Santimanitay

 GOD GAVE NOAH THE RAINBOW SIGN A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall, 2020 by Kim Johnson You can see it from the Fort, the slow coming of the rains. I welcome them, even though for millennia the idea of how the earth would be destroyed was a deluge. South Asians who endure the killer floods of monsoon season will no doubt differ, maybe even those Caribbean people who feel the wrath of hurricanes will dread the deluge. But to me it's just weather for leather, when the woman I love wll cuddle and keep me warm. Not surprisingly it was a Dutchman who painted its nightmare quality, because after all, they live below sea level. In 1525 Albrecht Durer illustrated the flood after - for the first time in Western art - a dream. A Nightmare by Albrecht Durer, 1525 “In the year 1525 between Wednesday and Thursday (7-8 June) after Whitsunday during the night I saw this appearance in my sleep, how many great waters fell from heaven. The first struck the earth about four miles away from me with a terr...

 REDEMPTION SONGS OF FREEDOM Raising the flag, August 31, 1962, Port of Spain. Photo courtesy of Government Information Services. August is the month of our greatest works in progress. It opens on Emancipation Day, August 1, and closes on Independence Day, August 31, which came out of the collapse of the West Indian Federation. Interestingly, our anthem followed the same trajectory, starting with British Guiana-born Pat Castagne’s song for the Federation which opened with: “Forged from the depths of slavery.” Jamaica abandoned that Federal experiment, followed by Trinidad & Tobago on Eric Williams famous mathematical advice: "One from ten equals nought". The dream of regional unity languished, and both countries rushed to independence. Jamaica got a Pentecostal-type anthem: “Eternal Father bless our land/Guard us with thy mighty hand.” And Castagne retooled his Federal song for an independent T&T, swapping “the depths of slavery” for “the love of liberty” but leaving...