Travelling from Jamaica to the USA is as much a mental journey as a physical one. Whatever else it may be, America is a smoothly functioning society that minimizes life’s daily frictions. In Jamaica on the other hand,  matters rarely go as they are supposed to. It may be too harsh to say people here try to be difficult. But too often Jamaicans’ careless attitudes towards those they are supposed to help creates unneeded irritations.

Many claim the Privy Council right of appeal is an archaic colonial relic. But the 1997 World Development Bank Report - “The State In A Changing World” - argues otherwise

The originating impulse of the Rastafari millenarian vision is often said to be Marcus Garvey's directive 'Look to Africa where a divine black king shall be crowned, for the day of deliverance is near' - a prophecy supposedly fulfilled by Haile Selassie's coronation as emperor of Ethiopia in 1930. Yet Garvey never uttered such words.

Rastafarianism was strongly influenced by Kumina-Revivalism. But Revivalists’ main concerns remained personal salvation and ritual observance. In contrast Rastafarians protested loudly about economic hardships and racial discrimination. Rastafarianism was not a movement isolated from place, time and history. Rather it was an integral aspect of a continuous matrix of black nationalism, folk religion and peasant resistance to the Jamaican plantation economy.

Books are the carriers of civilization. “Scripta manet, verba volat” – what is written remains, what is spoken vanishes. To posterity, a people without a documented history might as well have never existed. And a 100 years hence those wishing to know about the Caribbean will be heavily indebted to Ian Randle Publishers. In the past few years they have virtually created a library of the region, including “The Story of the Caribbean People”, “The Story of The Jamaican People”, “Reggae Routes : The Story of Jamaican Music”, “Bacchanal : The Carnival Culture of Trinidad”, “A History of Caribbean Architecture” and “Contending With Destiny : The Caribbean in the Twenty First Century”.

During the April gas riot last year a group of mostly white and light brown uptowners carrying ‘no gas tax’ placards went to the gas station at the foot of Jacks Hill and began demonstrating. Across the road on the sidewalk was a group of mostly black middle and lower class people also demonstrating with signs. Both groups were espousing the same cause. But according to Dr. Carolyn Gomes.

Whatever problems this nation may be facing, we have never been better informed about happenings across the country and the doings of our leaders. For the Jamaican press is more varied and vigorously outspoken than ever before. Especially heartening is the proliferation of community newspapers, radio stations and even cable television channels which report on grassroots news that never reaches the national press. And the healthy competition in all sectors is producing an increasingly more professional media.

Before man could paint, write, or make music, he could speak. Thus poetry is the oldest art, and the most enduring. In Nathaniel Hawthorne words "It is not the statesman, the warrior, or the monarch that survives, but the despised poet, whom they may have fed with their crumbs, and to whom they owe that they are now or have – name." “I have built a monument more lasting than bronze or stone” boasted Horace, and time proved him right.

“The world” said Horace Walpole “is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.” Charlie Chaplin gave a film director’s corollary “Life is a comedy in long shot, but a tragedy close up”.

While in exile on St. Helena Napoleon was urged by his aides to write a book on military strategy. Why not let the world know the secrets of history’s finest general? The great man laughed. It would be easy to describe the details of his maneuvers. But what would be the point? It was not the theory that counted, but the actual doing. Execution was everything.