Little Children

January 20th, 2015

The great boxer (he is so much more than a boxer) Muhammad Ali once said: “Children make you want to start life over.” Thoughts about life and death and family and children ran through my head as I walked in the Jewish Cemetery on Orange Street today. From this large open space, I could see […]

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Room To Breathe: Greening Our Cities and Towns

January 14th, 2015

I had an interesting conversation with a young Jamaican woman I know recently. She is currently visiting the island from Canada with her eight-year-old son. It was instructive, she said, to view Jamaica through her young son’s eyes. He expressed his thoughts on arriving in Kingston with a refreshing bluntness, as children often do. While […]

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Why is Mr. John Canoe Disappearing Down the Road?

December 30th, 2014

So, what did Christmas mean to Jamaicans this year? The few days preceding Christmas, in Kingston at least, were frenetic. Traffic swelled to gridlock levels, supermarkets were under siege and nerves were frayed as shoppers with limited budgets struggled to find the best bargains. Desperate women fought over Christmas cake in a well-known supermarket. There […]

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Christmas in Trench Town

December 23rd, 2014

We drive down Collie Smith Drive. It is a wide road with a median and a gully down the middle, where people sometimes set up chairs to sit and watch the world go by. There is never much traffic. Goats rummage across a dark patch of thinly spread garbage in an area of open ground. […]

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#GoVolunteerJA: Cultivating Compassion and “Generation Change”

December 8th, 2014

The cavernous space at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in Kingston last Friday morning was humming. But not with the energy of chatting and socializing; this was serious, powerful, focused energy. I sensed it as I stepped in the door. It was the second annual National Volunteer Symposium 2014, with the Jamaica National (JN) Foundation, Cuso […]

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What is Love? Pamela Mordecai Subverting Us With Sonnets

December 2nd, 2014

It’s a particular delight when a Jamaican living abroad returns home for a visit…Especially when she has a book she has authored tucked under her arm. On November 22, a crowd of us – old friends, recent admirers, book lovers and the merely curious – gathered on the upper floor of Bookland, in New Kingston. […]

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