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  • Ian on Sunday

    By Ian McDonald | Sunday, November 9, 2008 | 4 Comments

    Teaching beyond the ordinary run of our lives
    When we are young, if we are lucky, we meet a person who opens our minds to the infinite possibilities of life in this wondrous world. Such a person, he or she is often a teacher, suddenly reveals …

  • Ian On Sunday

    By Ian McDonald | Sunday, November 2, 2008 | 4 Comments

    The quiet sport
    Not many people guess right when asked “What is the most popular sport in the world?” The irony is that, more than any other people in the West Indies, Guyanese are in a position to say what is the most popular of all …

  • Ian On Sunday

    By Ian McDonald | Sunday, October 26, 2008 | 2 Comments

    The complex value of the word

    I love poetry. It is the quiet passion of my life. When I was a child my mother read me old nursery rhymes at bedtime and they had the lilt of poetry in them which stayed with me forever. And …

  • Ian On Sunday

    By Ian McDonald | Sunday, October 19, 2008 | 2 Comments

    Home is a lovely place
    In Canada it is just getting cool and the trees are filling with greenish gold and a darkening red as the beautiful season of fall begins to decorate the landscape. A place where seasons change the living earth so much is …

  • Ian On Sunday

    By Ian McDonald | Sunday, October 12, 2008 | 2 Comments

    Greed brings down a nation
    In the 1987 film “Wall Street”, ruthless stock trader Gordon Gecko, played by Michael Douglas, famously declared “Greed is Good.” It summed up the credo of America – and, following America, most of the rest of the world – for the …

  • Ian On Sunday

    By Ian McDonald | Sunday, October 5, 2008 | 0 Comments

    Victory at all costs?
    An old sporting argument – good for many lovely hours of intense discussion and fervent discussion – surfaces every now and then. Is winning everything? Or does sportsmanship and “playing the game” come first?
    Students of cricket will remember way back in 1981 …

  • Ian On Sunday

    By Ian McDonald | Sunday, September 28, 2008 | 2 Comments

    A bigger threat than terror
    We have to look forward to a long and terrible age of increasing and fearsome devastation.  I am sorry to be so gloomy but all the evidence is there.  Of course, we must seek, and indeed have even more incentive than …

  • Ian On Sunday

    By Ian McDonald | Sunday, September 21, 2008 | 6 Comments

    The whole point is not to talk or think
    I avoid as far as I can any party, club, reception or event when or where rap music is likely to be predominant. I do not think this is only because I am getting old and crotchety …

  • Ian On Sunday

    By Ian McDonald | Sunday, September 14, 2008 | 0 Comments

    Unsung heroes
    In the last month I have enjoyed watching the Olympics from majestic opening to colourful and tumultuous closing and between those spectacular bookends have seen an endless display of compelling competitive excellence. And all this was followed very closely by a Caribbean Festival of …

  • Ian On Sunday

    By Ian McDonald | Sunday, September 7, 2008 | 1 Comment

    A festival Caricom badly needed
    Carifesta X was a splendid and significant success. There were dropped catches, fumbles in the field, times of anxiety, periods of doubt, batting failures, technical errors and fractious disappointment among loyal fans here and there but the Test Match was gloriously …

  • Ian On Sunday

    By Ian McDonald | Sunday, August 31, 2008 | 0 Comments

    Illth
    Absurdly, we still take for granted that Gross Domestic Product is an accurate measure of success and well-being in a nation, so that if GDP is increasing we think we must be doing better. This is nonsense.
    When anybody proudly declares that GDP has gone up …

  • Ian On Sunday

    By Ian McDonald | Sunday, August 24, 2008 | 0 Comments

    Put poetry on the buses
    I favour the reintroduction of public transportation. A system of maxi-buses on the roads,  well-managed and subsidized with some of the VAT bonanza, would be a great boon for hard-working Guyanese hustled and harried in getting around. Let us hope it …

  • Ian on Sunday

    By Ian McDonald | Sunday, August 17, 2008 | 1 Comment

    Will any record ever go unbroken?
    It seems impossible that Michael Phelps’s record of winning fourteen Olympic gold medals, with more to come in London in 2012 when he will only be 27, will ever be broken. Phelps is a swimming phenomenon. He has size 14 …

  • Ian on Sunday

    By Ian McDonald | Sunday, August 10, 2008 | 0 Comments

    In an article reviewing Kasia Boddy’s book Boxing: A Cultural History the American writer Joyce Carol Oates quotes from that dark, unsettling philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: “Every talent must unfold itself in fighting.” Nietzsche thought, contrary to prevailing morality, that it was perfectly natural to fight, …

  • Ian On Sunday

    By Ian McDonald | Sunday, August 3, 2008 | 0 Comments

    An Olympic memory
    I am the ultimate sports junkie. If games were abolished by some satanic world dictator I would be almost as lost as if he banned all books. I love watching all sports. I love darts, I love javelin throwing. If my wife isn’t …