Stories about Jamaica from June, 2008
Jamaica: Kingston On The Edge
From Jamaica, Active Voice reviews KOTE (Kingston On The Edge), a visual arts festival, where she says “For a brief moment in time we were treated to the kind of vibrant effervescent atmosphere we ought legitimately to expect from a well-connected and functioning art scene.”
Barbados: Caribbean Football Falters
Living in Barbados comments on the fortunes of regional football teams, as qualification matches begin for World Cup 2010.
Jamaica: Crime Solution
As Jamaicans clamor to re-institute the death penalty, My View of JamDown from Up So says: “In Jamaica we don’t merely try and convict criminals. We try and convict poor people and the poorly-connected. We need to stop the gimmicks, nonsense, and short-cuts and begin to prosecute all criminals big...
Jamaica, U.S.A.: Juneteenth
Jamaican Geoffrey Philp remembers Juneteenth, “the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States.”
Jamaica: Local Fare
As global food prices continue to rise, Transition Sunshine is eating more locally produced staples and is surprised to learn that some Jamaicans consider them “slave food”.
Jamaica: Reggae Sumfest
After the recent sponsorship controversy surrounding Jamaica's Reggae Sumfest festival, Montego Bay Day By Day is happy to report that “the show shall indeed go on…which is a good thing for the local businesses…”
Jamaica: Red Man
Jamaican litblogger Geoffrey Philp posts a poem on “the curse of being apart, neither black nor white, but red…”
Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago: Calabashing Walcott
Jamaican blogger Annie Paul quotes Guyana's Stabroek News on Walcott's anti-Naipaul poem, The Mongoose.
Jamaica: Living with HIV
Geoffrey Philp highlights the reporting of poet Kwame Dawes, who has been examining the HIV/AIDS crisis in Jamaica, while DigiActive says that “the Jamaican government went as far as preventing its country’s leading gay rights group from even attending the (UN AIDS) New York meeting”.
Jamaica: Steering into the Future
“Where is the leadership, where is the firm hand on the rudder, where are the good government promises?”: Jamaica and the World is not happy with the course the country seems to be taking.
Jamaica: Continuing Crime
“Simply being aware and trying to keep myself safe currently feels like a great deal of work”: Transition Sunshine wonders why crime continues to escalate in Jamaica and links to Part 1 of a video series that may help explain the phenomenon.
Trinidad & Tobago, Jamaica: Calabash Highlights
Nicholas Laughlin at Antilles blog does a retrospective of the recently-concluded Calabash Literary Festival in Jamaica.
Jamaica: Losing My Religion?
“Here in Jamaica there are a lot of people being right about a lot of things, and spending a lot of energy making other people wrong”: Francis Wade blogs about religion in the context of Jamaican culture.
Trinidad & Tobago, Jamaica, Colombia: Duppies
“The silk cotton tree…is traditionally associated with duppies and jumbies, spirits who inhabit its vast, buttressed trunk, and who exact their revenge on anyone foolish enough to take an axe to the tree, or otherwise inflict damage”: Trinidadian blogger Nicholas Laughlin is a duppy for a day.
Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago: Remembering “Ratty”
“Perhaps…Ratty had in fact been a part of the hotel’s amenities, a way of reminding guests that the chic, pricey establishment they were staying at was in fact part of a community…”: Caribbean Free Radio remembers the 12-year-old boy who had been a fixture at Jake's on Jamaica's Treasure Beach.
Jamaica: Fastest in the World
Several Jamaican bloggers are excited about the performance of local sprinter Usain Bolt, who has broken the world record for the 100 m dash: “High accomplishment stems from school pride, which in turn translates to national pride. All this when our crime rate (and food prices) have risen alarmingly. How...
Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago: Writers’ Feud
Both Caribbean Free Radio and Geoffrey Philp link to Christopher Lydon's report on the Walcott-Naipaul feud that got even more nasty at the recently-concluded Calabash International Literary Festival in Jamaica.
