I was born in the shadow of mountains; this is an unremarkable fact, as it is true of anyone born in the city of Kingston. But there is a particular mountain that I think of as mine – Jack’s Hill. I never thought it was well named – Jack’s Hill sounds like something from a nursery rhyme, small and unimportant, and my mountain is both serene and imposing. As for Jack – I don’t know who he was.
My family lived on Sandhurst Crescent when I was a baby, in the shadow of Jack’s Hill. We moved to Stanton Terrace – in the shadow of Long Mountain. And then when I was ten, we went to Liguanea Avenue, to a rambling, inconvenient house that was dominated by an unconstrained and close up view of Jack’s Hill. I was home.
It is a triangular shaped mountain, like the three fat middle fingers of a green giant, the lower reaches and folds still forested, the upper slopes grassy and bare of all but a few trees. It burns several times a year because careless people light fires or discard cigarettes, and it turns black and like a small, angry volcano, sheds ash on the houses of the rich people below. A Jack’s Hill address is one of the best in Kingston.
I got to choose my bedroom when we moved to Liguanea Avenue – I was the eldest child. So I chose the room without air conditioning – which was an amazing novelty at the time – because it had a view of Jack’s Hill. I moved my bed under the window, so I could wake up and look out and see Jack’s Hill before I did anything else. It is my earliest recollection of a sense of wonder.
Sometime in the 1960s, a developer cut a road across the green and pleasant face of Jack’s Hill. I remember my father saying the ugly scar would be there for twenty years. In fact, almost fifty years later, the destruction is still discernible, although not as raw as it was when I was a teenager.
There has been construction on Jack’s Hill – some houses are barely visible through trees, others are large concrete boxes without aesthetic merit clinging to ridges. Last week I waited in a doctor’s office on the third floor of a high rise building in Kingston and all around me I could see the mountains I had grown up with – the far away heights of the Blue Mountains (assaulted by clearing for coffee and failed plantation forests), Long Mountain (much defaced by housing), Dallas Mountain (chopped up by limestone mining and charcoal burners), and Jack’s Hill, cleared to bare dirt in places to make fire breaks around million dollar homes, to plant crops, and cleared for clearing's sake. It must be that we who live in the shadow of the mountains no longer see them, because if we did, if we felt that sense of awe and wonder I first encountered as a ten-year-old, we would never have allowed what has happened to them.
I went once to a place where no building was allowed on the hills around – these were hills, not mountains, not like our mountains. It was Santa Fe in New Mexico and it was in the 1980s – so things could have changed. But then no one could build on the hills, the forests were protected, and when you stood in the city, all around you could see unblemished vistas. Not even a movie star had managed to change the minds of the planners. Here in Jamaica, if you talk about protecting a view from “development” you are considered certifiably insane.
I had to leave Jamaica to experience a forest. Before I went to the Pacific Northwest, I thought a forest was simply an assembly of trees, and I used to talk about the importance of planting trees to replace the ones cut down. But when I climbed into the Hoh Rain Forest of the Olympic National Park in Washington State, I understood for the first time what the term “forest” really means – it is not merely a tree farm planted by humans, but a complex organism of ferns and mosses and birds and lichens and insects and trees of different ages and sizes and types. I saw a nurse log in the Hoh Rain Forest and it was explained to me how when old trees died, they crashed through the forest opening up areas to light, and how seeds found root in the rotting bark of the fallen tree and started to grow there, and then the nurse log would rot and there would be an arch in the roots of the young trees who had found their start on the nurse log, a straight line of arches, showing the ghost of the fallen tree. I came back to Jamaica and went up into the Blue Mountains and unless you really get off the beaten track, found an utterly ruined forest.
I’ve been thinking about what brings Jamaicans together. I know all about what divides us – race, class, history, income, wealth, address, language, born yah, ex pat or returning resident, ghetto pickney or uptown bwaii, donkey man, bicycle man, Prado man, fisherman, ganja man, helicopter man, politician, businessman. The list is long and seems to grow ever longer. And what unites us? You might say Usain Bolt or the Reggae Boyz - until you see how quickly we turn on them if they stop winning. Then it struck me that it is our land that truly unites us, the physical place, this island. Pretty much every Jamaican, resident or migrant, will assert that Jamaica is a beautiful country – even the most beautiful in the world. This is something we will all defend, if only in theory.
And yet – we do our best to make this near universal source of Jamaican pride – a lie. We chop down and dig up and develop and misguidedly “beautify” until we no longer see where we really live, in the shadow of towering mountains, at the edge of a deep, murmuring sea.
I still love Jack’s Hill. Waking up in its shadow as I grew into teenage and young adulthood made me understand at least one passage in the Bible, when I heard it for the first time in Scripture class – I look towards the hills, from whence cometh my help…
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Friday, June 5, 2009
Signs of the Times - Treasure Beach on the edge
What rules will apply to development in Treasure Beach? Will anything have been learned from the mistakes made in other parts of Jamaica?
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Losing our Treasures (II)
Construction on the Treasure Beach canal has stopped, or so I’m told by the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA). Of course, it “stopped” after the National Works Agency (NWA) had finished what they intended to do in this Phase One, had packed up their bulldozers and headed off to seek other funding to complete the destruction. A NEPA vehicle was then seen in the area shortly after the NWA departed, with the occupants staring morosely at the canal. “You guys are three years too late!” shouted a passerby. I predict there will now be “meetings” and “regularization” and possibly even a “probe.” I further predict no one will be found responsible for this ignorant, lawless and reckless action, and there will be no sanctions applied.
I received two thoughtful emails on my first blog and a case study we had done on the Treasure Beach canal. The case study is not entirely completed, but will eventually be posted on the website of the Jamaica Environment Trust at http://www.jamentrust.org/ and on the Treasure Beach forum www.treasurebeach.net, if the webmaster will accept it.
Sandy Tatham of Treasure Beach wrote: “Great Bay is unlike any of the other Treasure Beach bays. Sheltered by the Great Pedro Bluff, this bay does not normally experience the “rough and dangerous” seas of the rest of the coastline. Great Bay does not have undertows, the sands are lighter in colour, and the beach more often than not, much wider and deeper than the other bays. This majestic bluff is the saving grace of this little village.The fact that Great Bay is entered by an entirely different approach to the rest of Treasure Beach, and ends at a dead end along side the Bluff, is I believe, its other saving grace. My most important point though, is the fact that Great Bay, has NEVER been subdivided. It is the least developed / developing of the Treasure Beach villages, apart from Fort Charles, which suffers from a lack of water. Very few pieces of land have changed hands in recent years, as most of the lands remain in the hands of large land owners who continue to farm their land as they have done through several generations: goats, sheep, cows and some cash crops. My family are amongst the “newcomers” and we have been here since 1969! The subdivision and developments you speak of have taken place mostly in the areas of Sandy Bank, Olde Wharfe, and along the main Treasure Beach Road, NOT Great Bay. Great Bay, unfortunately, though, has been the village that has suffered the most as a result of these subdivisions and development. Most of the ponds, several springs and few wells are found in Great Bay. I was once took Ann Sutton and fellow scientists to one of our “hidden” ponds and spring. They needed to go by foot, as they had, by plane, determined that this spot had the highest indigenous duck count on the island. All of this is what makes Great Bay so special ..... But since man has intervened by raising the level of the main road to Treasure Beach, allowed the subdivisions you speak of and subsequent building of plazas along the main road, when the rains come, these ponds fill and can no longer flow into the sea, as they once did. Instead, the waters back up and flood Great Bay. The old timers will tell you that the waters used to “walk” from the Great Pedro Pond across the main road through marshy lands and exit into the ocean close to the Treasure Beach Hotel. I even remember walking this in my childhood. Another contributing problem is the building and road works in the higher lands above the bays. These have redirected the flow of water, bringing much larger quantities down into the low lying areas causing destruction of roads and hill side. It is quite devastating. Most only see the destruction where homes and businesses are affected, but there are other areas where entire landscapes are changing due to the mass of water pouring off the hills. While it is imperative to have this canal problem rectified, sadly, the problem is much greater than just this and needs to be examined on a larger scale.”
Andreas Oberli from Irish Town wrote: “In 1979 I walked for the first time from Calabash east to Great Bay. The landscape was very special: Fine yellow grass like a large animal’s fur and here and there these enormous seagrape trees and bull thatch palms, a few little bays with shallow clear water (one of them where now the new canal joins the sea), one new house (large, ugly, surrounded by lawn and coconut trees) which we were able to ignore, the majestic bluff in front of us across the blue bay – and the wide beach of Great Bay!The beach is still there, even now. It went away in the last big storms, and it always comes back quite quickly. But the walk you can’t do anymore....”
And I received a wonderful letter from Artie Parchment of Great Bay in Treasure Beach. Artie says in part: “I am 85 years of age, throughout these years I have never experienced flooding as we had in 2005. Our property value has plunged to zero because the ponds have taken over, or washed away all the fences and tracks to secure and get to it. I definitely agree in regards the ecological problems. Our idea was not to drain the ponds completely but to keep them from overflowing when we have hurricanes with heavy rains…we really have a problem and I sincerely hope a solution will be found before the good Lord takes me away. The problem now is to satisfy the people of Great Bay and the ecology.”
This is an elder from the community who has been personally been affected by the flooding; yet still he writes of the importance of the ecology. If only we had people in positions of authority and power who shared Artie Parchment’s mindset, who valued the beauty and functionality of our land, who would take measured decisions about development based on careful study, considering both the short and the long term, and who respected our Jamaican law. Then and only then, we might have a Treasure Beach with its treasures intact forever.
I received two thoughtful emails on my first blog and a case study we had done on the Treasure Beach canal. The case study is not entirely completed, but will eventually be posted on the website of the Jamaica Environment Trust at http://www.jamentrust.org/ and on the Treasure Beach forum www.treasurebeach.net, if the webmaster will accept it.
Sandy Tatham of Treasure Beach wrote: “Great Bay is unlike any of the other Treasure Beach bays. Sheltered by the Great Pedro Bluff, this bay does not normally experience the “rough and dangerous” seas of the rest of the coastline. Great Bay does not have undertows, the sands are lighter in colour, and the beach more often than not, much wider and deeper than the other bays. This majestic bluff is the saving grace of this little village.The fact that Great Bay is entered by an entirely different approach to the rest of Treasure Beach, and ends at a dead end along side the Bluff, is I believe, its other saving grace. My most important point though, is the fact that Great Bay, has NEVER been subdivided. It is the least developed / developing of the Treasure Beach villages, apart from Fort Charles, which suffers from a lack of water. Very few pieces of land have changed hands in recent years, as most of the lands remain in the hands of large land owners who continue to farm their land as they have done through several generations: goats, sheep, cows and some cash crops. My family are amongst the “newcomers” and we have been here since 1969! The subdivision and developments you speak of have taken place mostly in the areas of Sandy Bank, Olde Wharfe, and along the main Treasure Beach Road, NOT Great Bay. Great Bay, unfortunately, though, has been the village that has suffered the most as a result of these subdivisions and development. Most of the ponds, several springs and few wells are found in Great Bay. I was once took Ann Sutton and fellow scientists to one of our “hidden” ponds and spring. They needed to go by foot, as they had, by plane, determined that this spot had the highest indigenous duck count on the island. All of this is what makes Great Bay so special ..... But since man has intervened by raising the level of the main road to Treasure Beach, allowed the subdivisions you speak of and subsequent building of plazas along the main road, when the rains come, these ponds fill and can no longer flow into the sea, as they once did. Instead, the waters back up and flood Great Bay. The old timers will tell you that the waters used to “walk” from the Great Pedro Pond across the main road through marshy lands and exit into the ocean close to the Treasure Beach Hotel. I even remember walking this in my childhood. Another contributing problem is the building and road works in the higher lands above the bays. These have redirected the flow of water, bringing much larger quantities down into the low lying areas causing destruction of roads and hill side. It is quite devastating. Most only see the destruction where homes and businesses are affected, but there are other areas where entire landscapes are changing due to the mass of water pouring off the hills. While it is imperative to have this canal problem rectified, sadly, the problem is much greater than just this and needs to be examined on a larger scale.”
Andreas Oberli from Irish Town wrote: “In 1979 I walked for the first time from Calabash east to Great Bay. The landscape was very special: Fine yellow grass like a large animal’s fur and here and there these enormous seagrape trees and bull thatch palms, a few little bays with shallow clear water (one of them where now the new canal joins the sea), one new house (large, ugly, surrounded by lawn and coconut trees) which we were able to ignore, the majestic bluff in front of us across the blue bay – and the wide beach of Great Bay!The beach is still there, even now. It went away in the last big storms, and it always comes back quite quickly. But the walk you can’t do anymore....”
And I received a wonderful letter from Artie Parchment of Great Bay in Treasure Beach. Artie says in part: “I am 85 years of age, throughout these years I have never experienced flooding as we had in 2005. Our property value has plunged to zero because the ponds have taken over, or washed away all the fences and tracks to secure and get to it. I definitely agree in regards the ecological problems. Our idea was not to drain the ponds completely but to keep them from overflowing when we have hurricanes with heavy rains…we really have a problem and I sincerely hope a solution will be found before the good Lord takes me away. The problem now is to satisfy the people of Great Bay and the ecology.”
This is an elder from the community who has been personally been affected by the flooding; yet still he writes of the importance of the ecology. If only we had people in positions of authority and power who shared Artie Parchment’s mindset, who valued the beauty and functionality of our land, who would take measured decisions about development based on careful study, considering both the short and the long term, and who respected our Jamaican law. Then and only then, we might have a Treasure Beach with its treasures intact forever.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Losing Our Treasures
Imagine a coastal area on a Caribbean island - a patchwork of fresh and brackish ponds that wax and wane with wet and dry seasons. Despite the ponds, the landscape is more dry than wet – scratchy, scrubby and scorched. Big trees are lignum vitae and thatch palm. The land around the ponds is filled with multitudes of birds - waterbirds, resident birds and migrants. The beach sand is dark grey, the coast heaped with old sand dunes, the sea dark blue, rough and dangerous. There are no large hotels, no red and white security barriers, no highways. Getting here takes commitment. This is Treasure Beach, on Jamaica’s south coast.
The place has its aficionados – returning residents, farmers, villa owners, boutique hotel operators, rich folks from Mandeville, several fishing beaches, and many small Jamaican establishments, where anyone can walk in and buy a meal cooked to order. Goats are the main traffic holdup. New buildings are overlarge, garish and ugly; old ones are earth coloured, unobtrusive in the landscape.
Some 25 years ago, an area called Great Bay, close to the Great Pedro Pond, was subdivided for housing. It must have been during a dry period and no one considered the extent of the pond in periods of heavy rain. Nor did the planners suggest elevated buildings in the manner of old time Jamaica. No, we must have new things, modern things, regardless of the predictable antics of natural features like coastal ponds on a tropical island smack in the hurricane belt.
In 2005, two hurricanes drenched Treasure Beach. The Great Pedro Pond overflowed its banks and flooded the people in the Great Bay houses, old and new. Meetings of angry residents were held and the cry went up – Do Something Now! In early 2006, a politician sprang into unaccustomed action, probably damaging several muscles atrophied from lack of use. Without benefit of plan, thought, permit or environmental study, the National Works Agency carved a channel from pondside almost to the sea.
Apart from those flooded out who were happy, the residents sadly contemplated the ugly scar across the landscape – a giant gully. The pesky environmentalists (I was one) raised an alarm – pointed out the risks of marine contamination from the pond, not to mention the risks to the pond itself and therefore to the wildlife that depended on it. The construction was illegal, the environmentalists said, as drainage projects to the sea required both an environmental permit and a beach license and neither had been issued. More public meetings were held and extravagant promises of box culverts and weirs were made by the National Works Agency. Then the flurry of government action spent itself – the hurricane season was, after all, over.
The Treasure Beach gully slept in the sun through the rest of 2006, 2007 and part of 2008. Its banks began to collapse. Scrub colonized the silty floor. Every now and then someone from Treasure Beach would object to its unfinished state. A few men would show up, a bit of form work would be done, there would be some digging. The environmental regulatory agency, the National Environment and Planning Agency, started a file - and filed it.
Early in 2009, the bulldozers returned. Culverts with two bridges were completed, along with a concreted channel into the sea. Only a small piece of land remained unbulldozed; only a small piece of land kept the pond from being joined to the sea.
As I write, that piece of land will probably fall within a week and a semi permanent connection from pond to sea and sea to pond will be established. There has been no inventory of the birds, the turtles, the crocodiles, the rare pancake lotus of the Great Pedro Pond. There has been no detailed study of the hydrology, the geology, the historical extent of the pond. Tests to establish the water quality in the pond were done once in the dry season only. No alternative solution to alleviate infrequent flooding has been considered – including the restoration of old drainage channels, reportedly blocked by the filling of sink holes. The risk to property and human life from storm surge – a la Hurricane Katrina – has been ignored. And the matter of aesthetics is certainly not the National Works Agency’s purview, nor apparently, the concern of the National Environment and Planning Agency.
I left Treasure Beach last week and drove to Jamaica’s north coast, where rivers are “trained,” drainage gullies are ubiquitous, rainwater sheets off highways and parking lots and the roofs of massive hotels into the Caribbean Sea. And there was the result – the land bleeding into the sea, brown plumes of silt and poorly treated sewage and plastic bottles blooming in what used to be clear, turquoise water. From the Santa Cruz Mountains looking down at the Pedro Plains and Treasure Beach as I left, the south coast sea still held its clean indigo colour.
Not for long, though, I thought. Not for long.
(See recent photos of the Treasure Beach Canal on the home page (at the right) of http://www.treasurebeach.net/
The place has its aficionados – returning residents, farmers, villa owners, boutique hotel operators, rich folks from Mandeville, several fishing beaches, and many small Jamaican establishments, where anyone can walk in and buy a meal cooked to order. Goats are the main traffic holdup. New buildings are overlarge, garish and ugly; old ones are earth coloured, unobtrusive in the landscape.
Some 25 years ago, an area called Great Bay, close to the Great Pedro Pond, was subdivided for housing. It must have been during a dry period and no one considered the extent of the pond in periods of heavy rain. Nor did the planners suggest elevated buildings in the manner of old time Jamaica. No, we must have new things, modern things, regardless of the predictable antics of natural features like coastal ponds on a tropical island smack in the hurricane belt.
In 2005, two hurricanes drenched Treasure Beach. The Great Pedro Pond overflowed its banks and flooded the people in the Great Bay houses, old and new. Meetings of angry residents were held and the cry went up – Do Something Now! In early 2006, a politician sprang into unaccustomed action, probably damaging several muscles atrophied from lack of use. Without benefit of plan, thought, permit or environmental study, the National Works Agency carved a channel from pondside almost to the sea.
Apart from those flooded out who were happy, the residents sadly contemplated the ugly scar across the landscape – a giant gully. The pesky environmentalists (I was one) raised an alarm – pointed out the risks of marine contamination from the pond, not to mention the risks to the pond itself and therefore to the wildlife that depended on it. The construction was illegal, the environmentalists said, as drainage projects to the sea required both an environmental permit and a beach license and neither had been issued. More public meetings were held and extravagant promises of box culverts and weirs were made by the National Works Agency. Then the flurry of government action spent itself – the hurricane season was, after all, over.
The Treasure Beach gully slept in the sun through the rest of 2006, 2007 and part of 2008. Its banks began to collapse. Scrub colonized the silty floor. Every now and then someone from Treasure Beach would object to its unfinished state. A few men would show up, a bit of form work would be done, there would be some digging. The environmental regulatory agency, the National Environment and Planning Agency, started a file - and filed it.
Early in 2009, the bulldozers returned. Culverts with two bridges were completed, along with a concreted channel into the sea. Only a small piece of land remained unbulldozed; only a small piece of land kept the pond from being joined to the sea.
As I write, that piece of land will probably fall within a week and a semi permanent connection from pond to sea and sea to pond will be established. There has been no inventory of the birds, the turtles, the crocodiles, the rare pancake lotus of the Great Pedro Pond. There has been no detailed study of the hydrology, the geology, the historical extent of the pond. Tests to establish the water quality in the pond were done once in the dry season only. No alternative solution to alleviate infrequent flooding has been considered – including the restoration of old drainage channels, reportedly blocked by the filling of sink holes. The risk to property and human life from storm surge – a la Hurricane Katrina – has been ignored. And the matter of aesthetics is certainly not the National Works Agency’s purview, nor apparently, the concern of the National Environment and Planning Agency.
I left Treasure Beach last week and drove to Jamaica’s north coast, where rivers are “trained,” drainage gullies are ubiquitous, rainwater sheets off highways and parking lots and the roofs of massive hotels into the Caribbean Sea. And there was the result – the land bleeding into the sea, brown plumes of silt and poorly treated sewage and plastic bottles blooming in what used to be clear, turquoise water. From the Santa Cruz Mountains looking down at the Pedro Plains and Treasure Beach as I left, the south coast sea still held its clean indigo colour.
Not for long, though, I thought. Not for long.
(See recent photos of the Treasure Beach Canal on the home page (at the right) of http://www.treasurebeach.net/
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Dreaming in Words
There are two good parts of novel writing. The first is when you begin dreaming about the book, when a character or a situation comes to you, and you think, oh that would make a good story. You go to bed thinking about it and you mull it over while in boring government meetings. It’s a bit like painting a picture in reverse – you first draw a few main people and events in your mind and fill in the background later. I love those early weeks, when you just know your characters are unique in fiction, your setting memorable, glimmers of a plot begin to emerge and it seems that in a few short months, a completed and seamless manuscript will flow from your printer into a neat pile of paper, holding all the magic of words. And they are your words!
The second good part is when a novel has been finished. Passing lightly over the years of angst, frustration, loneliness and self doubt that intervene, there does come a day when you have finished the blessed thing. There’s no point reading it again – you can no longer see a single word. Family members have been tortured with the dilemmas of your characters. Literary friends have been pressed into reading it and giving their thoughts. Expensive reference books on literary markets have been bought and pored over. Then you find someone – publisher or agent – who agrees to read it and you send it off. An assistant acknowledges it and, if you are lucky, mentions a time frame in which an answer will be given. You save it on multiple computers and jump drives and then there is nothing more to do. Except wait. And dream. You are back to dreaming.
All of this is a very long way of explaining the silence of this blog over these past few months – I’ve been finishing my second novel. “How to” books on blogging say there must be no hiatus – the number one rule of blogging is frequent posts. Too bad. I’m kinda opposed to blogging rules in any case. So now SnailWriter is back…
The second good part is when a novel has been finished. Passing lightly over the years of angst, frustration, loneliness and self doubt that intervene, there does come a day when you have finished the blessed thing. There’s no point reading it again – you can no longer see a single word. Family members have been tortured with the dilemmas of your characters. Literary friends have been pressed into reading it and giving their thoughts. Expensive reference books on literary markets have been bought and pored over. Then you find someone – publisher or agent – who agrees to read it and you send it off. An assistant acknowledges it and, if you are lucky, mentions a time frame in which an answer will be given. You save it on multiple computers and jump drives and then there is nothing more to do. Except wait. And dream. You are back to dreaming.
All of this is a very long way of explaining the silence of this blog over these past few months – I’ve been finishing my second novel. “How to” books on blogging say there must be no hiatus – the number one rule of blogging is frequent posts. Too bad. I’m kinda opposed to blogging rules in any case. So now SnailWriter is back…
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Royal Runnins
The King and Queen of Spain arrive in Jamaica today. There is an enormous spread in the Gleaner to commemorate the visit – the Jamaica Observer apparently did not benefit from the advertising largesse. In Jamaica, you have to understand the runnins – the Observer has hammered what has come to be called “The Sand Issue” – the theft of sand from a beach in Trelawny allegedly to “nourish” the beaches of three north coast hotels - two Spanish, and one American. The Gleaner spread has the predictable photos of the President of the Spanish/Jamaican Chamber of Commerce a.k.a. Spanish Ambassador to Jamaica Jesus Silva – is he gaining a bit of weight? The good life on the Rock will do that for you. Careful, Ambassador, you might jeopardize your Eye Candy status…
An article by Gareth Manning entitled “The Spanish in Jamaica” happily only begins the story in the late 20th century – so no uncomfortable mention of the poor Tainos – and does mention the environmental “issues” raised by “the environmental advocates.” Way to go, Gareth! Ambassador Silva dismisses these easily as lack of communication and the fact that we Third-Worlders are “not used to such a huge flow of sudden big-scale projects.” Really now. Actually, Ambassador Silva, we’re most used to large scale projects being inflicted on us in the absence of the required consultative, planning, environmental and social frameworks and yes, absent even an economic rationale. It’s the norm, not the exception.
The Ambassador gives us a fabulous quote at the end of his interview: “There are places in Jamaica where there is no investment, no economic activity, the coastline has been untouched and it has been very degraded.” Yup. Gotta get rid of that bush.
Ambassador Silva finishes with that old chestnut – “Sometimes the biggest threat to the environment is not hotels…it’s poverty,” he tells us. People who are poor and who directly use natural resources, such as for firewood, can and do cause damage to the environment, but it pales in scale and seriousness when compared to the actions of an investor with a bulldozer and an environmental permit.
One thing the Ambassador says is true: “Spanish hotels have become part of the geography of Jamaica and they are here to stay.” And that is the tragedy. When the economic downturn affects the viability of these hotels, after our people have been denied access to their own coastline, after our wetlands, coral reefs and sea grass beds have been destroyed in order to save them, after our coast has been turned into a version of The Generic Warm Place, we Jamaicans will be left with the concrete. The decisions are with us forever. As American environmentalist David Brower once said, “Our victories are always temporary; our defeats always permanent.”
The royal visit is not without its lighter side, of course. We have had the obligatory spruce up and clean up, the signage, the plantings, the paintings – all of which will instantly cease when the royal feet leave the Rock. The plantings will die or be returned to the nursery from whence they were loaned, the painting will fade in the sun, the signs will be grafitti’d or used by those Jamaicans not able to get jobs in tourism to make aluminum pots.
The King will honour Prime Minister Bruce and Mrs. Golding tonight – Portia and P.J. must be gnashing their teeth! After all, it was the PNP who brought the Spanish back to the Land of Not Much Wood or Water. Still, if memory serves me correctly, P.J. got his honours already and I'm sure a little patience will bring Portia hers too...
And so while we buzz around all agog at the brush with royalty – life continues on the Rock. We are assailed by vile and ignorant utterances from Member of Parliament Ernie Smith about gays, http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20090217/lead/lead6.html
we are desperate to protect our children from daggering songs http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/lifestyle/html/20090210t210000-0500_146018_obs_poets_defend_ban_on_explicit_songs_.asp
while doing little to ensure their safety, education and quality of life – the lack thereof being the real obscenities in Jamaica.
And another part of the north coast, historic Falmouth, is about to fall to an investor with a bulldozer, not one from Spain it must be said, but an investor also welcomed as royalty and given the keys to the kingdom without so much as the most minor of skirmishes.
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/magazines/business/html/20090210t230000-0500_146051_obs_stop_order_lifted_on_demolition_work_at_falmouth_cruise_ship_pier_.asp
An article by Gareth Manning entitled “The Spanish in Jamaica” happily only begins the story in the late 20th century – so no uncomfortable mention of the poor Tainos – and does mention the environmental “issues” raised by “the environmental advocates.” Way to go, Gareth! Ambassador Silva dismisses these easily as lack of communication and the fact that we Third-Worlders are “not used to such a huge flow of sudden big-scale projects.” Really now. Actually, Ambassador Silva, we’re most used to large scale projects being inflicted on us in the absence of the required consultative, planning, environmental and social frameworks and yes, absent even an economic rationale. It’s the norm, not the exception.
The Ambassador gives us a fabulous quote at the end of his interview: “There are places in Jamaica where there is no investment, no economic activity, the coastline has been untouched and it has been very degraded.” Yup. Gotta get rid of that bush.
Ambassador Silva finishes with that old chestnut – “Sometimes the biggest threat to the environment is not hotels…it’s poverty,” he tells us. People who are poor and who directly use natural resources, such as for firewood, can and do cause damage to the environment, but it pales in scale and seriousness when compared to the actions of an investor with a bulldozer and an environmental permit.
One thing the Ambassador says is true: “Spanish hotels have become part of the geography of Jamaica and they are here to stay.” And that is the tragedy. When the economic downturn affects the viability of these hotels, after our people have been denied access to their own coastline, after our wetlands, coral reefs and sea grass beds have been destroyed in order to save them, after our coast has been turned into a version of The Generic Warm Place, we Jamaicans will be left with the concrete. The decisions are with us forever. As American environmentalist David Brower once said, “Our victories are always temporary; our defeats always permanent.”
The royal visit is not without its lighter side, of course. We have had the obligatory spruce up and clean up, the signage, the plantings, the paintings – all of which will instantly cease when the royal feet leave the Rock. The plantings will die or be returned to the nursery from whence they were loaned, the painting will fade in the sun, the signs will be grafitti’d or used by those Jamaicans not able to get jobs in tourism to make aluminum pots.
The King will honour Prime Minister Bruce and Mrs. Golding tonight – Portia and P.J. must be gnashing their teeth! After all, it was the PNP who brought the Spanish back to the Land of Not Much Wood or Water. Still, if memory serves me correctly, P.J. got his honours already and I'm sure a little patience will bring Portia hers too...
And so while we buzz around all agog at the brush with royalty – life continues on the Rock. We are assailed by vile and ignorant utterances from Member of Parliament Ernie Smith about gays, http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20090217/lead/lead6.html
we are desperate to protect our children from daggering songs http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/lifestyle/html/20090210t210000-0500_146018_obs_poets_defend_ban_on_explicit_songs_.asp
while doing little to ensure their safety, education and quality of life – the lack thereof being the real obscenities in Jamaica.
And another part of the north coast, historic Falmouth, is about to fall to an investor with a bulldozer, not one from Spain it must be said, but an investor also welcomed as royalty and given the keys to the kingdom without so much as the most minor of skirmishes.
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/magazines/business/html/20090210t230000-0500_146051_obs_stop_order_lifted_on_demolition_work_at_falmouth_cruise_ship_pier_.asp
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Encounter with a Literary Lioness
Late last year, I read Junot Diaz's book "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao." I loved it. I googled him, to find out if he was speaking anywhere I might be, and saw he had spoken at the Key West Literary Seminar in 2008. I clicked on the website for the seminar and saw that the 2009 theme would be historical fiction. I had just finished my second novel - which is - drum roll - historical fiction. It was a Sign. Junot Diaz was not going to be there in 2009, but other literary Lions and Lionesses would speak and read and breathe the same air and I might find out something about historical fiction. There was financial aid; I applied and got it. That's why I was in Key West in January 2009. And before I go on - the Key West Literary Seminar is well worth attending.
The Seminar had two parts - workshops, where you joined a group of a dozen or so led by a teacher, and everyone's submitted writing was critiqued - and then the seminar itself, with lectures, panel discussions and readings from established authors. I've grown weary of the writing workshop over the years - especially for long forms. It's really hard to do justice to a novel when all anyone has read is 30 pages. So I joined the workshop for non fiction, planning a non fiction work which would be suitable for these terrible times in publishing.
There is a certain spirit that pervades such a gathering. The Aspiring Writers - all are, of course, voracious readers - walk around exclaiming at the aphorisms delivered by their favourite writers in panel discussions, they talk earnestly about books they've read, there is an atmosphere of heady intellectualism and wafting through it all is the taint of desperation from those yearning for publication, wanting to be one of the chosen reading to an audience from an actual book of their own, pronouncing on literary dogma, being the last word. People exclaim at seeing their heroes in the flesh in restaurants or hotel lobbies. And the published writers arrive just before the panels and try to leave just after, but always are waylaid by those who want even the briefest of brushes with their celebrity and that holy grail of writers' seminars - the signature on the flyleaf of a book, the actual handwriting of a Famous Author. "Mr. Vidal. Mr. Smart Bell. Mr. Matthieson. I'm a HUGE fan, would you mind...?" The book is handed over. The Famous Author smiles and tries to extricate himself or herself. The Aspiring Author has this one moment to get their attention and goes on, "...and I've just completed (fill in the blank - novel, short story, personal essay - the personal essay is big this year). What advice would you...?" Depending on the age and personality of the Famous Author, the encounter is short or long, general or specific, slightly useful or not useful at all, but regardless of the form, the Eager Young Writer (who is often anything but young) talks about it to other Aspiring Writers until the end of the seminar.
From the beginning, I had been sitting at the front row of the auditorium in Key West - I found there was more space to stretch out my sore knee. The writers had their own reserved section to the right. And one night I found myself sandwiched between a Literary Lioness and a Literary Lion. I had spoken to the Lion before because he had written about Jamaica, and he greeted me distractedly, because he had lost something and needed it before he went on stage. The Lioness ignored me. We waited for the first item to begin - it was described in the programme as a performance from a Chinese American writer I had not heard of.
The Lioness leaned across me and spoke to the Lion. The Lion glanced at me, apparently somewhat uncomforable with the Lioness's bad manners, but he answered her. They conversed. I tried to evaporate, feeling the stares of the Aspiring Writers behind me who were not seated in such august company. Look. At her. She's sitting with...!
The performance began. It was like that staple of Jamaican functions - the cultural item - slightly cheesy, somewhat amateurish, but endearing for all that. The Chinese writer was engaging in her enthusiams, she acted bits of her book with her daughter, she sang some opera, she did a bit of pretend martial arts, she changed costumes, she made jokes. She was thrilled to be someone who had struggled with English all her life - and who was now writing best selling novels in English. You go girl, I thought.
When it was finished, the Lioness leaned across me again. "What was THAT?" she said to the Lion.
"Oh, well a performance, you know," the Lion said, glancing at me again. The Lioness damned it as inauthentic, ridiculous, pointless. I became annoyed. "Would you two like to sit together?" I said to the Lioness.
She was unabashed. "No," she said. "We're going on stage now."
She was brilliant in her panel, as was the Lion. At the end, they came off the stage and stood to one side, awaiting their accolades. I saw the Chinese American writer approach them and she almost bowed to the Lioness, and I could see she was asking with utmost humility if she could have her photograph taken with this woman who had just condemned her performance and her work. The Lioness struck a pose and the Chinese American woman stood beside her and her friends took her picture.
It's trite to say talented people are just people in all their variety - but it struck me that a certain ego is required to set words on paper and imagine that others will want to read them. And these days that ego is overfed by the book tour and the writer's workshop and literary festival and the spectre of being an Oprah pick or a Richard and Judy pick or the winner of a mega literary prize. No longer can a writer be a romantic recluse, eschewing interviews, affecting a tantalizing mystique. It's the Era of the Media and you gotta be out there.
Who knows what the fate of my own books will be. One will be published late this year or early next, the other is just beginning it's search for a publisher. I suppose one day I might have to read from my own work, might have someone ask me for advice about their unpublished work - how did you do it, Miss McCaulay? - or thrust a copy of my book at me and ask for a message to someone I have never met and my signature. Happy birthday Doris. Diana McCaulay. I hope I'll cope with grace, remembering what the world looked like from the seat of the Aspiring Writer.
The Seminar had two parts - workshops, where you joined a group of a dozen or so led by a teacher, and everyone's submitted writing was critiqued - and then the seminar itself, with lectures, panel discussions and readings from established authors. I've grown weary of the writing workshop over the years - especially for long forms. It's really hard to do justice to a novel when all anyone has read is 30 pages. So I joined the workshop for non fiction, planning a non fiction work which would be suitable for these terrible times in publishing.
There is a certain spirit that pervades such a gathering. The Aspiring Writers - all are, of course, voracious readers - walk around exclaiming at the aphorisms delivered by their favourite writers in panel discussions, they talk earnestly about books they've read, there is an atmosphere of heady intellectualism and wafting through it all is the taint of desperation from those yearning for publication, wanting to be one of the chosen reading to an audience from an actual book of their own, pronouncing on literary dogma, being the last word. People exclaim at seeing their heroes in the flesh in restaurants or hotel lobbies. And the published writers arrive just before the panels and try to leave just after, but always are waylaid by those who want even the briefest of brushes with their celebrity and that holy grail of writers' seminars - the signature on the flyleaf of a book, the actual handwriting of a Famous Author. "Mr. Vidal. Mr. Smart Bell. Mr. Matthieson. I'm a HUGE fan, would you mind...?" The book is handed over. The Famous Author smiles and tries to extricate himself or herself. The Aspiring Author has this one moment to get their attention and goes on, "...and I've just completed (fill in the blank - novel, short story, personal essay - the personal essay is big this year). What advice would you...?" Depending on the age and personality of the Famous Author, the encounter is short or long, general or specific, slightly useful or not useful at all, but regardless of the form, the Eager Young Writer (who is often anything but young) talks about it to other Aspiring Writers until the end of the seminar.
From the beginning, I had been sitting at the front row of the auditorium in Key West - I found there was more space to stretch out my sore knee. The writers had their own reserved section to the right. And one night I found myself sandwiched between a Literary Lioness and a Literary Lion. I had spoken to the Lion before because he had written about Jamaica, and he greeted me distractedly, because he had lost something and needed it before he went on stage. The Lioness ignored me. We waited for the first item to begin - it was described in the programme as a performance from a Chinese American writer I had not heard of.
The Lioness leaned across me and spoke to the Lion. The Lion glanced at me, apparently somewhat uncomforable with the Lioness's bad manners, but he answered her. They conversed. I tried to evaporate, feeling the stares of the Aspiring Writers behind me who were not seated in such august company. Look. At her. She's sitting with...!
The performance began. It was like that staple of Jamaican functions - the cultural item - slightly cheesy, somewhat amateurish, but endearing for all that. The Chinese writer was engaging in her enthusiams, she acted bits of her book with her daughter, she sang some opera, she did a bit of pretend martial arts, she changed costumes, she made jokes. She was thrilled to be someone who had struggled with English all her life - and who was now writing best selling novels in English. You go girl, I thought.
When it was finished, the Lioness leaned across me again. "What was THAT?" she said to the Lion.
"Oh, well a performance, you know," the Lion said, glancing at me again. The Lioness damned it as inauthentic, ridiculous, pointless. I became annoyed. "Would you two like to sit together?" I said to the Lioness.
She was unabashed. "No," she said. "We're going on stage now."
She was brilliant in her panel, as was the Lion. At the end, they came off the stage and stood to one side, awaiting their accolades. I saw the Chinese American writer approach them and she almost bowed to the Lioness, and I could see she was asking with utmost humility if she could have her photograph taken with this woman who had just condemned her performance and her work. The Lioness struck a pose and the Chinese American woman stood beside her and her friends took her picture.
It's trite to say talented people are just people in all their variety - but it struck me that a certain ego is required to set words on paper and imagine that others will want to read them. And these days that ego is overfed by the book tour and the writer's workshop and literary festival and the spectre of being an Oprah pick or a Richard and Judy pick or the winner of a mega literary prize. No longer can a writer be a romantic recluse, eschewing interviews, affecting a tantalizing mystique. It's the Era of the Media and you gotta be out there.
Who knows what the fate of my own books will be. One will be published late this year or early next, the other is just beginning it's search for a publisher. I suppose one day I might have to read from my own work, might have someone ask me for advice about their unpublished work - how did you do it, Miss McCaulay? - or thrust a copy of my book at me and ask for a message to someone I have never met and my signature. Happy birthday Doris. Diana McCaulay. I hope I'll cope with grace, remembering what the world looked like from the seat of the Aspiring Writer.
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