By Lionel Gayle

When I first heard of a Patois Bible being published in Jamaica, I got the impression that the diction would be based on the Louisean Flair of the English patois spoken in Jamaica. That’s the style popularized by the late Hon. Louise Bennett-Coverley – Miss Lou, the Jamaican writer and folklorist whom the country had honoured as its Cultural Ambassador at Large.

Louise Bennett-Coverley
  (C) Lionel Gayle

My preference is that in most cases, the written presentation of the dialectic substitutes should bear some resemblance to Standard English words and idioms. Check how Miss Lou used “jus” for just, “wat” for what, “de” for the, “mout” for mouth, and “islan” for island in her hit poem, Colonization in Reverse. (http://louisebennett.com/newsdetails.asp?NewsCat=2&NewsID=8)

It supports my belief that patois, or a dialect, is mainly phonetic and evolved out of the need to simplify the complexity of a mother tongue. So although the spellings of some of the words from the Patois Bible may be linguistically sound, I believe they lack the percept that would attract voluntary interaction with most traditional patois-speakers in Jamaica.

For example, I see words such as “Jiizas” for Jesus, “riili” for really, “ienjel” for angel, “Mieri” for Mary, “nyuuz” for news and “taim” for time. And take a look at this cover title of the Gospel of Luke from the New Testament that is slated for publication by time Jamaica celebrates its 50^th independence anniversary, August 6, 2012: Jiizas - di buk we Luuk rait bout im. In translation it is: Jesus – the book that Luke writes about Him.

Just as I was getting comfortable with the unusual spelling of those simple words, I’ve been disappointed by the mention of “Jamaican Patois.” This came up in a BBC story about the project and the West Indies Bible Society who is managing the translation.

What is “Jamaican Patois?”

I’m guided by the credibility of an online source that defines patois as “a characteristic language of a particular group.” It also says it’s “a regional dialect of a language” and that it is “usually considered substandard.”

While I wouldn’t call Jamaicans “a particular group,” it seems correct to label patois “a regional dialect,” and that region is the Caribbean. As for “language” it’s no secret that many people in the former British colonies of this region speak English patois. And those who were colonised by the Spanish, the French and the Dutch, in addition to their official languages, also speak dialects based on their mother tongues.

By that token, there’s no such thing as “Jamaican Patois” because, strictly speaking, there’s no language called “Jamaican.” I based this conclusion on the fact that patois, or a dialect, must be the off-shoot or working simplification of another language, preferably a dominant tongue.

“It’s not bad English, it’s not poor English,” said Rev. Courtney Stewart, General Secretary of the West Indies Bible Society, in a video clip from the BBC News Magazine (December 24, 2011) as he gloats over the pending publication of the book.  He added, “It’s not [even] English, it is patois.”

Surprisingly, even the least educated, patois-speaking Jamaican can converse with a person who is well schooled in the English language. And every Jamaican who spends most of his or her time using Standard English is fluent in the patois lingua.

My experience and observation are supported by an Associated Press story, carried by Fox News (December 19, 2010): “Nearly all Jamaicans, regardless of class, speak patois – a mixture of English and West African tongues spoken by slaves who were brought to this Caribbean island by European colonizers.”

Have you ever listened to the English patois spoken in Jamaica? Is it all dialect or is it a mixture of Standard English words – and even whole English sentences – and Creole grammar? Let us discuss this in another blog.

Happy New Year!

By Lionel Gayle

My Facebook landing page is like a well-traversed jungle or an active meeting place in a large city. At any given time, it provides accommodation for a plethora of information that reflects the heartbeat of a multi-cultural community.

My Profile Image

It’s the platform on which I connect with my friends daily and observe the antics of others as they express their feelings of sadness, joy and happiness. And I must admit that I’m often stirred to the very core of my soul as my fellow Facebookers convey their emotions through poetry, prose, photographs and YouTube videos.

I don’t mind the religious fanatics who often quote verses from the Bible, obviously to scare their friends into submission to the bosom of God, or Allah or Jah. And I welcome those who provide newspaper and video links to televangelists and other Bible-thumping revivalists. I firmly believe there’s enough room for all sorts of us on Planet Earth, even as the global population reaches its 7-Billionth mark in the next three months.

Aha! And here’s my special breed – the picture-takers. I’m glad to know that there are others who are still guided by the maxim that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” However, to some of you, drop the over-bearing narcissistic behaviour in your photo posts. Even as you like to see yourselves in pictures all the time, give a little respect to the others posing beside you.

Did I hint that I like to see your friends and families in those photos too, in addition to outdoor sceneries and party camaraderie? But, I think members of the Facebook fraternity would find them more interesting and believable if you say who’s who and where’s where in these photographs, even if you borrowed them from your grandmothers’ family albums.

In the journalism business there’s a term called caption. This is the act of saying what’s going on in the photo and naming the people exactly as they appear from left to right or from right to left. As for place names, just don’t write Kingston, Quebec or Montreal with Canada on your mind if you don’t know the facts.

By doing so you could offend a Jamaican citizen from Quebec, a district (or village) close to Port Maria, the capital of the island’s northeast parish of St. Mary. Or you could earn the wrath of another Jamaican from Montreal, a district near the town of Carron Hall on the opposite side of the same parish, close to the northeast end of St. Catherine, an adjoining parish. And you wouldn’t want to insult Jamaica whose capital, Kingston, has the world’s seventh largest natural harbour.

In its rich and confined state, my Facebook page reminds me of a junk box I kept when I was a young man. To me, it was a sort of repository for useful things such as: transistor batteries, bits of electrical wires, cute pieces of plastic and other pocket-size radio and mechanical parts I had picked up on the streets or in waste bins. If they hadn’t disappeared, I have a strong feeling they would’ve come in handy one day for one of my mechanically or electrically contrived projects.

Even earlier, as a teenager, I had a bunch of keys, but I discarded them when I found out that hoarding a dozen or so keys (or even one), particularly without the matching locks, could’ve landed me in jail on some charge like: intent to break and enter. What was I thinking? I don’t remember harbouring any interest in key-making or lock-smithing.

I think I’ll check my page now to see who is sharing useful information, fund-raising for Christmas, announcing a concert or posting photos from their six-year-old albums. Then I’ll check through the clutter of newspaper links shared by a certain voracious reader.

And I hope there’s no obituary as I send best wishes to a friend who is celebrating her birthday today (December 9, 2011).

‘Commonwealth anti-gay conundrum’

continues from previous post

By Lionel Gayle

It is an open book that most governments of the Commonwealth believe there’s a direct link between sexual lifestyles and the proliferation of the deadly HIV/AIDS within their respective borders. And it’s an expensive exercise to medicate the afflicted.

Presently, they rely on the Global Fund (to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria) to buy their antiretrovirals (ARVs) – the anti-HIV or anti-AIDS drugs, and the paraphernalia to prolong the lives of their affected citizens. And it’s working.

Even though “the annual number of new HIV infections has steadily declined” worldwide and thus, fewer AIDS-related deaths, the UK-based HIV/AIDS charity, AVERT, says at the end of 2009 the Caribbean had an estimated 240,000 people living with HIV and a death count of 12,000 caused by AIDS. (http://www.avert.org/caribbean.htm)

The Caribbean, where women constitutes 50 per cent of adults living with HIV, is “the second-most affected region in the world,” after sub-Saharan Africa, where an estimated 12.5 million people were found living with HIV at the end of 2009 after AIDS killed about 1.3 million.

As the United Kingdom cites human rights breaches in these member states and threatens them with financial aid cuts, unless they drop their homophobic behaviour, most governments are toughening their stance against the temptation to repeal their sodomy laws.

Not many Caribbean countries, it seems, take British Prime Minister David Cameron’s threat seriously. At the end of the three-day Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Perth, Western Australia (October 28-30, 2011), he reiterated his country’s intention to cut back “aid from governments that do not reform legislation banning homosexuality.”

In the BBC report in which Cameron said “British aid should have more strings attached,” the BBC website said the cut “would not reduce the overall amount of aid to any one country.”

That is hardly any comfort for Bajan writer Peter Simmons. In a recent NationNews column he called the UK’s intention a “Threat to ignore,” while noting that Barbados’ British assistance had been “negligible.”

But Ian McKnight, Executive Director of the Caribbean Vulnerable Committee Coalition (CVC), told the Antigua Observer newspaper that “Turning a blind and haughty eye” to the threat “will erode the Caribbean’s gains over the last 10 years in reducing deaths” from AIDS.

After drawing attention to the UK’s contribution to the Global Fund he said: “When they pull that out I would say at least 90 per cent of what it cost our countries to provide free treatment will be gone. Most of our countries do not have the local domestic money to foot this bill.” (http://www.antiguaobserver.com/?p=66652)

Meanwhile, the Global Fund has denied Uganda $270 million “needed to put over 100,000 more people on lifesaving ARVs,” a story in Uganda’s daily newspaper, NewVision (November 15, 2011) said. The reason is, “the country’s policies are deemed harsh on sexual minorities.” (Less than 50 per cent of Uganda’s 700,000 with HIV/AIDS are on ARVs).

Several African newspapers, accessed online, had reported that about two weeks before Cameron’s post-CHOGM threat, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Ghana were among African countries who “condemned” the PM after the UK had threatened to cut aid because of their harsh laws against homosexuals.

Ghana’s President John Atta Mills was prompt with his response when he scoffed at the UK’s proposal in a Daily Nation story after Cameron’s Australian interview with the BBC. Under the headline “Ghana tells off UK over threats on gays,” Atta Mills said he wouldn’t “decriminalise the practice of homosexuality even at the risk of suffering aid cuts that might follow the threats of Prime Minister Cameron.”

 

 

In Zimbabwe, The Herald newspaper (November 10, 2011), in an opinion piece, took Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai to task for flip-flopping on the gay issue. The paper accused the PM of telling the BBC on his visit to London that “homosexuality, although controversial, should be decriminalised.”

 After pointing out how Tsvangirai had agreed with President Robert Mugabe on the matter, the newspaper accused him “of wanting to please Westerners,” adding that he contradicted himself “because you want all people to view you as if you are the one who is good.”

Zimbabwe, the former British colony called Southern Rhodesia, is not a member of the Commonwealth. It withdrew from the group in 2003 when the Commonwealth refused to reinstate the country after it had been suspended from the union in 2002 “for breaching the Harare Declaration.”

By Lionel Gayle

FORTY-FOUR years after the United Kingdom repealed its sodomy laws against “consensual homosexual acts in private,” former British colonies – now members of the prestigious Commonwealth of Nations – still prosecute citizens deemed guilty of homosexual activities.

David Cameron

And there’s no indication that these independent nations will repeal their buggery laws anytime soon. In the meantime, hordes of people engaged in same-sex activities live in the 41 Commonwealth countries that “still classify same-sex sexual conduct as illegal.”

Although the matter was brought up at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), held in Perth, Western Australia (October 28-30, 2011), the discussions concluded without any promising outlook for gays and lesbians.

But Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron, saw a different picture. He told the BBC the CHOGM, in an internal report, had recommended a stop to “bans on homosexuality,” even though the three-day summit had “failed to reach agreement” on human rights reform.

A Human Rights Watch report, among other things, had said the out-dated buggery laws “invade privacy, create inequality by relegating people to inferior status, degrade people’s dignity by declaring them unnatural.”

So far, the Commonwealth has maintained that “Most ‘anti-sodomy’ laws were imposed during the colonial era, based on British law and introduced to British colonies.” Since India first adopted this law in the late 19^th century, “Many countries have kept sodomy provisions on their law books long after independence,” says a paper issued by the Commonwealth Secretariat.

At the recent meeting, many interested parties had expected encouraging response to Australia’s Foreign Minister, Kevin Rudd’s address in which he called on member states to repeal their sodomy laws “targeting sexual minorities.”

Disappointingly, his presentation seemed “to have fallen on deaf ears,” said an edition of Star Online, a gay and lesbian newspaper in Australia. The publication noted that the “decriminalisation of LGBTIs,” received “no mention in the CHOGM 2011 Communiqué that lists Commonwealth leaders’ priorities for the next two years.”

The CHOGM is held every two years.  Sri Lanka will host the next summit in 2013.

A review of the communiqué, released online by the Commonwealth Secretariat, doesn’t show any listing for the Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgender, and Intersex (LGBTI) group on its seventeen-point agenda.

Meanwhile, several Commonwealth countries are up in arms over Cameron’s threat “to withhold UK aid from governments that do not reform legislation banning homosexuality.” In the BBC report, he stressed that recipients of aid from the UK should “adhere to proper human rights” and added that “British aid should have more strings attached.”

If this is any consolation, Britain’s intention is not to aid-starve any of the countries it had weaned after years of colonialism and dependency. The BBC website says Cameron’s threat “applies only to one type of bilateral aid known as general budget, and would not reduce the overall amount of aid to any one country.”

Presently, thirty per cent (30%) of the world’s Seven Billion citizens live in the 54 countries that make up the Commonwealth of Nations. All 54 states – including Fiji who is currently on suspension – were British colonies, except Mozambique and Rwanda who were colonised by Portugal and Belgium, respectively.

One key question comes to fore in this discussion: If Britain cuts its aid, will the lack of funds interrupt HIV/AIDS programs that are allegedly linked to homosexuality in Africa and the Caribbean?

See next post for conclusion of this discourse.

By Lionel Gayle

Occupy Toronto is the sobriquet for what seems to be a timeless occupation of a private space – a sort of tent-city enclave within Canada’s most bombastic metropolis. It’s from here that a group of belligerent demonstrators have been selecting targets of derision, ever since they kicked off their Toronto campaign on October 15, 2011.

An Occupy Toronto protest at Nathan Phillips Square in front
of Toronto City Hall, Sat., Oct. 22, 2011. (C) Jackman Chiu.

While the vigilant police are calling the current encampment of the vociferous activists a peaceful protest, the gathering in St. James Park, on Kings St. East downtown, is a catalyst – knowingly or unknowingly – for fear in the minds of some Torontonians.

Many citizens live close to the well-kept botanical park that is attached to the 158-year-old St. James Cathedral (Anglican). And it’s doubtful that some can tolerate the high-spirited partying such as that which took place October 15: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy7kueaSxFE)

But that’s just one inconvenience; call it contrived negativity if you will. If the novelty of communal living is still intact, that’s good, because, based on how long the young adventurers co-habit the park, group dynamics will take its toll. Without a unifying force, the aspirations of a group of happy campers could transform into apathy and confusion.

Toronto occupiers – like New York City’s campers in Zuccotti Park in the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement – have not declared a leader of the demonstrators who have rained down on the Financial District at King and Bay Sts., and gathered in front of Toronto City Hall to condemn the social and economic reality brought on by the vast disparity between the super-rich and the poor.

But it’s a clichéd exercise that is not expected to bring any early change of mind in any government on planet earth. And that’s a very sad state of affair, because in the next 136 days and some hours (as of the publication of this post), the world’s population will reach its Seven Billion mark. More people mean more mouths to be fed, therefore, the wealth concentrated in the hands of a few needs to be spread.

However, I would never advocate a limit to a person’s riches. As long as he/she is not robbing the public purse or acquiring wealth by any other illegal means, you can pile your riches sky-high.

But the message of occupiers seems to be directed at all rich people, regardless of how they have acquired their wealth. Their slogan, “We are the 99%” was borrowed from the OWS campaign, but one protestor, Brigette DePage, explained that in Canada it means that the top “one per cent” controls 13.8 per cent of the wealth.

Even the venerable book of wisdom, the Holy Bible, speaks of the rich getting richer, without any condemnation. Check out this passage from the American King James Version: “For whoever has, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whoever has not, from him shall be taken away even that he has.” (Matthew 13:12).

In the detail of their message, the Occupy Toronto activists are calling on Canada’s Conservative Party (CP) government to end “corporate greed,” “stop ignoring youth,” “end war, feed the poor” and to “Respect existence or expect resistance.”

The media have reported that there are several similar occupation movements, including Vancouver and Montreal, taking place in Canada.

The Toronto movement is an off-shoot of OWS, initiated by a Canadian group called Adbuster. It has been ongoing since September 17, 2011, when protesters took over the nearby private-owned Zuccotti Park, in the Wall Street financial district in Lower Manhattan.

The movement has been replicated in several other US cities and communities, and the OWS model of the encroaching socio-economic occupation is reportedly copied by more than 900 cities worldwide.

By Lionel Gayle

It is part of the democratic process whenever a government – be it local, provincial or federal – demands a budget cut from one of its most vital services. Unfortunately, the public never hears of any plan to mitigate the effects of such mangling, and whether any “injured” department ever succeeded in delivering its mandated responsibilities effectively.

Chief Bill Blair

Presently, there’s no secret that Toronto Police Chief, Bill Blair, and the Mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford, are at loggerheads over City Hall’s demand for a ten per cent ($83 million) cut from the Toronto Police Service (TPS) budget. And despite a barrage of anti-police views in the media and on the streets, Chief Blair seems reluctant to acquiesce to City Hall.

In an interview with Toronto’s Citytv, one could sense the pain in Chief Blair’s face as he explained that the requested cut would result in the loss of 1,000 front-line police officers. Reports say roughly 90 per cent of the TPS budget covers salaries and benefits. A Toronto Star story says that, so far, the chief has indentified about $3 million that he can cut.

But his reasoning doesn’t seem to impress Mayor Ford one bit. Sporting his usual unworried demeanour, in a TV broadcast, the mayor demanded his pound of flesh, and insisted that the cut must be done to help the city reduce its $774 million deficit in its 2012 budget.

However, Alok Mukherjee, Chair of the Toronto Police Services Board, told the Globe and Mail newspaper that “Layoffs are not a practical option for the 2012 budget.” The board is a civilian body that oversees Canada’s largest municipal police force – the Toronto Police Service, which currently has about 5, 600 members.

Mayor Ford has said publicly that he’s not asking for a reduction in front-line police personnel. And Chief Blair says the cut cannot be made without the loss of 1,000 crime-fighters. Maybe this exchange between two of the city’s top administrators is just par for the course. And therefore, the disagreement that smacks of political shenanigan will have an amicable outcome.  

Over the years the TPS has been accused of being racist, homophobic or unfriendly to some marginalised members of the city, so who cares if it is emasculated?

Not the few idiotic fools – and many others who are neither idiots nor fools – who seem to have little or no understanding of the importance of the TPS to the City of Toronto. That’s why some criticise the police and cheer every time Mayor Ford insists that the Toronto Police Service must cut its budget by ten per cent.

Even if you have no sympathy for Chief Blair’s predicament, one needs only a modicum of commonsense to understand that if the TPS loses 1,000 crime-fighters, the people of Toronto could be in dire straits.

As the most multicultural city in Canada (world’s 2^nd largest country by land area) and a burgeoning metropolis, Toronto needs a 21^st Century police force that is not only efficient in crime-fighting techniques, but also strong in number. The current size of the TPS “is the appropriate number to keep neighbourhoods safe,” the Toronto Star reported Chief Blair as saying.

Here are some key points to mull over: Was Mayor Ford serious when, during his 2010 campaign for office, he promised to hire 100 more police officers? Does he have convincing information that the TPS can make the ten per cent cut without weakening its front-line force? Is Chief Blair painting a true picture of the situation?

At least one of Mayor Ford’s “lieutenants,” Councillor Michael Thompson (Ward 37 – Scarborough-Centre), doesn’t think the police chief is painting a realistic picture, and has accused Chief Blair of “playing the fear game.” (Toronto Star, September 2, 2011). Councillor Thompson is vice-chair of the seven-member Toronto Police Services Board of which Mayor Ford is a member.

By Lionel Gayle

Amy Winehouse (Contributed)

We live in a bloody topsy-turvy world, but I hoped young Amy Winehouse could’ve stayed around to gain some more experience. In so doing, she would’ve satisfied loved ones with her charming presence and fans with the continued expression of her artistic talent.

We don’t know how she spent her final hours, but we now know that her unique voice is silenced forever. (That’s according to our general belief system).

Had she stayed, I believe, she would’ve learned how to negotiate her way among this chaotic mess – composed of the tabloid spiders with their venomous tentacles. In their aiding and abetting, I believe they have become the ultimate destroyers of the young and the old who court even a modicum of public attention.

The blood-sucking paparazzi can’t prey on Amy anymore, and the tabloid wordsmiths will have to find another subject on whom to base their lies and innuendos. And I’m convinced that they are already hell bent on destroying other lives.

I was just listening to the The Ska EP, four songs by Winehouse, reportedly “recorded during the Back to Black era.” Even though I grew up on ska music, I like her Rehab song from the Back to Black album. It reflects her honest-sounding voice as she sings: “They tried to make me go to rehab but I said no, no, no.”

I doubt she was a very stubborn person, and therefore conclude that, except for her family, she had no close collaborators who really cared for her well-being. And apparently, she did not receive enough support that could’ve helped her defeat her demons – be they drugs or alcohol.

Deepak Chopra would’ve, probably, attribute Amy’s so-called troubled life and untimely demise to the pressure of “entropy,” which he describes as “a cosmic force stands ever ready to destroy life.” It’s like the flip side of good.

 In his book, “Ageless Body, Timeless Mind,” Chopra says “Entropy is a one-way arrow” and further explains that it “came into existence at the instant of the Big Bang.” Put another way, entropy is “the universal tendency for order to break down into disorder,” he says.

But if French educator Hippolyte Leon Denizard Rivail, better known as the spiritist Allan Kardec (1804-1869) was right, that spirit is one of “two general elements of the universe,” then Amy’s continued existence, perhaps in another world, is assured.

Even though I’m fascinated with the metaphysics, I’m not yet fully convinced by Dr. Edith Fiore’s claim in “The Unquiet Dead: A Psychologist Treats Spirit Possession,” published in 1987.

Dr. Fiore, a psychologist and hypnotherapist, retired from her California practice in 1997 after 30 years, and now lives in Florida. Based on her “clinical findings” she says “life does continue after biological death,” and added that “It appears that death involves a smooth, natural transition to a spirit realm with no loss of consciousness.”

So, where is Amy now?

By Lionel Gayle

I count my first blog among the more than 156 million web logs said to be in existence since mid February 2011. With a Canadian traffic rank at 76,723 – reported by Alexa Internet, Inc. – it should be clear that my site, “Just Blogging,” at http://www.lionelgayle.com, is a very new online journal.

In fact, I published my first post just about mid May 2011, and currently, Alexa says my blog “is relatively popular among users” in Toronto where it is ranked at #11,234. The company gives my site a global traffic rank at 4,566,642.

I am fully aware that the information I’ve just shared above is not really exciting news. I merely want to brag a little, now that my literary effort is noted at some little spot on a global platform – namely, the World Wide Web, via the Information Superhighway.

The real focus of this article is to share some of my experiences as a newbie blogista (that’s my coinage for blogger), especially as I attempt to customize the free Google Blogger template to attract attention, as well as to fit my personal taste.

 Customizing your site means you can manipulate the template to change the look of the page as long as you stay within the guidelines set by Google. And even though it would help a lot, you don’t have to know HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), two popular languages – comprising tags, rules and brackets – used in hypertext documents and web development.

Recently, while trying to customize my other blog, I experienced what I thought was a big problem and didn’t know how to solve it. I wanted to do two tasks: (a) to put a box around my sidebar, and (b) to put a background colour to my post (that’s my article).

After following the advice of several how-to-do-it online gurus I succeeded only in putting boxes and colour to the sidebar titles – “Follow by Mail,” “Links,” “Followers,” etc. And the date header above my post was automatically formatted in the same way.

In the interim it seemed that I had messed up the template because the headline of my article had shrunk to about 12 points – from 36 points, and the dateline and the sidebar titles had increased in size and displayed in bold letters.

I fiddled with the template code for a long while until I fixed the date header and the sidebar titles, but the post headline wouldn’t budge. So I searched online and found several bloggers with the same problem, but no published solutions. I then posted the following question in an online forum: "How do I fix my post title, I use to be able to increase size from Template Designer, but it no longer works?"

Later I received an email from Google Help saying that Bonjour Tristesse had found an error in my template. I was directed to “Put a closing bracket } at the end of your h2 declaration.”  I knew what that meant, followed the instruction and the headline became fixable. 

 (This was a big surprise from the Google team. I’m still waiting on them to respond to some earlier requests).

 Now, how do I add a colour background to my post? Advice from the online gurus didn’t work for me.  So I experimented with the template until I got it. Plus, I have also succeeded in putting a box around my post, but I still don’t know how to apply the same treatment to the sidebar.

 For newbies who like the hands-on approach, remember to backup before you fool around with that HTML template. Follow the instructions and “Download Full Template” to your hard drive before you start editing. Another way to backup is to go to view on your browser menu bar and select source if you are using IE. Then copy the code and save it in notebook. If you opened your blog with Firefox, select page source from the menu drop-down to find the code which, in my case, is over 1,100 lines deep.

By Lionel Gayle

Fathers deserve their big day too. Just like mothers – who are pampered to the hilt on Mother’s Day each year – dads should be encouraged to adapt that air of expectancy every time Father’s Day comes around.

This year the highly commercialized Father’s Day is being observed on Sunday, June 19. It was inaugurated in West Virginia in 1908, mainly to celebrate fatherhood, and of course, to complement Mother’s Day which “is rooted in antiquity.”

Do all dads deserve some pampering on Father’s Day?

Some people, mainly disgruntled wives and neglected “baby-mothers,” think not. And some of them have taken on the devious task of dividing fathers into a sort of loving, “responsible alpha males” and wicked, “dead-beat dads.”

But there is a wide spectrum of “other fathers” between those two popular, categorised markers. For instance, what about the “good” homely dads with all those secret children outside? And think of the Jekyll and Hyde fathers who, at nights, are transformed into lechers as they prowl after-hours clubs and whorehouses, as well as rob and hurt innocent people.

And there are those who verbally and physically abuse members of their families, and engage in incestuous relations with their children. And for various reasons, there are many fathers who are estranged from their grown children.

So here are four recommendations for Father’s Day 2011:

• Reconciliation with estrange children
A father’s guilt, based on his years of neglect can easily be the cause of lack of communication with his grown children. Or, it could be the daughter’s (or son’s) resentment of her dad’s action that is at the crux of the matter. Then again, they probably arrived at that stage because of some disagreement in the not-too-distant past.

Now is a good time to bury the hatchet. But who should make the first move? Anybody can initiate the move with a phone call. Then you meet and take it from there. If both of you followed through and you actually met, that’s a great Father’s Day gift. There’s no need to buy anything.

• For so-called dead-beat dads
If you’re a father who has not been taking care of your children, change that situation now. Especially if it’s a case in which their mothers can’t cope, or can barely manage. Don’t allow your ex-wife or baby-mothers to keep maligning you.

And you don’t want any of those children to grow up telling people about “my mother who fathered me” while you are alive and well.
Incidentally, a common case like that led Jamaican anthropologist Edith Clarke to document her landmark book “My Mother Who Fathered Me,” published in 1957. It was re-issued by the University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica, in 1999.

• Get help for your incestuous behavior
Dads with incest on their minds should get help immediately. In her hypothetical experience Queen Ifrica sings, “Everyday a wonder why ma daddy had to be di one to take away my innocence.” Check out her song, called “Daddy” (Don’t Touch Me There) at this link. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYrXb_KJmEU&feature=related).

• Don’t ignore your children’s connections
Start talking to their teachers, pastors and sport team leaders. Get to know their friends. In fact organise a party – nothing big and fancy – and invite their friends’ parents. Show your appreciation to those who play important roles in your children’s lives.

By Lionel Gayle

“This time I’m coming like Hurricane Hatty.”

That’s a catchy line from teenager Jimmy Cliff’s song, “Hurricane Hatty,” a mere reference to the Category 5 Hurricane Hattie that crashed into British Honduras (now Belize) on Halloween 1961.

Besides claiming over 300 lives, the powerful hurricane forced the Central American British colony to relocate its capital from Belize City to present-day Belmopan.

Whenever I hum Cliff’s melodious ska tune, I’m not in the least mocking the inhabitants of the Caribbean region, especially when they are in the throes of another perilous period. For the next five months, a lot of West Indians will only be able to watch and pray as some weird and dangerous climatic conditions batter the region as the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season takes its toll.

The National Hurricane Centre has predicted 12-18 named storms and hurricanes for the season that began, officially, on June 1.

To many others the stormy weather is hardly a deterrent to their accustomed lifestyles as they stage lavish pageants, regattas and carnivals. Add to those, a series popular music fetes featuring jazz, gospel, soca, calypso, hip hop, reggae, or a multi-genre showcase like the St. Kitts Music Festival (SKMF), scheduled for June 23-25, 2011 at Warner Park Stadium, in Basseterre. (http://www.stkittsmusicfestival.com/).

If at first you chose Ocho Rios for the 21st annual Jamaica International Jazz Festival, June 11-20, you must visit St. Kitts-Nevis on your island-hopping. At this time Basseterre should be teeming with excitement as the first concert of the festival kicks off on Thursday, June 23. This year marks the 15th annual renewal of the event which has been downsized to a three-night musical extravaganza.

If you’ve abandoned your staycation and heading south for a vacation, don’t worry about hurricanes. Use this 1898 memory poem as a maxim: “June too soon/July stand by/August look out you must/September remember/October all over.”

Despite all the odds against them, Caribbean people are a resourceful and fearless lot and even with the inherent danger, it would take more than the baddest storm to scare them. Presently – based on a 2010 estimate – there are more than 36 million people occupying over 92,000 aggregate square miles of land space in the Caribbean region.

Since its inception in 1996 as the Shak Shak Festival, no hurricane has ever blotted out the SKMF. However, the event was dropped in 2000, the same year St. Kitts-Nevis presented the 7th Caribbean Festival of Arts (Carifesta).

When I first visited St. Kitts in 1999, one of the organizers explained that the festival had no set formula. “It varies from year to year,” but they were aiming for 80 per cent Caribbean content, he added.

I did not scrutinize the formula on my last attendance in 2002, but something seems to be working right – or almost right. The show has been moved from the historic Fort Thomas Hotel to a larger venue, Warner Park Stadium, and the SKMF is now a fixture on calendars of events throughout the Caribbean, and probably right across the “global village.”

Three cheers for the SKMF management committee and all the 35,000 souls on the 64.9 square miles of volcanic rock that looks like a chicken drumstick, with sister island Nevis sitting off the southeast tip like an over-sized McDonald’s nugget.

For more information contact St. Kitts Tourism toll free: US 1-800-582-6208 and Canada 1-888-395-4887.

By Lionel Gayle

The above headline certainly reflects a kind of gender disparity.

However, the clever defence lawyer who highlighted that female tendency in a Jamaican court many years ago wasn’t pitting a woman’s character against a man’s.

His male client was before the court for the possession of ganja – more politely called marijuana or cannabis. As it turned out, the attorney allegedly argued convincingly that what his client had in his possession was the male substance of the species. Back then the Jamaican law had identified the female stock of the cannabis sativa strain as the more potent form of hemp.

I cannot recall if in those days the possession of the male cannabis would’ve resulted in an acquittal, or a lighter penalty. But subsequently, as I understood it, the Government of Jamaica amended its narcotics law to embrace both strains of ganja as being dangerous and equally illegal.

Today the feminization of cannabis is a big deal; but it is mostly a business concern for grow-operators who maintain that “female plants that have not been pollinated” produce more marijuana buds. So it’s a cardinal rule not to keep a male plant in a grow room, since the goal is to produce the highly potent sinsemilla (seedless buds).

As the worldwide war on drugs reportedly failed, the high-profile signatories to a report that calls for an end to such futile exercise, said cannabis should be among the drugs decriminalized.

And when the Global Commission on Drug Policy released its report June 2, 2011, in New York, it pointed out that the failure came “with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world.”

One of its recommendations is that drug-users who don’t harm others should not be criminalized, marginalized or stigmatized. (http://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/Report).

Although cannabis is illegal in Canada, this country was the first nation to legalize medical marijuana for the terminally ill “and those suffering certain painful debilities.” Currently, there are more than 4,000 Canadians licensed to use weed for medical purposes.

But in the meantime, the country has been given 90 days to revamp its marijuana laws which a Province of Ontario judge has deemed unconstitutional. The countdown started April 13, 2011.

Sometime in early 2011, the United States recorded its one millionth “legal medical marijuana patients,” who are licensed in sixteen states and the District of Columbia. And a company called weGrow has opened a 21,000-square-foot store in Arizona to sell marijuana grow-op products. The International Business Times, on June 2, 2011, dubbed it the “Wal-Mart of Weed.” (http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/156173/20110602/marijuana-wal-mart-of-weed-home-depot-arizona-la-detroit-federal-crime-medical-marijuana-wegrow-dhar.htm).

In Jamaica where it’s zero tolerance for the possession of the weed, the National Commission on Ganja, in 2001, recommended that the government decriminalize the use of the drug “in small quantities by adults and also as a religious sacrament.” And in April 2011 the government appointed a committee to review the recommendations in that report.

If reggae star Peter Tosh were still around he would have had more reasons to sing his landmark song, “Legalize It” (And I will advertise it). And chances are, the controversial showman would’ve had some disagreement with the Jamaican senior who has expressed his hatred for the word “legalize,” merely because “you can’t legalize weh [what] God create, because God a God.”

By Lionel Gayle

It is no longer called Caribana, but don’t expect major changes when the world-renowned Caribbean festival kicks off its annual three-week run July 12.

Even with a new name on its 44th anniversary, it remains North America’s grandest summer fete. But Scotiabank Caribbean Carnival Toronto (SCCT) is a helluva mouthful for the name of a merrymaking event. Still, that shouldn’t be a deterrent to the thousands of revellers who are expected to converge on Toronto for the cultural explosion. (http://www.thestar.com/news/article/996630--caribana-unveils-its-new-name?bn=1).

And even though, in May 2011, an Ontario Superior Court forbade the five-year-old Festival Management Committee (FMC) to use the old name, I believe people will still call the event Caribana. And as time goes by you’ll probably hear “Scotia Carnival,” “Toronto Carnival,” “Scotiabank Festival” or some other easy-sounding variations.

However, the Caribana Arts Group (CAG) – former organizer of the event – whom the court had declared the rightful owner of the Caribana trademark seems very unhappy with the name-change which it calls “a theft.” It has expressed its intention to reclaim control of the festival under the Caribana banner. (http://www.sharenews.com/local-news/2011/05/26/fmc-renames-caribana-festival-amid-controversy).

Looking back over the years, it seemed that long ago Caribana had evolved beyond the manageability of CAG’s predecessor, the Caribbean Cultural Committee (CCC) who started the festival in 1967. In fact, in the past the CCC had been severely criticized and accused of mismanaging the festival, even by members of its own community.

So for whatever reason, the City of Toronto and the Ontario government yanked their Caribana funding in 2006, it’s of little importance now. But at the time of the drastic action the CCC was blamed for its consistent failure “to produce adequate financial statements.”

Despite the controversy, the SCCT office said on June 1 that everything was in place for the official launch of the carnival on July 12, at Metro Hall, downtown Toronto.

If you are going to the Caribbean Carnival for the first time, take note that the Grand Parade is the showcase of the three-week revelry. It is scheduled for Saturday, July 30, along Lakeshore Blvd., a short distance from the edge of Lake Ontario.

It starts about mid-morning at the nearby Exhibition Place where several mas’ bands, some with hundreds of participants, will dance up a storm in front of a panel of judges and a paid audience. Then one-by-one, each group will trek out of the stadium onto Lakeshore Blvd. and head west on a 3.5-kilometre journey that ends at a designated dispersal point.

As the procession moves along the route, the sounds of calypso, soca, reggae, and a few other popular music beats will blare from speaker boxes atop elaborate floats – some with live performers. Observe the scantily clad mas players in their splendiferous costumes as they gyrate suggestively in front and alongside the slow-moving floats.

Perhaps as many as one million revellers from all walks of life will stand behind metal bars, along the parade route, to witness the spectacular display of the multi-ethnic Caribbean culture. Don’t hesitate to join the excitement. Jump and shout; get “something and wave” – a rag or a flag.

If it rains on the parade, the intermittent showers won’t dampen the spirits of masqueraders and onlookers, but the blazing sun can be brutal. However, there are tons of remedies close by – neatly placed stalls and kiosks sell anything from bottled water to a wide variety of ethnic foods, as well as lots of exotic arts and crafts items.

This link will give you a list of some necessary items that you should take to the Carnival Parade. (http://www.torontocaribbeancarnival.com/pagedisplay.aspx?i=239).

By Lionel Gayle

As a thinking man, I don’t believe there is any evidence, scientific or historical, that the world will end – not even with simultaneous cataclysmic earthquakes in divers places, or with a planet-wide nuclear war.

By the way, have you ever wondered why earthquakes are among God’s chosen arsenal of weapons for the annihilation of His own people?

Allegedly, it’s part of Jesus’ prophecy of end-time phenomena. Furthermore, “Earthquakes speak for God.” (http://www.mswm.org/earthquakes/earth_quakes/superearthquakes_superearthquakes.htm).

As for the threat of a worldwide nuclear war, the likelihood of such catastrophe is nil. Tyrants will emerge all over the place, but I have faith in our sane and conscientious leaders who will strive to preserve this planet as a paradise for every living being.

Expressions such as “End of the world,” “End-Times,” “Armageddon” and “The Rapture” are mere jiggery-pokery, obviously coined by holier-than-thou nobles and religious deceivers as scare-and-control mechanisms.

Even if the world ends soon, it won’t be in accordance with the forecast of the great Californian soothsayer, Harold Camping, president of Family Radio. And it won’t reflect the preferences of all those other prognosticators of doom and gloom since time began.

That’s why this drivel about Judgment Day on October 21, 2011 – that’s five months away – is so remotely crazy. The world didn’t collapse on May 21, 2011, and the righteous Mr. Camping also missed the mark in 1994.

Instead of condemning God’s lovely people to a doomsday calamity, all the guilty religious soapbox stars should focus more on the well-being of the needy masses around the world? If your minds are devoid of positive thoughts, don’t hesitate to call on the Almighty for help. Some of you claim that He speaks to you personally, and all of you accept the Holy Bible as the word of God.

By Lionel Gayle

The Scandinavian volcano that erupted last week got me worrying whether the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, also known as the Doomsday seed vault, was in any danger.

So I checked up on my geography and found out that Grimsvotn, one of Iceland’s most active volcanoes, was miles away from Norway’s Doomsday seed-bank.

In fact, the Global Seed Vault is on the Norwegian Spitsbergen Island, built 120 metres (390 ft) inside a mountain cavern, about 1,300 kilometres (810 miles) from the North Pole.

Honestly, if the cataclysmic eruption had destroyed the seed-bank, I wouldn’t have shed a tear, but I would’ve been disappointed. The fact is that I’m fully aware that all the Doomsday deposits – thousands of seeds and a wide variety of plants – are duplicates from seed-banks in countries around the world.

If Svalbard was hit by a natural disaster last week, my main concern would’ve been whether that destruction was a prelude to Armageddon and the Rapture, predicted to happen at 6 p.m. Saturday, May 21, 2011.

California preacher Harold Camping, 89, who had predicted the Judgment Day, said 200 million Christians were expected to ascend to heaven after the destruction of the earth. (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/05/23/national/a110014D10.DTL).

But it seemed God didn’t set foot on planet earth on Saturday, and there was no news of any extraordinary happenings from around the world, where Camping has an audience through his Family Radio International.

At a media conference at his radio studios, he told reporters that the End Times had actually begun on Saturday and would continue until October 21, 2011 when God would destroy the world.

Unlike other critics and observers, I am not calling Mr. Camping a false prophet, even though his prediction that God would’ve destroyed the world in 1994 also came to naught. I guess he has chalked up that error to a miscalculation on his timeline chart.

If this is any consolation, the Jehovah’s Witnesses had a better calculation system, but Jesus didn’t come in 1975 as they had predicted. And in fact, it seems the organization has scored zeros on all its predictions since American Charles Taze Russell, in the late 1870s, founded the precursor to the current Watch Tower Society. (http://4jehovah.org/help-1975-prophecy.php).

As for those nincompoops who reportedly gave away all their worldly possessions in anticipation of last weekend’s elusive Rapture, what were they thinking? From my observation, it’s never a safe move for desperate souls to put all their trusts in religious cults. Remember the Jim Jones suicide pact in which more than 900 perished at Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978, and the 1993 Branch Davidian fire that claimed at least 76 lives near Waco, Texas?

It’s really a sad state of affair when some clever religious leaders use their charisma to hoodwink the hopeless into shedding their possessions in exchange for embracing a silent and absent God. Like the late reggae star Bob Marley said: “Babylon System is a Vampire … building church and university/deceiving the people continually” (Babylon System from the album Survival by Bob Marley & The Wailers, Island Records, 1979).

By Lionel Gayle

After a week of Google pain with its Blogger confusion, I am glad to report that my blog (this site) seems to be working smoothly.

Yet, it puzzles me to know that I can still launch it from the old address link which I was convinced had been deleted or removed from my Google account. In fact, that old link should’ve been more aligned with my first TLD (Top Level Domain), http://www.kantankarous.com.

It’s the loss, or disappearance of the kantankarous.com address that has led to my week of frustration and confusion in setting up my first blog.

Nevertheless, thanks to those guys at Google for mitigating my stress-level. However, I believe that my present comfort zone arrived after I had made a strategic move when it seemed certain that I wouldn’t have launched my blog anytime soon.

At least I can access my blog with any of my regular web browsers. Up to a few days ago I couldn’t even launch it with Google Chrome – the upstart browser that some internet gurus are touting as the fastest vehicle on the information highway. For about a week, the whole process of setting up this freaking project had stressed the living daylight out of me.

And I blame the behemoth Google Inc. for my woes. I had expected this technological conglomerate to have a top-notch customer care service at Blogger.com, its free and popular blog-hosting operation.

Anyway, I registered my first blog at http://lionel-gayle.blogspot.com. (From Blogspot.com you get what they call a “naked” domain, that’s without the “www,” when you sign up for the free service). My name was not my first choice for the URL (Uniform Resource Locator), but I accepted it and later published my blog under the title “Here Me Now.”

To rookies like me, pleased observe that “a blog” is a website like this one, and my blog title is “Just Blogging.” The story below is my post, headed by the “post title,” which is tantamount to a headline in a newspaper or magazine.

Don’t be flabbergasted if your next-door “blogista” (my coinage) asked you: “When will you post your next post?”

I know your attention is piqued by the two “posts” in that short sentence. And you’re quite right; each post has a different meaning. But just stay cool my friends, it’s merely blog-talk coupled with the perplexed nuance of the English language.

Let’s get back to my Blogger problems. Shortly after I had set up the free blog at http://lionel-gayle.blogspot.com I purchased my TLD, http://www.kantankarous.com, through Google Apps.

Then I transferred my blog to the new site and deleted the stuff from the other. Everything was fine until kantankarous.com disappeared. The old site was still alive, but it was an empty page. That was no problem, I could easily replace the stuff. I just wanted back my TLD.

I laboured with the problems for a few days, with no solution in sight. Then aha, I registered another TLD, http://www.lionelgayle.com, with DomainShoe.com and signed up for another free site at Blogspot.com. I made the registered address my preferred domain and linked the free site. (Hey, that’s the same thing I did at the beginning!)

This time Blogger refused to accept my original e-mail address, so I opened a Gmail account with Google.

Although my blog is up and running, my first TLD http://www.kantankarous.com is still MIA.

I had posted a query at Webmaster Central, a Google help forum, and received a reply saying that the domain http://www.kantankarous.com blog “does not exist,” and that http://lionel-gayle.blogspot “exists but it's basically an empty site.”

Shortly after I had bought that domain, I received an e-mail from The Google Apps Team confirming my purchase and congratulating me “on completing your purchase of kantankarous.com.” The domain is registered with eNom and will expire on May 12, 2012.

I hope she comes home before that date, and before I become a cantankerous old man.

By Lionel Gayle

When the United States special-forces raided Osama bin Laden’s hide-out at Abbottabad, in north-west Pakistan, did they kill him, did they murder him, did they assassinate the man regarded as America’s most wanted terrorist mastermind behind the 9/11 atrocities?

America and the rest of the world are referring to that daring act of May 2, 2011 as “the killing” of bin Laden. To me it sounds crass and impolite. Even President Barak Obama’s direction to his elite commandos to “capture or kill” and his reported success of the mission as “an operation that killed Osama bin Laden” sent chills to my spine.

Yet, it’s reality. But I have an aversion to the way in which the word “kill” is being used in such serious matter by intelligent people. It’s like part of a loose-talk that belongs to the street. And as such, it lessens the impact of the milestone reached in the demise of the mass murderer who had classified decent, law-abiding citizens worldwide as mere infidels whose lives are expendable.

Even though I would’ve preferred bin Laden to be captured and prosecuted (like Saddam bin Hussein of Iraq), I never had even an inkling of admiration for the unholy imposter. And gladly, I celebrate with all Americans who have lost loved ones at his dirty, devil-riddled hands. And to those Somalis who marched vociferously in celebration of his death in the streets of Mogadishu last week, I tip a symbolic hat. As one of the marchers told the Associated Press in a story published in the Arab News, “His death will be a milestone for world peace.”

But taking into consideration the universal recognition of polite behavior and the etiquette usually observed by diplomats and heads of state, was the al-Qaeda leader really killed, murdered, or assassinated?

What’s the difference? It is crystal clear that whichever label is used to describe his demise is of no significance. However, because in certain instances I’m a stickler for political correctness, we should at least strive to call a spade a spade.

While I’m not rooting for any reserved respect for the departed monster, I take some solace in the report that his speedy sea burial “had been handled in accordance with Islamic custom.”
Now, take it from me: The course of action employed in the elimination of Osama bin Laden was definitely an assassination. As Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines assassinate: “to murder (a usually prominent person) by sudden or secret attack often for political reasons.”

There is no doubt that bin Laden was a prominent person, albeit infamous. And as Kingston, Jamaica-based imam Muhammad Islam told the Jamaica Observer newspaper, "Osama bin Laden was a politician who just happened to be Muslim."

The Oxford English Reference Dictionary defines assassinate as, to kill “especially a political or religious leader for political or religious motives.” And The Free Dictionary (online) says to assassinate is “To murder (a prominent person) by surprise attack, as for political reasons.”
There is no secret that the US Navy SEALs had executed a surprise attack on bin Laden’s enclave and assassinated him for his political terrorism. But from a popular standpoint, he was killed and not assassinated. Perhaps “assassination” is a euphemism reserved for the clandestine killing of people with respectability, such as presidents, kings and prime ministers.