Gwyneth Harold Davidson's Blog, page 2
February 17, 2023
Secret Identities of the Rio Minho
Rita was determined to have a place in society and she used every opportunity to soar, climb and scratch her way up.Every encounter needed to be made good. Lady Densham, Marlon the good man, Oliver the sensitive boy. Not all of the people had an easy start, and not all of with have a good finish, but every identity had value. A novel of the passions that drove people in a time of change in Jamaica.
A novel coming soon by Gwyneth Harold Davidson.Pay by NCB Lynk $750.00
February 5, 2023
Twelve Jamaican Men Walking in Garvey's Footsteps
Twelve Men Supporting Black Upliftment
Submitted by Ntukuma, the Storytelling Foundation of Jamaica
Twelve Jamaican men who Garvey knew personally and who were luminaries of Pan Africanism and racial pride were recalled in a presentation by President of the United Negro Improvement Association UNIA, Mr. Stephen Golding at the Ananse SoundSplash 2023 event marking International Men’s Day. Held on November 19, 2022 at Liberty Hall, Kingston, the presentation revealed how the individual and collective work of these men promoted a spirit of self pride in Black people in the Western Hemisphere.
80 YEARS OF JOURNEYING THROUGH CARIBBEAN IDEALS
Using the theme “In Garvey’s Footsteps” Golding tracked a period spanning 80 years, starting in 1900 with early efforts to form associations that promoted Pan African interests, and closed with the 1980 release of Bob Marley’s Redemption Song, which was inspired by Garvey’s essay, “The Work That Has Been Done”.
An early inspiration for Garvey, who enjoyed reading as a child, would have been the Jamaica Advocate newspaper that was first published in 1894 by politician and medical doctor Joseph Robert Love. Jamaica was under Crown Colony government at that time with few elected positions. Dr Love used his newspaper as a part of his advocacy for those elections to be free and fair. The newspaper was published for about a decade and his voice perhaps paved the way towards Jamaica proudly becoming the third country in the Commonwealth to have universal adult suffrage in 1944, behind first New Zealand, and then the UK.
Having been blacklisted within the printing industry for leading a labour strike in Kingston at age 23, Garvey started his travels in 1910, going first to Central America for employment. During his two years there, he started two newspapers, Nation/La Nación in Limón, Costa Rica and La Prensa in Colón, Panama. Founding Rastafarian, Joseph Nathaniel Hibbert, was a young man in Costa Rica at that time. Golding noted that the significance of this lies in the fact that as fellow Jamaicans, Hibbert and Garvey would have been exposed to the buzz of ideas in their diaspora community, and current at that time was the Ethiopia movement which is crediting with fueling new spiritual expressions.
Following visits to the UK and Europe, Garvey returned to Jamaica and strengthened his relationship with Dr Love, who by then had retired due to his health. In 1914, after Love died, Garvey, and Amy Ashwood founded a new kind of organisation that would not only serve Pan African intellectuals, but also labourers, entrepreneurs and youth. Now in his early 30s, Garvey moved to Harlem in 1916 and over the next eleven years successfully established the UNIA as a global force.
DIASPORA CONFLICTS AND COLLABORATIONS
Among the Jamaicans who were in New York from 1916 to 1927, and who would have come into contact with the UNIA, were friends and associates whose support and ideas were influential in Garvey’s future direction. Among them was Hanover-born Joel Augustus Rogers who had completed service in the British armed forces to become a man of letters as a New York-based journalist and self-taught historian. Rogers’ focus was the histories of African peoples. His writing is acclaimed in the USA and Europe as being influential to the development of the African American identity. In 1917, the same year that Garvey established the first branch of the UNIA in the USA, Rogers self-published the groundbreaking novel “From Man to Superman”, a futuristic discussion between a negro railway porter and a white US Senator for Oklahoma. The novel has a hopeful conclusion. Rogers was later the sub-editor of the 1922 UNIA newspaper Daily Negro Times.
Throughout his life, Garvey attracted and then came into conflict with many men who were serving the social needs of the Black community in different ways. During his first year in the USA, the Gleaner published a letter on October 4, 1916 and signed by thirteen Jamaican men denouncing Garvey as a troublemaker who was giving Jamaica a bad name.
Three of these were outstanding in their own right: journalist Wilfred Adolphus Domingo; priest of the Orthodox Church Fr Raphael Robert Morgan, and private detective Herbert Simeon Boulin.
At age 27, radical socialist Wilfred Domingo had introduced Garvey to reputable printers and was also the Editor of the UNIA newspaper, The Negro World, until there was an ideological falling out between him and Garvey. He pressed for socialism, while Garvey adopted capitalism. Domingo’s writings also pitted him against African-American writers as he made distinctions between the mindsets of the immigrant and those of USA born Blacks. He co-founded the Jamaica Progressive League which, over time, helped to establish the People's National Party. In 1941, one year after Garvey died, Domingo was detained and held for 20 months at Up-Park-Camp for actions that the Governor of Jamaica considered to be prejudicial to public safety and defense. His detention overlapped with that of Alexander Bustamante.
With roots in Chapleton, Clarendon-born Fr Raphael Robert Morganwas a well-known churchman who had served in three different denominations as he followed his personal spiritual evolution. He is considered to be the first Black man from the western hemisphere to be ordained as a priest in the Orthodox church. His achievements it has been said, helped to spread the view that Christianity existed outside of colonialism and enslavement of peoples of African descent. The letter was sent by him from Philadelphia and he was 50 years old in that year, 1916.
The third Jamaican man who was highlighted by Golding, in the context of the conflict that followed Garvey at that time, is Herbert Simeon Boulin, a former member of the Jamaica Constabulary Force who ran a detective agency in New York City. It is believed that Boulin later provided information which the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) used to have Garvey arrested.
GLOBAL INFLUENCES
Many of the Jamaican men in Garvey’s Harlem community had already experienced the wider world outside of the Caribbean and USA. Three of these mentioned by Golding were working in the fields of health, nutrition and cuisine. Although then only 25 years of age and from the deep rural district of Brandon Hill, St Andrew, St William Grant at age 25, was a veteran of the Eleventh Battalion of the British West India Regiment and, like many in the UNIA who were disbanded at the close of World War 1, would have experienced prejudice based on colour during his service. In 1919, Grant was working in New York as a cook. He later became a bodyguard for Marcus Garvey and was later a fiery speaker for social justice beside Alexander Bustamante.
Alexander Bustamante of Blenheim, Hanover was 35 and had worked in several occupations including as Jamaican policeman and also a seaman. In New York, he was a dietitian. Bustamante would become the first Prime Minister of Jamaica.
A few doors down from Liberty Hall, 21-year-old Leonard Percival Howell of Crawle, Clarendon ran a health business, as a tea room, selling herbs to the public. Howell, like Joseph Hibbert, had worked in Central America and was a spiritual person who was being guided by the UNIA’s message of empowerment. He is known as The First Rasta.
COMMITMENT AND PERSEVERANCE
Garvey, who put everything that he had into building the UNIA, was found guilty of a federal crime and was deported to Jamaica in 1927. Undaunted he formed the People’s Political Party, which is credited as Jamaica’s first political party. Golding said that three candidates who supported by the PPP were successful at the polls, although they were not all of the PPP. Rev Dr Felix Gordon Veitch won a by-election and became the Hanover member of the Legislative Council. Advertising executive for Garvey’s Black Man Newspaper, John Coleman Beecher, won for Ward#2 of the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation and Garvey himself also won for Ward #2 in 1929 and again in 1930. During his time as councillor, Garvey inserted himself into a dispute over a gas station building permit on Oxford Road. Advocating on behalf of residents, Garvey found himself in direct conflict with the barrister Norman Manley who was representing the KSAC.
Ever the entrepreneur, Garvey started Edelweiss Park Amusement and outfitted it to the high level that he had seen in New York. In so doing, Golding notes that he provided an important platform for the development of the performing arts of Jamaica.
By 1934, Hibbert, Howell, Garvey, Grant and Bustamante had all returned to Jamaica from New York. Hibbert and Howell, with others, infused the uplifting UNIA message for the Black diaspora with Ethiopian Christianity and the result of this was Rastafarianism.
Garvey, Grant and Bustamante were agitating for improved conditions for workers, greater political representation for the masses and political independence for Jamaica. By 1935 Garvey had lost his seat in the KSAC twice and lost his election to the Legislative Council and the amusement park was bankrupt. He moved to the UK, and five years later, in 1940, Marcus Garvey became ill and died. Throughout his time, he was devoted to serving the UNIA. St William Grant and Bustamante both continued in activism that led to universal adult suffrage in 1944 and then political independence of Jamaica in 1962.
UNFORGETTABLE
Stephen Golding stated that by the 1950s the world seemed to want to forget about Garvey. The impact of the 1939-1945 war was followed by an intense period of rebuilding which led to the Windrush generation of the Caribbean people in the 1950s. By the 1960s, the dissatisfaction with the prejudicial social structures that were based on race, emerged again. The Black Panther movement in the USA and other Black power organizations were inspired by Garvey’s footsteps and his teachings. The red black and green flag became popular again and then reggae music emerged, carrying the name and the message of Garvey. Golding declared that without the memory of Garvey, there could be no reggae music, and from reggae music came Hip-Hop which also carries political messages. These are rooted in what Garvey did at Edelweiss Park and Liberty Hall.
In Golding’s view, the music of the 1960s has not diminished as it has been carried by artists such as Burning Spear and Bob Marley; both of whom happen to be from St Ann, the parish where Marcus Garvey was born. Burning Spear released the album Marcus Garvey in 1975 under the distribution of the Island label which allowed it to reach a worldwide audience. In 1976, Island released Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Exodus album with the Marcus Garvey poem “Man to Man” re-written as “Who the Cap Fit”. In 1980, Marley interpreted Garvey’s essay of the uplifting power of personal accountability, “The Work Has Been Done”, with his non-reggae ballad “Redemption Song”.
In concluding his presentation Golding expressed that , “In the Footsteps of Garvey” is about one powerful Jamaican with his shadow touching other powerful Jamaicans and providing some insights into why we find ourselves where we are today. His impact still lives on. We have the Royal African Soldiers with us here, a name of a legion of the UNIA, and their word, sound, power is rooted in that same level of consciousness.”
Ananse SoundSplash was held from November 13 to 20 under the theme Webs of Greatness with partners: Tourism Enhancement Fund, CHASE Fund, CIBC International Caribbean Bank, Emancipation Park, Jamaica Cultural Development Commission, The Sky Gallery and the Jamaica Library Service. “In These Footsteps” was presented in collaboration with Liberty Hall.
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November 3, 2022
2022 Ananse SoundSplash Conference and Storytelling Festival for 13 – 20 November
2022 Ananse SoundSplash Conference and Storytelling Festival for 13 – 20 November
October 23, 2022
The 2022 staging of Jamaica’s premier storytelling festival, the annual Ananse SoundSplash will run from November 13 to 20 under the theme “Webs of Greatness”. It will feature an enticing array of enjoyable events which will include learning opportunities for educators and platforms to affirm the contributions of Jamaica’s nation builders, utilising face-to-face, hybrid and online formats
A signature sponsorship event of the Tourism Enhancement Fund, (TEF) the festival is produced by Ntukuma, the Storytelling Foundation of Jamaica in partnership with the Jamaica Library Service. Other major partners are The CHASE Fund, CIBC Bank, the National Housing Trust and the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission. Maintaining the excellence of the festival’s past years, the 2022 staging will be a harvest of performances and discussions featuring adults, youth and children.
Festival founder, Dr Amina Blackwood Meeks affirms, “Before we can leverage our rich cultural heritage for economic development, we must protect it and actively work to ensure that we build on it.
The festival will kick off at 4PM on Sunday, November 13 at Emancipation Park in Kingston with ring games and storytelling for the entire family. .
The opening gala, titled Our Hearts Salute Jamaica , scheduled for 10AM on Tuesday, November 15 at the Kingston and St Andrew (Tom Redcam) Parish Library will feature young storytellers guided by theatre practitioner Ms Toni-Kay Dawkins in role as M
Later that evening at 7PM, Sky Gallery in Kingston will be the venue for the launch of the book The Children Ought to Know hosted by United Nations Fellow for People of African Descent Ms Nattecia Bhohardsingh.
A lunch hour concert titled Colon Man, at 1PM, Wednesday November 16 will at the Kingston and St Andrew (Tom Redcam) Parish Library will pay tribute to Jamaica’s Contribution to Central and Latin America. It will include readings by Poet Laureate Miss Olive Senior.
An exciting webinar for educators called Ananse Goes to College will delve into the invaluable role that storytelling has in delivering the National Standards Curriculum with a special focus on using stories to convey scientific concepts. Educators will be invited through their regional associations.
Members of Ntukuma, the storytelling foundation of Jamaica, will be deployed to storytelling events at participating schools across the island on Friday, November 18 for Ananse Goes to School – A Legacy of Greatness. The staging at the Innswood High School will be live streamed. Schools that are hosting the storytellers are encouraged to invite neighbouring schools to enjoy the sessions.
Storytellers at the final event of the 2021 staging of AnanseSoundsplash at the
Headquarters of the Jamaica Library Service
International Men’s Day on Saturday, November 19 will be held under the theme In These Footsteps: Garvey and Male Leadership with the President of the UNIA Stephen Golding as the main presenter. This event will be hosted at Liberty Hall in Kingston.
The final event will be on National Storytelling Day, Sunday, November 20 under the theme “Reigniting a Nation” at all parish libraries.
As public health protocols continue to be observed, families are encouraged to visit the social media pages of the Jamaica Library Service and also Ntukuma, the Storytelling Foundation of Jamaica for information on how to attend. Reservations are required for some activities.
Ananse SoundSplash is an annual event to share and celebrate the progress of Jamaica’s development through storytelling. Its foundations are the stories of folk hero Ananse who has been an African legacy retained for 400 years across the Caribbean.
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Contact:
Terika Grant
Ntukuma Secretariat
Cell: 876 225 9591 Email: Ntukuma_ja@yahoo.com
October 24, 2022
Case for an Urban Forest for Kingston
Fiction Not written by an expert so the act of reading this will expose the reader to misinformation.
Case for an Urban Forest for Kingston
“If you went away for twenty years and came back, Kingston would not have moved one inch,” said a businesswoman two weeks ago. This mirrored my brother-in-law, who migrated from Kingston in the 1960s and returned in about 2015 and while driving through Rockfort said "- expletive deleted – Di damn place look exactly the same”.
That may be great for a retro atmosphere, but it is totally unintended by us, the progressive populace.
Kingston is not only the capital, but the dominant urban centre for Jamaica. This is where 20% of the population live and have businesses that undertake 29% of non-agricultural commercial activity. It woudl be well to ask, "Is this a place where people feel good about living?" I will set out here my definition of Kingston city for this essay. The Kingston Metropolitan Region (KMR), 18,000 hectares of the Hope River watershed alluvial plain, the surrounding urban areas of St Andrew parish and the Palisadoes tombolo which culminates in Port Royal.
I went to the experts – Friends who are residents of Kingston – and asked them which city attributes were the most important to them, they mostly agreed seek ye first a Clean and Safe city and all other desirable attributes would be added.
If we are considering and desiring a clean and safe environment, then the habits of birds is auspicious. The first time that I saw and heard a Jamaican Woodpecker was in 2006 as it knocked on a dry breadfruit tree in Forest Gardens.I had only looked up to identify which bird was throating such a loud and tuneless caw and was delighted to see its bright red crown bobbing as it hopped along its chosen branch searching for nutritious bugs. The dry tree was among a canopy of backyard trees that supported its own ecosystem. In December 2021, I was shocked to see a woodpecker looking for food in a leafy ackee tree in Mona! I imagined that it had been reduced to foraging there as it had lost its home in the dry Limestone Forest of Long Mountain, now a dusty construction site for a 50 unit subdivision. The only standing trees there (I checked) are Red Birch and - as everyone surely knows – its resin is not tasty.
Swish, swish, swish, goes the broom of the 5AM street sweeper, but even if every city road was cleared of litter daily, clean streets are not an international measure of a clean city, air quality is. According to the 2005 World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines, a “clean city” has air with a mean annual concentration of ultra-fine particulate (PM2.5) not exceeding ten micrograms per cubic meter (10µg/m3). On its website, WHO sets out that air quality in Jamaica moved from 14.96 g/m3in 2010 to 15.3 g/m3 in 2016.
The head of the National Environment Planning Agency (NEPA) was quoted in the Sunday Gleaner of February 5, 2017 “The air quality in the corporate area is more and more compromised from industry, illegal burning and motor vehicle emissions.” STATIN reports obtained from the Jamaica Fire Brigade are that there are 2,500 fires per year in Kingston and St Andrew with bush fires being prevalent in rural St Andrew.There are an average of 21 fires per year at the Riverton City dump. Jamaica has a widespread culture of charcoal burning, even within Kingston city limits, and there are no controls for motor vehicle emissions.
Clean air has a direct impact on our health. Using WHO standards, actions that improve air quality, would most certainly improve heart and lung health for perhaps 20% of the population of the city. Jamaica health authorities have increased visibility around non-communicable diseases and undertake sustained behaviour change strategies to encourage lifestyle choices that will reduce the incidence of these diseases in the population. An emissions policy framework was completed in 2021 which ominously says, in the foreword that the country needs a “definitive policy position on outdoor air pollution caused by human activities” and needs to “develop and implement an Air Quality Index including meteorological and climate data.” To achieve health goals, the health practitioners need to lobby for the passing of the NEPA Act and accompanying environmental regulations and policies. Without clean air and water, our personal commitment to healthy lifestyles will not reduce the incidence of wheezing in children and non-communicable diseases in adults in a short time.
The State of the Environment Report is scheduled to be published every three years, the most recent was eight years ago in 2013. Many environmental related projects are underway and Jamaica has been active in the global climate resilience movement, but without measures that compel administrations to deliver results such as 10µg/m3 NP2.5 air quality, this may be a lot of activity without any accountability to ourselves. To repeat for emphasis: as much as we change diets and be active for 30 minutes every day, better air quality may very well have a greater impact to prevent 20% of us getting sick from heart disease, stroke, asthma and lung conditions.
The other attribute for a desirable city, according to Friends, is safety. The Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) serious crime statistics show that at the end of 2020, the homicide rate for the JCF Area 4 was between 77 per hundred thousand (77/’000) and 197/‘000.The November 2021 homicide rate for the area covering Area 4 and St Andrew North is a low of 44/’000 for St Andrew North and 151/’000 for St Andrew South. The Latin America and Caribbean regional average is 17.2/’000 and global average is 6.1/’000. The unfortunate conclusion is that although there are dips in the occurrence of serious crimes, no police division in the KMR is safe.
The KMR is not clean enough and not safe enough to be a great city and it is the lack of a compulsive reason to do public business differently which is holding back the progress. After the global financial fallout from 2007/2009, followed by the 2010 West Kingston troubles, Jamaica entered into an arrangement with the IMF that has brought the country to have stringent fiscal discipline. Among the achievements were the creation of an independent central bank and caps on borrowing.
Government's fiscal policy papers set out how the country will manage budgetary policies and fiscal debt.Oversight is provided by the government-appointed Economic Programme Oversight Committee (EPOC). Its success is in part due to having the IMF maintain discipline by having influence on our reaching out for loans and credit and managing debt.
Included in the 2022/2023 fiscal policy papers are major investments in National Security programmes which have their own Crime Monitoring and Oversight Committee. There is no equivalent committee for the environment and clean air but, from my reading of the expenditures, there is no imminent fiscal capital expenditure for that subject area. Many climate resilience projects are on the ground, but not in the 2022 Throne Speech as being on the legislative agenda.
Again, it will be the compulsive arrangements with external financial partners that will hold us to our commitments. National security and environmental stakeholders have set out a long list of activities to need to be done. I will highlight the promulgation of three: NEPA Act, National Land Policy and Squatter Policy, the greatest of these is the NEPA Act. Without this lynch pin piece of legislation and the named policies, adherence to development orders and other initiatives that touch on land use will be avoidable.
The KMR is not clean and not safe; but is living here worth considering at all? Yes, if you are ok with natural hazards like floods, earthquakes and hurricanes, and the population has made a good bet as the odds have been in their favour.
In her book,”Building Rock-Solid Resilience to Natural Hazards”, environment specialist Le-Ann Roper says that Jamaica has been said to be the third most exposed country when it comes to natural hazards. The 2015 State of the Jamaican Climate report tells us that - starting now - storms will be stronger, rainfall more intense, droughts longer and sea levels will rise.Many studies of the geomorphology around Kingston describe a wide area of earthquake faults that could become slip zones with just one flex of either of the two tectonic plates that shear latitudinally across the island. There are less earthquake prone towns such as Spanish Town or Lucea, but people are attracted to places that work well with the rules of money, and the staying power of the KMR has been its adherence to money.
Looking at the population of the KMR over time, it can be described as changing unevenly. The net increase in the population over the last three censuses, 1991 to 2011, was three per cent. The greatest cities are not necessarily the fastest growing, or the largest, but they should have a stable population. KMR population over that 20-year period was stable.
The Electoral Commission of Jamaica has recorded a year-on-year increase in number of voters across every constituency in the KMR with a 26% increase over the last 10 years; so while the population growth was flat between 2001 and 2011, the number of registered voters increased, which could indicate that more people were actively engaged in the economy and/or it could also be that more persons on attaining adulthood desired a voter’s card.
Another useful measure of population change is the size and number of households. Between the 2001 and 2011 censuses, the average number of persons per household in the two parishes decreased from 3.2 to 3 but the total number of households increased by 6.6%. The key takeaway here could be that more and smaller households are being sustained in the KMR.
The Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation (KSAMC) and the NEPA publish reports on developments that have been approved, and on inspection of these, it seems from the number, size and physical distribution of developments that construction is hot in the city.
October to December 2018 report had 14 approvals that were 1,000 m2 and over, and these larger developments occurred across six postal zones. Two years later, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the October to December 2020 report showed twelve approvals that were 1,000m2 and over across seven postal zones. It should be noted that the new Parliament development was in this report. October to December 2021 had 27 projects of 1,000m2 and above and they were for locations across eleven postal zones. The approvals for developments that are 1,000m2 and over are becoming more widespread across the KMR. Development is across half the postal zones, not one or two.
The 2020 PIOJ Economic and Social Survey is reported by the Gleaner on August 9, 2021, "to have all mixed-use applications received as well as the largest share of commercial applications (21.4 per cent) and industrial applications (64.7 per cent)".
To further demonstrate the direction of industry: The 2021 Jamaica Institution of Engineers Annual Report notes that there are no mining engineers registered, 1 biomedical, 1 metallurgical, 5 agricultural and 8 marine, but 127 civil structural, 140 civil, 174 electrical and 142 mechanical, among other engineering disciplines.
Again, among the policies that the national development framework says will support risk reduction is a National Land Policy and Squatter policy, both are in draft.
Returning for a moment to my wise Friends, recall that there were three additional options that were proposed to them on what they would want for Kingston. The next most desired attribute was: Modern High-Tech & High GDP. This was lower in priority than safety and security, but higher than the last two which were: Quality Cultural Experiences and, Diversity & Tolerance. Kingston promotes itself as a cultural city, but it is not compelling enough for Friends to consider it relevant to choose to live in the city. For the attribute Diversity and Tolerance, Friends are not yearning for their hometown to have a cosmopolitan flavour and become a cauldron of new, untested ideas; or to become a distillery that extracts cultural practices.
At some point, based on the country’s fiscal commitments, Kingston’s Finest in blue will dampen crime and the NEPA act, when passed, will allow environment protectors to properly enforce emissions rules, and at that time, we will take a sigh of relief and then we will realise that the city has only palm trees, artificial turf, vanda orchids, and that the Jamaican Woodpecker is long gone.
In 2018, the Forestry Department presented a paper: Forest Cover, The Jamaican Scenariowhich shows urban forest cover in selected parts of the city. Urban forest cover was 6% in the Central Sorting Office (CSO) postal zone; 12% in Kingston 20 and 34% in Kingston 19, which is where I first saw the woodpecker. The city needs at least 40% cover to prevent heat islandsat bus stops, on artificial turfs and in church parking lots. It will not be comfortable attending an outdoor event when the sun has been baking concrete all day.
The current thrust to plant trees on school compounds is a quick fix, but does not provide contiguous cover that will break the concrete deserts around the schools. Is the public prepared to give up lanes of roadway for an urban forest? Will the tree lined avenue leading up to UWI Main Gate be maintained and replicated? What will take the place of open spaces that are now being designated as developments should there be a citywide disaster?. History tells us that hundreds of displaced persons camped out at the Race Course (National Heroes Circle) following the 1907 earthquake.
Can the National Land Agency, which holds public land in trust, and private land owners, accept that perhaps 40% of city land should now be under broadleaf that licensed foresters will inspect? This is the time for institutions to offer forester training with certification that will be recognised throughout the tropical world.
Perhaps buildings will now need to have forests designed on roofs and within walls. Property tax structures may need to encourage city landowners to keep a designated mix of trees on their properties.
Jamaica’s Forest Policy 2017 calls for urban forests that will be regulated by the Forestry Department and NEPA be the enforcing agency.At this time, there is no designation of urban forest; recall that there is no NEPA Act. An extensive study done about urban forests in Puerto Rico demonstrated the effectiveness of trees to reduce flooding and eliminate heat islands, but after the passage of Hurricane Maria in 2017, felled trees and branches blocked roads and damaged utilities and other infrastructure. The recommendation was to plant shorter trees and have more varieties of local trees and shrubs in the urban forest. There are many options to be researched and explored for a climate ready city and urban forestry will be at the centre of it.
With our average household size being three persons, the trend for smaller habitations perhaps, as high rise strata developments will probably continue. If the next census does not reveal a steep climb in the population, then more land will become available for open spaces and perhaps forest cover.
In a moment of reflection, a Kingston man recalled with pleasure diving off the pier at Gun Boat Beach in the 1960s. With climate change, we will never recover that particular beach experience, but from many other vantage points, the city winks at us: the harbour and the coastline still have what it takes to thrill. The ongoing efforts to promote awareness of environmental issues are laudable, but the improvements will happen after the laws are passed and regulatory institutions enabled.
If we want to stay cool in the city in a few years and not have to find more public money to build roads higher than the flood lines, then urban forestry is a reasonable part of the solution. In addition to the practical matters, each living tree also has financial value on the global market as it is tradable as carbon credit.
Kingston has shown itself to have staying power. It was created out of a catastrophic natural disaster, it won the political struggle to become a capital, it has had more than its share of man-made disasters. The reasons for this can be explored elsewhere, I just seek to make a compelling argument that we need urban forests for the future that the climate scientists tell us is already here.
end
This backyard has six species of nesting birds, visiting fruit bats, snails, land crab, lepidoptera, arachnids, three types of lizards, centipedes, termites and other arthropods, mice, frogs that live in bromeliads, toads, mice and feral cats.
WHO updated their standards in September 2021 https://www.who.int/news/item/22-09-2...
https://statinja.gov.jm/Environmentdata.aspx
https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/riverton-is-a-public-health-hazard-say-local-experts_166979
https://mhurecc.gov.jm/docs/policies/FINAL_150721_Emissions_policy.pdf
https://mof.gov.jm/fiscal-operations/
https://www.pioj.gov.jm/product/the-state-of-the-jamaican-climate-2015/
http://www.licj.org.jm/index.php/national-land-policy-of-jamaica/
https://forestry.gov.jm/resourcedocs/forest_cover-_the_jamaican_scenario-1.pdf
Urbanized areas that experience higher temperatures than outlying areas. Structures absorb and re-emit the sun’s heat more than natural landscapes.
https://nljdigital.nlj.gov.jm/items/s...
https://www.forestry.gov.jm/resourcedocs/forest_policy_of_jamaica_2017.pdf
https://www.forestry.gov.jm/resourcedocs/urban_forestry-_clarifying_myths_about_caribbean_cities.pdf
August 1, 2022
Brother Man - finally read after 7 years
Brother Man by Roger MaisMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
The story of a collection of lives in a Kingston, Jamaica working class community set in the 1950s. We feel the impact of the coastal environment, and how much of life is lived in the streets. Almost nothing can be kept a secret, but yet, the truth can still be hidden if you do not want to see.
The author presents us with hopelessness and also hope.
As with many Jamaican works of fiction, the role of mother is very important to the story. The role of the state in the this story is that of the police.
I am quite surprised that this was a literature book in secondary schools. As such, Brother Man calls out the lie that has been told abroad that Jamaican schools did not have Caribbean literature on the reading lists and Literature syllabus.
View all my reviews
May 22, 2022
A woman in charge – three books set between 1860s and 1915
WORKING DRAFT
A woman in charge – three books set between 1860s and 1915
Thanks to the Ed Baugh Lecture held on May 9, 2022 I first heard about what could be considered as the first novel by a Jamaican woman. A notable fact, but I read the novel a few days later and it is remarkable that it is set in 1915-1917 about a Jamaican woman and her banana estate. The author, I think, gives us the world as it would have been seen by a contemporary observer and it led me to think about two other books with women in charge: Far From the Madding Crowd (FFTMC) by Thomas Hardy and Gone With the Wind (GWTW) by Margaret Mitchell.
The lecture was delivered by Head of School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, Professor Alison Donnell’s theme was: The Missing Mid-Century West Indian Woman Writer and Another Quarrel With History. She addressed three writers, Ada Quayle, Jamaican and author of one novel, The Mistress (1957); Edwina Melville, Guyana, journalist and short story writer; and Monica Skeete, Barbados, novelist and short story writer.
The protagonists of the three books that came to my mind: FFTMC, GWTW, and The Mistress have the following similarities. They are teenagers when they came into control of their lives and also control of agricultural estates and of people who work the land: I considered these young women on two points: their stewardship of the land and their lovers.
In FFTMC, following the death of her uncle in the 1860s, Englishwoman Bathsheba Everdene, at about age 18 or 20, and without any agricultural or managerial experience, decides to personally manage her inheritance, which is the sheep and grain farm, Weatherbury.
Everdine makes it a point to consider Weatherbury as her means to personal independence, and she admirably makes the proper running of the farm, her priority. As Hardy allows her to say to the workforce, “I shall be up before you are awake; I shall be afield before you are up; and I shall have breakfasted before you are afield. In short, I shall astonish you all.”
The book turns its attention to setting her relationships with men as their equal, with the rigours of farm life as the backdrop to demonstrate her determination.
In the novel GWTW, upheaval caused by the American Civil War in the late 1860s led the nineteen-year-old, twice widowed, currently married Scarlett O’Hara to assume the running of her family’s ruined cotton plantation Tara, after her father lost the resolve to carry on. Unlike the other protagonists, O'Hara is also a mother to one child.
As a plantation manager and matriarch, O'Hara lives in the ruins of the estate and displays a determination that no deprivation is too much for her to overcome. She rages while watching her cotton harvest burn, at the hands of the invading army, “As God is my witness they're not going to lick me. I'm going to live through this and when it's all over, I'll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my folk. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill. As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again”.
In Quayle's The Mistress, in 1916, sixteen-year-old Jamaican Laura Pettigrew unexpectedly inherits the banana plantation Newbiggin, after her mother dies as the result of an accidental overdose of an Obeah spell set on her by her coachman. She is determined to make a success of the plantation.
Not written in the high literary style of Hardy, Quayle's writing vividly evokes the period, and demonstrates Laura’s determination to make her farm productive. The possible reason why this book has remained in obscurity is that her strength of character is many times accompanied by the unvarnished brutality that she, as mistress, delivered to her workers. This renders Laura ignoble while Bathsheba and Scarlett are heroines.
The language of The Mistress is notable from FFTMC and GWTW as Laura speaks the same Jamaican language as her workers. There is no distinguishing great house language from village language, they are one. The Pettigrews and their workers worship in the kirk on Newbiggin. In addition to attending church though, the workers also have their own religious ceremonies and also have a role for the obeahman at times.
Unlike Laura Pettigrew, the spoken English of Hardy's Everdine is different from her workers on Weatherbury. It is indeed Everdine's spoken language and customs that cause her to separate herself from suitors to find a husband who satisfies her cultural tastes.
O'Hara's spoken English is also different from that of the enslaved persons on Tara, but there is complete understanding between them.
Each of these three landowning women consider themselves free to choose a suitor or a lover. In the opening pages of The Mistress, Pettigrew has taken her neighbour Neil Naunton as her lover. Naunton lets her down financially and also delivers an emotional blow when he takes on her neighbour as his fiancée. Laura has convinced herself that she will devote herself only to him until she has to choose between the success of Newbiggin and the attention of Naunton.
Everdine allows herself to fall in love with Sergeant Troy who she marries and who brings her towards financial ruin and also impregnates her worker. She clung to the idea of him as her ideal man for a long time.
O'Hara, on the other hand, had more complex emotional outings. She loved the mild-mannered Ashley Wilkes whom she could not have, and after he died, she became attracted and connected to the opposite kind of man, Rhett Butler, with a domineering character.
One question to me was how much did The Mistress borrow from GWTW. I think nothing at all. The character of Laura was immensely Jamaican in speech and mannerisms. The author also had good knowledge of the land and farming in Jamaica and this came out in her descriptions. The tension between expatriate workers, peasants, black overseer, white pastor, coloured wealthy relative and the sexual determination of women of every colour seems to be island based. Also, in FFTMC and GWTW the lead women travelled in carriages, while Laura was an excellent horse rider, the novel gives us many examples of escapades on horseback.
The poem on which FFTMC gets its name, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is apt for the stories around Bathsheba, Scarlett and Laura Pettigrew. The poem pays tribute to countryfolk whose hearts and passions were probably as grand as any leader of nations or grand artists or philosophers.
As it says in the 8th and 9th stanzas:
“Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor.
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”
But, these thoughts started because of the 2022 Ed Baugh Lecture, so to him I must give the privilege to wrap these characters together, and his poem Elemental allows me to do so. It is a poem of carrying on through unknown perils and to rejoice at the end for bravery to have made the journey.
"I would have words as tenacious as mules
to bear us, sure-footeed
up the mountain of night
to where, at daybreak;
we would shake hands with the sun
and breathe the breezes of the farthest ocean
and, as we descended,
in sunlight,
We would be amazed
to see what hazards we had passed."
END
A woman in charge – three books set between 1860s and 1815
WORKING DRAFT
A woman in charge – three books set between 1860s and 1815
Thanks to the Ed Baugh Lecture held on May 9, 2022 I first heard about what could be considered as the first novel by a Jamaican woman. A notable fact, but I read the novel a few days later and it is remarkable that it is set in 1915-1917 about a Jamaican woman and her banana estate. The author, I think, gives us the world as it would have been seen by a contemporary observer and it led me to think about two other books with women in charge: Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy and Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.
The lecture was delivered by Head of School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, Professor Alison Donnell’s theme was: The Missing Mid-Century West Indian Woman Writer and Another Quarrel With History. She addressed three writers, Ada Quayle, Jamaican and author of one novel, The Mistress (1957); Edwina Melville, Guyana, journalist and short story writer; and Monica Skeete, Barbados, novelist and short story writer.
The protagonists of the three books that came to my mind: GWTW, FFTMC and The Mistress are similar in age and outstanding circumstances outside of their control caused them to come into control of farm land. I considered the books on three points: steward of the land; language and lovers.
Following the death of her uncle in the 1860s, Englishwoman Bathsheba Everdene, at about age 18 or 20, and without any agricultural or managerial experience, decides to manage her inheritance Weatherbury the sheep and grain farm.
Upheaval caused by the American Civil War in the 1860s led nineteen-year-old twice widowed and mother Scarlett O’Hara to assume the running of her family’s ruined cotton plantation as her father did not have the will to carry on.
In 1916, sixteen-year-old Jamaican Laura Pettigrew unexpectedly inherits Newbiggin after her mother dies as the result of an accidental overdose of an Obeah spell set on her by her coachman.
Bathsheba makes it a point to consider Weatherbury as her means to independence from the control of a man and she admirably makes the proper running of it her priority. As Hardy allows her to say to the workforce, “I shall be up before you are awake; I shall be afield before you are up; and I shall have breakfasted before you are afield. In short, I shall astonish you all.”
The book turns its attention to her relationships with men as an equal, with farm life being the backdrop for her determination and the rural landscape.
As a plantation manager and matriarch, Scarlett, lives in ruin and displays a determination that nothing material is too much for her to bear. She rages while watching her cotton harvest burn, at the hands of the republican army, “As God is my witness they're not going to lick me. I'm going to live through this and when it's all over, I'll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my folk. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill. As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again”.
Not written in the high literary style of Hardy, Quayle nonetheless demonstrates several times Laura’s determination to make her farm productive. The possible reason why this book has remained in obscurity is the strength of character was many times accompanied by the unvarnished brutality that the mistress delivered to her workers. This renders Laura ignoble while Bathsheba and Scarlett are heroines.
The language of The Mistress is notable in that Laura speaks the same Jamaican language as her workers, on that point, they are one. They also worship at the same church that is on her property. In addition to attending church though, the workers also have their own religious ceremonies and also patronize the obeahman at times.
Bathsheba, however, does not speak like her workers and it is her language and customs that cause her to separate herself from suitors to find a husband who satisfies her cultural tastes.
Scarlett speaks differently from the enslaved persons who work her plantation but there is complete understanding between them.
Each of these three landowning women consider themselves free to choose a suitor or a lover. In the opening pages of The Mistress, Laura has taken her neighbour Neil Naunton as her lover and even when he lets her down financially and also by taking on her neighbour as his fiancée, for a long time she is determined to love him and only him but she finally accepts that she is being used for her money by him.
Bathsheba allows herself to fall in love with Sergeant Troy whom she marries and who brings her towards financial ruin and also impregnates her worker.
Scarlett, on the other hand, had more complex emotional outings. She loved the mild-mannered Ashley Wilkes whom she could not have, and when he died became attracted and connected to Rhett Butler, who had a domineering character.
One question to me was how much did The Mistress borrow from GWTW. I think nothing at all. The character of Laura was immensely Jamaican in speech and mannerisms. The author also had good knowledge of the land and farming in Jamaica and this came out in her descriptions. The tension between expatriate workers, peasants, black overseer, white pastor, coloured wealthy relative and the sexual determination of women of every colour seems to be island based. Also, in FFTMC and GWTW the lead women travelled in carriages while Laura was an excellent on horseback, the novel gives us many examples of her riding.
The poem on which FFTMC gets its name, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is apt for the stories around Bathsheba, Scarlett and Laura Pettigrew. The poem pays tribute to countryfolk whose hearts and passions were probably as grand as any leader of nations or grand artists or philosophers.
As it says in the 8th and 9th stanzas: “
Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor.
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”
But, these thoughts started because of the 2022 Ed Baugh Lecture, so to him I must give the privilege to wrap these characters together, and his poem Elemental allows me to do so. It is a poem of carrying on through unknown perils and to rejoice at the end for bravery to have made the journey.
I would have words as tenacious as mules
to bear us, sure-footeed
up the mountain of night
to where, at daybreak;
we would shake hands with the sun
and breathe the breezes of the farthest ocean
and, as we descended,
in sunlight,
We would be amazed
to see what hazards we had passed.
END
May 7, 2022
I Emote on Seeing Weston Haughton in Half-Way-Tree
I Emote on Seeing Weston Haughton in Half-Way-Tree
Weston Haughton at 50th birthday of Karen Smith. Gleaner PhotoThe moment he strode into the frame of my windshield, I recognized whose smooth stride was adding a touch of sophistication to the rush of single minded humans moving in linear fashion outside Jamaica National. I looked for the camara crew, because surely - this was a fashion out take - but there was none.
I saw him stride seven times, each one holding a tempo, his magnetism still able to pull the dreams of a woman into his aura and help her to shape herself into the person that she wanted to become.
In the 1970s and 1980s as a dancer and as a model, he dazzled international audiences, yet did not overshine his partner, because being on the arm of a willing woman (let’s say lady) is reason enough to enjoy a dance, or a walk.
Weston Haughton, organized events for schools, danced to help raise money for the church St Andrew Parish Church, St Luke Cross Roads and others, soon afterwards became a partner in beauty pageants and fashion galas for society ladies. As model, emcee, choreographer, each event was an opportunity to display conventional good taste with excitement. There were many sophisticated events, and through the newspapers, only photographs of well-known women were seen by the public, but for shows that he helped to produce, such as the AJ Fashion Follies with Carrole Guntley, the women attending felt that they too were a part of the catwalk company.
Doyennes of fashion brought him in to perform, and just as importantly, to help to plan. The dancer, the gentleman, the man who made the women in the room feel good about being themselves. Brides relied on him to plan not just for his glamour expertise, but because they wanted their wedding day to be filled with love and good memories. As the R&B singer Ne-Yo says, “Girl let me love you and I will love you until you learn to love yourself.”
“Do not let makeup hide your natural attributes” he would urge women and girls, and for Miss Jamaica Fashion Model Althea Laing he completed her first modelling application form himself.
My eyes followed his steps: performer, organizer, nurturer of talent, arbiter of good taste, then he went out of frame until he showed up in the wing mirror for three more steps. What would those steps define?
The left foot, heel to toe: dependability to deliver a pleasing show no matter how many times he did it before. Each new batch of women in a pageant worked with him creatively and he defended them as a national resource for Jamaica. The charm carried in their faces; their poised bodies; their ambition that commanded attention. His runway flock defined style of the 80s and 90s: Cathi Levy, Jaqui Tyson, Debbie Whittingham, Joan McDonald, Tanya McDonald, Bev Corke, Audrey Burgess Barrakat, Michelle Moodie, Sophia Max Brown and many more. The business around them was the fashion academy.
The right foot: then he became more than fashion, he was high social culture: the Embassy for Venezuela entrusted him to execute the bicentennial of their founder Simon Bolivar that also coincided with Jamaica 21. He helped to bring thousands into Disco Inferno for his coordination of the annual Grand Fashion Gala during the early years of the City of Montego Bay. With partner - another commanding lady with ambition - playwright Dahlia Harris, they have respectfully ushered in a new era for the Miss Jamaica World competition. In this new role, the master again worked his arts, bringing out the best in Toni-Ann Singh who dazzled the world with her spiritual take on beauty, becoming Miss World 2019.
There last step before he disappeared from my view that afternoon, in Half-Way-Tree, when only I and the red and orange bougainvillea flowers lining the pavement celebrated him in the bright sun. I think that he does it as a patriot, for the love of contributing to his country. Every woman, every girl is cherished, his shows were aligned themselves to a sweeter cause, helping the vulnerable in society, every one under his guiding hands and watchful eye and encouraging smile, can shape themselves into a star.
April 16, 2022
Are we a beautiful dream come true?
Are we a beautiful dream come true?
Thoughts set down here are refined over time.
Jamaica is a respectable state which can be depended on to contribute meaningfully on international issues, and which is frequently called upon to even lead initiatives. At this time, the Minster of Finance is the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Inter American Development Bank; the Prime Minister is a co-chair of the UN Climate Change Financing Initiative; our sports administrators have chaired the Commonwealth Games Federation and been the President of the International Netball Federation. A Jamaican is currently the Chef de Cabinet for the General Secretary of the United Nations.
The country has developed a respected and well-known global brand in food and agro products like the jerk flavours and marijuana products; travel and tourism such as the all-inclusive hotel concept, and attractions like Dunns River Falls and even in holidays from the edge in Trench Town. In popular music of note is ska, reggae and dancehall. Our athletics and leadership in winter sports is legendary. This is separate from other achievements by individuals who are performing without a brand being wrapped around them such as Jamaicans abroad like the mariners, agricultural workers, fashion models; commercial airline pilots, health care workers and teachers and writers across genres.
These achievements can be connected to the Throne Speech of Wednesday March 31, 1965. I select that one as the Gleaner’s Parliamentary Reporter did not have much in content of the throne speeches of 1962 to 1964. The year of 1965 is when the speech delivered the government’s clear intent.
It declared that citizens will occupy officer ranks in the Jamaica Defence Force. I am willing to believe that this has been true for a lifetime and in 2021, the chief holding the baton is a Jamaican woman.
Governor General Clifford Campbell read that a Jamaica Stock Exchange would be established, and certainly one has been in operation since 1968.
A clear need, the throne speech read, was financial and technical assistance for the development of all kinds of industry in Jamaica. The years before independence experienced growth of the mining industry and start of the decline of plantation agriculture had not yet had an impact.
In 1967 The Jamaica Development Bank assumed the development responsibilities, and this caused the eight-year-old Development Financial Corporation to be closed. In 1982, the Jamaica Development Bank was subsumed under the National Development Bank of Jamaica and in 2000 the Development Bank of Jamaica took over the role of that bank and also the Agricultural Credit Bank. These were all state-owned institutions focused on delivering loans and grants to industries. The existence of such an institution or others within the government is a fulfilment of the leaders of the newly independent Jamaica.
At one of the April 2022 promotional events to launch his latest book, “How Britain Underdeveloped the Caribbean”, Vice Chancellor of the UWI Sir Hilary Beckles, noted that the UK took the plan that the West Indian leaders developed for itself and used it to help to formulate the Colombo Plan, which promoted economic and social initiatives in the Pacific starting in 1951. This grouping has expanded over the years to include most countries in Asia, Iran and Oceana. It provides academic scholarships and professional learning activities to advance social development. The Colombo Plan seems to have evolved into a global multilateral, which was and is not the West Indian (Caribbean) preference.
The Development Financial Corporation was established by the Jamaican legislature in 1959. It was a response to the conclusion that the Colonial Development Corporation that was established in 1947 - two years after the world war (1939-1945) - was not going to support the development needs of the region. An article that was republished by the Gleaner blankly said that the West Indies believed that the Dominions and UK should send more resources to support the dire situation in the colonies, specifically the West Indies rather than to other foreign affairs imperatives of the UK. An article like that would have been seen as an insult.
Having indigenous financial institutions was a priority of the independence cadre and, as pointed out earlier in this note, the original institution has given way to updated models at least three times.
Back to the other points in the throne speech: Jamaica needed to seek additional export markets. This was done but became manifest in 1988 with the establishment of the Jamaica Promotions Company (JAMPRO) which is the torch bearer around the world for Jamaica for all areas of commerce outside of tourism and hospitality.
Bauxite was first shipped commercially from Jamaica in 1952 and its expansion had not yet reached peak at independence. The leaders of the country said in the 1965 throne speech that it was a priority of government to democratize ownership of industry and expand cooperatives. At that time, agricultural lands were still largely in the hands of private plantation style estates. What is the status today? Bauxite has become nationalized. Sugar cane agriculture is in the control of large scale owners, a lot of farm land has gone under concrete; some of it for urban developments and others as resorts. Tourism, which was important at the time of independence is also today mostly in the ownership of corporations and not in as a cooperative. Many of these tourism interests are owned by overseas investors.
The general ideas of ownership of production was always alive in Jamaica, but the dream of owning a small piece of something bigger than yourself through a cooperative has not happened.
The population participates in cooperatives through credit unions but not through industry. Cooperatives do well for promoting a social good but perhaps not so much for shareholder value. The writers of the 1965 throne speech will be disappointed by this.
If it were up to them in 1965, Flat Bridge would be a relic as the legislators were determined to replace it with an all-weather roadway. We still have that thoroughfare with us and it is known more for scenes of sadness and fear and trepidation and frustration than anything else. No disrespect to its marvellous builders who set those volcanic stones wisely.
So, from the items raised by the Parliamentary reporter, it would seem that the dream of 1965 has come true. The setting up of institutions was done by the inspired and the trained and talented. What the country needed was an educated citizenry to keep up, but full literacy was not on the 1965 throne speech and that idea may not have emerged until 1971.
Would the leaders of 1962 be satisfied? Based on what they wrote down as things to do, I think that they would not be dismayed.
