To three Caribbean artists who passed recently: SAMANTHA PIERRE, Trinidadian storyteller, ARROW the super Soca Man from Montserrat. NEIL ISAACS, part of the Guyana theatre scene.[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLzkDDE9TkQ&fs=1&hl=en_US]
This is so cool I had to post it to all my blogs, tweet it, and facebook it (is to facebook a verb yet?)I am so frustrated that here in the Caribbean where God has bathed us in sunshine we keep waiting for northerners to tell us what to do with it. Why can't we think of these things -- or take the chance on them to make them happen?Solar highways.
A group of 90 leading academics, authors, journalists and human rights activists from around the world has called on France to repay the 17 billion euros £14bn “extorted” from Haiti in the 19th Century. In 1825 France demanded 150 million gold francs in compensation after the Haitian Revolution, through which the country gained independence.via Repeating Islands.
Well now.On the surface, there is not much to argue with here. The idea is interesting, arresting even, and exciting, given the names of the signatories, who include
American linguist Noam Chomsky, French philosopher Étienne Balibar, and the Euro MPs Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Eva Joly.
Here's the question, though. To whom would this payment go, and how would it be remitted? Simply erasing the debt is not enough; there is also the long-term damage done to the core fabric of Haitian democratic society that resulted from the isolation of Haiti that occurred over the century following the revolution, not to mention the complete lack of national infrastructure in the country even today (a lack that the American occupation of the first decades of the twentieth century, an occupation that could be read as America's own imperialism, did not rectify). This is worth a whole lot more thought. Discussion and thought.But worth considering nevertheless.
What's the big deal?Well, if you have to ask, you haven't been seen the CRB. And you really don't have any excuse; I've blogged about it, twice (or more). It's not just that I finally finished the review that Nicholas invited me to do lo these many months ago. It's also that I'm really stoked about who's in the CRB today with me: Mark Dow, who's got publication credits up the wazoo, the kind of credits that you have to don sunglasses to read.And it's a review of Sidney Mintz's work, which makes me proud. Mintz made my anthropology -- and my thought, and my national and regional pride too -- what they are today.So go on over and check it out. And while you're at it, spend some time on the site. It's worth it.
BWSI 2010!Bahamas Writers' Summer Workshop 2010. First public meeting/discussion @ the Hub is ongoing. First - what? Panel? Reclaiming the Bahamian imaginal. Discussion about where we situate ourselves and how and how writing must be situated in the imagination of a nation.
Commodification of the self - of the national and the personal self - the colonization of the imagination. The separation of the self from the earth. So much to say and more.Who? Lynn Sweeting, poet; Patti Glinton-Meicholas, writer; Keisha Ellis, writer; Christi Cartwright, writer, interviewed by Helen Klonaris.Saturday, July 17th, 7pm @ The HubRestorying the Bahamian Imaginal LandscapeKeisha Ellis, Patricia Glinton-Meicholas, Lynn Sweeting, Christi Cartwright (Interviewer: Helen Klonaris)
From commentary on the new T&T PM's decision to move into the house built by the previous PM (with state money) for himself, after she promised not to:
In small, half-made societies like ours, people must be willing to suffer personal loss or inconvenience so that principles by which we all can live can take root. The greatest enabling factor in the last, insufferable two-and-a-half years of the Manning PNM was an acquiescent public: Trinis put up with everything from the neophyte Cabinet through the Finance Minister taking a personal benefit from the CL Financial bailout to the sacking of Keith Rowley without lifting an eyebrow, a finger or a placard (except for Ishamel "Sledge" Samad, who tried to arrest Calder Hart personally).It took a $2M flag and then Sports Minister Gary Hunt's arrogance over it for people's backs to be raised; it took the discovery of the private church being built by Chinese workers on state land to raise the hackles on their necks; and it took a snap election for them to raise their fingers - but what will it take for Trinis to raise their fists?The palace in St Anns does not cease being the symbol of delusions of grandeur merely because another occupant moves in. The people around Kamla Persad-Bissessar should convince her that she should watch that palace like a month in jail. But already all responsibility and principle have been abandoned and the process of placation begun; what the palace stands for is clear, though; and anyone who deliberately chooses to occupy the palace necessarily assumes all its trappings. You can't play sailor mas and ‘fraid powder and you can't install someone in a palace and ‘fraid emperor.via A HOUSE FOR MS BISSESSAR at B.C.Pires.Com
I'm posting because we Bahamians should be aware of and study the folly of Trinidad and Tobago, because there but for the grace of God.
First of all, thanks to Nicholas Laughlin and the Caribbean Review of Books for asking me to review this book.I've long been a fan of Sidney Mintz. His study of the impact of sugar on the creation of modernity, which I read first in the 1979 article “Time, sugar and sweetness,” (Marxist Perspectives 2 (4): 56-73) and then more fully in his book Sweetness and Power, shifted the way in which I thought about the Caribbean, the world, and my place in it. I've fallen out of touch with his work. Our research interests diverge somewhat. But this new book of his, which grew out of three W. E. B. Du Bois lectures (2003), has brought me back.Won't say much here. After all, I'm supposed to do that for CRB, and I will. Let me jsut say that thanks to Mintz, I'm remembering the excitement of rediscovering our region (even though he repeats the not-so-wise wisdom of excluding the Bahamas from the historical Caribbean), and, most importantly, of the place of history in our realities.For those of you who think that colonialism is dead, that there is no point in "resurrecting" the past (I put the word in quotes because that past has not yet died within us), understand this: without colonialism there would be no us. The Americas in general as we know them, populated and shaped largely by an extension of a Europe that conquered, subordinated and coerced other groups of people in the process are the specific creation of colonialism. As long as we exist, it can never be dead; we are our past, as the past created us. Until we get that through our heads, until we understand that process, until we know who we are and give up the myths and wishes that fool us into thinking we are "free", we will never inhabit complete societies. For, as Mintz observes:
The history of the Caribbean region ... embodies the real beginnings of European overseas imperial rule ... the modern world's first colonies are to be found mainly in the Caribbean region. ... Not only did most of the islands become colonial early, most of them also stayed colonial late. ... People in erstwhile colonial areas besides North America may be slow to grasp how anciently colonial the Caribbean region is. The Indian subcontinent is usually thought to have become a colonial possession, mostly of Great Britain, when Clive defeated the nawab of Bengal at the battle of Plassey in 1757. Yet by 1757 the Antilles had been colonial for more than 250 years ... Once it can be acknowledged that Caribbean colonialism is truly ancient, its history can help to give additional nuance to the term "postcolonial".
In other words, globally, we cannot understand colonialism or independence or postcolonialism without first understanding the Caribbean -- without understanding ourselves. Mintz and others (Eric Williams, for one, C. L. R. James for another) have argued that we cannot truly understand modern western civilization without understanding the Caribbean either, and each time I reread the argument I'm reconvinced. But more on this later. For now, I'm reminded. The significance of our region is far more than we comprehend ourselves. We must know our history, and the history of the world, to understand this. "The world in a basin" is not simply a romantic term; it's more real than we can understand ourselves.
Big congratulations to Nicholas and company for this venture.I'll be checking back regularly!
A note to our readers: Welcome to the new website of The Caribbean Review of Books. From May 2004 to May 2009, the CRB published twenty-one quarterly print issues, featuring reviews of books of Caribbean interest, interviews with writers, original fiction and poems, essays on Caribbean art and culture, and artists’ portfolios. In May 2010, the CRB’s sixth anniversary, the magazine has been relaunched as an online publication, offering the same intelligent, incisive coverage of Caribbean literature, art, and culture.via The Caribbean Review of Books • A bimonthly review of Caribbean literature, art, and culture.
As the Earth warms, the melting of its two massive ice sheets—Antarctica and Greenland—could raise sea level enormously.via SolveClimate.com.
Last month's earthquake in Haiti brought out two sides of Bahamians: the all-too-common bigotry that holds tight onto what we've achieved over the past forty years and refuses to share our good fortune with others, and a generosity and compassion that signals a possible change in the way we talk about ourselves, our country, and our neighbours.What struck me, though, was the almost unquestioning subtext of both: the growing-old refrain that we are blessed, we are special, God has smiled upon us, and therefore we must either keep that blessing selfishly to ourselves or spread it more generously than we have done in the past.And we've gone off to thank God, to congratulate ourselves, that we were not so unfortunate as to have had an earthquake here in our land, that we are mostly outside the earthquake zone (except Inagua, which is close enough to the fault that shook Port-au-Prince to have experienced the earth's shaking at different times in its history).What I wonder about, though, is the question of why in all our discussions about blessedness, in all our wrangling about who-won-Elizabeth, in all our self-centredness and short-sightedness, no one -- not during the debates, not during the discussions on the air, nowhere, not even during the Copenhagen talks last year -- has raised the issue that should have every Bahamian deeply concerned: the question of the impact that global warming will have on ocean warming, the melting of the ice caps, and the eventual rising of the seas.Now it's possible for us to not-believe all the science about global warming. I myself, while accepting the research and the results, and believing entirely that the earth's climate is experiencing some major changes, am vaguely sceptical about the stated causes of climate change, and am also not always convinced about the predicted results of it.BUT. One thing that isn't in dispute at the moment is that the ocean temperature is currently rising. Or, to be more precise: "July 2009 was the hottest month for the world's oceans in almost 130 years of record-keeping" (Seas at Risk.Org); and that scientists are noticing a shrinkage of the ice sheets of both Greenland and Antarctica.Here's what that means:
If the Greenland ice sheet were to melt, it would raise sea level 7 meters 23 feet. Melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would raise sea level 5 meters 16 feet. But even just partial melting of these ice sheets will have a dramatic effect on sea level rise.Senior scientists are noting that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC projections of sea level rise during this century of 18 to 59 centimeters are already obsolete and that a rise of 2 meters during this time is within range.via Melting Ice Could Lead to Massive Waves of Climate Refugees | SolveClimate.com.
Here's what that means to our country.The Bahamas is flat, low-lying, with few points on any island that can be considered high ground. Our highest point, way away on Cat Island, is 206 ft (63 metres) above sea level. But what's perhaps more worrying is that our fresh water sources are universally fresh water lenses, which rely to some degree on the stability of the salt water levels to continue to provide us with fresh water levels. Consider the fact, too, that New Providence gets its fresh water barged in from Andros (having long outgrown/contaminated the local freshwater lens, which was once considerable for a Bahamian island, but which can in no way support Nassau's population of a quarter of a million people, give or take), and that Andros is one of the flatter, lower islands. We don't know what impact rising sea levels might have on that.So it's not inconceivable that rising sea levels will turn Bahamians back into what for the past three generations we have not been: migrants, refugees, emigrants in search of dry land. It's not inconceivable that Atlantis, for the past decade or so our "saviour", may be what we actually become one of these days -- a sunken country, our property reclaimed by the sea. One of these days, The Bahamas may become just a memory to be kept alive by those most reviled of us all -- our artists.Just saying.
I want you to know that, before the earthquake, things in Haiti were normal. Outside Haiti, people only hear the worst -- tales that are cherry-picked, tales that are exaggerated, tales that are lies. I want you to understand that there was poverty and oppression and injustice in Port-au-Prince, but there was also banality.via Salon.com Mobile.
The writer of the above is Laura Wagner, an American PhD candidate in anthropology who was studying in Haiti at the time of the earthquake. She was injured in the quake, which killed at least one of her friends, and she still does not know what happened to the rest of them. Read the article. It gives a far more balanced account of what happened -- and what still is happening -- than most other writing, which focusses on the sensational, the (mostly foreign) heroics (because of course poor black people are incapable of their own heroism) and the predictable -- "looting" and "social breakdown".This is what anthropology is good for, which is something that I keep reminding myself as I teach it, and as I situate myself in this hybrid, postcolonial, complex society on the edge of the written world. It's good for getting inside places and people, for jettisoning the expected and the prejudiced, and for telling the story of individuals, the kinds of people who don't generally get stories told about them on any global level. That isn't to say that anthropologists and ethnographers are the "voices" of these people. They're (we're) not. But they/we do stand sometimes as interlocutors, challenging prejudice with actuality, and provide pieces of the puzzle of reality that are often overlooked, often missing.So go read the piece. And let it add just a little to whatever idea of "Haiti" and the "earthquake" you have in your minds. Let it make those ideas just a little more complicated. A little more real.
Now that the first journalistic burst has ended, now that the celebrity telethons have wrapped, the stories you hear are of “looters” and “criminals” set loose on a post-apocalyptic wasteland. This is the same story that has always been told about Haiti, for more than 200 years, since the slaves had the temerity to not want to be slaves anymore. This is the same trope of savagery that has been used to strip Haiti and Haitians of legitimacy since the Revolution. But at the moment of the quake, even as the city and, for all we knew, the government collapsed, Haitian society did not fall into Hobbesian anarchy. This stands in contradiction both to what is being shown on the news right now, and everything we assume about societies in moments of breakdown....Social scientists who study catastrophes say there are no natural disasters. In every calamity, it is inevitably the poor who suffer more, die more, and will continue to suffer and die after the cameras turn their gaze elsewhere. Do not be deceived by claims that everyone was affected equally -- fault lines are social as well as geological. After all, I am here, with my white skin and my U.S. citizenship, listening to birds outside the window in the gray-brown of a North Carolina winter, while the people who welcomed me into their lives are still in Port-au-Prince, within the wreckage, several of them still not accounted for.via Salon.com Mobile.
Professor Rex Nettleford Is Dead Prof. Rex. Nettleford CaribWorldNews, WASHINGTON, D.C., Weds. Feb. 3, 2010: Vice Chancellor Emeritus of the University of the West Indies, Professor Ralston Milton `Rex` Nettleford, is dead. Nettleford died at 8 o`clock tonight in the George Washington Hospital last night. He was 76.via CaribWorldNews.com - Global Caribbean Daily Newswire.
Well worth reposting, reading, and savouring in days to come. Sobering commentary indeed.
Nine days after the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti on 12 January 2010, it's now clear that the initial phase of the U.S.-led relief operation has conformed to the three fundamental tendencies that have shaped the more general course of the island's recent history. It has adopted military priorities and strategies. It has sidelined Haiti's own leaders and government, and ignored the needs of the majority of its people. And it has proceeded in ways that reinforce the already harrowing gap between rich and poor. All three tendencies aren't just connected, they are mutually reinforcing. These same tendencies will continue to govern the imminent reconstruction effort as well, unless determined political action is taken to counteract them.via Peter Hallward, "Securing Disaster in Haiti".
And you know that I'll be buying into the first of them for sure!!! Via Geoffrey Philp.
I'll be making a contribution to Cafe Cocano because it represents some of the things in which I believe: the ability of Caribbean peoples to overcome any situation and that we are responsible for creating the changes we want to see. Unless we (InI) do it for ourselves, nothing will happen.***Because I also believe in the power of the Word and that with giving, we can also speak/write/do great good, I'm recommending a site--thanks Randy!-- VWA{Poems for Haiti):VWA: Poems For Haiti was created by Caper Literary Journal as a way to inspire people to think about the tragedy in Haiti. We want people — readers and writers alike — to generate hope through a time that is very dark. We have luxuries many do not, and though some of us cannot help in major ways, sharing your work in the name of their pain and strength is something we can do. VWA, the kreyòl word for voice, aims to turn the pain and inspiration into literary works.via Two More Ways to Help With Haiti Relief.
People who read this blog regularly know that Rick and I rarely agree on anything, and that when we do it's a cause for commemoration. But there is not one thing in this article with which I take issue.Here's just a taste:
There has always been a love hate relationship between Bahamians and Haitians. We love them when they do the physical labour we don't want to do, but hate them when they start to aspire to do more for themselves.When we consider the reactions to the government documenting and releasing 119 Haitians from the detention centre here as a result of the earthquake devastation to Port au Prince, Haiti one wonders how we can call ourselves a "Christian" nation.via The Bahamas & Haitians - WeblogBahamas.com
I hardly know how to write about the Haitian earthquake. The situation is worse than any possible imagining. And what is worst for me is this: our Caribbean brethren in Jamaica, Barbados, and Trinidad and Tobago are demonstrating far more compassion than we seem to be doing.Before I go on, let me say that I'm not talking about ordinary people here. The first Bahamian responses I read were on Facebook and Twitter, and they were all one could hope for: expressions of horror and disbelief, compassion and love, desires and movements to help.But among the comments are others -- the headlines of our foremost newspapers, for instance, which, rather than forcing us Bahamians to shake our deep, deep prejudices against our closest neighbours, against our cousins and brothers and sisters to the south, instead reinforce our prejudices and our fears. "PANIC, LOOTING AND TRIAGE AFTER MAJOR HAITI QUAKE", screams the Tribune; the Guardian warns, "GOVT BRACES FOR HAITIAN INFLUX".I don't wish to be crude, but WTF? I mean, what TF?? The Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding is preparing to fly into Haiti along with the leader of the opposition Portia Simpson-Miller, but the messages being given to our public are messages that reinforce our ideas that the citizens of Haiti are degenerate and lawless, helpless people who come and tief the wealth of others (=Bahamians), and messages that we need to brace for an influx of more of these people that we don't want or need. And these messages are having their effect. The natural responses of ordinary Bahamians grow mixed. Some of us express sorrow for the tragedy while worrying about our safety, concerned that we will have to house more refugees.Wake up, Bahamas. Ours is a country that has been built -- for the last thirty years literally, but for all our history in many many ways -- on the strength, sweat and hard work of our Haitian brethren. Many of us are descended from immigrants, recent or old, from Haiti, even though we may neither know nor admit it. We share our stories with Haiti -- our B'Bookie is called Bouki in Haiti, and his partner in Haiti is Compère Lapin (B'Rabbie here). We are not separate or better; we are neighbours, brothers and sisters. We share ancestors. We look the same.And we oppress our neighbours with our words, with our fear, with our hate. We think with our bellies -- witness the results of the Tribune poll -- but we masters of hospitality will not open our home to those who need hospitality most.And we call ourselves a "Christian" nation. How many of us are truly committed to following the words of Christ? Or does our Christianity line up with this?
The Rev. Pat Robertson is offering his own absurd explanation for why a quake hit Haiti: Many years ago, the island's people "swore a pact to the devil.""Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it," the controversial televangelist said during an interview Wednesday on the Christian Broadcasting Network."They were under the heel of the French...and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, 'We will serve you if you'll get us free from the French.'"Robertson continued: "True story. And so the devil said, 'OK, it's a deal.' They kicked the French out. The Haitians revolted and got themselves free. Ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other."via Rev. Pat Robertson says ancient Haitians' 'pact with the devil' caused earthquake.
Maybe we "Christians" secretly think that Jesus Christ was a wuss. After all, he said that we should turn the other cheek when people oppress us, that if we have two cloaks we should take one and give it to the poor, that if we visit prisoners, house the homeless, feed the hungry and clothe the naked we are visiting, housing, feeding and clothing Him. This does not normally line up with our theologies, which generally focus on measuring God's blessing in the stockpiling of material wealth, and which often spout the kind of hate that Pat Robertson so blithely shared with the world yesterday.But Robertson isn't one of the gods that I recognize. No. Thanks to my paternal grandmother, I spent plenty of time with the Bible, reading it for myself, not accepting the half-chewed rantings of self-styled demagogues. And there, even in the Old Testament, I read this:
21"(A)You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. (Exodus 22:21, and repeated again and again in Exodus 23:9; Leviticus 19:33, 34; 25:35; Deuteronomy 1:16; 10:19; 27:19; Zechariah 7:10)
Perhaps it's time we take our profession of Christianity a little more seriously, turn away from our evil and hate, begin to obey the word of the Lord we say we serve, and open our hearts and our home to our neighbours in this time of their unimaginable, unbelievable suffering.
We love to believe in the uniqueness of our traditions. Well, let me correct myself. We love to believe in the uniqueness of Junkanoo. The heartbeat of a people, we've called it. Festival of The Bahamas. The cultural pinnacle of our selves, our lives, our work (I trust my priests will forgive me for this). If I were to collect up the tweets and FB status updates* I found on Junkanoo this year, I could make a book of them. And that book would be smug. And purring.We tend to forget -- or, more probably, we don't know -- that Junkanoo in the Bahamas is not unique. It is expressed uniquely, to be sure, though what the modern parade has become is a fascinating mash-up of African-American and Trinidadian elements, many of them eclipsing the traditional core (though it survives in pockets here and there). We tend to ignore the fact that our Christmas carnival (yes, I use that word advisedly) is one of several such John Canoe festivals in the so-called New World. And perhaps most of us don't know that the most studied and written-about John Canoe festival may still be Jamaica's Jonkonnu, and not ours (though that is rapidly changing).So in the interest of broadening horizons, then, a taste of what happens in Jamaica at Christmas:
Screams pierced the air like sharp knives, high above the sounds of fifes and drums and even a grater that created music for dancers in colourful costumes. Children, teenagers and even adults were sent running; they were afraid.One little boy could not manage the excitement. Scared of the men in the masks, he escaped the grasp of a guardian and ran into the arms of another, in an attempt to get away from the taunts of a dancer. There was no gruesome end to the story though, as the Kayaea Jonkonnu Group performed on the streets of downtown Kingston recently.
The group had just finished a stage performance when they took to the streets, giving many an experience they had never had before - though the tradition is more than a few decades old. Some pretended, as part of the excitement, but many in the crowd watching the festivities were genuinely afraid of the antics of the dancers who charged at them aggressively, while all the time demonstrating a variety of dance movements.
Behind the masks and the costumes, there is much happening.
via Jamaica Gleaner News - Preserving tradition - Jonkonnu dancers find it hard to remain viable
So here's my question. When does change become too much change? When do we adapt so much that we no longer recognize ourselves? I'm not sure myself; I'm tossing this idea out to provoke thought. Or not. As you wish.
In keeping with the survey of Caribbean blogs that tell us that here in The Bahamas we are not alone, here's a taste of what the CHOGM attendees (including our own Prime Minister, who appears to believe that the building on Shirley Street we call the National Centre for the Performing Arts is good enough for the Bahamian people) had to experience in Trinidad and Tobago. The photograph is from the inside of their spanking-new National Academy for the Performing Arts (which takes one's breath away). The commentary is less flattering, though. Go have a read.
To say it got mixed reviews is an understatement. Some people loved it. Others hated it. I wish I had seen all of it. But of what I saw, the following moments from the opening cultural show for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting stood out most ...
* P L E A S U R E *: Those unforgettable moments from the CHOGM opening
For some reason, the following story is causing serious waves in Barbados. Earlier this year a man reportedly woke up in the morgue of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Bridgetown after suffering an epileptic fit. The story's making the rounds of the cybersphere, and the Bajan government seems not to take kindly to the fact at all.OK, as far as it goes. It's not all that unusual; apocryphal stories abound in the Bahamian canon about people who were not dead but were almost buried nevertheless. My favourite two are quite different, but nevertheless render the story curious but commonplace. The first is the story, told by the late Pandora Gibson Gomez, about the man who died in Hatchet Bay, who was put in the coffin, and walked through the streets to the graveyard. In those days coffins were simple, made out of pine, carried on people's shoulders and Hatchet Bay is small and narrow and hilly and as the coffin was carried around a corner it bumped into the building and the man woke up, banging on the coffin and demanding to be let out. Some years later, the man died again, and the pallbearers began the trek from the home to the graveyard. As they neared the blessed corner, the man's wife yelled out:"Y'all be careful there now, you hear? Remember what happen last time!!"The other was the story, true as far as I know, and relatively recent too, told by the late Kayla Lockhart-Edwards about a woman who danced the quadrille at the Smithsonian Festival of the Americas. After we returned from Washington, many of the tradition bearers we took began to die (they were in their eighties when they went, so it's not that surprising), and we became morose but prepared for more people to pass away. This woman, though, was one of the youngsters—in her sixties rather than her eighties, but word came that she died. So Kayla phoned the family to wish them well and offer condolences. The daughter answered and said, "Thanks, Mrs Edwards, but Mummy ain't dead no more!" Like the Bajan man, this woman had woken up in the morgue.(Now for some unrestrained ethnocentrism): Here, we laugh. Here, these stories don't make it into the papers (our papers are far too fixated on politicians anyway. If it happened to one of them ...) Here, the survivors are little miracles in themselves; they don't get death threats.But it seems as though the hospital and the government in Barbados are taking what seems to be a not-uncommon occurrence around the world a little seriously:
Nation News, 11/5/2009: No kicking bucket! The bizarre story of an apparent escape from a Barbados morgue has taken another turn. Mr. Scantlebury’s claim that he was put in a drawer in a cold room appears to be substantiated by the evidence. Regrettably after his ordeal, Mr. Scantlebury says he has received threats.
Scantlebury alleges that he woke up in a dark room that was “black and cold” after suffering an epileptic seizure, but was hazy as to the exact date. He claimed he kicked until whatever he was in slid out “like a drawer”. After this, he said, he walked out of the morgue and into the night wearing only a disposable diaper and pyjama bottoms. The hospital management on Monday initially denied in a radio broadcast that Scantlebury was ever in the hospital. However, chief executive officer Dr Dexter James in a later broadcast did say that Scantlebury was treated in the Accident & Emergency Department on (Sunday) September 20, 2009 and released the next day. Prescod, who had heard her friend was dead, was shocked when he turned up at her canteen on Tuesday, September 22, looking frail and worn, wearing a diaper and pyjama bottoms.
and
He added that since he went public with his claims, he had received threats and endured many sleepless nights.
Keltruth Corp.: News Blog of Keltruth Corp. - Miami, Florida, USA.
Generation YIt's been a long time since I was able to follow the blogs I read, partly because I've been doing so much other stuff but largely because I still can't add bookmarks to Safari and I haven't taken to other feed-readers. So I haven't been discovering new blogs or dropping old ones -- I can't do much of that.But today I discovered a new blog that I would like to follow, if I can work out how: Generation Y. Here's what the blogger says about it:
Generation Y is a Blog inspired by people like me, with names that start with or contain a "Y". Born in Cuba in the '70s and '80s, marked by schools in the countryside, Russian cartoons, illegal emigration and frustration. So I invite, especially, Yanisleidi, Yoandri, Yusimí, Yuniesky and others who carry their "Y's" to read me and to write to me.
Well, Yoani, here's to you. I've found your blog affecting, and more than anything (on this Remembrance Day, 45 minutes away from 11 a.m.) thought-provoking. This is from an off-island supporter of La Revolucion, and a long-time admirer of Castro and his Cuba. You won me because of your writing, which is calm and reasoned and clear as glass, not because of your political rhetoric; your writing doesn't have any of that. Your calm description is what got my attention.Recent posts I recommend for reading:A Question of TonesA Gangland Style KidnappingBlame the VictimAnd on an entirely personal note to my friendly adversary Rick: democracy isn't an ideology as much as it's a way of life—and part of that way of life is hearing what other people have to say.Yoani says things well. I'm listening.
We on the arts community in The Bahamas often like to believe that things are different for artists in other Caribbean nations. This blog post from PLEASURE blog suggests that it's not so:
Tomorrow, the spanking new $518 million National Academy for the Performing Arts around the Queen's Park Savannah, Port of Spain, will officially open. But a few blocks away, at the corner of Roberts and White Street, Woodbrook, the historic Little Carib Theatre will remain boarded-up and shut. The restoration of that historic theatre, which was founded by local dance legend Beryl McBurnie in 1947 and which has played a key role in the development of the arts in this country, has stalled for about two years.The problem? Reportedly a lack of funding, with an additional $2 million needed to complete the restoration not forthcoming from the State. The same State that can pump $2 million into a flag around the crumbling Hasley Crawford Stadium and which can build arts academies apparently at the snap of its fingers.
It sounds all too familiar -- white elephants being created by decision makers more interested in showing off, attracting foreign investment, or negotiating cool perks than in building a nation for real. Of course in Trinidad, where oil money confers delusions of splendour, the showing off is of the glitziest kind.
The context: the T&T government has built, with Chinese money, something it is calling its National Academy for the Performing Arts, which is fancy, and which can ensure that the T&T government can have something that can be plastered on glossy magazine pages as evidence that the Caribbean is not home to transplanted savages and native beachbabes clad in Lion of Judah hula skirts and floral arrangements. At the same time, though, as is common with us all in Caribbean societies, the things that have made central contributions to the development of the arts are left to languish, perhaps because they're not glitzy enough, or because they mean nothing to the philistines who far too ordinarily get themselves elected to positions of power, or because they represent too much competence, outspokenness or creativity for the individuals who have been given charge of the government departments responsible for implementing government's policies. In Trinidad, the Little Carib Theatre and the Trinidad Theatre Workshop share fates that are not very different from the Dundas Centre for the Performing Arts here in The Bahamas, which is being eaten from top to bottom by a very happy army of termites, or from any of the so-called "National" performing arts entities, not one of which has an adequate home:
Examine, for instance, the traumas of the Trinidad Theatre Workshop (TTW), once housed at the Old Fire Station Building on Abercromby Street, Port-of-Spain. The TTW, whose founder was Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott, was housed at that historic building for ten years from 1989 to 1994, when Walcott won the Nobel, and then to 1999.Yet, after a swanky restoration, and the construction of a National Library around it, the TTW was quickly booted out of the building and left to find accommodation in a small gingerbread house on Jernigham Avenue in Belmont. To date, despite its name, the TTW has no real theatre of its own, with a small space at the house in Belmont acting as a performance area. The Old Fire Station is used for such things as press conferences by the Ministry of Information as well as hosting administrative offices.
There are times, indeed, when I'm thankful for the studied and deliberate contempt paid to Bahamian artists and arts in this country, thankful for the fact that the turn-of-the-century $3 million gift the Chinese government earmarked for our own Centre for the Performing Arts was not spent the way the Chinese wanted it to be spent (i.e. on renovating the NCPA on Shirley Street so that it could actually house performing arts, rather than function as it has been doing for the past 9 years now, as a glorified church hall). PLEASURE blog shows what might have happened:
The new academy was designed without any real consultation with the local artist community whatsoever, according to artists. The design was done by a Chinese firm, built by a Chinese contractor in accordance with Chinese building codes and specifications.
The building was supposedly inspired by the national flower, the Chaconia. But that is a loose association; the structure looks more like an imitation of the Sydney Opera House. Or a kind of sophisticated alien space-craft. How it fits into its environment also seems to have been an oversight by the designers, as the building looks away from the green of the Savannah and its environs, instead of paying tribute to them. This week, as preparations for tomorrow's opening continued with curious members of the public strolling around the academy, Chinese workers who will never be afforded the luxury of attending the swanky performances inside worked overtime to the sound of Chinese techno music playing from speakers housed in large wrought-iron boxes around the building's perimeter.
Questions have been raised about the adequacy of the steel used to build the structure, as well as the suitability of the design for performance. One Government minister has even pubically admitted, at the hearings of the Uff Commission of Inquiry, that some aspects of the building may be unsuitable to "performance" and more suitable to "training". And the myriad of concerns over top-level corruption looming over Udecott, the State company that handled the project, go without saying.
Despite all of this, in the face of it, the arts in Trinidad and Tobago are flourishing, thanks to individual action in the vacuum.
It is a crowning irony that throughout all of this, some have managed to find fertile places for art in the most unexpected of places. For instance, the million-dollar, shimmery structure that will open tomorrow may be an audacious sight, but it may never compare to what is happening at smaller spaces like Alice Yard, which is a few blocks away from the neglected Little Carib Theatre on Roberts Street.At Alice Yard, a simple backyard has, over the last three years, done more for contemporary arts and discourse in this country than any $518 million mega-project can hope to do. Could it be that the State's neglect has actually engineered the conditions for true artistic creativity?
The answer, apparently, lies in taking matters into one's own hands, in not waiting for the "government" to deliver what one needs. (Hail Rik and Idebu!) So here's to us, artists. Artists of the Caribbean, unite!
