Business and culture don’t often mix. And it’s rare when an idea promises to both make someone a lot of money, and help preserve and promote a vital part of our heritage. But such seems to be the case with de Windies Grill, the cricket themed restaurant which opened in Mandeville recently.

U ROY'S Wear You To The Ball was the first big deejay hit. I was too young for parties in 1970. But I remember my uncle shouting "Turn off that tuneless garbage!" to my older cousins when it came on the radio. Now the same people who sing along at oldies sessions to 'Chica bow chica bow, she's got it, move it up!" condemn their children's dancehall favourites as 'foolishness'. Plus ca change ...

AVID READERS lead double lives. One is the flesh and blood reality of family and sex and work. The other is a mostly secret dialogue with ourselves about imaginary characters. For fellow book lovers are scarce, especially if you have a taste for what used to be called the classics, but which, these days, are labelled dead white European male ­ or dwem ­ literature.

BORN TO humble circumstances in a small country with a few million inhabitants, Robert was one of history's great songwriters. His lyrics championing the poor and oppressed are recited and sung the world over. A free spirit who praised the pleasures of intoxication, he fathered 11 children from six women and died when only 37. His nation's most famous son, Robert's birthday is celebrated by countrymen and admirers around the globe.

For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

LOVE IT or hate it, none can deny the power of dancehall. Whether for good - as in Sean Paul's phenomenal international success, or for bad - as in the recent 'terror at Sting' - this music has an uncanny ability to excite people.

Louise “Miss Lou” Bennett is undisputedly the most universally loved personality this nation has ever produced. For over 50 years as poet, broadcaster, actress, television personality and stage performer she tirelessly championed Jamaican folk customs. Yet Miss Lou was more than a brilliant entertainer, she is in all likelihood the greatest poet this country has produced. Certainly she is the only Jamaican poet whose works are continuously in print and she still outsells all the others put together.

When Richard ‘Shrimpy’ Clarke fought for the World Flyweight Boxing title in 1990 you could almost feel the nationalistic fervour in the jampacked National Arena. “Lick ‘im down Shrimpy!” the ecstatic crowd screamed deliriously as he skillfully outboxed champion Sot Chitalada for the first 8 rounds - “He’s giving him a boxing lesson!” a man behind me kept shouting. Alas a jolting uppercut knocked out Shrimpy in the 11th round. “Him teach him too good!” a wag commented wryly as we filed out in gloomy disappointment.

I like to think I’m getting more tolerant as the years go by and more wiling to see the other person’s point of view. But the older I get the less I can stand the company of those who ignorantly insist on classifying people according to how much melainin they have in their epidermis and who see the world in terms of superior “us” and inferior “them”.

“A culture based on joy is bound to be shallow. Sadly, to sell itself, the Caribbean encourages the delights of mindlessness, of brilliant vacuity, as a place to flee not only winter but that seriousness that comes only out of culture with four seasons.” Derek Walcott – Nobel Lecture 1992

“The Church In Crisis” – so ran many headlines about the recent Roman Catholic sex scandals in America. But it’s also the title of a book by Philip Hughes detailing the 20 General Councils of the Church between 325 AD and 1869. If you include Vatican II in 1962 this gives an average of one every 80 years. Meaning that “The Church in Crisis” is probably the second oldest regularly occurring headline in history, ranking only behind that eternal favourite “War Breaks Out”.