It was just a few days to go before Christmas and we went over to Adam’s Bagelry, the only real bagel factory in the Caribbean, to buy a few goodies for our friends coming over bringing gifts. Whatever Adam does is high quality and our friends like the currants rolls, chocolate cake and coconut sweet …
When I was in my salad days and very green in judgment, I was often accused of being too “manish”, a term reserved for those of us whose urinary outpourings had not yet been so shaken by life’s vicissitudes and veracities that they had started to form or contain a rising or overflowing mass of …
I read somewhere that the word “politics” is really two words and not one, something like “harass”. The writer explained that the first syllable “poli” or “poly” means “many” and “tics” or “ticks” are “blood-sucking creatures”. This was the idea behind the song by calypsonian, Black Stalin, about “Vampire Passing.” With election-time approaching in several …
It is said that diplomacy is the art of saying “Nice doggy” while reaching for a rock. However, for those like Boris Yeltsin, former Russian President, it is hard to reach for anything when you’re already stoned. Even before he became President in 1991, Yeltsin had already shown signs of being a problem. In 1989, …
The Putin Protocol and Other Presidential Gaffes Read More »
The evil that men do lives after them and so too their laws. This is the case of the British in India. Ironically, I saw the announcement that India is to repeal nearly 300 obscure laws dating back to the British Raj in a BBC article. It seems that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who took …
A cappuccino is an Italian coffee drink which is traditionally prepared with espresso, hot milk, and steamed-milk foam. The name comes from the Capuchin friars, referring to the colour of their habits. My Capuchin friars had very dirty habits and my cuppa cappuccino looks like mochaccino (a chocolate cappuccino) and tastes like macchiato (an espresso …
William Congreve (1670 – 1729) was an English poet and playwright. Two of his characteristic pithy and witty turns of phrase, both from the play “The Mourning Bride”, though now misquoted and attributed to Shakespeare, are still in common usage to the point of being clichés. One is “Music has charms to soothe a savage …
Jack Parr was the first host of the ground-breaking, late-night television programme known as ‘The Tonight Show’ later made even more popular by Johnny Carson and Jay Leno. WIKIPEDIA says, “It was during Paar’s stint as host that ‘The Tonight Show’ first became an entertainment juggernaut; Paar generated the most obsessive fascination and curiosity from …
There are twelve signs in the Shēngxiào or Chinese zodiac, each linked to an animal. The Rat is the first animal in the cycle and it is followed by the Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog and Pig in that order. There is a story about how this originated. Buddha summoned …
If I had a nickname for any of the pilots of Caribbean Airlines (CAL) who “sicked out” a few days (Tuesday July 1) ago and left passengers stranded in many different airports throughout the region and wherever else the airline flies, it will be “Wrong Way”
There are many faces to Sparrow- his humour, his women, his travels, his concern for social justice, his politics and his raw sexuality. But they are our faces, our concerns and our interests. He is us.
An assessment of the impact of Hurricane Ivan on Jamaica by the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC) in 2004 stated, “The event’s direct damage and indirect losses amount to 8% of the country’s current GDP in 2003 (almost 36,000 million Jamaican dollars or 580 million of US dollars).” Yet this did not seem to …