In 2016, I first took a picture of it simply because I saw art and earthly beauty in it. But the pictures captured something else. Some of the limbs at the top, maybe 25 feet up, were dried-up and stuck out in areas where shoppers, vendors and...
“… A child says he hasn’t anything on. ‘But he hasn’t got anything on!’ the whole town cried out at last. The Emperor shivered, for he suspected they were right. But he thought, ‘This procession has got to go on.’ So he walked more proudly than...
Last week, I took a proverbial chill pill for a few days in Ocho Rios. From the room in which I stayed, I had an impressive view, which afforded me the opportunity to watch cruise ships come and go daily. Locals were also prominent participants of...
As Jamaica seeks to take advantage of the opportunities in the digital economy, the use of a mobile payment gateway is a huge part of the process. Mobile payment (m-payment) can be defined as any type of payment that is processed using a mobile...
The Government, like the Opposition, wishes that Jamaica never had the apparent nuisance of a diaspora while welcoming its financial benefit. Only days ago, I was convinced of this by a former minister of foreign affairs and foreign trade. The...
All of last week I spent some time in Florida, where I met a most interesting criminal investigator and lawyer. He had Jamaican roots, and based on what he said, he was almost totally convinced that Jamaica was being played up, down, and across the...
Recently, Twitter has outdone itself for intrusiveness It’s the only social media I use because it allows immediate (and pithy) commentary on breaking news. But my antisocial nature ensures that I “follow” very few other users outside of family....
The Disabilities Act (2014) came into effect in February 2022 after languishing in limbo for eight years pending parliamentary approval of the regulations, which finally took place in October 2021. It was hailed as a historic feat, and in a media...
This was my first full year at the Jamaica Environment Trust (JET), and 2022, arguably, saw one of the most consequential environmental decisions in Jamaica’s history: the long awaited declaration of the Cockpit Country Protected Area (CCPA). On...
To win schoolboy football at the Manning and DaCosta Cup levels, a school not only has to recruit football talent, but to do so very heavily. Bringing in students based on their sports ability starts from first form and continues up to sixth form...
I grew up with a nuclear family Christmas even after my parents divorced. The traditions were simple. The family made the Christmas pudding together a couple of weeks in advance. It was a day-long job involving a Yabba (ask your Granny); a wooden...
The American Embassy sits strong and secure just south of the well-known community of Standpipe. A part of the view from the entrance walls, where the embassy intersects with many Jamaicans seeking visitor visas, leads ones eyes to the offices and...
At COP27, there was a multitude of competing interests and voices that sought the world’s attention. But one thing that became clear was the chorus of small and often vulnerable states demanding justice now and at scale to address their concerns...
Willem-Alexander, king of the Netherlands, has opened a three-year investigation into the role of The Netherlands in the Maafa, the Holocaust of African enslavement. This project’s terms of reference spans the late 16th century to the present and...
One week from today, the Christian world will celebrate the arrival of Jesus Christ to this mortal toil. His teachings have inspired the birth of a religion He never wanted or sought, provided too many mere mortals with tools used to control...
According to a July 2022 Time magazine article, “Japan, a country of more than 125 million people, experiences significantly less gun violence and other forms of violent crime than the global rate. Annual gun-death rates in Japan typically amount...
It is an indisputable fact that Jamaica relies heavily on remittances to support the economy. In 2020, these inflows stood at US$2.9 billion, which at the time, was equivalent to 21 per cent of GDP. This was up from 15 per cent of GDP recorded in...
Academic arguments about the legality of the Government’s desperate reaching for states of public emergency (SOEs) crutches seem to have run their course. In any event, seemingly in furtherance of the purpose of government for the JLP by the JLP,...
“…There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served …” writes Jane...
According to INDECOM, 14 policemen were involved in 30 (23 per cent) of 120 police-involved killings in a one-year period ending June 2021. If one is not a keen-eyed police investigator, the numbers would only be ‘cause for concern’ instead of a...
At Emancipation in 1834, the Caymanas Estate in St Catherine comprised three separate parcels - Ellis Caymanas, Taylor Caymanas, Ewing Caymanas – records B. W. Higman in ‘Jamaica Surveyed’. By 1885, Caymanas had 6,000 parent titles for Bernard...
In the first of this two-part article, we focused on why the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts (EMCVPA) decided to honour Dennis Scott as part of their 45h anniversary. Part I described Company Song, staged by second- and final...
The situation was most convenient for me to immediately sprout an advanced degree in clinical psychology as I watched that hauntingly troubling video of the Homestead Primary student on his personal burst of anger and violence. For a while, I came...
What was to have been a serious national crime-fighting debate descended into scattered semantic squabbles akin to prep school playground scuffling. The squabbles didn’t end with the Opposition’s blinkered blockage of the Government’s attempted SOE...
The $50 million action epic, The Woman King – directed by African-American, Gina Prince-Bythewood, and filmed in Cape Town and Kwazulu-Natal - recounts the tale of the all-woman regiment of Agojie warriors from the Dahomey kingdom in 1823. The...
