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Who Reads Here
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Changing Pace
Underwater Sculpture Park in Grenada, West Indies by Jason de Caires Taylor
I came across this gem while surfing poets’ websites. It took my breath away.
Go have a look. Let’s tip our hats to the dream that became amazingly, hauntingly, real.
Vicissitudes
Grace Reef
Can You See Us? (Video)
Can You See Us?
Thanks to Erica James at the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas, I was led to seek out this series on the statelessness of children of Haitian parentage growing up in The Bahamas. You’ll find it on YouTube. I don’t know who made the movies, but every Bahamian should watch them — especially those Bahamians who view their society through the lenses of “Us” and “Them”.
I’ll embed the videos later.
Edit: The video was made by the Bahamas Human Rights Network. Kudos.
Terror at Millar’s Creek Fundraiser
I received the email below while I was away in Guyana, attending a regional cultural meeting and hearing about Guyana’s difficulties with crime and civil liberties. As I read it, I found myself thinking Why am I worrying about Guyana? We have problems with civil liberties right here.
And we don’t talk about them.
The email is in fact a press release put out by the environmental community group Millar’s Creek Preservation Group, which had the fundraiser they were holding at the Millar’s Creek community park raided by police, who proceeded to terrorize the patrons at the fundraiser and the organizers for several hours during the night.
I’m not at all sure what the impetus for the raid was. There was an element of xenophobia in it, certainly. Worse, it was a xenophobia which was desperately misdirected. Perhaps not worse. As Lynn Sweeting writes,
Even if that event was packed to the rafters with illegals, a lawful, decent, humane immigration and police operation CANNOT BEGIN WITH MASKED GUNMAN FIRING SHOTS.
And:
We are all in trouble when we cannot any longer tell the difference between the criminals and the police. The party-goers at the Millar’s Creek fundraiser know the horror of this first hand. All of them, Mr. McKenzie told me, are deeply traumatized, especially those legal and documented persons who were still locked up at the time of this conversation. Mr. McKenzie is asking: Who is responsible for the terror and trauma caused to these innocent people?
Here are a couple of excerpts from the press release. The entire release is below the fold.
Thinking a robbery was taking place I, along with everyone else darted for cover. Some people headed across the creek where we were confronted by several men in masks who pointed guns at us and told us to get down. At this stage I was petrified and feared for my life. When one of the masked men proceeded to place hand-cuffs on me- I realized that these individuals might be law enforcement officers. The men started to drag me and others through the mangroves towards the dirt road on the other side of the creek. I started to ask for some identification and questioned the officers as to why the park was being invaded. I was told by one of the masked men to shut the F—- up or risk getting shot in my head. I immediately complied as these men did not display badge numbers or any other identifying signs.
And
After all the officers had left the scene I began to take an assessment of the past night’s operation. I found out that some of my workers who had work permits had been taken to the detention centre. The persons who were responsible for collecting money at the gate stated that the envelope containing the money was taken by officers. The person who was operating the bar explained that when he was told to lie down, a junior officer attempted to take about two-thousand dollars from his pocket. A senior officer instructed the officer to put the money back without any warnings or disciplinary action levied against this officer. Several cell phones had been tossed into the creek. Someone had his passport torn. Some patrons had been walked on and gun butted by unidentified officers. The most amazing thing I found out that some of the officers had consumed most of the food and drinks that were on sale at this event.
More below.
National Poetry Month
I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, and am posting (irregularly) the poems I’m writing daily.
But I wanted to note that Geoffrey Philp has been doing a daily update on Caribbean poets all month long. You can find it here. Today’s is particularly good: Anthony McNeill (Jamaica):Somebody is hanging:
a logwood tree
laden with blossoms
in a deep wood.
The body stirs left
in the wind …
The Long Silence
I am never sure how to address this question — the question of my silence. It’s not that I am not thinking. It’s not that this blog isn’t important either. The challenge I have, though, is my position as a senior government official. More and more the things I have/want to say seem to be in conflict with that fact. It isn’t that everything that is current is politically charged — but it seems as though there are many things that invite comment, and that comment is liable to be critical.
So the question is, what do I do?
I want to post, for instance, the story of an incident that occurred recently (two of them, in fact), because I think that the responsibility of a writer is to raise awareness, to speak out about injustice, and to point at things that are wrong in a society so that we can fix them. Let me just say this. The two stories to which I refer have to do with the abuse of power of our uniformed branches. Now I am a supporter of the police and the defence force. In my position I see the best of them; they work with us in securing major events and help us with logistics on a national level, and they do difficult jobs very well. But what I have heard on both sides are so egregious that they cannot be kept silent about.
So the question is — how do I do that?
Well, I’m just going to do it, I guess.
Watch this space.
He was the Greatest of Us All
R.I.P., Aimé Césaire.Cesaire’s best known works included the essay “Negro I am, Negro I Will Remain” and the poem “Notes From a Return to the Native Land.”
His works also resonated in Africa. Former Senegalese President Abdou Diouf said Cesaire led a noble fight against hate.
“I salute the memory of a man who dedicated his life to multiple wars waged on all battlefields for the political and cultural destiny of his racial brothers,” Diouf said.
Born June 26, 1913, in Basse-Pointe, Martinique, Cesaire moved to France for high school and university. He returned to Martinique during World War II and served as mayor from 1945 to 2001, except in 1983-84.
Cesaire helped Martinique shed its colonial status in 1946 to become an overseas department. As the years passed, he remained firm in his views.
–from the Miami Herald
Edit: Geoffrey Philp has an excellent article, here.
Just an update
… because I’m not the regular little poster I ought to be.
Shall try to do better in future.
In the meantime, something to watch (it’s fun)
Too much pinkery?
For those of you who might be thinking that I have waaay too much time on my hands, know this: I’ve been on vacation for the past two weeks. The public service has the policy of being able to bank your vacation — you get a certain number of weeks per year, and you can accumulate leave over time. It’s a nice perk. Trouble is, it costs taxpayers money, because many civil servants, including some of the best, simply bank their vacation over time and then add it up as pre-retirement leave. It has not been uncommon for people to be paid for three, six, nine or twelve months as they near retirement. It’s especially useful in times of illness. My father was a case in point. When he was ill, his vacation leave helped assist us in taking care of his hospital bills.
It’s good for the worker, but not great for the service. The person remains on the books, which means that their post is occupied even though they are not working in it. That means that it’s often difficult to replace them — and believe it or not, the public service is suffering as much from a lack of employees as it is from a bloated payroll (more on that later).
So there’s an official policy that keeps reminding us civil service that vacation leave is cumulative only up to a maximum of fifteen weeks. For people who get three vacation weeks a year, that’s five years’ worth of vacation, but for people who get more than that it doesn’t take long to accrue a lot of leave. I entered my fifth incremental year last October with some 10 weeks’ leave, and didn’t know how I’d got it. So I’m taking it this year — two before Christmas, two right after, and two weeks right now.
All that to say that I’ve been fooling with the blog. I’ve fixed the comment issue in the upgrade, which is good. On the other hand, I have had to abandon the theme I was using, which was a design I liked. A lot. I’ve got this one, which is by the same designer, but though it does the job, it doesn’t feel right. Not bold enough. Not me enough. I’m waiting for him to release the theme for 2.5 so I can play with it again — but by that time I may have redesigned the entire site.
So I say all that to say this: this may be just too much pinkery for the moment. But stick with me. It’ll all turn out well in the end.
It’s a mystery.
Downtime
For those of you who came to this blog over the last night or so, you will have noticed that you couldn’t get to it — the comment that came up was “ERROR CONNECTING TO DATABASE“. It was a problem that affected all the nicobethel.net blogs.
Our service provider is having issues.
I am working on putting up a mirror blog. At this point there is another blog which serves as an archive. You can find it here:
http://nicobethel.net/test-blogworld/
and it is where I play around with themes, etc, before putting them up here.
If the entire server goes down again, that will also be unavailable, but it is a backup.
Eventually I hope to have something at http://nicobethel.com — but not just yet.
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The World is Talking
