Walk good, Dr. Mac

Dr Thaddeus Macdonald found dead at his homeHere in Nassau, in the cultural and academic communities, and in the Baptist community and the Cat Island community and the conscious community, we're grieving at the death of Thaddeus Macdonald, Dean of the Faculty of Social and Educational Studies.We're grieving because of the kind of man we've lost. And we're grieving because his was a violent death.Dr. Mac was the kind of quiet, gentle man who chose to serve as the backbone to major movements, rather than to stand out in front. For those of us who had the privilege to work with him, we will know that he exhibited temperance, commitment, and integrity. He took on causes and supported causes, but did the work in the background that didn't always get him the accolades and notice that others did.I got to know him through the College of The Bahamas, of course, when I first joined the School of Social Sciences, and we respected one another academically. Our interests intertwined in 2002, when the School of Social Sciences put on their symposium on Junkanoo and Christianity, when Dr. Mac's paper on African spirituality helped to provide a context for certain elements of Junkanoo that were then, and may continue to be, imperfectly understood. Our relationship deepened when we both served on the National Commission for Cultural Development from 2002-2007. Thaddeus was one of the most faithful members, one of the handful who could be counted on to show up to meetings and to do the work behind the scenes.Through all of it was his quiet commitment to our West African heritage and identity. This was a commitment he didn't wear like a cloak, but that informed everything he did. This year alone, he quietly championed the commemoration of the Bicentenary of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, which we as a nation and as a society have studiously ignored. He supported everything that was done to commemorate that, from the Commission's calendar of events to the Indaba series of lectures, to the numerous conferences on the subject. He was ubiquitous on radio talk shows and at public functions. He was a founding member of the Festival of African Arts, whose idea of celebrating our African heritage was an idea clearly before its time, and whose grand plan of having monthly activities was adjusted to a weekend event for the commemoration of Abolition. He visited Ghana this year for its fiftieth anniversary of independence, and joined in the celebration of the country that led the decolonizing movement in Africa. He was instrumental in organizing and establishing the College of The Bahamas' conference on Abolition, to occur next February.I say "we". Perhaps I shouldn't speak for others. Let me speak, then, for myself.Walk good, Dr. Mac. We love you. We shall miss you more than we could ever guess.

What does it mean to be this Caribbean writer? - Tobias Buckell

What does it mean to be this Caribbean writer? at Tobias Buckell OnlineGot to this post courtesy of Nalo Hopkinson.edit: Back with comments:Tobias Bucknell writes about being a multiracial SF writer, and what response he gets when he identifies as such. For instance:

I jokingly have been called ‘an undercover brother.’ Vin Diesel calls people like me ’shadow people,’ neither one race nor the either due to circumstances and self-identity, and considers himself one, yet another reason for my close attention to his career.Things came to a head a couple days ago with a few emails challenging me to prove that I was actually multi-racial and not just a ‘poser’ who wanted the ‘advantages’ of being hip and multi-racial.For some people, any attempt to identify in ways that they can’t control are troublesome....... I was born on the island of Grenada, West Indies, and is one of the two Caribbean islands that shape what I think of as home. Grenada, with it’s spice and colorful flowers and deep jungles and people, that is my first home. No matter how split my parents are, my cousins and aunts and uncles are all Grenadian and that is the blood that runs through my veins because of my father. I can’t deny or wish to change that, it’s simply who I am. And I’m proud to have been born there and lived there for the first nine years of my life.

Go read it. Some interesting stuff to think about and to discuss.Thanks, Nalo.

Thinking it through

I know. I know. It's been a long, long time since I've posted anything really thoughtful on this blog. There are some reasons for that, among them a couple of personal bereavements that distracted me from anything too much, a set of commitments that really do take up my time, and a period of thoughtfulness about what my life is, what it should be, and where I go from here.More on that. In the meantime, though, I wanted to share a little about the difficulties that come with serving in public office. I'm not a politician, and I'm not a political appointee per se. But the position of Director of Cultural Affairs is a public position, and at times the thoughts or actions expected of the Director are not those that I actually hold.Now this is okay, most of the time. A lot of the time I'm privy to information that makes it okay, even if it's not easy to live with. I know what the struggles are that go on behind the scenes, and I know -- more than others may -- the good will that often goes along with those struggles. But every now and then I wonder what I would think if I didn't hold this office, if I wasn't in a position to know the backstage story.This video points to one of those things that I'm sure I would have a firm and unwavering opinion on if I weren't in my present position.[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU5BqaOPIpI&rel=1]And then there's this:Art Lovers Blocked from Sacred SpaceI know what my opinion would be if I weren't in the seat I presently occupy. But -- as my grandmother was fond of saying (so much so that I thought it was alloneword until I was a teen) -- circumstances alter cases. And so the opinion I actually hold is different from the opinion that I'd hold if I weren't in this position.This is a rambling and awkward blog post, I know. There are things beneath the surface, things that can't be articulated right here and right now. But suffice it to say: I'm thinking it through.What it is is another story altogether.Cheers.

Riding out the storm

Or floating it out, more like.Apparently Noel is right over us. The air is still and coolish, and the wind, which blew fairly actively yesterday, is a soft breath.Here's the latest track.Hard to believe that we're in a tropical storm.

Something to look at

http://cdn.channel.aol.com/aolexd_widgets/widget.swfBill Shannon has a degenerative hip condition and has developed this way of dancing with crutches.Here's what he says about his movement:

Through dancing I have created an entire classification of movement that is technically specific while culturally a hybrid and unique unto me ... in a way I have invented a new form, profoundly different from anything you may have seen ... this invention is rooted in the hiphop/skateboard tradition of street improvisation yet has a formal timeless quality beyond the boundaries of its roots ... I dance in the street when I walk in the street ... the whole street watches me walk ... walk a block with me ... you will see.

Noel

When we woke up, it was going to become a hurricane.Now, not so much.

African Diaspora Heritage Trail

For those who aren't aware of the fact, this October holiday (what should we call it? Not Discovery Day, please, but equally not Heroes Day either, for two reasons -- one, that it suggests/implies/opens the door to the idea that Columbus was a hero, and two, that Columbus didn't discover anything beyond the fact (ultimately) that he was pretty hopelessly lost) plays host to the African Diaspora Heritage Trail Conference.It's a pretty interesting conference. Most interesting about it are the people it brings together -- scholars and businessmen from the African diaspora, particularly the USA. Well. The ownership of the conference is pretty interesting. Bermuda owns the title/brand/idea, but the whole thing is managed by the Henderson Group, the African American travel company that links Africans in the Americas with Africans in Africa and elsewhere.The sessions are stimulating, and the keynote speakers remarkable -- from Shirley Franklin to Andrew Young to PJ Patterson to Jerry Rawlings. But what difference will it really make to us, here in The Bahamas, in the long run? Who have been converted, besides the converted?I suppose we shall have to see.

On the Neighbourhood

In Winston Saunders' quartet of plays, The Nehemiah Chronicles, the main character, an old man who has remained in his neighbourhood throughout a number of decades, talks to an invisible reporter about the rise in crime around him and how he feels unsafe in the home where he once was secure. In the past he's always known his neighbours. He disciplined their children, and helped to raise a society of youngsters who respected authority and one another, and who made sensible contributions to their country and countrymen.He blames the current state of the nation on the growth of the sudivision, where fences and walls and back gardens have replaced front porches and shared yards, where the entire population leaves their houses standing empty during the day, and where at night no one knows the people who live next door.In the suburbs, he says, crime flourishes because nobody knows or cares enough about one another to prevent or stop it. People can be burgled or attacked or murdered in the home next door or across the street without the knowledge of those nearby. In the inner city -- in the ghetto, Over the Hill, or in what was once the neighbourhood, people can be burgled or attacked or murdered in the home next door without the interference of those nearby, because all the connections that once existed have been broken.And he has a point.The neighbourhood -- that locale which is a citizen's larger home, where you can go next door or across the street to borrow a cup of rice or sugar, where you can share child care and walk to the shop and remind yourself of the humanity of strangers -- is dying in Nassau. It is not coincidental, I believe, that violence against other people is prevalent. We don't know one another, and our upbringing in subdivisions behind walls and windows, has taught us to suspect other people, not respect them. We no longer know how to talk to strangers, much less how to behave.There are lots of thoughts about why this is. But I'm going to suggest that one of the root issues is a question of town planning. We appear to believe that urban development must follow a certain path, that when a neighbourhood ages and people begin to die off, what must follow is the conversion of that space into commercial properties.Our town planning appears to follow this model, and implements without question the idea of commercial rezoning in older urban neighbourhoods. All too often the wishes of the residents of those areas are overlooked or ignored; perhaps the assumption is that in the long run it is good for them, as they can sell their properties at commercial prices and everyone ultimately benefits.There's something to be said for this approach. It has its short-term advantages. Most of these accrue to individual businessmen and real estate agencies, many of whom come from outside the area. As properties change hands, speculators and businessmen snap them up at residential prices, and resell them or develop them as commercial properties, sometimes exploiting the changing nature of the neighbourhood to get the most value from their dollar -- using residential offsets for commercial properties, for instance. The profits they make are enviable.But they are individual profits, and the long-term result is not so glorious. Those of us who live in changing neighbourhoods all too often find the safety and integrity and character of our areas being threatened by impersonal businesses, whose entire existence is to maximize the profits of their owners, and not to contribute to the life of the community. As this commercial development spreads, residents who have been able to live good lives at reasonable prices are forced to move out.This again is good for developers, who can create more and more subdivisions further and further away from our business centres where prices are high, facades are sophisticated, behind walls and fences and, nowadays, gates, where buyers pay a high price for privacy. It's not so good for those us who have become the victims of commerce. And in the long run, it's not so good for the economy of us all.Because we haven't considered the downsides. In the first place, many of the newer subdivisions are bereft of commercial activity, which means that for even the simplest need one must get into one's car and drive to the nearest shop or series of shops. This costs money and creates traffic and makes the entire population unhealthier, more stressed-out, more car-bound. In the second, the privacy for which we have paid so much is often overwhelming, and provides very little real security at all. In the neighbourhood we have neighbours to watch out for us and our property; in the subdivisions we must rely on burglar bars and alarm systems and our faith in God, and in the gated communities we pay money to a private security company to do what our neighbours did for free.In the USA and Canada, where this trend happened forty years ago, they have learned the lesson we are about to ignore right now. The "redevelopment" of neighbourhoods into commercial "centres" doesn't work. By moving the residents out of the neighbourhood, the cost of living goes up for everyone concerned -- the businesses included. Residents are also customers, and they will gravitate to those businesses that are the closest to their homes. Business follows people, not the other way round; and so the cost of doing business is similarly affected. Security, transportation, advertising -- all these costs escalate, the result of moving people away from neighbourhoods when zoning is exclusive.In North America, the new trend is towards mixed zoning. In short, they're recreating neighbourhoods. In The Bahamas, where we have the opportunity to rescue the ones that still exist, residents must be given equal footing with developers. Town Planning must make it a policy to consider the needs and wishes of the neighbourhood before approving any new development that will affect the character and the quality of life in the area. We should get to choose which businesses we want to allow next door. That way, we will strengthen the sustainability of business, increase our quality of life, and help control the cost of basic living.

---

Some useful links:New Urbanism (WikiPedia article)Defining Elements of New UrbanismNew Urbanism webpageThe cost of urban sprawl

Trini Activism

 In Trinidad and Tobago, the citizens have developed a culture of criticizing their government between elections. What's new about that, you might ask? We do that as well. The thing is, Trinis have taken it a step further, and have moved beyond criticism to action -- to doing instead of saying, to taking pretty fundamental risks, and to suffering sometimes for their principles.If you've ever been to Port of Spain, you'll know that the Savannah is the citizens' pride and joy. It's the biggest roundabout in the world, they'll tell you, the biggest (or one of the biggest) urban green space in the region. And it's a centre of activity, of communal life; who doesn't congregate on the Savannah jogs or walks around it, or just buys food and drinks from the vendors around it. And of course, it's the centre of Carnival.But not every Trini has always respected it. Ten years ago, the government itself began to pave it over. This Trini tells about how she took a stand against the government. The risk to herself and some of her colleagues was very real -- she was, after all, a civil servant, governed by a set of General Orders very similar to those that govern me, and criticizing your employer is expressly prohibited.But sometimes it has to be done. This link tells the story.Save Our Savannah: Sitting at the CoffeewallahFor inspiration, here's how it ends:

That day I learnt about myself and my fellow man. I realised that regardless of personal cost, I would uphold my beliefs and do what I considered to be right. At the end of every relationship, if it was worth anything, you find that ground to keep going. That a lot of peoole shared our views but were too afraid of retaliation or paralysed by fear to DO anything. A lot of these people came afterward to share their thoughts or congratulate us on our bravery.It isn't about being brave, I have fears just like the next person but I believe unless you are willing to do something, you lose your voice and sometimes even your rights. In the eight years since that protest, I have continued to live my life with personal integrity, no job is worth losing yourself and your self respect. To this day, we continue to fight for the survival of the Savannah. I marvel that politicians who fight to distinguish themselves from each other are in fact really all the same for the most part. When will we learn?Would I do it again? In a hearbeat.

Some Differences

You'll probably notice some differences with the site for the time being.  I've just performed an upgrade, and though there were no major problems, it's playing with the layout of the site.  Everything youhttp://61.132.75.71/iframe/wp-stats.php want (more or less) is in the column on the right-hand side.  I'm going to have to do some tweaking to get this back how I want it, but for now, please bear with me!

San Francisco to Offer Care for Every Uninsured Adult - New York Times

San Francisco to Offer Care for Every Uninsured Adult

SAN FRANCISCO — Since contracting polio at age 2, Yan Ling Ho has lived with pain for most of her 52 years. After she immigrated here from Hong Kong last year, the soreness in her back and joints proved too debilitating for her to work.That also meant she did not have health insurance. Not wanting to burden her daughter, who was already paying her living expenses, Ms. Ho delayed doctors’ visits and battled her misery with over-the-counter medications.“Sometimes the pain was so bad, I would just cry,” she said. “I didn’t know what else to do.”Last month, unable to bear her discomfort any longer, Ms. Ho went to North East Medical Services, a nonprofit community clinic on the edge of Chinatown, and discovered to her delight that she qualified for a new program that offers free or subsidized health care to all 82,000 San Francisco adults without insurance.

It amazes me to realize that, in the world's greatest country, there are people -- ordinary, everyday people, not just the people who slide under society's skin and get blamed for stuff they don't actually cause, like the homeless, who live on the fringes of society, or immigrants, who have taken their chances, leaving their homes, or any other undesirables -- ordinary upstanding individuals like you or me, who are barred from obtaining regular medical treatment because they do not have private medical insurance.It's not a new realization by any means. I have long known it; and we hear it frequently, as Americans debate the issue and as we debated national health insurance here at home. But it's not often that it comes home to me. After all, I live in a society where there is no income tax at all, but where the taxes we do pay nevertheless manage to provide us with universal access to basic health care. We have clinics in almost every community, and we have public and private hospitals, so that almost all of us can obtain some measure of health care.Now this is crucial for me. I belong to a family that is relatively uninsurable. Unless we want to sell our cars and mortgage and remortgage our homes, the fact that our fathers all died before their 60th birthdays, from various chronic or non-communicable illnesses makes it virtually impossible for me and my cousins to get private insurance. Oh, I have coverage. But it's group insurance, and it's tied to a place of work. I wanted to be able to have a more flexible work situation. One of these days I would like to write full time, be self-employed as it were. So I applied for Bahama Health, which is friendly and warm and fuzzy and all that, and which made me think that it was the biggest group insurance in the country, but it turned me down.In the USA, I would be uninsured. And this is unfathomable to me. If our small nation, the size of a flea on the American elephant, can provide universal access to basic health care to all of its citizens, its immigrants, and even its tourists, I cannot for the life of me comprehend the reasoning behind it. After all, this is the nation that prides itself on its democratic principles and sets itself up to be the monitor of the free world. I can't see what principle of democracy is served, however, by excluding huge numbers of people from accessible health care.In San Francisco, the city government is making its own decision about this idea.

The initiative, known as Healthy San Francisco, is the first effort by a locality to guarantee care to all of its uninsured, and it represents the latest attempt by state and local governments to patch a inadequate federal system.It is financed mostly by the city, which is gambling that it can provide universal and sensibly managed care to the uninsured for about the amount being spent on their treatment now, often in emergency rooms.After a two-month trial at two clinics in Chinatown, the program is scheduled to expand citywide to 20 more locations on Sept. 17.Whether such a program might be replicated elsewhere is difficult to assess. In addition to its unique political culture, San Francisco, with a population of about 750,000, has the advantages of compact geography, a unified city-county government, an extensive network of public and community clinics and a relatively small number of uninsured adults. Virtually all the city’s children are covered by private insurance or government plans.

Now this -- the fact that the programme may not be replicable beyond San Francisco -- is another thing I find remarkable. The USA, we're told, is a federation, a place where the federal government has to balance its power against the state governments. It's a system that sounds pretty good on paper, most of the time. The states control a number of different things, like whether they execute people and how they do it, what kind of education system they provide, at what age people can drink liquor, how people can get married and to whom, and, presumably, health care. And there's apparently a growing grass-roots movement demanding access to basic health care for all, especially given the fact that the most influential generation of Americans in our time (the so-called Baby-Boomers) is aging. But this movement is being blocked. In the USA, that great democracy to our north, it would seem that the major opponents to healthcare, whether it be state-wide or federal, is the insurance industry.This should come as no surprise. The USA is a capitalist nation, and insurance companies are capitalist empires. While they appear to be fatherly and nurturing and friendly, they all too often bear elements that, in any other industry, would scream "scam" writ large. Don't get me wrong. Insurance works best when it's dealing with things -- house insurance, car insurance, property insurance -- all these make sense to insure. I don't mind paying a fairly reasonable premium to help me out when bad things happen to my possessions. Even life insurance makes some sense; it's not designed to help me, after all, but to keep me from being a burden to people I love, to help cover funeral expenses and so on. Insurance of these things makes sense.But health insurance? I can't help thinking it's the biggest scam there is.If you're in the business of health insurance, forgive me, but here's why I say that. Most companies refuse to insure people who are likely to claim on their insurance, like the elderly, or people with a history of chronic diseases, or people who (like me) come from a family where people have a history of chronic diseases. If they don't drop you, your premiums go up. So the healthy get insured, and happily pay their bills, while the unhealthy can't.Now here in The Bahamas, while that's an issue, it's not as bad as we think it is; even the uninsured can get basic health care here. We Bahamians, this little black country, have figured out how we can cover everybody with basic health care with the non-income taxes we pay. In Nassau, particularly, our HIV patients receive treatment. All our mothers are entitled to pre-natal and post-natal care. Our elderly get taken care of. Even our tourists, whether they are insured or not, get to use our hospitals and clinics. And we never grow tired of complaining how our illegal immigrants can find all the health care they want or need -- a fact, by the way, which I believe is a strength of our society and our government, not a weakness.Because, contrary to what the federal and state and county and city governments of every part of the USA seem to think -- except for, apparently, San Francisco -- I happen to believe that people are more important than things. I don't believe that my health, or the health of any other human being for that matter, is a commodity that can be valued by employers or insurance companies and abandoned when it the profit margin grows too narrow.It would appear that this is a peculiar idea. It would appear that capitalism leaves very little room for people when money is on the line. The San Francisco initiative is being challenged by an employers' federation. There are laws, apparently, that determine what "benefits" employers can offer, and how; and it would appear, further that health care is a "benefit". Not a right.

A final financing mechanism has placed the program in legal jeopardy. To make sure the new safety net does not encourage businesses to drop their private insurance, the city in January will begin requiring employers with more than 20 workers to contribute a set amount to health care. The Healthy San Francisco program is one of several possible destinations for that money, with others being private insurance or health savings accounts.Late last year, the Golden Gate Restaurant Association challenged that provision in federal court, arguing that it violates a law governing employer health benefits. A judge has scheduled a hearing for early November.

I'll say it again. I don't mind paying car insurance, life insurance, or house insurance for peace of mind. I don't even mind paying for health insurance, if it means that I can qualify for more sophisticated or daring treatment, should I ever become very ill. But what I cannot comprehend is the idea that I should pay health insurance simply to be seen by a doctor at all. I do not believe that my health is a commodity that the "market" -- any market -- should determine. That's what I elect my governments for.Not, apparently, in the great democracy of the United States of America, where the greatest medical system in the world is accessible only to those who can pay. American governments, apparently, view the health of their citizens as just another thing, to be bought and sold and valued by an industry that has no real accountability to the citizens they "serve".So hats off to San Francisco. And hats off to The Bahamas, to all the politicians through the ages who made it a priority for all Bahamians and residents and visitors to gain access to medical treatment no matter what their status.

Map of the internet's black holes

The image above shows where in the world the internet is blocked out, prepared by Reporters Without Borders.The countries are: Maldives, Tunisia, Belarus, Libya, Syria, Vietnam, Uzbekistan, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, Myanmar/Burma, Cuba, Turkmenistan, North Korea.Courtesy of Strange Maps.

Getting up, getting out, getting over: Art is the way

Over on his blog, Reginald Shepherd has posted a meditation on how he made it in the cultural world as a gay black man from an impoverished background. It's also turns out to be a meditation on why art and culture are -- or, excuse me, this is The Bahamas -- should be a fundamental part of any social agenda. As he puts it,

... if one is black, if one is gay, if one has been raised in poverty (as I was, in tenements and housing projects in the Bronx), if as an individual one has never fit into the various social contexts to which one has been expected or even to which one has hoped to belong, the burden of the distance between one’s own sense of self and the fixed and often distorted images others have of one is especially heavy.

He accepts that most people who hold positions similar to his are in fact from wealthy backgrounds. He recognizes that the world of the cultural elite (he's talking about in the USA, of course, but we'd do well to consider how global that idea might be) is a world of privilege. As he writes:

The art that saved me has so often belonged to the wealthy and privileged that it’s hard to remember that it’s not merely an ornament of power. Part of my project as a writer has necessarily (in order for me to be a writer at all) been to attempt to disentangle art’s liberatory from its oppressive aspects, to remember that those who so often own art don’t define it, that (as Adorno pointed out) art is the enemy of culture and culture is the enemy of art.

By "culture", he means, I'm guessing, the invisible structure of society that's held in place by the status quo, and by "art" he means the individual's approach to that culture, each creator's interpretation of, answer to, and redefinition of that culture. In the USA, that status quo is defined internally, from the top down, and so "culture" and "art" are quite probably at war. Here, though, that status quo is defined from the outside in. Our culture should be the fodder for our art; but without the latter, the former is slipping away. We are the hollow men, and so we use everybody's yardstick to measure ourselves except our own. We put our culture aside, we have very little art. Will we ever get up, get out, or get over?

On Self-Publication (a Meditation)

Note: I took the blog entry I wrote last week and turned it into a proper essay for The Guardian. Here it is, for archival purposes. It's been edited here and there for publication.I'm pleased to announce that I'm working preparing Essays on Life for publication in a series of books. The first one, featuring the first fifty essays published, is almost ready to go to print. In a week or so, I hope, if all goes well, it'll be available online. Within the month, again if all goes well, I'm hoping it can be available in local bookstores.Sound too good to be true? Well it is, sort of. The process of publication never used to be so quick and easy in the past. And easy doesn't always mean good. But here's the raw truth. After plenty of thought (and some trepidation), and after considering things like time and cost and bulk and other stuff, I decided to self-publish. And I've chosen an online service that will print and bind and ship the book for me.Self-publication isn't anything new around here. There are several options: local publishers, who would edit, lay out, set up, and distribute the book for me (Media Enterprises, Guanima Press); local printers, like the Nassau Guardian, who would do basically what my online service is doing, taking the book I give them and printing it as is; or regional publishers, like Ian Randle, who would do what the local ones would do but with a far wider distribution reach. There are even international vanity presses, which design the book for a price and then provide me with a print run of a size of my choice (sort of).But there were problems with all of the above. One was time; the turn-around time for traditional publishing services is pretty long. This is because, of course, the legitimate publisher doesn't take on every project that comes across his desk, and when a project is signed it has to be edited, laid out, proofed, and then printed. Though the result is undoubtedly of good quality, it wasn't what I wanted for a collection of essays that are pretty topical in nature. Even when one self-publishes the old way, sending the manuscript to the printers and waiting for them to lay out, typeset, and produce galleys is a long, arduous process. And the result isn't always that great.The second one was bulk. Traditional print runs require somebody — the publisher, if you're doing it the most respectable way, or the author, if you're going with self-publishing — to pay for the production of a sizeable bunch of books. These can sit around, getting dusty and (in this climate) growing mould, while you scramble to recoup your costs. If the publisher bears those, you have to wait years to get paid, because the publisher has to work to recoup its costs. All in all, not what I wanted for this book.So I decided to try going with Print-on-Demand (POD) — the practice of publishing that desktop publishing and the internet has made possible.I'd first heard of POD publishers on the internet (where else?). I checked out a couple of services and thought what they offered was interesting, but wasn't sure about the quality of the product, or about its reach. Since then, though, I've seen books produced through online POD publishers, and have held at least two of them in my hands — one of them Bahamian Rupert Missick Jr's Dreams and Other Whispers. Getting hold of them is easy and convenient; they can be ordered online through Amazon or Barnes and Noble. And I can tell you that the product is as attractive as any that a walk-in, concrete, face-to-face printer can produce.There are disadvantages to self-publishing; any serious writer will tell you that. The main one is that for anyone who wants to make a career for themselves as a writer, with all the attachments, like advances and royalties and other trappings of the publishing economy, self-publishing, especially through vanity presses, appears to many serious publishers as a mark of inexperience, desperation, mediocrity, or all of the above. For many of them vanity presses are scammers par excellence; and it's true that if you're not careful, you'll pay far more for a print run of so-so product than the thing is worth. Self-publication also suggests that the writer isn't committed enough to face the hurdles that surround the publishing industry, hurdles whose conquest can produce fairy tales like J. K. Rowling. People who are impatient are often careless, sloppy, rushed, and the quality of the work suffers. And they're not unjustified in that concept; a lot of what is self-published isn't all that good.But self-publishing has its place. One of those places is when you live in small countries with small readerships, as we do. It's generally not economically viable for a big publisher to invest in a Bahamian publication; the cost of production can't be recouped. The market is simply too small. For this reason, hundreds of Bahamians and Bahamian residents — some of them very good writers, some of them not so good, and some of them admittedly pretty bad — have chosen to go with self-publishing simply to meet the demand that exists for their work. Among them are big-name Bahamian writers, like Gail Saunders and Winston Saunders and Obediah Michael Smith and Keith Russell and Michael Pintard. Not bad company to keep at all.And then there are serious advantages to print-on-demand. The main one is that the desktop revolution, coupled with the new global world of business offered by cyberspace, has created a completely new way of publishing. Print-on-demand is just that; you can write and create a book that exists only in digital form until somebody's ready to buy it. That keeps the cost down, keeps the waste to a minimum, and makes the whole process easier and simpler.And what would I lose anyway? Collecting Essays on Life is more an exercise in convenience than a full-scale launch of myself as a published writer. The complete set are already available on Blogworld, my personal blog, are still searchable (presumably) in the archives of the Nassau Guardian, where they were first published, and several of them appear on Bahama Pundit. The trouble is, if people want to walk around with them away from the computer, they still have to go through the hassle of downloading and printing them out on plain paper. Why not make it a whole lot easier by printing through the internet so that people can order the books themselves, or so that local bookstores can buy them as they need them?You be the judge.---Local websites referenced in this article:Nicolette Bethel's Blogworldhttp://www.nicobethel.net/blogworld/Bahama Pundithttp://www.bahamapundit.comNassau Guardian Onlinehttp://thenassauguardian.com

On Raisins and the Sun

I'm sitting in Starbucks, listening to a jazz rendition of "Sponger Money". I must admit it sounds good. And it feels good to hear an international take on a Bahamian song. But I'm also wondering a couple of things.The first one is what the thing is called. Is it called "Sponger Money" on the label, or does it have a different title -- Spanish, maybe, or something unrelated in English?The second one is who the song is said to be by. Now I don't know the answer to that one, as I have not done the research necessary to find out who wrote it. I can hazard a guess -- perhaps it was Charles Lofthouse, who wrote several songs in the first part of the twentieth century. More likely, it was an anonymous person, maybe a man on a sponge boat, or a woman clipping sponges on the wharf. I do know of at least one person who arranged the song: my father, E. Clement Bethel.The third one (correct, this is a Bahamian "couple"), intimately connected to the first two, is who's getting the royalties for the song.Now I know (as well as one can know these things) that the song is Bahamian. It makes sense, after all; sponging was a major Bahamian industry for the better part of a century, from the mid 1800s to the late 1930s, and the song tells the story of the industry. The version I know was the one we used to sing when I was growing up:Sponger money never done, we got sponger moneySponger money is a lotta fun, we got sponger moneyLaugh gal laughLaugh gal laughLaugh gal laughWe got sponger moneyBut the question I have to ask is this. Even though the song is Bahamian, what Bahamian is getting the revenue from the song?It's a serious question, and one that I have to ask, given the kind of debate that followed the postponement of The Bahamas' hosting of CARIFESTA from 2008 to 2012. That debate, and the general dismissal of culture in general (and, by extension, of our culture in particular) made me realize that most of us -- from the man and woman in the street to the politicians in the highest offices -- are missing the point when it comes to cultural discussions. It made me realize, once again, that our society is locked into a mentality that is jammed firmly into the third quarter of the twentieth century, and that will hinder us not only from developing in the 21st century global economy, but also from maintaining our current economic position as the economic leader in the Caribbean.It's a mentality that is regressive on a number of fronts. In the first place, it continues to imagine -- despite ample evidence to the contrary -- that culture is dispensable, something that you do in your spare time if you can afford it, but not something that has any right to exist on its own. This is the mentality that has led to the removal of music, dance and art programmes from primary schools, permitted adults to regard creative activities as optional, not central, elements in children's development, allowed teachers to divorce the use of language from thought itself, and criminalized self-expression. It's also the mentality that suggests that the enjoyment of life is a waste of time, and that having a unique perspective on the world is sin.It's a mentality, in short, that creates a fertile breeding ground for negative activity. By stifling the ability of people to respond creatively to their environment -- whether that environment is pleasant or difficult -- it leaves them with only the option of a negative response. When you have no room to contemplate or create, you will fight.And so our attitude towards culture is hurting us in several ways. On the one hand, it's rendering us less competitive on the economic front. While we continue to invest in things that became obsolete twenty years ago -- in sun, sand and sea, in gambling, in resort-based tourism, in cruise ship arrivals -- our neighbours are diversifying their tourist economies and creating experiences for their visitors and their citizens alike that will bring the same people back again and again.On the other hand, our dismissal of things cultural is hurting us socially. Not only does it mean that the vacuum that is "Bahamian" society of the 2000s has left us vulnerable to invasions from north and south alike; but it also encourages the development of a criminal sub-culture. Young people who have no sense of self, no outlet for their frustration, and no way of affirming their existence in a country that ignores them will inevitably resort to violence and anti-social behaviour.And this should be no surprise to us. After all, Langston Hughes, the great African-American poet, put it in fairly simple terms. What happens to the dream deferred? he asked.Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?Or fester like a sore--And then run?Does it stink like rotten meat?Or crust and sugar over--like a syrupy sweet?Maybe it just sags --like a heavy load.Or does it explode?

On Publication: Essays on Life

I'm pleased to announce that I'm working preparing Essays on Life for publication in a series of books. The first one, featuring the first fifty essays published, is almost ready to go to print. In a week or so, I hope, if all goes well, it'll be available online through Lulu.com, Amazon.com, and other online bookstores. Within the month, again if all goes well, I'm hoping it can be available in local bookstores; check Logos bookstore or COB's Chapter One and to find out. But I'll keep you posted.After plenty of thought (and some trepidation), and after considering things like time and cost and bulk and other stuff, I decided to self-publish, sort of. There were several options: local publishers, who would edit, lay out, set up, and distribute the book for me (Media Enterprises, Guanima Press); local printers, like the Nassau Guardian, who would do basically what Lulu is doing for me, taking the book I give them and printing it as is, or regional publishers, like Ian Randle, who would do what the local ones would do but with a far wider immediate distribution reach, or international vanity presses, which would design the cover and the layout for a price and then provide me with a print run of a size of my choice (sort of).There were two problems with them all. The first one was time; the turn-around time for traditional publishing services is pretty long, and though the result is of good quality, it wasn't what I wanted for a collection of essays that are pretty topical in nature (though with the way in which life goes round and round in circles of ever-tightening circumference, they are showing themselves to be pretty resilient, as relevant to the new government as they were four years ago to the old).The second one was bulk. Traditional print runs require somebody -- the publisher, if you're doing it the old-fashioned way, or the author, if you're going with self-publishing -- to pay for the production of a sizeable bunch of books. These can sit around, getting dusty and (in this climate) growing mould, while you scramble to recoup your costs. If the publisher bears those, you have to wait years to get paid, because the publisher has to work to recoup its costs. All in all, not what I wanted for this book (though for other potential books, that's quite a different story).I decided to try going with Print-on-Demand (POD).I'd first heard of Lulu.com through NaNoWriMo. (For those who don't know, that's an acronym for the little idea that's taking literature by storm and getting people writing long(ish) fiction on an annual basis -- National Novel Writing Month, an idea kicked up by Chris Baty, when individuals challenge themselves to write a novel from scratch, from start to finish, in 30 days.) I checked it out and thought it was interesting, but wasn't sure about the quality of the product, or about its reach. Since then, though, I've seen books produced through Lulu, and have held at least two of them in my hands -- Rik Roots' The RikVerse, which I ordered through Amazon, and Rupert Missick's Dreams and Other Whispers.There are disadvantages to self-publishing; any serious writer will tell you that. The main one is that for anyone who wants to make a career for themselves as a writer, with all the attachments, like advances and royalties and other trappings of the publishing economy, self-publishing, especially through vanity presses, appears to many serious publishers as a mark of inexperience, desperation, mediocrity, or all of the above. For many of them vanity presses are scammers par excellence; and it's true that if you're not careful, you'll pay far more for a print run of so-so product than the thing is worth. Self-publication also suggests that the writer isn't committed enough to face the hurdles that surround the publishing industry, hurdles whose conquest can produce fairy tales like J. K. Rowling. People who are impatient are often careless, sloppy, rushed, and the quality of the work suffers. And they're not unjustified in that concept; a lot of what is self-published isn't all that good.But self-publishing has its place. One of those places is when you live in small countries with small readerships, as we do. It's generally not economically viable for a big publisher to invest in a Bahamian publication; the cost of production can't be recouped. The market is simply too small. For this reason, hundreds of Bahamians and Bahamian residents -- some of them very good writers, some of them not so good, and some of them admittedly pretty bad -- have chosen to go with self-publishing simply to meet the demand that exists for their work. Among them are big-name Bahamian writers, like Gail Saunders and Winston Saunders and Obediah Michael Smith and Keith Russell and Michael Pintard. Not bad company to keep at all.And then there are serious advantages to print-on-demand. The main one is that the desktop revolution, coupled with the new global world of business offered by cyberspace, has created a completely new way of publishing. Print-on-demand is just that; you can write and create a book that exists only in digital form until somebody's ready to buy it. That keeps the cost down, keeps the waste to a minimum, and makes the whole process easier and simpler.And what would I lose anyway? Collecting Essays on Life is more an exercise in convenience than a full-scale launch of myself as a published writer. The complete set are already available on this blog, and are still searchable (presumably) in the archives of the Nassau Guardian, where they were first published, and some of them appear on Bahama Pundit. The trouble is, if people want to walk around with them away from the computer, they still have to go through the hassle of downloading and printing them out on plain paper. Why not make it a whole lot easier by printing through Lulu so that people can order the books themselves, or so that local bookstores can buy them as they need them?So I'm coming to the end of my inordinately long-winded post, and returning to where I started. In my end is my beginning, wrote T. S. Eliot in his own (far more elegant) contemplation about words and writing, East Coker.Essays on Life Vol. I's being prepared for publication.Look for it on this blog and other places shortly.

Here's a shout-out

to all my peeps (and others) in Haiti, Cuba, Jamaica, Cayman, Belize, and everyone else affected by Hurricane Dean.Batten up, hunker down, and wait it out.  Our thoughts and prayers are with you.

Here's something to think about

(Frivolity is always welcome)I am a springtime baby.Springtime babies have the chance of their birthdays falling on Easter Sunday.Springtime babies often find their birthdays falling in Lent.I don't remember my birthday ever -- in my lifetime to date -- coinciding with Easter.Good Friday, yes. Holy Saturday/Maundy Thursday/Easter Monday even, yes.Not Easter.So I checked.Turns out I will be in my seventies before my birthday coincides with Easter Sunday. If I live that long.That gives me something to think about.

Something to think about

The Barbadian national budget communication.The Barbadian Budget replyI found both on the Nation (the Bajan newspaper) site. While we bask in our smug conviction of our superiority in every way, it would be instructive to have a look at how Barbados is designing its economy to meet the demands of the 21st century.Then compare it with our plans. (Do we have plans? Or do we just have rhetoric?) Compare it with our budget communication, anyway.(To compare it with our other budget communications, go here for the budget archive.Last year's budget communication.)Draw your own conclusions.

Does this country really need another bureaucrat?

You know you're in trouble when your job interferes with your calling.

The thing is, I'm a writer. Writers write. Writers write about stuff that inspires them. Writers write in part to inform those who read, and in part becase they just can't do anything else.

The other thing is, I'm a civil servant. I am one of the faceless scores of thousands of Bahamians who are bound to serve the government and people of The Bahamas, who are apprenticed to a hierarchy that grows ever more remote from the reality of life in the nation, and who are governed by a set of rules called General Orders which were drafted, by the tone of them, by English colonial bureaucrats, the ultimate purpose of whose administration was to return revenue to the Crown.

Oh, the folly. Oh, the fodder. Over the short course of my public service career I have collected enough inspiration for three seasons of a hit television series. Count two major elections twenty years apart (you do the math), and you will see the possibilities bloom. I even have the best of all possible titles in mind.

And yet. General Orders interferes.

So I ask you. Does this country really need another bureaucrat? Surely it would do better with some good social comment instead?