Passing Nassau’s British Colonial Hilton not long ago, I could not help but notice the extensive alterations to that grand old property. One happy change was the clearing away of the tangled, unattractive foliage that had for so long hidden the front of the hotel and the statue of Woodes Rogers, first royal governor of […]
If you are among the living on planet earth, chances are that, at some point in your life, you have faced opposition to accomplishing goals that you believed to be noble. Perhaps you were promoted or assigned a task at work and have had a difficult time completing it, owing to uncooperative co-workers. Or maybe you […]
Let it be known from the outset that the ultimate purpose of this essay is a desire to promote a fuller understanding of the word “national” and the challenges, obligations and opportunities the designation presents to organizations, which incorporate the word in their titles. In these times when The Bahamas is still developing and financially […]
Midsummer in The Bahamas is hallmarked by celebrations of freedom from two kinds of bondage. On the first Monday in August annually in The Bahamas, it is our custom to mark the anniversary of the end of an insidious form of bondage—chattel slavery in our islands and throughout the British Empire, the 184th occasion in […]
“Into each life some rain must fall.” This well-known quote is taken from a poem entitled “The Rainy Day” written by American poet and educator Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. At the outset, the tone of the three-verse poem appears to be rather gloomy. The day is cold, and dark, and dreary; It rains, and the wind is […]
Abaco Secessionist Movement Raises Its Ugly Head Again On 16 July 2018 in the Letters to the Editor section of The Tribune, one of my homeland’s leading newspapers, I read a submission that saddened me deeply. A scant six days had passed since the country broke out in flags, buntings, ceremonies, junkanoo, regattas and other […]
Baby Boomers will fondly remember Mork and Mindy, the sitcom of the late 70s and early 80s, which brought then-unknown Robin Williams to national fame. The late comedian starred in the series as Mork, an alien from the planet Ork, who comes to earth to learn more about human behavior. Although they looked like us, […]
Writing for The Nation in 2002, Raúl Courel, himself an Argentinian, reflected on whether the people of Argentina suffered from a moral sickness that made them prone to wrongdoing. When I read the first lines, I said “Wow! This guy is tricky; he is writing about The Bahamas but pretending that he’s describing his homeland. […]
There is an adorable video making the rounds on social media of a little African-American girl who has been discovered by her mother with crumbled pretzels in her hair. After a lengthy discourse aimed at talking her way out of punishment, the kindergartener finally admits to her mother the reason she did the deed. She […]
Never before in my experience have there been so many Bahamians who seem determined to achieve their personal agendas and benefit at the expense of intelligent action by the collective for the benefit of the collective, order and peace in our country. Sadly, spreading the corrosive napalm of narrow, self-serving interests has become the expected […]
“Excuses are tools of incompetence built on monuments of nothingness and those who indulge in their uses are seldom capable of anything else.” I first heard this poem while pledging for the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. It was customary for our big sisters to give us seemingly impossible tasks to complete, and we were not […]
Annually on July 10 and on its peripheries, The Bahamas is en fête. The weeks and days leading up to that date signal an appreciable banquet of trade for dry goods stores and the occasional vendors, who sell Bahamian flags, buntings and a seemingly endless supply of Independence novelties. July 10 also generates bounty for […]
