By LLOYD KING

Sir Wilson Harris

The struggle for independence in the Spanish American countries had a character which set these countries and people with a quite different experience from anything we have gone through in the Caribbean. Two aspects will be noted here: a) there was a desire to get away from the Hispanic self and b) to develop a self which was shaped by French Enlightenment ideas, and this specifically included a hostility to the Catholic religion and, it might be said, to religion in general. This sets up a profound conflictual pattern in Spanish American intellectual and political life which has lasted to our day.
Those who believe that the Cuban revolutionary elite’s attitude to religion was simply a function of Marxist indoctrination are quite mistaken. It was also part of an ongoing contest with religiosity which goes right back to the independence struggle. For the elite, for Simon Bolivar, as Garcia Marquez seeks to show in his novel on Bolivar, the vicissitudes which beset the post-independence period in Spanish America were generated by the resistance to this attempt to shape new selves and polities animated by the ideas flowing out of the French Revolution and the Enlightenment. Therefore there was a lot of translation, manifested for example in the wording of constitutions, and in the belief, sometimes taken to the extreme, that essential issues of governance would be solved if the right constitution was formulated. Bolivia produced 33.

Jorge Luis Borges

How unfortunate this swallowing of French ideas could be is illustrated by the career of the Mexican Benito Juarez, famed as the leader who drove the French out of Mexico. He was a pure-blooded Mexican Indian who had first studied at a seminary to become a priest, one way to escape a peasant life of poverty in the latin countries, but broke away to embrace politics and also French Positivism. As President of Mexico he then proceeded to implement land reform according to the positivist model which stressed the individual and individual ownership of land. But the indigenous people of Mexico had traditionally believed in and practised communal ownership of their lands. The result was disastrous for them. Not knowing the rules of this modernizing game, they were systematically robbed of their land and patrimony, because one of their own had taken over ideas which were ill-adapted to their real conditions. In Argentina, Domingo Sarmiento took over the Eurocentric division of humanity under the heading of civilization and barbarism. For Sarmiento, the best way to achieve Civilization, French style, was by way of genocide, particularly as he was aware of the very same solution in the United States. Thus the Spanish American faced many challenges after independence and in their early post-colonial situation relied on translation and plagiarism in order to achieve their imagined communities.
What was true in the sphere of politics was true for poetry as well. What is considered the first serious breakthrough in poetry took place late in the nineteenth century and carries the name Modernismo which is not to be confused with the modernism of the wider Western tradition. No West Indian student can easily understand why Ruben Dario, who initiated the new style of writing, is so revered. The poems of his which first amazed his contemporaries celebrated princesses and swans and Greek satyrs and were on the face of it nothing but translations of stuff being written by poets in France known as Parnassians. The content of Dario’s verse by and large had little to do with his environment; however, he brought back life to Spanish verse forms and instilled a music in verse which had been lost in Spain. It was Dario whose verse revitalized modern Spanish poetry but, with a few exceptions, not because of its content. In fact, one of the puzzling features of some Latin American verse is a peculiar dissociation from immediate context.
This brings me to a writer whose stories have attracted a lot of attention but who is little known in the Caribbean, Jorge Luis Borges. It was always easy to be hostile to the man; he was ultra-conservative to the bone, actually declaring an admiration for Pinochet. At the same time, he raised all sorts of fascinating intellectual issues, not least on the question of historical plagiarism. The particular story in which he does this explicitly is called Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote. In this incredible story, a French narrator reveals that his friend Pierre Menard had managed to rewrite not quite three chapters of the novel Cervantes had composed 320 years earlier. What could that possibly mean? Basically the argument, now become a commonplace, is that Time changes the meaning of all texts. All the references, however, are relevant to the view that with the passage of Time readers inevitably change the meaning of earlier texts, for what comes between author and text are all the changes in ideological perspective which time brings. Thus Cervantes wrote that history is the mother of truth. But when Menard wrote the same words he could not possibly mean the same thing.
For us now historical truth is always shaped by ideology. Similarly For Cervantes to exalt arms and therefore warfare over letters (read artistic production) was to quote a commonplace of his time; for Menard it is to take a position against intellectual pacifists such as Julian Benda or Bertrand Russell.. This is, of course, a reversal of the well known rejection of anachronistic readings; in fact it is a view that anachronism is inevitable. Consider the implications. The books of the Bible cannot mean the same to the most convinced believer as they would have done to their authors, not to speak of the point that is made by the fact that Menard is French and writing in French. No translation ever gives you the original intact. And the King James version was a translation of a translation of a translation. Which is the general point. As offshoots of the western tradition, we have had no option but to be plagiarists and translators. Our laws are copies of British laws, modified as necessary by copying from other Commonwealth countries, our military took over regimental colors from British units who have actually fought in wars, suits are still required in parliament so much so that a then PNM minister expressed outrage at a member of the Opposition wearing a Nehru jacket. In spite of the occasional talk about mimic men, plagiarism is our lot. It is, I guess why we hold on to our imagined peasantry and African and Indian roots. Before we shout plagiarism as a form of condemnation, we need to look into the extent we are condemned to borrow and the extent we are involved in anachronistic interpretations and distortions. I leave that to younger heads.
BORGES AND SIR WILSON
The writing of Borges preceded that of Sir Wilson Harris but I doubt there is a direct link between them. I will mention an obvious one. In one or two Borges stories a character about to die re-imagines a crucial moment in his life in order to transform it, sort of like the crew in Palace of the Peacock. The differences are two-fold. Borges writes short stories that make Harris’s short novels seem long. Secondly, Borges always sought to write with what he called lucid perplexity, and even Harris’s devoted readers stress his difficult perplexity. Nevertheless what seems to link them is their interest in a form of idealism, indicated in the stories referred to, that is to say that reality is subject to the imagination, the aesthetic imagination, which the Romantics were given to writing with a capital I. Part of this view is that reality as we know it is inferior. But again there is a profound difference in approach. Borges found the world and reality oppressive. There is his famous statement: “The world, unfortunately, is real. I, unfortunately, am Borges.”
This, I suspect, is not the kind of statement Sir Wilson would make. He is in the more optimistic West Indian tradition. He is committed to a sense of the spirituality of the real that is beyond historical fact, a mystical imaginative turn which has attracted some readers to Sir Wilson’s work. His view seems to be that History is inferior to the transcendent rescuing imagination of the artist. This again points up a difference to, not only Borges, but Latin American writers. The Latin American tradition has a relatively long history of religious skepticism, and a distrust of the mystical, which interestingly in modern times has led to a fascination with the otherness of experience. Thus you get the forms of writing known as magic realism and fantastic literature. Sir Wilson’s writing may look similar to, but is different in orientation from that of writers like Carpentier, Cortazar and Borges.

A tribute to Sir Wilson
….with some plagiarizing
The Guyanese poet Fred D’Aguiar recalls a day when he was walking with (the not yet Sir) Wilson Harris alongside a trench in Georgetown. Now Trini readers need to understand that what Guyanese call a trench might be the size of our Caroni River. As they walked Harris remembered a younger self walking with a friend along the selfsame trench and he pushed his friend into the trench. (Maybe they were attracted to the same young lady, who knows) In any case Harris still felt guilty about what he did as the trench was full of water. It was now empty. Now I go on to what D’Aguiar did not see, since he lacked the second sight with which I am gifted as mage and maggot. He therefore did not see the ghost of memory swoop down and with Harrisian hands also push him D’Aguiar or his double into the trench in a quantum way such that he was at once alive and dead, somewhat like Schrodinger’s cat in the box. For now D’Aguiar’s body wore the head of Wilson Harris’s boyhood friend who dusted off his clothes and started to climb up the slippery slope of the waterfall of transcendence. Waterfalls of transcendence are the easiest things to find in Guyana since they have about 365 rivers. Ask any Guyanese.

By Kevin Baldeosingh

PNM Leader Dr Keith Rowley.

One of the stock claims made by supporters of the People’s National Movement is that Trinidad and Tobago is better off  because of the party’s governance since 1956. Put this way, the claim is non-falsifiable, since it is based on a counter-factual: the state of T&T if the PNM had not been in office during the latter half of the 20th century.
If we frame the issue differently, however, it is possible to give an empirical answer to the real question: Did the rule of the PNM have a positive, negative, or neutral impact on T&T? This can be done in three ways, using simple statistical methods. The first technique is to compare key social indicators of developed nations and ours. Speaking on July 4th at the PNM’s Special Convention, the party’s new political leader Dr Keith Rowley asserted that the United Nations Development Programme had  placed T&T “in the top tier countries in the world” as measured by life expectancy, literacy, and per capita income. “We can take pride in the fact that these developments occurred under PNM’s stewardship,” said Rowley. Table 1, however, shows that T&T falls short in all the main criteria of a developed nation.
Rowley also claimed, “Over the last 55 years, largely through our guidance, Trinidad and Tobago has improved rapidly.” The assertion is undoubtedly true, but the centre clause is a non sequitur unless it is proven. In this instance, we can test the counter-factual of “guidance” by comparing T&T’s progress to the rest of the developing world. If it is anomalous, then perhaps PNM guidance might indeed by posited as the causal factor. By this criterion, Singapore and Lee Kuan Yew’s People’s Action Party would pass the test (although only within the context of Confucian cultural traits).
Thus, in the developing world in the second half of the 20th century, we find that economic and social progress was the rule, not the exception. In his book The Rational Optimist, Matt Ridley writes:  “It is hard to find any region that was worse off in 2005 than it was in 1955. Over that half-century, real income per head ended a little lower in only six countries (Afghanistan, Haiti, Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Somalia), life expectancy in three (Russia, Swaziland and Zimbabwe) and infant survival in none.”
In the developing countries in the 1970s, per capita income grew by 2.5 percent and by 4 percent in the 1980s. Between 1970 and 1980 in T&T, thanks to the oil boom, per capita Gross National Income increased from $1,559 to $13,336. However, inflation also rose from 2.5 percent to 17.5 percent. While income stayed the same through the 1980s, inflation continued to average 12 percent. Per capita gains were thus not much greater in real terms than the rest of the developing world.
In respect to T&T specifically, we can examine the statistical indicators 30 years before 1956 and 30 years after that decade to isolate the PNM as a causal factor. I use 30 years because social change generally takes one generation to occur. If the rate of progress after the 1950s changed, or took significantly different tangents, we can attribute this to the governance of the PNM.
Murder figures for the 1920s and 1930s are not available from statistical records. Between 1945 and 1951, the murder rate was 7 per 100,000 persons, so I assume that figures in prior decades were not significantly different.
By the 1980s, the murder rate was the same or slightly higher (it is now 40 per 100,000, the rise starting in 2000, the year before the PNM got back into office after the 18-18 deadlock result of the December 10, 2001 election). It is worth noting that the homicide rate is highest in PNM constituencies, to the extent that murder is now the leading cause of death for Afro-Trinidadians aged 18 to 30 years. So we can conclude that the PNM regime did not reduce the murder rate in T&T, with all that implies: no change in socio-economic structures or in cultural values
The figures for infant mortality reinforce this conclusion . This indicator strongly correlates with the general development of a country, perhaps because it links both economic progress and cultural attitudes (if you don’t act responsibly towards your young, you aren’t going to act responsibly to much else).
In 1956, 62 out of every 1000 babies died at birth; this dropped to 26 per 1000 by 1986. This was a clear indicator of progress in T&T’s social arrangements, but the decline in infant mortality had, in fact, been the pattern before 1956. Between the 1920s and the 1950s, infant death rates had declined even more steeply from 133 per 1000 live births. Much of this was due to improved medical care, but the research suggests that attitudes toward health-care are even more important once a certain technological and skills threshold is passed.
The figures for newspaper circulation (used because literacy data for both pre- and post-1956 are unreliable) show that in 1956 there was a ratio of one paper for every seven adults. In 1981, the ratio was 1:4. So literacy rates increased significantly. However, between 1930 and 1950, newspaper circulation rose five-fold, while the population only tripled, so the PNM made no difference to the actual rates of rising literacy. The party’s boasts about improving education are based on the “edifice complex”: the PNM can point to all the new schools, but the education system itself was not significantly advanced. This is revealed by the dismal 50 percent pass rates in key subject areas like English Language and Mathematics, and by the national mean Intelligence Quotient score of 85: a whole standard deviation below the average IQ score of 100.
Thirdly, and finally, we can compare T&T to selected nations. But what nations should we choose? Addressing a Special Convention of the PNM on January 27 1962, the party’s founder Dr Eric Williams, speaking on the issue of independence, said:  “And whereas the per capital [sic] national income of Trinidad and Tobago which increased from $651 in 1957 to an estimated $815 in 1960, is greater than that of several independent countries in 1957, for example, Malaya $469; Mexico $398; Ghana $272; Ceylon $197; Burma $85; Tanganyika $78 and India, which increased from $104 in 1956 to $118 in 1960.” How has T&T performed relative to these nations a half-century later? Table 3 gives a comparison on key indicators.
This country is now in a better position than all the countries listed by Williams as being already independent in 1960. Each of the countries we have out-performed has had significant social and political unrest, so the PNM can be commended for not exacerbating ethnic tensions in T&T. However, Rowley also claims that “In the 40 of the last 55 years that we have been in power, we led this society in a manner that would make any democracy proud.”
However, the EIU rating, in which T&T is classified as a flawed democracy, means that Rowley’s assertion is something of an exaggeration.  Also, when we apply a historical test, it is not clear that the PNM was the key variable. British historian Niall Ferguson in his book Empire notes that “nearly every country with a population of at least a million that has emerged from the colonial era without succumbing to dictatorship is a former British colony…This can be attributed to the way that British rule, particularly where it was ‘indirect’, encouraged the formation of collaborating elites; it may also be related to the role of Protestant missionaries, who clearly played a role in encouraging Western-style aspirations for political freedom in parts of Africa and the Caribbean.”
So the best conclusions we can draw from the data presented is that the PNM either played an indifferent role in T&T’s progress or, based on the profile of the party’s support base, was pernicious in stymieing the full development of our economic and human resources. Of course, these statistics won’t change the mind of anyone who claims that the PNM is a “great party”. But you can be sure that the people who make such assertions without providing hard data are only revealing their political bias.

By RUBADIRI VICTOR
rubadiri@yahoo.com

“Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
 
“There are only two lasting bequests we can give our children…one is roots, the other wings.”
—Stephen Covey
 
In a column in the T&T Review of May 2010, I said the Manning administration would pay the ultimate price because with NAPA they had transgressed against the Soul of the Nation. By this I meant that Trinidad and Tobago’s long neglected cultural Legacy is the Sun at the centre of our Soul. I also am saying that in his version of NAPA, Manning had aborted the crystallisation of the magical Golden Age Legacy of Trinidad and Tobago. The dream for a Home for the Arts on Princes Building Ground was a dream for which four generations of local artists of every ethnicity and type has crusaded. They saw in the Home for the Arts the vindication of everything that the civilization of Trinidad and Tobago had created up until this moment.  NAPA was supposed to contain, celebrate and liberate- in its architecture, curriculum, and programming- the glory of an unprecedented island civilization. In aborting this four-generation old dream Manning and Calder Hart had gone a stage too far. The vengeance of Moko awaited…
 This article takes a close look of what the original conception of NAPA was for generations of T&T artists which should the public to understand why artists are so insulted by the current version of NAPA. The other idea being explored in this piece is this: The NAPA fiasco could also be the ultimate symbol of the abortion by Maximum Leadership of the dreams of the Visionary Citizen with the May 24th election result marking the first step of the triumph of the Visionary Citizen over the Maximum Leader.
The term “Visionary Citizen” is used here to describe the gifted citizen who has been trying to dream T&T into existence for the last 200 years. There have been many, from many walks of life. It is this magical consort that has emerged from amongst the crowd to distill the poetry of T&T’s magic into something that could be communioned with by all their fellow citizens.
The Visionary Citizen has been creating festivals, monuments, artifacts and systems for Trinbagonians to know themselves: Seiwdass Sadhu who built the Temple by the Sea; Ras Shorty I inventing Soca; George Brown architecturally inventing modern Port of Spain and Woodbrook; Spree Simon and the host of teenage delinquents who invented the Pan; Leroy Clarke inventing the El Tucuche myth; Minshall innovating the traditional Bat mas to arrive at Man Crab and then Tan Tan and Saga Boy…These are all superhuman examples of the Visionary Citizen. These are some of the Maroons (escaped slaves) that got away with it… All will testify that they have gotten away with it by the skin of their teeth…
 However beneath them are a whole host of citizen initiatives that have been aborted, most of them since Independence. Since then there has been an undeclared war on citizens with Ideas. Why is this? How could it have happened? How could a country so gifted be so saddled with a class so bent on assassinating its gifts?
 
THE WAR AGAINST THE
VISIONARY CITIZEN

Part of the root of T&T’s war against the Visionary Citizen may be found in the creation of the Crown Colony. Trinis are fond of saying that we have a Westminster system of government- but we do not. Our Westminster system is overwhelmed by the insertion of the Crown Colony. The Crown Colony was the most evolved form of Plantation Government. In the Crown Colony, power has been completely centralized into the person of the Governor who is in turn controlled by the Crown.

The structure centralized power away from the ‘Cabinet’/Council, the ‘Parliament’, and the people. The power then really lay with whoever was advising the Governor.  Sounds familiar? Trinidad was the most evolved form and the prototype of the Crown Colony.
Crown Colonies normally emerged from territories acquired by war- so the Crown Colony at its worst also presumed that the local population consisted of members of a potentially violent opposition that needed to be neutered and subdued. This paranoia could also be said to be part of the psychology of the Governor.
The local British governor and the imperial British government probably thought that the Crown Colony was the only way to rule such a freakishly varied and magical society such as Trinidad- made up of Spanish, Amerindians, French exiles who controlled the cultural and social life, an English officer and clerical class, and culturally independent Africans.
This reliance on destroying indigenous will to flatten out the peaks of local flowering independence would become a theme of all our rulers. Nothing indigenous would be crowned unless it had been validated by overseas…The neuroses of the Governor Planter would find its next evolutionary step in Dr Eric Williams.
 
WILLIAMS VS THE
VISIONARY CITIZEN

Williams set the template for how Maximum Governor leadership would be exercised in our modern Western democratic republic. Despite all his gifts Williams went about obliterating his visionary peers. He ran an inquisition through the public service and emptied it out of those with grand dreams and the spine to stand up to him. He even went so far as to imprison his mentor CLR James- our Dreamer par excellence!
The PNM was also emptied out of all Visionary Citizens- like Sir Learie Constantine- and all those who presented intellectual and charismatic threats. This established a template for every successive political leader of major national parties.
What T&T was learning was that instead of many fertile dreamers—all harnessed together in the service of nation—what was allowed was one Messiah, and we lived and died according to his singular say so. This also meant that as a nation we have not spent any time figuring out how to create institutions and systems to manage and harness talent. We only have systems that respond to maximum leadership where people are required only to follow orders from above…
 Many of us know of hundreds of brilliant visionary documents with blueprints for solving most of the country’s problems in Health, Agriculture, Education, Sports, the Arts, etc. These documents lie rotting on the shelves of most Ministries in the country. Most of these plans were discarded for plans imported from abroad or for hare-brained schemes conceived by the Maximum Leader- whether that leader happened to be Williams, Chambers, Robinson, Panday or Manning.
It is important to understand the culture that is perpetrated from above by the Maximum leader. Since initiative and ideas are not accepted anywhere in the system, what is left are those best able to follow orders. Everything is micro-managed by the Leader. It thus means that all that matters is proximity to the leader.

Patronage and dependency blossomed. In the 70s, 80s and 90s ideas and initiative became a disease and were attacked on sight. People learned not to dream and not to rock the boat. In every field we witnessed the best not promoted and the mediocre advanced in their stead.
Real dreamers were replaced by fraudulent imitations, mediocre copyists whose presence has dumbed down the idea of Ideas…Those that refused to keep silent on their dreams became outcasts, their ideas frustrated at every turn, their impoverishment a lesson for all onlookers as to the fate that awaits all those who attempt to dream in this town…And so, in big ways and small, the adventure of Trinidad and Tobago’s Independence never was allowed to materialise.
 Trinbagonian Independence was not defeated in a grand war by a foreign force, nor by an internal competing idea; it was defeated by thousands of tiny acts of spite and pettiness by many small people. If we were to assemble all the visionary ideas slaughtered by the Maximum Leaders and the minions of the Mediocre since Independence we will begin to get a glimpse of the glorious people we could have become.
I believe that the apathy of the average Trinidadian is a result of them having witnessed generations of this destruction of dreams and dreamers. I believe that Trinbagonians have learned not to try to want more. It is not apathy- it is defeat…
The end result has been that this country has never had the benefit of its visionary citizens. This is where the civilization of T&T pales beside those of many others on the planet who are not as talented as us. The real genius of a country like the United States lies in the pathways and facilitative mechanisms it has in place for the resourcing and the crowning of the Visionary Citizen. What else is Bill Gates, George Lucas, Oprah Winfrey, or Barack Obama but ordinary citizens facilitated to take their ideas to their glorious conclusions? Can we honestly say that we have created a society that has done the same?
The heroic geniuses of T&T that have emerged have all done so despite the system… And having emerged they have never been facilitated by it.  It has become a cliché to say in Trinidad, only those who escaped to foreign lands were allowed to blossom and be crowned. It is a cliche to say that everywhere you look there are ‘square pegs in round holes’. The tragedy is that there is truth to the chorus. But not all classes are created the same- because there has been one place where the Republic was sacrosanct and where genius ran riot and established its own principalities and power in T&T. This place is the Jamette culture.

NEXT MONTH: The Seat Of Our Beauty In The Jamette Culture

By IAN McDONALD

It seems but a month or two ago that I was observing, with no great excitement to be sure, my last birthday. Yet here again, to my dismay, is another one. I hear old Sam Beckett’s pessimistic shout: “We breathe, we change! We lose our hair, our teeth! Our bloom, our ideas!” Doris Lessing in her autobiography Under My Skin describes how perception of time passing changes utterly as one gets older. She describes her experience as a child:

“How far away it was, the condition of being grown up and free, for I was still in the state when the end of the day could hardly be glimpsed from its start…There is no way of conveying in words the difference between child-time and grown-up time… In the story of a life, if it is being told true to time as outwardly experienced, then I’d say 70% of the book would take you to age 10. At 80% you would have reached 15. At 95% you get to about 30. The rest is a rush towards eternity.”

That is perfectly true. As one gets older life becomes an ever-increasing blur of days, weeks, months, years. If one keeps a journal and looks back on it the days are packed enough with incidents and people and events, joys and fears and a hundred small triumphs and tribulations - as the days have always been. But it is the living through it all that gets quicker and quicker. Someone has pushed the fast-forward button.

There is no time left for great achievements. Nobody gets a return match between himself and his destiny. The main tasks of life are already undertaken or nearly finished. The hectic concerns that ate up the hours are not half so insistent and seem not one tenth so important. What is called getting on in the world has long ago begun to seem a fool’s pastime.

The quiet pleasures, the private delights, the sitting in the garden talking with my wife or reading as evening falls, matter much more now. Going out in society, to parties and receptions, to any gathering except a meeting between close friends, becomes increasingly a burdensome chore to be avoided at all costs.

Increasingly, memories come out of the blue from scores of years in the past. For some reason at this time I remember when I was very young I went to a house where there was a blind boy in the family. I remember a dark room full of flowers. The boy plays with his mother’s face with the fingers of both hands and he is smiling. Why does that particular picture come back so vividly now after almost 70 years?

More and more I see the truth of the 17th Century Japanese poet Tachibana Akemi’s “Poem of Solitary Delights” which I first read in my twenties and which in those long- gone days puzzled me:

What a delight it is

When, borrowing

Rare writings from a friend,

I open out

The first sheet.

What a delight it is

When a guest you cannot stand

Arrives, then says to you

“I’m afraid I can’t stay long”

And soon goes home.

What a delight it is

When, reading of wild exploits,

I hear about me daily

The well-loved sounds

Of a settled home.

What a delight it is

When night falls

A graceful woman

Brings fragrant candles

And chilled glasses of wine.

What a delight it is

When after a hundred days

Of racking my brains

That verse that wouldn’t come

Suddenly turns out well.”

I have noticed a surprising development. As the years go by the beauty of ordinary things again becomes more sharply focused. When I was very young every day revealed fresh miracles of a shining world. Then there was a long period in the press of strenuous ambition and coping with the clutter of life when one lived without revelations. But now they come again. I think even Samuel Beckett, the eternal fatalist, felt it in his ageing bones: “What sky! What light! Ah, in spite of all, it is a blessed thing to be alive in such weather, and out of hospital.” This heightened perception I think must come in childhood and with age: in childhood because it is happening for the first time, in age because you may soon have to say goodbye.

As the birthdays inexorably quicken their pace one can only be thankful for this unexpected blessing.

By SAM LOCHAN

There are no more “boy schools” left in Trinidad and Tobago. The old traditional “boy schools” like Queens Royal College, St Mary’s College, Naparima College, and all the other denominational “boy schools” are no longer male preserves. Most of these schools have a teaching staff consisting of at least seventy percent females—and young women at that. The future of these “boy schools” now rest squarely in the hands of these young female teachers. These schools should now be more appropriately called schools “for boys”.

In the 1960s when I attended St Mary’s College there was only one female member of staff. She was a part-time teacher who came in to teach us elocution and the habits of good “broughtupsy”. (She was an old lady who the priests violently protected from us miserable boys and so classes with her were a danger to our health.). Boys of my time in St Mary’s, QRC and lots of other secondary schools had the experience of being taught by men who were serious about the job of teaching and were also intellectually strong. They could also, at least some of them, play good football and cricket, as we found out when they played against us students.

By 1972 there were two or three permanent female members of staff; today the staff must be predominantly females as in all the other “boy schools” in Trinidad and Tobago.  In fact there are two “boy schools” in North Trinidad with female principals and vice principals. In one traditional “boy school”, a teacher friend of mine had protested to me that before the women came on staff,  there were two male football teams made up of staff members and infinitely more liming after school hours. The life of the staff has changed with the advent of a female teaching corps, many of them being women who tend to go home immediately after classes to take care of their families.  On the other hand, in some of these “boy schools”, women,  sometimes mothers of boys, were now managing groups like scout troops, previously the preserve of male teachers.

None of this is to deny the tremendous contribution of the women who have taught at these schools in the last three or four decades. What is does point to, however, is the different conditions that have defined the trajectories of boys’ schools as opposed to girls’ schools in the past few decades. It would surprise no one to learn that the culture of girls colleges like St Joseph’s Convent, Bishops Anstey High School, Naparima, SAGHS etc have remained largely intact- and even been re-inforced by the continuation of established practice of largely recruiting female teachers for the student body of females. The culture is re-inforced even further by the fact that many of these female teachers are past students of the school who serve as carriers of their schools’ cultural legacy and often bring extra zeal to the job.

On the other hand, with the feminization of their staff, the “boy schools” risk losing some element of cultural legacy and loyalty.

So today a “boy school” has become a dubious concept and it might already be impossible to replicate the “all boys” school of former times. It is worth noting at this stage, that we have had a pretty good and long tradition of co-educational secondary schools in Trinidad and Tobago. In Tobago, these would include Scarborough Secondary and Bishops High School while in Trinidad they would include San Fernando Government Secondary, Couva Government Secondary, San Juan Government Secondary, St James Government Secondary and Woodbrook Government Secondary.  We have also had St Stephens College and Iere High School as well as St George’s College.

My next observation is that the boys in the top “boy schools”  in Trinidad and Tobago have been under-achieving in academic performance for a very long time.  While their examination results have not been poor, there is evidence of  high underperformance when one looks at the total performance of the schools in terms of the percentage of boys achieving full certificates and the quality of their grades. It is therefore foolhardy to think that the answer to the underachievement of boys at new sector schools like Barataria East and West or El Dorado East and West would be solved by simply providing a same-sex environment. The problem exists as well at the very top “boy schools” with a same-sex environment. If the problem can be solved at this level, it may well provide us with some clues on solving it at another level.

The examination results from CXC and CAPE usually have the girls taking the lion’s share of the scholarships. This is a far cry from the 1960s when girls were totally out of the running, prompting the need to introduce something called a girl’s scholarship. In these “boy schools” today, teachers would tell you that it is very difficult to get the boys to take their academic studies seriously. In the traditional “boy school” where I taught in the 1980s and early 1990s, the boys were generally satisfied to simply pass their exams. The complacency made it very frustrating to teach them at Advanced Level. As I was about to leave that school, a decision was taken to bring girls into the Sixth form, a practice which continues today. Ironically, one of the arguments advanced then was that the girls would make the boys perform better by providing competition which would push the boys to want to work harder in order to out-perform the girls.

Recently, I had the opportunity to discuss the matter of underperformance with some senior boys from a top “boy school”  in Port of Spain. When asked if they admired students who do well in examinations and if getting good grades was a worthwhile achievement, they all said yes. Asked if they admired boys who worked hard in school, spent time in the library, participated actively in class, studied when the teacher was absent- they all replied ‘No’. Such boys would be seen as “fighting it” which is just “not cool”.

I wish to suggest that this culture is alive and well in all “boys secondary” schools of Trinidad and Tobago. Indeed, I can recall only one principal of a” boy school” in San Fernando who insisted that the study ethic in his school was still strong.

Now herein lies a gender trap for boys in the school system. If we unravel it we may be able to move forward. Boys admire achievement but do not admire the set of behaviours that make for this achievement. There is a concept of being male which they have imbibed: Men must be cool, they must not be seen to be struggling with books and working hard. The boy who achieves is admired. He is considered smart. And since he was not seen sweating it out in the library or classroom he is admired as being cool for making the achievement look easy. By no means must one be seen as a nerd. So there is a strong anti-nerd culture among boys. Boys who are admired are the ones who are good in sports, music, athletics, and if that is combined with being rude to teachers or being anti-administration, then respect among peers is assured.

The nature of this gender trap is such that boys have bought into a culture of what being a man is all about - and that does not include soft things like devotion to academics. Do girls have this problem? It doesn’t seem so.  While boys know they would like to succeed and even do well, they have to achieve this by a kind of subterfuge. They have to study extra hard at home and then slack off in class. They may have to go for extra lessons. And if they end up in lessons with their peers then parents are wasting money because the same norms kick in. In extra lessons where some of these boys do try to work it is in situations with girls present in class. I know of no extra lessons teachers who have any same sex policy for their classes.

Boys who are well supported at home and who achieve high enough levels of numeracy and literacy at the end of primary school that gets them into a secondary school with a strong culture of achievement may survive, but the level of achievement in these top “boy schools” leaves a lot to be desired.

Those boys who did not attain a good foundation at the primary level and reach secondary school ill-equipped for the literacy and numeracy demands of secondary school are in big trouble. If the masculinity norms are about aggression, strength, materialism and even violence, then they do not have a chance because the kind of submission required to admit that you cannot read or write and spell, and that you should get help for doing these simple things, may prove too demeaning, especially if you are older than the other students in the class. In these schools, boys from a lower socio-economic background will take refuge in their sexuality, dress- thus the emphasis on brand name bags, boots, belts. Even when books are provided free of charge it is not cool to take books to school. Just to be seen walking around with such objects is bad for the image. Working on evenings to get income or staying away from school to do the occasional job brings in money which in turn commands attention from the girls.

Girls fall into the gender trap as well when they enter secondary school without the academic foundation to succeed. They, too, fall back on sexuality, clothes, hair etc. The fact that there is a greater focus on male underachievement and violence should not blind us to the fact that there is a large percentage of girls in secondary schools who do not attain even the minimum acceptable academic standards.

If the model of male and female that students adopt are powerful shapers of their behaviours and choices then any attempt to solve the problem of underachievement or violence at the secondary level has to involve confronting, systematically, the concepts of male and female into which they are socialized. In  Raising Cain, Dan Kinlon and Michael Thompson advance the thesis that emotional intelligence is not developed in boys. The prevailing culture teaches boys not to deal with feelings and emotions. They are kept illiterate in that sense, which is a crippling deficit that leads to violence and abnormal behavior, which, ultimately, reduce their chances of academic success.

Today, through brain-based research, we are learning a lot of things about the different ways boys and girls are equipped to learn. We know of two clear differences between boys and girls: the verbal abilities of girls mature faster than that of boys which is demonstrated by the fact that girls talk earlier and more fluently. Secondly, boys tend to be more physically active, moving faster and staying in motion longer. We know that the amygdalla of the female is larger than the male and this equips her to pick up a range of sensory data that males are oblivious to.

Richard Whitmire in a recent book, Why Boys Fail, argues that the world has gotten more verbal and boys have not. They tend to fall behind and then the inability to read gets compounded as it gets tied up with problems of underachievement and general indiscipline. The authors put the blame squarely on the kinds of demands made by recent curricula and the inability of teachers to help boys become literate. While most girls are wired up to get a faster start on reading, with help the boys can catch up by later grade levels. Boys have a strong need for play and outdoor activity.

So in summary, I am positing here, firstly, that the teaching profession has been feminized and the single sex school for boys is a dubious concept; that boys in single sex schools have been underachieving; that one major factor in the underachievement of boys is their construction of masculinity; that we are clearer now about the differences in the way males and females learn.

The fact that there are more women in teaching is not likely to change soon and so any attempt to create same sex schools will have to deal with the fact that women are going to be in charge of and be predominant in schools set up for boys. Schools set up for girls will have predominantly females in their establishment.

The concept of masculinity, if it is to be tackled in the culture, should not be confined to the school curriculum. If we are to tackle the emotional intelligence of boys and the ways in which they perceive manhood, then there has to be a societal approach. The self-destructive habits of males in the classrooms are a mirror of the self-destructive habits of males in the wider society today. Women may be complicit in this process of male socialization as mothers and teachers. If this is the main factor at the root of male under-achievement and violence in the society, then same sex schools are an irrelevance.

The issue of how males and females learn is a contentious one.  The differences between males and females are always one of degree. It is not that males or females have a capacity that is completely lacking in the other. If the culture of a society emphasizes the use of a certain skill then all in that society will come to possess it. Psychology helps us to understand human potential; culture allows us to achieve it. Tweaking what we teach  and how we treat boys and girls in the s- regardless of whether they are same sex or co-educational.

What must be achieved is a strong school culture which engages with whatever negative norms exist in the wider society. The norms of the school must be consciously developed and supported so that the school provides positive spaces for self-fulfillment where boys and girls experience success in ways which confront the negative norms of the wider culture. If the internal culture of the school is weak and children experience failure then the negative norms of the wider society will become dominant.

The modern education system which evolved in the West during the nineteenth century was a result of the discovery of print. Printing made educational systems possible and necessary. The increasing literacy requirements of industrialisation made it necessary to have a literate work force. Social theorist Ernest Gellners argue that print was at the root of modern industrial society and made the modern world more egalitarian, made industrialisation possible and made the national education system administered by states necessary. Agreed-  universal education is a recent phenomenon, and girls may be more equipped for early text-based education, but the same print-based, literacy-based system of education has seen quite a few male successes in the last three hundred years or so.

The following Editorial commentary is reproduced from the Stabroek News of June 26, 2010.

Twenty years ago, Professor Errol Miller of the University of the West Indies popularized the notion that the Caribbean was ignoring a “marginalization of the black male” and that thousands of “men in crisis” needed a boost for their dwindling self-esteem lest they become even more dysfunctional.  Miller’s analysis was questioned by several academics  who offered good evidence that by most traditional measures—such as the proportion of female faculty members at UWI itself - the region was still, generally, a bastion of male privilege. Some also suggested that Miller’s descriptions were tendentious since they implied that men were more deserving of a country’s resources, and that current trends would be blamed on the success of better-educated women. Whatever the truth of the matter, few would disagree that any marginalization which Miller discerned, black or otherwise, has only grown in the intervening years,  particularly among working class males who have suffered most from the social and financial uncertainties which accompany globalization.

Fortunately the crisis is far from unique to the Caribbean; unfortunately it may also lie beyond the control of individual governments, and continue for decades, since marginal men seem to be an unavoidable consequence of a shift to post-industrial economies which devalue customary male roles - breadwinner, social and moral authority, head of the family. Men have been slow to adapt to the new economic landscape and until they find a way to forge new roles, many are at risk of becoming almost completely irrelevant to the economic mainstream.

In the current issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Hannah Rosin argues that America has reached a stage at which men’s failure to adapt has become noticeable. She supplies a wealth of statistics to show, far beyond any reasonable doubt, that Americans are just as unprepared for the future as their West Indian counterparts. Consider this: “In 1970, women contributed 2 to 6 percent of the family income. Now the typical working wife brings home 42.2 percent, and four in 10 mothers - many of them single mothers - are the primary breadwinners in their families.”

In the United States, women dominate all but two of “the 15 job categories projected to grow the most in the next decade.” The two jobs which they have yet to outperform men are:  janitor and computer engineer.  But female success extends beyond traditional blue-collar jobs: “[W]omen are also starting to dominate middle management, and a surprising number of professional careers…  [they] now hold 51.4 percent of managerial and professional jobs - up from 26.1 percent in 1980. They make up 54 percent of all accountants and hold about half of all banking and insurance jobs. About a third of America’s physicians are now women, as are 45 percent of associates in law firms - and both those percentages are rising fast.”

Rosin cites similar statistics for other countries: “Women in poor parts of India are learning English faster than men to meet the demands of new global call centres. Women own more than 40 percent of private businesses in China…  [and, in 2009] Iceland elected Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir, the world’s first openly lesbian head of state, who campaigned explicitly against the male elite she claimed had destroyed the nation’s banking system, and who vowed to end the ‘age of testosterone.’” These trends , Rosin argues, are evidence that “[the] postindustrial economy is indifferent to men’s size and strength. The attributes that are most valuable today -social intelligence, open communication, the ability to sit still and focus - are, at a minimum, not predominantly male. In fact, the opposite may be true.”

Reports of a crisis in American masculinity also stretch back more than twenty years. In Backlash, a study of America’s responses to feminism, Susan Faludi cites a 1987 study at the University of Michigan which found that “men’s psychological well-being appears to be significantly threatened when their wives work.” The researchers even noted that “Given that previous research on changing gender roles has concentrated on women […]  serious effort is needed to understand the ways changing female roles affect the lives and attitudes of men”—an observation made at almost exactly the same time that Prof Miller first voiced his own fears about the crisis among West Indian men.

Can men adapt to the new economic realities? A glimmer of hope may be found in the rise of what have been called post-racial politicians in the United States. The label describes a group of African-American or mixed-race leaders born too late for civil rights great battles of the 1960s. Having grown up in mixed neighbourhoods and integrated schools the new generation have far more fluid identities and have quietly taken their place within the highly traditional power structures. While black America has suffered one ‘crisis’ after another, these men have shown that besieged minorities can succeed in one of the most competitive areas of American life.

President Obama is the most famous example of this phenomenon, but he is certainly not unique. Harold Ford (Tennessee Congressman), Cory Booker (Mayor of Newark), Deval Patrick (Massachusetts’ first black Governor) are other well-known members of the so-called Joshua generation. Admittedly, they represent only a tiny fraction of the overall picture, but all of them have exploded stereotypes about what black Americans are capable of achieving. If they can succeed, why can’t others?

Leon Taffari Phillips, second generation scion of the Chee Mooke Baking dynasty, passed away on June 9, 2010 at age 74. The family business began 79 years ago as Columbus Bakery on what was then Columbus Square and is today Independence Square. The bakery, then owned by future soft drink entrepreneur Joseph Charles, was acquired in 1931 by Phillips’ father Arthur Phillips who sadly, died when his children were still very young. As the story goes, the business got the Chee Mooke name when his stepfather, Boysie Chee Mooke, hung his nameplate on it for a

photograph designed to strengthen his chances  of being accepted at a professional school for bakers in the United States.

The sign was initially forgotten but eventually left in place after the public began referring to the bakery as “Chee Mooke’s”.

In the period since, Chee Mooke Bakery, which has grown to include several branches across the island, has become a symbol of successful black entrepreneurship. The family’s roots are also deep in the black liberation movement. Leon Taffari Phillips’s uncle, George Padmore, is a

legend in the Pan-African movement; his cousin Makandal Daaga was a leading figure in the 1970 Black Power Movement in Trinidad and Tobago. The following tribute was delivered at the funeral service at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception

A tribute by Eddie Yearwood

“Chee Mooke Passes On” was the big banner headline of Newsday Friday 11th June 2010. How appropriate and significantly captured.

There was a big smiling picture of Leon Taffari Phillips, that to me said a lot about the man, for he really passed on a lot to many of us: his education, his love for humanity, his passion and dedication. His unique method of approach made him a favourite with the people. No one tampered with him; he was not afraid to put you in your place one time. He experienced absolutely no trouble doing business in the area; he excelled in whatever he did for he had a passion for excellence.

Taffy was the last child born to Arthur Alexander Phillips and Daphne Octavia Cha Cha. His true birthday was August 4th 1935 although the Registrar of Births incorrectly noted it as 25th August 1935. Taffy never corrected this error. As a result, he celebrated his birthday for the whole month of August. He attended Nelson Street Boys R.C. then went on to St. Mary’s College- in those days ‘ ah big thing ah boy from behind the bridge

He was the first black captain for St. Mary’s Intercol team, playing in the position of wing back or link. He was an avid reader who had subscriptions for at least twenty different periodicals. He read all the newspapers which no one touched, not even the comic strip,  before he had read them..

He attended the University of British Columbia obtaining a B.S.C. in Bio-Chemistry. He loved music in general with a special love for pan, calypso and classical music. He liked Pavarotti very much with whom he shared a couple of things in common. Both were sons of Bakers, they were born in the same year, they had football dreams, they both were tenors. His favourite pan side was Despers and with football is in the air he would have been backing Brazil and Germany. Taffy was the first person to sponsor Ato Boldon and while I am on the subject of sponsorship - and we know how hard it is to get sponsors for anything even the big companies, Chee Mooke have always stretched a lending hand to many calypsonians, pansides, parang sides and drama productions.

He sponsored my programme, “The Original Magic Of Pan” on 91.9 fm for one full year and would have done it again if he was alive. For this I am extremely grateful. I coulda put mih head on ah block for dat. All he would have said was: ‘Things kinda tight but check mih nah. Leh mih see what could work out, if I can’t do the whole I will do part’, always giving you hope to carry on.

Taffy was able to diagnose a person’s problem just by looking at you. A master of body language, he was able to spot it from a distance. What a character he was! They don’t make them like that anymore. Anyone visiting him never left empty handed. “Give him ah sweet bread dey fuh mih and four currants roll. Yuh want ah German Bread? Gi’ him ah big one and put it in ah bag. As a matter of fact, Angel give him two bags, one for Iwer. I like that fella. Ah black man make it boy! Tell him howdy for me.”

He was so generous and a natural humanitarian. I used to tell him ‘you shouldn’t be running a bakery you should be heavily involved with the St.Vincent De Paul!’ The people around his business who came in contact with him experienced his generosity and love. For, whenever they were in a crisis or financial difficulty they could go to him with their story and he was ever willing to help them out of their predicament.

He loved baking and enjoyed seeing people eat. His friends came from the highest rung of the social ladder- judges, magistrates, diplomats, lawyers, doctors, insurance executives. From the Protective Services to the lowest man in the street, the down trodden, the homeless and the vagrant- he befriended them all, for he saw them all as human beings. As he would say, “We are all God’s Children. Amen.”

Taffy loved family life. Leon Tafari Phillips was a lover of all his relatives especially his children and grand children. He adored his wife Joan and his children Natalie, Simone, Stokley, Leona and grand children Tigana, Chad, Neffertare and Sudan.

I guess I have never wanted to face the loss of someone who had such an impact and effect on my life. Taffy was associated with so many words and phrases. Excellence, creativity, altruism, methodical, tenacious, hard working, a jack of all trades. He was also a tremendous D.J. with a repertoire of music beyond imagination. He was such a great person who, never in a million years, allowed you as a friend to settle for less than the best.

“Eddie that Program is top class boy! When I listen to you, your voice has character. You should be on the World Stage. You have the qualities to be great boy!”

Taffy was a loving father who was a strict disciplinarian. The way he handled misdemeanours kept his children in line. His desire for excellence in his children has spurred them to greater heights. He pushed them to work harder because a second place in test would be totally unacceptable to him. Most of all he had fun with his children who learned from him physical and social skills which, together, are the essence of team work. He was very disciplined, meticulous and well organized. His children are determined to put their own families in a better position than they are in today simply because their father gave them a better start than he had. A great man indeed. He bloomed in his prime. We will never forget him. We will always remember his contribution to all our lives, with an attitude of gratitude.

That is a very sad blow for me. Another unbearable loss. My friend of 82 years. One of my idols as an actor and a man with a heart so full of love, hidden sometimes in the garb of picong. My days will now be more desolate, my soul more lifeless.

All of my sorrow is with you.

Cecil Gray (Canada)

It was a real honour and joy to have known and loved Errol, and also to be loved by him. We became friends in 1958. He introduced me to his family. A year later he came to Jamaica and he met mine and ever since both families have been sharing a love born out of mutual respect and kindness. Errol Jones was a gentleman, honest and truthful, generous and kind, and had all the marks of Nobility. His sense of humour was infectious. A talented and consummate actor who had he gone to Hollywood, would rank among the very best we know.

But he remained in the Caribbean, in his native land, and we have been blessed.

In every place in every time and every place, God sends men and women to enrich our lives. E. Jones was one such person. We thank the Creator for that precious gift, and we pray for his pardon and his peace.

Easton, Jean & The Lee Family (Florida)

I had opportunity to see him in his element on stage, I read the book The Play’s the Thing…Errol Jones at 80 and I met him on a few occasions at the home of a mutual friend in the 1980s. I remember his booming voice and raucous laughter. There’s a special place set aside for the great personalities…particularly those like Uncle Errol, Horace James, Wilbert Holder (to name a few).

Mervyn and Inga Crichlow

About 1954, Freddie Kissoon invited me to be part of Errol Hill’s production of Derek Walcott’s Henri Christophe. That is how I came to know Jeff Henry and Errol. I left Trinidad shortly after to take up residence in Canada. Almost a half century went by before I was privileged to again meet Errol. I instantly recognized him by name and face. He had made an indelible impression on me with the intensity of focus that he had brought to his rehearsal and performance of his leading role as the historic Henri Christophe.

Charles Roach

( Canada)

The words that immediately came to mind were that of Hamil Parris in The Joker: “I’m an old actor who’s been beating these boards for years . . . .” Anyway, if called upon to say a few words about Errol, I would say: There’s nothing to say, Errol said it all and very eloquently by his discipline, commitment, respect, the exploitation of his talents, and the way he lived. Darling Errol, Break a leg!

Brenda Hughes  (Boston)

A Tribute to Ralph Leonard Errol Jones

By LeRoy Clarke

Snatched from the raw, Eye am gathered;

My heart kneels to the calling light of swords, kneels

Trembling like it once did in the old scriptures of good hands.

(De Distance Is Here)

Truth, poor noble creature, you left us a long time ago. A mysterious dark shudders in the leaf’s end ripple as virgin light ushers the climax to the Old! The old mannered ways you knew so well, tread by deciphering feet that opened the path to nurseries of fraternal greens; wide, soft savannahs urging our affectionate spirit forward with a recurrent melody of greater expectations, heartfelt.

The manner of Old is rare, rarer than the privileges they persisted unto us. In turn, the difficulties we face in them, must insist on us to think them impossible tales. No life can be so devotional! But, no effort that is less will acclaim the grandeur of our true Destiny. Ralph Leonard Errol Jones suffered that reality. He will sometimes say, while holding in his well-lined palms, an invisible world: Stella (by Starlight)…  Eye poor and tired and ugly! His was the lament of our world: The tongue given to praise is eaten up by false teeth. Too late now, to impress him with bleeding paper flowers. Ah, save your funereal elaborations for the emotions of another Day.

One day, when my courage was summed up enough, Eye asked him about that love of his life (His Muse). He withdrew further inward to allow only the echo of his voice: I love Her. She left. And when she walked, the subtlest trace she left with rising flowers. I don’t know. My thirst of boiling tears, leads me to finer summits, perhaps, a New Race among mine is in the browse -I don’t know.

She was an Enigma -His Woman. A Morning in his as well in all our lives that touches us deeply that we remember God forever in our search for ourselves. She is everything of us, she is no thing of us, remaining apart in her un-see-able circumferences while being that implacable core of all we are. What is left us, hers in him, is the common moment that expires no sooner it is pleasured, and we are forever after its flight.

Errol avoided deep discussions; he did not trespass. He would rather bite his lips, keeping secret her agency of Fecundity and Death. He bore the knowledge of Her as if he was obeying a sacred duty he had to perform -A pure force of praise begotten of the silence of gems that made him incomparable on any Stage.

We, who knew him well, also know, we knew him not. If He was our Island, verily, he was a continent, a world. But no ordinary limit contained Him. He was more an element, a quality of humanity that prefigures us as Good. Always, we hasten to say: Errol is a Good Man. Some of us even bowed in his Majesty, but it was more in memorial we felt for the image of things that hither distinguished us as decent human beings, lost to us now, but still remains here, chaste -our tortured haunt.

Errol was a consummate Actor, if there were One. And that, that he felt deeply within and pursued privately was the Elysium of fertile joyousness that eluded him and mankind, and which would be his life’s vocation to re-acquaint us. We are yet to find another in any field, so brazen but retreating; so punctual, so understanding of power and yet so kind to love -his moments on stage were virtually gestures of forgiveness for our wanton ways.

A passionate man, fondly saluted as “Captain!” with the visage of a well-rounded wisdom, his ecclesiastical fervour was made delineated to just offerings that necessitated subordinating his massive character to the action at hand. The width and depth of Charity, Compassion and Understanding that instructed him, further causing many an alarmist to be daunted by the presence of his Humility!

Then, whence came that brooding anthem “All things bright and beautiful” that belied his distress at us? It is my belief that the disappearance of Stella by Starlight left a hole, a void of muscle, a flayed bridge across which nothing came to tame the unbearable in his memory for triumphant voices and the ears that command them; themes of voluptuous reputations; carousels with their laughter of flowers matching their ceaseless seasons… The Poem had lost its Ear! O, pity the muffled shoulder!

Surely, He also missed gallant debates, some chiseled to a burnished flash of their brute. He found there was no pleasure in escaping the poverty of an artless world by closing his one eye to its suffering. His arms outstretched in the immense leisure of his voice were the envy of Rainbows: Immortelles, Bougainvilleas, Hibiscus, and Poinciana. The Flamboyant reaches our verandahs! We are touched by a rebirth of Decency.

All summits burst from your lungs. You kneel, ready for flight from salivary apparitions in dust to the calling light of swords. “It is I, Ralph Leonard Errol Jones, Esquire of the Old Honour Guard of Sacred Texts, my Heart trembles like it once did in the Old scriptures of Good Hands.”

There were strange stirrings, dissolving shadows in the windswept clearing of that Hour. Auguries buttered our horizons. Of Starlight motes are the grassy rhymes of distances widening our gap. We have a last glimpse of Him entering the chimaeras of dawn under a sprinkle of intense ecstasies of sky and earth -Her Eternal Kiss- A Holy place is set for Him… Apotheosis!

An Overture’s Garland, high, scoring Stars, welcomes You: Edric C., Ken O., Slade H., Horace J., Eric R., Wilbert H., Beryl McB., Eric W., Andrew B., Carlisle C., James B., Wayne B., Kitchener, Spoiler, Charles A. Errol P., Cheryl B., Claude R., Trevor R. Errol H., Errol J. George J., Astra D. Earl W., Ermine W., Lady B., George B., Victor Q., Leroy C., Cito V., Leo W., Ken M., Maestro, Terror and Duke…

Footnote: Naming the Main Theatre of The National Academy for the Performing Arts after Him, should be a small, but worthy tribute in his

honour. Or, the Poui of our Good Heart which nothing can imperil, punctual to its year, and ablaze in the Hills, will remind us of His Flame!

Quo Vadis.

The Elder, Chief Ifa’ Oje’ Won Yomi Abiodun.  LeRoy Clarke.

leroyclarke@hotmail.com

By Winston Riley

I came to know Errol personally in the mid sixties during my visits to #3 Nock Road in pursuit of a unity of mind, body and spirit through an encounter with a living other.  Errol, his mother Florence and his sister Daphne provided backdrop for that encounter. Backdrop, which represented over one hundred and fifty years of the forging of personalities steeped in a dignified understanding of post emancipation suffering. Suffering that bred a strong sense of freedom, freedom to resist all barriers…a freedom that allowed each succeeding generation to permeate our space with that which is gracious and excellent. They were all ‘long livers’ you know…

The tribute to Errol’s passing staged at the Trinidad Theatre Workshop on Thursday represented not only the demise of Errol but symbolised the passing of a ‘mood’…a ‘mood’ which permeated the totality of our lives. A mood which gave rise to discipline and the pursuit of excellence as in the case of Errol, allowing  us to see not only a legend in the performing arts but also a person in the workplace in the Immigration Department and at home, a person who environed those  spaces with solitude and hope.

The lived experience represents for all of us a kind of correlating between self awareness and the anticipation of death, between the creation of self identity and the potential demise of all identities, between ‘telos’ and ‘eschaton’.  It is this correlating that establishes ‘mood’ as the essence of existence, as the ‘attunement’ of spirit and nature, habitat and inhabitant. Our lived collective experience as narrative, gives colour and texture to that basic ‘mood’ and throws up personalities with specific characteristics, a kind of genre.

The genre of Errol’s generation has the stamp of sustained and dignified irreverence. Irreverence as disposition allowed the actor Ralph Leonard Errol Jones, through the very excellence of his portrayals, to retrieve the pain of our past and render that pain as art…  art in which the very power of presence engendered in us the conviction that we can go forth and make our new world. That generation is rapidly passing away, that ‘mood’ has changed and this forces reflection on Nietzsche’s statement “…The wasteland grows, woe unto him who harbours wastelands within.”

“Errol’s story,” (I wrote on his 80th birthday) “as a story of a man whose calling is to be creative is no play at entertainment, but a demand to recollect and reflect on the nature of our home ground. A demand to reflect on the future that has not grasped the ‘may be’ of our homecoming.”

I will miss Errol’s movement upstairs as he awakes while I am in the library below. I will miss reflecting on the daily attention Marcia paid to him to ensure his comfort. We will all miss his boisterous laughter especially during those telephone visits by many including Pearl Eintou Springer, Electra Harris, Pat Roe and Dion McTair. We at 19 Coblentz Avenue will miss the regular visits paid by his closest friends of the Upper House: Stanley Marshall, Nigel Scott, Joy Gould-James, Albert LaVeau and others now departed as they convened Parliament to decide the fate of one Johnny Walker.

We will miss the halting steps he made to the breakfast table every morning in his closing years. We will miss the close attention the Queen’s Hall ushers paid him as he entered. We will miss the special attention he received on the Ferry service and at the airport on our regular travel to Tobago. We will miss the dash to his bedroom by his great-great niece Ayodele and great- great nephew Jelani every time they visited.

And so we give our heartfelt thanks to Dot, Felicia, his doctors, therapists and all who helped us care for him so that the quality of his life to the end was no less than what he deserved to enjoy. We are now at the final curtain call for a well rehearsed exit to his often uttered refrain…  “I going Lapeyrouse…”

Lights down… Black out…Applause