Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Why blog?
No comments on other blogs just yet. Inspired in part by a blog I was reading last night that was counseling bloggers about what they do when they run out of ideas, I'm ruminating about why I'm in the business. I may say what I've said before in so doing, but indulge me, please. I guess blogs can be all things to all persons (within the law, of course) since one can pretty well do as one wishes with a blog. For some people they are strictly commercial endeavours, and there's nothing wrong with that. Earning a few dollars from ads compatible with the concerns and interests of this blog is fine by me, but that's not why I'm up here. For others, blogs are like diaries, and though in time I might add diary elements to this one, that's not my focus. It isn't a hobby blog either, or an academic one, or one with a focus like politics or sports, philately, fine art or photography. I felt called to begin it primarily because of end-of-the-world concerns, which I still have, and will continue to have for as long as we play fast and loose with the planet, and with each other and one another. Re ecological matters, I admit to having weird ideas, like the notion that earthquakes are increasingly violent because we've pumped so much oil out of the earth's crust. Those viscous masses must have been meant to do something down there, like be a buffer against the grating movements of tectonic plates. I'm no geologist, nor any other -ist, but I figure, there has to be a consequence to pumping all that stuff out. Earth, like the rest of the universe, is put together in a certain way, and we should really have tried to figure that out a bit more before we messed with it. I'm very sure that the use of atomic power, whether to make bombs or to provide energy, is a very bad idea, for the same reason. Another odd notion of mine is the fact that prayer (described as supplication to God/Allah/Jah/Supreme Spirit, or in simple terms of good will) can powerfully influence individual health, the wind and waves, the spread of disease, the height the corn grows, the way we behave individually and communally, etc., etc. I believe, as I've been saying to fsjl in comments on a recent post, that Wisdom is gracious, and reveals herself to those who seek her, humbly – and even not so humbly. So, in sum, I'm concerned in this blog with how we treat one another; how we treat the planet; how we answer our responsibility to eat bread by the sweat of our brows; how we respond to the need to share that bread; and how ready we are to deal with ordinary circumstances, as well as extraordinary ones, as they arise. I don't say "when they arise" for they've already arisen – they're all around us. After all, for the victims of the recent violent earthquakes, monsoons and tsunamis, the people who live in HIV/AIDS ravaged countries, communities torn apart by war, places where people are fighting for food, the end of the world has already come. (BTW, The 'long count' calendars of the Mayas and Aztecs end somewhere around 2012, I think. correct me, someone, if I'm wrong,) It can't hurt if we work as hard and carefully as we can, behave as well as we can, and pray the way we know how, and as earnestly as we know how. I hope the interests of this blog, as listed on the banner, reflect these matters. Aha! What about literature, Caribbean writing? Where is its place? As I've said elsewhere, literature is the first of the disciplines. After Sacred Lore came song and story. Indeed, many Sacred Books are song and story. I have always thought of the best Caribbean Song and Story as singularly inspired, and so a perfect fit for comforting us to the end of the world. Selah.
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26 comments:
just because your ideas arent backed by scientific studies yet doesnt mean they are weird.
most times intuition outpaces scientific theory.
jdid: Glad you think that. I think so too, but you know the way of the world! P&L.
To my way of thinking, we aren't put here for any purposes except those we create ourselves, but since we are here we have to behave responsibly. We have responsibilities to ourselves, to each other, to our children, and to the fragile planet on which we live. We are here for a short time, we might as well do something useful with it and make this world a human and humane place. As Phil Ochs sang 'can't tell the right from the wrong when I'm gone/so I better do it while I'm here' (or words to that effect).
Very well said, fsjl, though I think some of those responsibilities you name are purposes for which we were put here. I do like the Phil Ochs quote... Thanks.
As the sage Brhaspati has it:
While life is yours, live joyously;
None can escape Death's searching eye:
When once this frame of ours they burn,
How shall it e'er again return?
As the sage Brhaspati has it:
While life is yours, live joyously;
None can escape Death's searching eye:
When once this frame of ours they burn,
How shall it e'er again return?
fsjl: Brhaspati all right, yaw! Him cyan gwaan. Meanwhile, Portia and all like me still facing life!
Yu did listen to dat?
Face life joyously.
I've just learned that part of the emolument of the headmaster of Potsdam School (renamed Munro College during the Great War) in 1906 was the right to pasture his cattle on the grounds of the Trust that owns the school. This in addition to £350 a year, free medical care for himself and his family, a capitation fee from each pupil, and free housing. Not bad for a learned classical scholar (which the Reverend Mr Pearman was) a century ago.
fsjl: But yes me did listen to dat! "Meanwhile Portia is facing life..." There's a lovely poem with that title. Yes, not bad remuneration for a umbl teacha in 1906. I particularly like the 'capitation fee'. A penny, not for your thoughts but for your whole head! And you pay me.
Humble? He was one of the big shots of the parish back then.
Some of those heads would have been overpriced at a penny, methinks.
fsaj: Yes, one time teacha was teacha. Overpriced at a penny? But is no them that was paying him...
Whether the world is ending, or not, is open to debate. What is almost certain, however, is that if we don't take seriously the points raised here, regarding "How we treat one another, how we treat the planet...how we respond to the need to share...bread" a conclusive answer to the question will be provided for us.
Whether this blog has a specific "focus", or not, it does not lack. It addresses universal concerns and provides much food for thought.
True, they were the ones who were paying, but I don't think they were necessarily worthy of the education they obtained.
I knew (and it is a sad thing that I, born more than a decade after the Second World War, can say this)the first black, as opposed to brown, man to attend Munro. He was a dentist practicing in Santa Cruz.
Hi djm: Thanks so much for stopping by, and making those reassuring, satisfying comments. If the blog is food for thought, that's great. It makes me think too, and go do my homework, and think some more. And I learn a lot from those who are kind enough to visit and leave comments. So do stop by again. Peace and Love.
fsjl: You are, I think, saying that the young men at Munro were either not equipped or not disposed to take advantage of their schooling. Also, that they were bakras (or bukras, as I'm often seeing it writ these days), white, light and brown men, rather than anyone who deserved to go to school... Hmmnnn. Munro. 1906. But of course. Do you know when that dentist of whom you speak attended the school?
You're following my thoughts accurately, Pam.
Dentist Allen was the son of 'Daada' Allen the fist black MLC from St Elizabeth. He attended Munro in the 1930s. Its possible -- only possible, I can't say for certain -- that my father might have been the first black pupil to attend Munro had his father, a real, ahem, character permitted him to do so.
fsjl: You are of course tempting me to ask you about your father's father, the – ahem – character, who, I take it, had decided notions about where his son should go to school, and why...
My grandfather was the old-fashioned type who didn't want his children advancing beyond himself; and he was an illiterate peasant who kept his children out of school if he needed their labour. Not a complicated man. He was enterprising. He had to be, he ran two separate households, and supported a number of 'outside' children as well. I always thought of him as lazy, because he worked his children harder than he worked himself. He was a major support of the rum bars of Mountainside. Yet he owned horses, including some that won races at Caymanas. And he lived in fear of my grandmother.
fsjl: He sounds archetypal. What about your grandmother? How come he lived in fear of her? And when did your Dad meet your Spanish (yes?) Mama?
My grandmother was a fearsome woman, with a fearsome temper. She was also very hard-working (and hard-done-by).
My parents met in London, where I was born. My own identity, after all, is not wholly Jamaican and never could be. It's also British and Galician.
fsjl: Your grandma (your daddy's Mama) was Jamaican, then? So on your Dad's side, your heritage is Jamdown. So it's your Mom who had one Galician and one British parent... Right?
My mother's family is entirely Spanish Galician. The British part comes from my having spent my childhood in Britain. My father's mother's mother, by the bye, was Jewish. This was a dread family secret, since my father, for some reason, was ashamed of being Jewish and was an anti-Semite -- for all that he was, by virtue of Jewish descent in the female line, halachically Jewish!
fsjl: Thank you for the clarification re your heritages. Given the very small number of Jews who were supposedly in Jamaica at any one time (though we know that their influence far outweighed their numbers), it's remarkable how many families they turn up in... To be honest, this is the first time that I've 'encountered' a Jamaican anti-Semite. Why was your father so against Jews?
The Jews left quite a footprint in Jamaica, given the number of Cohens and Levys around, not to mention the Lindos, Seniors, Mordecais and so on. I've never understood my father's feelings towards Jews; they seem to be something he developed either in New York or London. One of my brothers tasked him with being anti-Semitic once, and he replied that he couldn't be anti-Semitic since he was Jewish!
fsjl: I think I met both the term and the notion of being anti-Semitic only after coming to North America for 'further education' so I daresay your father's was probably a foreign infection. I don't know if his aregument holds, though. I know black people who are anti-black, for instance...
Hostility to blackness is encoded deep in Jamaican culture -- in expressions like 'yu too black an ugly' for example.
Some person or persons unknown painted anti-Semitic slogans on walls in Kingston in 1981.
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