We can be a strange people, sometimes. No one likes being ridiculed or laughed at even though we have this wonderful trait of being able to laugh at ourselves. We are masters at picong and extempo. We find humor in most things, even to the detriment of persons who may have been physically hurt. As we say, everything is a big joke!
Well, that is if one is not from here then it becomes an issue. Recently we had the 'rodie' incident in Toronto and now a famous TV food critic not only talking about how great our food is but that we a higher murder rate per capita than the city of Chicago. How could these foreigners be so insensitive? who told them that they could actually make a negative comment about our beautiful country. Imagine that! There is joke then they have damn joke and that is where we draw the line. Of course not for one minute thinking that if this is how a visitor with a critical eye sees things then maybe that is exactly what it is.
I guess when someone else says it then it's not the same, all joke done!
Labour Day is on Monday 19th, June. We recognize this day as the day that there was an uprising by workers in the oil belt town of Fyzabad in 1937. The strike was led by none other than Tubal Uriah Butler and eventually became a general strike in the country. What I have a problem with is that there is not a museum in which the history of this can be preserved. Other than the annual pilgrimage to Charlie King Junction in Fyzabad, songs sung by the labour movement and some serious rhetoric by the leaders of the various trade unions, normally from the same era 1937, there is no public depository for documentation, artifacts, memoirs, film, nothing. Once again the history of this country is left up to a handful of individuals who on their own do it as a labor of love.
My personal experience is in wanting to give to the UWI the original, un-edited, tapes of the interviews of so many persons, some now deceased, when we made the documentary '70, A Revolution!' documenting the 1970 Back Power era. UWI was just not interested, and no, there was no cost it was being donated.
What is it that we refuse to recognize our history, it's as though we are afraid of it, or because some of it is not to our particular liking that we hope it goes away. There is not a single, well managed depository for anything. Not labor, not pan, not calypso, not chutney, not culture, nothing about our history. Its as though we never existed.
I drove through Mary Street in St Clair the other day and saw a plaque on a fence that said that that building was in fact the first house that the first PMOTT lived in. Of course the second house, La Fantaise, was bulldozed, history destroyed.
History is what it is, you cannot change it.
Not because a foreign TV celebrity makes a negative comment about our country we need to discredit that person. If we knew our history then it might really help us to understand who we really are. By the way he 'bigged up' T&T in no small way in the rest of the show.
And we live to fight another day, things can't be that bad as we are the 3rd preferred destination for refugees.
Adios!
Well, that is if one is not from here then it becomes an issue. Recently we had the 'rodie' incident in Toronto and now a famous TV food critic not only talking about how great our food is but that we a higher murder rate per capita than the city of Chicago. How could these foreigners be so insensitive? who told them that they could actually make a negative comment about our beautiful country. Imagine that! There is joke then they have damn joke and that is where we draw the line. Of course not for one minute thinking that if this is how a visitor with a critical eye sees things then maybe that is exactly what it is.
I guess when someone else says it then it's not the same, all joke done!
Labour Day is on Monday 19th, June. We recognize this day as the day that there was an uprising by workers in the oil belt town of Fyzabad in 1937. The strike was led by none other than Tubal Uriah Butler and eventually became a general strike in the country. What I have a problem with is that there is not a museum in which the history of this can be preserved. Other than the annual pilgrimage to Charlie King Junction in Fyzabad, songs sung by the labour movement and some serious rhetoric by the leaders of the various trade unions, normally from the same era 1937, there is no public depository for documentation, artifacts, memoirs, film, nothing. Once again the history of this country is left up to a handful of individuals who on their own do it as a labor of love.
My personal experience is in wanting to give to the UWI the original, un-edited, tapes of the interviews of so many persons, some now deceased, when we made the documentary '70, A Revolution!' documenting the 1970 Back Power era. UWI was just not interested, and no, there was no cost it was being donated.
What is it that we refuse to recognize our history, it's as though we are afraid of it, or because some of it is not to our particular liking that we hope it goes away. There is not a single, well managed depository for anything. Not labor, not pan, not calypso, not chutney, not culture, nothing about our history. Its as though we never existed.
I drove through Mary Street in St Clair the other day and saw a plaque on a fence that said that that building was in fact the first house that the first PMOTT lived in. Of course the second house, La Fantaise, was bulldozed, history destroyed.
History is what it is, you cannot change it.
Not because a foreign TV celebrity makes a negative comment about our country we need to discredit that person. If we knew our history then it might really help us to understand who we really are. By the way he 'bigged up' T&T in no small way in the rest of the show.
And we live to fight another day, things can't be that bad as we are the 3rd preferred destination for refugees.
Adios!
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