Tweet
The cat and the albatross
Jean Lowrie-Chin
Monday, December 17, 2007
JLP and PNP members of parliament who have sworn on The Holy Bible to serve our country are instead serving us the bread of bitterness. Day after day, they rail after each other, using precious time on petty arguments. Night after night, they are crowding our television screens with threats and accusations.
The parties had better take the beams out of their respective eyes so they can focus on the woes of the country. Can you believe that even as these well-dressed folks are cursing out each other criminals now have a "hit-list" of police officers? The only "hit-list" we knew of when we were growing up was the Saturday night top 10! While they are quibbling and posturing, our girl children cannot walk the streets for fear that they will be harassed, raped or "sent for" by the resident "don-man".
It must have been Stephen Vasciannie's unfortunate metaphor, broadcast and re-broadcast on Cliff Hughes' Impact that conjured up in my mind Coleridge's classic The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. (Promise yourself to read this poem, even if you've read it before.) About the time of Bruce Golding's return to the JLP, Vasciannie likened him to a "dead cat" on the deck of the party ship, expanding the metaphor to olfactory offensiveness. Vasciannie is a bright man, but we would have thought that someone so strongly anti-Golding would have graciously declined being named as the next solicitor general under a Golding-led government.
I remembered Coleridge's poem because this dead bird, the albatross, was also aboard a ship, weighing down the mariner's neck like a heavy penance for his sin of shooting it. The wind went down around the sailor's ship and he watched his crew die of hunger and thirst. As the mariner sank into depression, everything around him became unsightly: "The very deep did rot: O Christ! /That ever this should be! /Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs/Upon the slimy sea."
A couple of years ago I wrote about a psychological condition called "complicated grief", where a group of people, a family or a community, becomes so traumatised by a series of tragedies that they descend into a chronic mournfulness. I suggested that Jamaica was entering, if it had not yet entered, into this leaden existence. Like the ancient mariner, we feel ourselves surrounded by slime, crime and violence.
Slime? Dead cats? When our thoughts turn this way, we had better realise that this is an unnatural state of mind - we have allowed ourselves to drift into a churning sea of hatred and division. Let's get on with the country's business. One weary senior police officer asked me last week, "To whose benefit would it be to discredit the entire police force?" While we feel comfortable to shout criticisms of the police, we tiptoe around the crooks, unaware of how complicit we have become. We are allowing thugs to dictate, "every move we make, every breath we take", because while we are out trying to earn honest bread, they are watching us 24/7.
Every minute that a politician spends on inane bickering is a minute wasted; a minute that should be used to concentrate the national focus on issues of crime and justice. CAFFE took an important step when they called for the resignation of the two erring ministers. We are going to have to depend on them and our dedicated Political Ombudsman Bishop Herro Blair to remind our politicians to get with the programme.
I am also appealing to media colleagues to refuse to be drawn into the political quibbles. Let's use our airtime and column inches to publicise the courageous efforts of humble individuals who are trying to hold their communities together by dint of hard work and good example. Since performance-related pay is the buzz, let's offer our people including politicians, some PRP - performance-related publicity.
So did the ancient mariner die like the rest of his crew? Well here is the twist in the tale: The very creatures he had referred to as "slimy things" began to appear beautiful to him: "O happy living things! no tongue/ Their beauty might declare: / A spring of love gushed from my heart, / And I blessed them unaware."
In that moment of praise and prayer, the rotting albatross fell from the sailor's neck. He had discovered that the snakes were really not "slimy things", but like him, a part of God's creation. We must now focus on the redemption of God's precious creation, our nation. We have to rescue the delinquent and support the diligent.
Our justice system must be strict, but should offer rehabilitation and respect. Hardened criminals may have to be dealt with differently, but as Sandra Ramsay at Food for The Poor (FFTP) will tell you, there are basically decent folk who because of unpaid debts or poor legal representation, end up in jail. FFTP has a programme to pay fines for such people, reuniting scores of anguished families every Christmas and Easter.
After the dust settled from a shoot-out with fugitive members of the Stonecrusher gang in Moneague last Thursday, it was discovered that one of them was a 15-year-old child. Where are the parents, relatives, neighbours of this child? Who gave him a gun and taught him how to use it? We must look very harshly at any politician who is not consumed by these questions. We are depending on them for safety, not sophistry.
Happy 75th Birthday, Hyacinth Chen
Behind the story of billionaire Michael Lee-Chin, is a moving lesson for every Jamaican parent. Hyacinth Gloria Leung, an unwed teenage mother was left alone to raise little Michael in Port Antonio. Dedicated to his well-being and education, she worked as cashier, bookkeeper, bookseller and Avon lady. She refused an offer to travel abroad to study, as she could not bear to leave her child. She married the steadfast Vincent Chen, raised with him a large family and founded the Super Plus chain of supermarkets.
A courtyard in the new Michael Lee-Chin Crystal at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto is named in her honour. While touring the building in May of this year, she asked, "What's a little orphan girl from Jamaica doing in a place like this?" You have earned it, Hyacinth Gloria Chen! We salute this inspiring, warm-hearted lady, who celebrated her 75th birthday on Saturday.
lowriechin@aim.com
Jean Lowrie-Chin
Monday, December 17, 2007
JLP and PNP members of parliament who have sworn on The Holy Bible to serve our country are instead serving us the bread of bitterness. Day after day, they rail after each other, using precious time on petty arguments. Night after night, they are crowding our television screens with threats and accusations.
The parties had better take the beams out of their respective eyes so they can focus on the woes of the country. Can you believe that even as these well-dressed folks are cursing out each other criminals now have a "hit-list" of police officers? The only "hit-list" we knew of when we were growing up was the Saturday night top 10! While they are quibbling and posturing, our girl children cannot walk the streets for fear that they will be harassed, raped or "sent for" by the resident "don-man".
It must have been Stephen Vasciannie's unfortunate metaphor, broadcast and re-broadcast on Cliff Hughes' Impact that conjured up in my mind Coleridge's classic The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. (Promise yourself to read this poem, even if you've read it before.) About the time of Bruce Golding's return to the JLP, Vasciannie likened him to a "dead cat" on the deck of the party ship, expanding the metaphor to olfactory offensiveness. Vasciannie is a bright man, but we would have thought that someone so strongly anti-Golding would have graciously declined being named as the next solicitor general under a Golding-led government.
I remembered Coleridge's poem because this dead bird, the albatross, was also aboard a ship, weighing down the mariner's neck like a heavy penance for his sin of shooting it. The wind went down around the sailor's ship and he watched his crew die of hunger and thirst. As the mariner sank into depression, everything around him became unsightly: "The very deep did rot: O Christ! /That ever this should be! /Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs/Upon the slimy sea."
A couple of years ago I wrote about a psychological condition called "complicated grief", where a group of people, a family or a community, becomes so traumatised by a series of tragedies that they descend into a chronic mournfulness. I suggested that Jamaica was entering, if it had not yet entered, into this leaden existence. Like the ancient mariner, we feel ourselves surrounded by slime, crime and violence.
Slime? Dead cats? When our thoughts turn this way, we had better realise that this is an unnatural state of mind - we have allowed ourselves to drift into a churning sea of hatred and division. Let's get on with the country's business. One weary senior police officer asked me last week, "To whose benefit would it be to discredit the entire police force?" While we feel comfortable to shout criticisms of the police, we tiptoe around the crooks, unaware of how complicit we have become. We are allowing thugs to dictate, "every move we make, every breath we take", because while we are out trying to earn honest bread, they are watching us 24/7.
Every minute that a politician spends on inane bickering is a minute wasted; a minute that should be used to concentrate the national focus on issues of crime and justice. CAFFE took an important step when they called for the resignation of the two erring ministers. We are going to have to depend on them and our dedicated Political Ombudsman Bishop Herro Blair to remind our politicians to get with the programme.
I am also appealing to media colleagues to refuse to be drawn into the political quibbles. Let's use our airtime and column inches to publicise the courageous efforts of humble individuals who are trying to hold their communities together by dint of hard work and good example. Since performance-related pay is the buzz, let's offer our people including politicians, some PRP - performance-related publicity.
So did the ancient mariner die like the rest of his crew? Well here is the twist in the tale: The very creatures he had referred to as "slimy things" began to appear beautiful to him: "O happy living things! no tongue/ Their beauty might declare: / A spring of love gushed from my heart, / And I blessed them unaware."
In that moment of praise and prayer, the rotting albatross fell from the sailor's neck. He had discovered that the snakes were really not "slimy things", but like him, a part of God's creation. We must now focus on the redemption of God's precious creation, our nation. We have to rescue the delinquent and support the diligent.
Our justice system must be strict, but should offer rehabilitation and respect. Hardened criminals may have to be dealt with differently, but as Sandra Ramsay at Food for The Poor (FFTP) will tell you, there are basically decent folk who because of unpaid debts or poor legal representation, end up in jail. FFTP has a programme to pay fines for such people, reuniting scores of anguished families every Christmas and Easter.
After the dust settled from a shoot-out with fugitive members of the Stonecrusher gang in Moneague last Thursday, it was discovered that one of them was a 15-year-old child. Where are the parents, relatives, neighbours of this child? Who gave him a gun and taught him how to use it? We must look very harshly at any politician who is not consumed by these questions. We are depending on them for safety, not sophistry.
Happy 75th Birthday, Hyacinth Chen
Behind the story of billionaire Michael Lee-Chin, is a moving lesson for every Jamaican parent. Hyacinth Gloria Leung, an unwed teenage mother was left alone to raise little Michael in Port Antonio. Dedicated to his well-being and education, she worked as cashier, bookkeeper, bookseller and Avon lady. She refused an offer to travel abroad to study, as she could not bear to leave her child. She married the steadfast Vincent Chen, raised with him a large family and founded the Super Plus chain of supermarkets.
A courtyard in the new Michael Lee-Chin Crystal at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto is named in her honour. While touring the building in May of this year, she asked, "What's a little orphan girl from Jamaica doing in a place like this?" You have earned it, Hyacinth Gloria Chen! We salute this inspiring, warm-hearted lady, who celebrated her 75th birthday on Saturday.
lowriechin@aim.com