Published:Wednesday | August 12, 2015 | 12:00 AMPaul H. Williams
In this the 150th anniversary of the Morant Bay Uprising, the St Thomas Parish Development Committee is hosting a series of events and activities.Yesterday, some members of the committee - Custos Marcia Bennett, Mayor of Morant Bay Ludlow Mathison,...
'I will not be caught dead in that place', 'Dat deh place dung deh soh, no sah', 'It too volatile, no way' and 'Anything can happen, just so, and yuh dead' are some of the utterances you might have heard about August Town, situated in eastern St...
CHEESEFIELD, St Catherine:It is located at the top of the district of Time and Patience in St Catherine, but you will not find Cheesefield on the map.It was by chance this writer came upon the quiet district with a very interesting name. I was in...
"Dip dem, Bedward, dip dem, dip dem in the healing stream. Dip dem deep, but not too deep, dip dem fi cure bad feeling" is part of a well-known Jamaican folk song.It's actually about the legendary folk hero, Revivalist,...
SOUTHAVEN, St Thomas:The wind is strong and the waves are high at Southaven, Yallahs, St Thomas. The weather is ideal for surfing. The Jamaica Surfing Association (JSA) saw this, and for nine years has hosted the Makka Pro International Surfing...
There is a worldwide belief that food nourished by chemical fertilisers and those genetically modified can cause prolonged ill health and, eventually, death. There are calls from government and non-government stakeholders for a ban on the growth and...
Last Sunday, in a ceremony that lasted more than five hours, Bishop O'Neil Miller, his congregation and well-wishers sang, danced, preached, and trumped as they celebrated the ninth anniversary of Bishop Miller's Apostolic Sabbath Church."It is my...
Zedekiah Inglington of Dumfries, St Thomas, was only 15 years old when he witnessed the exhumation of the skeletons at the back of the Morant Bay courthouse. The inquisitive youngster had heard that officials were there digging up a...
Plans by the National Water Commission (NWC) to reactivate several of its unused wells, as part of short-term measures to alleviate the impact of the prevailing drought, could be stymied by the state of these facilities.Last week, Water Minister...
A few weeks ago, when Pastor Clementa Pinckney and seven members of his congregation were gunned down by a man in Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Charleston, South Carolina, many people heard of the AME Church for the very first...
In 1965, some 100 years after the Morant Bay Rebellion, a statue sculpted by Edna Manley was mounted in front of the St Thomas parish capital's couthouse.Affixed to the mount was a name plaque with 'Paul Bogle' etched into it.Paul Bogle was one of...
When Edna Manley was commissioned to do a statue of Paul Bogle in 1962, it was said she wanted a Bogle relative, whose image would depict the strength and spirit of Paul Bogle.But the popular anecdote is that people with the Bogle surname were not...
On February 2, 1925, in Cornwall Barracks, Portland, Katherine White gave birth to Euphemia, fathered by Archibald Bartlett. She was their third child, who would eventually attend Moore Town Elementary.At 18 years old,...
REVIVALISM IN Jamaica evolved out of Myalism, another Afrocentric religion whose purpose was to rid the land of evil charms and to heal the spiritually and physically afflicted.The emergence of Revivalism came in the 1860s with two different...
CHARLES TOWN, Portland:THE THEME of this year's seventh annual International Charles Town Maroon conference, held June 20 to 23, at Charles Town, Portland, was 'Maroons, Indigenous People and Indigeneity'.And to support the conference and its theme...
It was romanticised, it is talked about, it was a magnet that pulled people from all over eastern Jamaica to its sparkling embrace from decades.It evolved into a social destination, a public shower if you will. But Roselle Falls in St Thomas has...
EVIVALISTS BELIEVE the spiritual and the earthly realms are one. The living and the departed, therefore, can communicate with each other. "Therefore, the living can become possessed and influenced by the spirits of the dead," Olive Senior writes in...
A GENETICALLY modified organism (GMO), also known as a transgenic organism, is any organism whose genetic material has been altered using genetic engineering techniques and synthetic chemicals. The process is considered unnatural.The GMOs have been...
MYALISM WAS a religious movement started by Africans who were brought to Jamaica to work on plantations. It was regarded as one of the first anti-slavery movements as Myalists worked to free themselves from enslavement, an evil caused by European...
MYAL PEOPLE believed in the eradication of evil and ridding the land of obeah charms as they prepared for the coming of Jesus Christ."Whereas obeah could be directed at harming someone through charms and curses ... Myalism was really anti-witchcraft...
Claris Wager-wood's 'triumphant' last day at infant school was the talk of the district for weeks. How dare she and her auntie, Miss Rhoda, disrespect Miss Gordon, her infant school teacher, they fumed. But aunt and niece didn't care aboutpeople's...
In October 1865, Paul Bogle, a well-to-do black man from Stony Gut, St Thomas; George William Gordon, a coloured politician; and more than 400 peasants were killed by the authorities in St Thomas. Stony Gut was ravished by fire, which destroyed...
St Thomas, Jamaica's most easterly parish,is a region of great geographical diversity.At the extreme north, the Blue Mountain range stretches across the parish.The wetlands are concentrated in the southeast - all the way to the Morant Point...
SOUTHAVEN, St Thomas: Southaven is a sprawling seaside housing estate near Yallahs in St Thomas. Its development started in the 1960s, but there are still many empty lots, and a few unfinished houses.On paper, and in concept, it looks like a place...
