skins are dark and palm trees feather the skyline).  I know Hurricane Ike was a bastard, and ripped up the southern Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos and slammed Cuba and is now going to hammer Texas.  I know this, and so do you.But is there any excuse for the kind of coverage provided below?BBC NEWS | Americas | Paradise flattened in storm's wakeHere are other ways in which the BBC has reported on the storm:Images of Ike (almost all of Cuba, which racks up the heartstring points)And here is how the local media covered it:Images of Ike damage in Inagua, including millions of dollars' damage at Morton SaltMy conclusion:  our lens sees damage.  The lens of the BBC seeks human distress.All the better to underline, once again, and subtly (or not-so-subtly) the wonders of being civilized.I wrong?***(15/09/08) Edit: So maybe a little wrong, and certainly a lot biased.  Here are some other links to consider before weighing in on the discussion:New York Times on Ike (May require a password to view)LA Times on IkeHuffington Post on Ike

Another View of CARIFESTA

Alissa Trotz makes some salient points (hey, Alissa!!)In the Diaspora : Stabroek News

In a presentation made at the Caricom Heads of Govern-ment Conference in July, Barbadian novelist George Lamming took Guyanese President Bharrat Jagdeo to task for the following comment “…and now we come to the lighter side, CARIFESTA in Guyana.”There is one way to interpret these remarks, as seeing culture as entertainment to engage in when the real work is finished. It is a view that allows ‘culture’ to fall by the wayside, to be addressed only after the ‘real’ priorities of so-called development are attended to, like building roads and paying off the foreign debt. As Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott observed in his exchange with the President at the opening CARIFESTA symposium, we have heard politicians rehearse these tired arguments for years. Walcott expressed his ambivalence about a festival that asks us to celebrate the wanton disregard for our artists in a region where with few exceptions artistic endeavour is not seen as a serious vocation. Here is the ongoing lie of CARIFESTA, illustrated by the profound gap between rhetorical pronouncements and the woeful state of our institutional infrastructure supporting the arts.

Read more.

An answer, maybe, to Rick

Guyana Providence Stadium: Guyana - Rambler on the benefits of Carifesta

So please, El Presidente could you arrange just one more week of freeness, dancing and drinking? You know as a Moscow trained economist that this splurge of government spending, (you take $500 million of taxpayer’s money out of the economy and send it right back in) is not the zero sum game it would appear on paper. It multiplies throughout the truly long lasting, productive sectors: beer, rum, hair salons, boutiques and Red Dragon.And what a shining example of public/private partnership, the mega concerts were. For example, you invited the company that imported soda pop/beer to hold a concert for which people had to buy the same soda pop/beer to receive a ticket. This demonstrates how even-handed you can be even as your investigation into the customs scam grinds to a halt.The performers stay in the hotel you helped finance with our money and thereby reduce the hotel’s interest-free loan in a way that is impossible to verify.Then you get the newspaper whose owners your government gave illegal tax concessions to, to join an unquestioning cheerleading chorus for Carifesta along with your personal TV and radio stations.Let’s not even mention the Chronic, which ignored everything else in Guyana for ten days as it entered the magical world of Carifestaland. Not even the killing of those criminals – what are their names again? - could crash their party.No wonder it was a success. You proclaimed it was a success, the biggest ever… like your budgets, your tax revenues, and you were everywhere, omnipresent: you quarrelled with Walcott, avoided auditors at the Grand Market, addressed the gospel fest, declaring the country was in safe hands …you meant your hands of course, not God’s. Ha ha silly us!And the crowds! The multitudes came out for you, for your country. After all 30,000 people at the Banks Ultra Mega Concert-to-end-all-Concerts can’t be wrong! And in the process, they made the PNC look like fuddy-duddy party poopers.

The point, though, is that it didn't have to be government-funded only.  My point was that the demand for such events is high, and is worth money.  Governments don't have to make everything free to make something economically viable; in fact, governments often destroy the economic viability of cultural events by too much interference.  Take Junkanoo as an example.We would do well to pay attention.