Settling for less
I’m not a Twitter and Facebook guy. You like it, fine; it’s not for me. I text rarely. I get all sorts of requests to be someone’s “friend” on the internet; sorry, but I pass. Even email, for me, is selective; apart from family, perhaps five or six friends, that’s it, and most emails I [...]
It’s not for sale
Twelve years ago, when I was living in Grand Cayman, I bought a minivan in Tampa and shipped it down. It was a seven-seater Dodge Caravan that came in handy when people visited. I could move musical equipment around easily using it, fetch a full sheet of plywood in it, and when my family came [...]
Everywhere you look
A close friend sent me a note recently that I’m passing onto you. It was headed “How Come,” and here’s a portion of it: “How come successive governments can’t stop the mini-buses from killing commuters with loud music? I thought it was illegal, yet passengers are subjected to the loudest and sometimes nastiest music on [...]
Preparation is lacking
Several weeks ago, I wrote a column entitled ‘Knowing the fine fine‘ on the point that to understand the why and the how and the where of conditions in a country you have to live there a long time in order to begin to see all the factors, many invisible, that are operating on the [...]
There was a time
A young man from West Demerara who takes care of the electrical problems in my home was pointing out to me this past week that I should get rid of the half dozen or so fluorescent fixtures in the place. Apart from the inconvenience of having to occasionally replace parts of the lamp, I would [...]
Character will out
Useful as they are, dictionaries are inadequate when we are trying to define certain intangibles. The words in the Oxford Concise may be correct as far as they go, but they sometimes cannot begin to convey the full picture. Try to define the word ‘character,’ for example. One can come at it from a number [...]
Guyanese ingenuity
One of the striking things about the Guyanese culture is our disposition to improvise, to use our ingenuity, to use our wiles, to try and overcome. We find replacements for parts that cannot be sourced; we improvise different materials when the foreign one is not available; we get around problems in daily life by coming [...]
Ethnicity rules
In the early 1990s, during the ‘mo fyah’ disturbances, a prominent Guyanese political figure called me in Toronto with the suggestion that I should write a song to help calm tensions. I was reluctant. I do not write songs head-on, and I also firmly believe that song-writers cannot give people positions which they don’t already [...]
Masters at work
Every now and then you run into people who are true masters at what they do. There is a fellow in Cayman I wrote about before who makes beautiful knives from old files and black coral, every knife unique, every one a work of art. As a youngster, I remember a Pomeroon boatman who would [...]
Passion ruling reason
I approach the columns I write for Stabroek News appreciating that, among other things, they are likely to trigger discussion. Pro or con, it doesn’t matter; when the subject is engaged, when different responses emerge, something constructive is happening; the creature is being examined and, hopefully, better understood in the end. Even if opinions remain [...]
From Kaieteur to Niagara – on a bicycle
Approximately 15 years ago yesterday, a young man from Berbice arrived at Niagara Falls, Ontario. Most visitors come to Niagara by car or bus, but this young man, Terry Ferreira, was making history: he had come all the way from Guyana to Niagara on a bicycle. Terry had covered the 7,552 miles, via Brazil and Venezuela and [...]
We’re spoiled rotten
I’m driving with this Canadian lady heading for “cottage country” in Northern Ontario. The cell phone towers get spaced out up there so you can sometimes lose cell phone service between towers. We’re going 60mph on the highway, and the lady starts to rail. “This is so irritating. I paid $150 dollars for this phone [...]
Forgetting the forerunners
This started with a comment from my friend Henry Muttoo, the theatre whiz, following a piece of poetry by Louise Bennett I had sent him. Henry, who has strong opinions in artistic matters, was complaining that the work of our earlier stellar creative people, such as the late Madame Louise, was not getting the attention [...]
Pictures without sound
I hate to travel. When Tradewinds became popular in 1968, we were doing a lot of travelling. The first year or two was fun, but after that I hated it. I certainly loved seeing new places and particularly going to all these lovely islands I had read about and meeting Caribbean people I would not [...]
You cannot teach talent
When I formed the Tradewinds band in Toronto in the late 1960s, we played frequently at a small bar downtown on Yonge Street (the main drag) called the Bermuda Tavern. It was the only place in the city where you could go to hear a Caribbean band 6 nights a week (the other two musicians [...]