Jonty on the (virtual) turntables, Sean Thomas on drums and the rest of us running our mouths. Photos here.

After this appeared, a few of my crueller friends suggested I should have Delphine’s tongue removed. I had to remind them that she’s just a pothound, after all, and you shouldn’t read too much into her expressions (not to mention, of course, that removing an animal’s tongue is just plain barbarous.)

Looking at the image above, however — the glint in the eyes, the expression of utter disdain — especially in the context of her Garbo-like attitude towards being photographed lately, you do begin to wonder. . . .

Farewell: Brian Lara flanked by pals Dwight Yorke (left) and Russell Latapy (right) at Lee Studios, Manchester, England in April 2006

It’s difficult. . . to recall a time when Brian Lara was not the man of the moment. Since April 1994, when he scored 375 runs in the fourth Test against England in Antigua, breaking Sir Garry Sobers’s 36-year-old record for the greatest number of runs scored in a single innings in Test cricket, he’s carried the future of West Indies cricket on his shoulders. (Less than two months later he scored 501 for Warwickshire, his English county team, the highest score in a single innings in the history of first-class cricket.)

The burden has only become heavier with time. Having entered the senior team just as West Indies cricket was beginning its long descent from the heights of greatness, he spent his early days witnessing the departure of the old guard. By the time Courtney Walsh and Curtly Ambrose (the last remaining members of the West Indies’ legendary pace bowling attack) departed, Lara found himself the sole repository of the people’s hopes of victory. When the batting line-up collapsed, when the bowling was being flayed to all corners of the pitch, Lara was the man expected to come up with a swift century and save the day. >> more

That excerpt is from a piece I wrote at the end of 2004, a few months before Brian Lara wrested his world record back from Matthew Hayden. Lara’s certainly the man of the moment today, as he plays what he says is his last ever international cricket match, against England in Barbados.

Lara’s delighted and maddened and dazzled and puzzled and frustrated and entertained us greatly these past 17 years (he’s a West Indian man, and that’s what they do). We wish him all the best.

Technorati Tags: brian lara, west indies, cricket, trinidad, caribbean, cricket world cup

Undaunted by the near-disaster that was the “Evening of Appreciation” held in V. S. Naipaul’s honour on April 18, we ventured back to the University of the West Indies yesterday evening to hear Sir Vidia read from his works.

Left to his own devices, with a proper microphone and nobody asking him annoying questions (and only Lady Naipaul interrupting every so often to refill his water glass, which had to be placed just so on the table), Sir Vidia was fine. He read excerpts from Half A Life, the “His Chosen Calling” chapter of Miguel Street and a passage from Among the Believers about Malaysia (”a country,” according to Sir Vidia, “dedicated to fundamentalism”).

Naipaul’s reading style isn’t particularly good, in the classic sense, but his stilted, slightly quaint delivery is oddly effective, and easy on the ear. Even his attempts at reading the Trinidadian dialect which he rendered so adeptly in his early novels — and which is clearly now so alien to him — worked, after their own manner. It was also remarked by at least one member of my party that Half A Life sounds better read aloud.

When the reading was over, Lady Naipaul leapt to the front of the stage and assumed command of the procedings. “The book signing begins now!” she announced. “Form a queue. And only new books will be signed. That is the form.”

What form was this? we wondered. My heart went out to the throngs clutching their well-thumbed copies of early Naipaul novels and first editions which, on being subjected to the newness test by an advance guard comprising Naipaul’s agent, Gillon Aitken, and Lady Naipaul’s daughter, Maliha, were deemed too old for signing, and turned away.

I hadn’t planned on bringing a book to be signed, which is just as well, as I’d probably have been sent packing with my 1987 edition of Engima of Arrival, the newest Naipaul I actually own.

One student permitted me to photograph her copy of The Loss of El Dorado, which somehow managed to pass muster, unlike her friend’s dog-eared and yellowing Penguin edition of Biswas. A friend I hadn’t seen in a while brought along a first edition of Miguel Street, in a delicate dust jacket with edges serrated by time and wear; but it was rejected in favour of a recently purchased Half A Life. “And I don’t even like this book,” she said, with a sigh, and pushed it back into her handbag.

Technorati Tags: v. s. naipaul, trinidad, literature, books, reading

Woman: Hi, I’m trying to reach Georgia Popplewell.

GP: This is she.

Woman: I’m calling about an e-mail sent to you by Jane Doe [who, for the record, thinks GP is a bit of an upstart]. Will you be attending X event on Tuesday?

GP: Sorry, but I never received an e-mail from Ms. Doe.

Woman (with considerable attitude): Well, she sent it.

GP (not without a bit of ‘tude herself): Well, that is one of the problems with e-mail, isn’t it. Just because something is sent doesn’t mean it was received. I’m checking my mail now….

GP types “Jane Doe” into the search window of her e-mail client.

GP: Nope. Nothing. In fact, I haven’t received any mail from Ms. Doe in ages.

Woman: Well, it’s on Wednesday. Can you attend?

GP: What’s this event again?

Woman: The official opening of X [the same X that’s been in operation for over a year now].

GP: Could you e-mail me the information again? I’ll give you another address.

On the other end of the line GP can discern what she’s almost certain is the sound of pins piercing the fabric skin of the GP-shaped voodoo doll (loaned to the woman by Jane Doe) she’s convinced the woman has on her desk.

GP: Are you still there?

Woman: Er, yes. Let me get a pen.

GP: Why don’t you simply use one of the pins and carve it into the surface of your desk?

Woman: I beg your pardon?

GP: Sorry? Did I say something?

Embellished a bit, perhaps. I’ll leave you to guess which parts are genuine.

Pictured above is one of two (or three, if you count the orange shawl someone handed to me, just like that, in a restaurant last night) delightful gifts I received yesterday.

Nikipedia picked up this figurine of Dr. José Gregorio Hernández on his travels in Venezuela. A physician who, during his lifetime, ministered to the poor, Dr. Hernandez is “commonly invoked as “José Gregorio” by both doctors and patients for healing purposes. He is also called upon for protection during overland journeys.” The Vatican granted him the status of Venerable in 1985, and he’s also a lesser deity in the pantheon of the syncretic cult of María Lionza.

José Gregorio joins Babe the Blue Ox and others in one of my own personal pantheons — that comprising lovely and unusual gifts given to me by close friends.

One wonders which local performer is going to sell his/her soul this year and have his/her works co-opted by the parties contesting this year’s election. One also wonders whether it might not be a good — or at least amusing — idea to set up a parallel music truck/sound system to rove the country during the campaign season, pumping out tunes which would counteract the effects of rum and roti and free t-shirts and over-exposure to re-jigged Iwer songs.

One rather obvious candidate for such a playlist would be Stevie Wonder’s “You Haven’t Done Nothin’“, from 1974’s Fulfillingness’ First Finale, (arguably) Stevie’s greatest album. Which skepticism-inducing dystopian ditties would you add to the anti-election campaign playlist?

Just learned of the passing yesterday of American novelist Kurt Vonnegut, at age 84 . Like many of my ilk (US-educated Trinidadian of a certain age?), I had my Vonnegut phase. It’s been ages since I’ve read him, but I loved (perhaps still love) his off-the-wall imagination, the dark nuttiness of the world his characters lived in. A friend and I even had a long-running joke where I’d send postcards to her from various parts of the world signed “Larry, Curly, Moe and Kilgore Trout.”

Some years ago, Vonnegut, who was noted for his clear, simple, prose, was one of the spokesmen for a plain English campaign; the ads used to run in places like the New Yorker. I’ll never forget the cartoon that was part of the Vonnegut ad. Two figures, one a speaker of the “jargonese” the campaign was meant to combat, the other a user of plain English. The jargonese-user was saying something like, “The biota exhibted an 100% mortality response,” which the plain English user translated as, “All the fish died.” As someone who fell — very briefly — under the sway of Post-structuralism and witnessed with great dismay the havoc it wrought upon academic writing; and as someone who has has worked on publications for organisations which believe that language is best used as a big stick, an obscurer of meaning, this summed up much of what I feel about writing. It may not even have been Vonnegut’s own idea, but it sounds like something he might have conjured up.

Vonnegut didn’t have an easy life, but he worked hard, continued writing articles when he had no novels left in him, and it doesn’t sound like he complained much. He sounds like someone who truly deserves to rest in peace.

Technorati Tags: literature, books, kurt vonnegut, reading, writing

I spent most of yesterday helping shepherd Global Voices’ massive volume of content across the divide separating the old and new web site designs. Things got rather hair-raising for a while there between 2 and 3pm, as our Montreal-based techmeisters Boris and Jeremy did battle with the various glitches and snafus a transfer like this entails, and Oso (in Oakland, California) and I (here in Trinidad) kept refreshing the pages to see what had disappeared, got erased, weirdly altered or fallen through the cracks.

But it got done. And well. See the splendid result of Boris and Jeremy’s tremendous efforts at Global Voices, and read here about the site’s snazzy new tools and features, which includes some rather astounding maps.

(Image of the new GV web site by bopuc)

I’ve been getting a real kick lately out of photographing birds in my garden. Almost every morning I position myself behind the breeze blocks in the laundry room to see who shows up for his/her share of the fruit on the makeshift bird-feeder next to the water tank.

One of the folks at the breakfast table this morning was this Bare-Eyed Thrush (Turdus nudigenis). My growing collection of bird photos is here.

(Cross posted at Caribbean Free Photo)

Jonathan and I didn’t end up going bobolee-hunting as planned on Good Friday, but during a drive out to Tamana this afternoon I came across the remains of this Good Friday bobolee hanging on a lampost along the main road in Cumuto. The bobolee is an effigy of Jesus’ disciple Judas Iscariot, and its role in life is to have the crap beaten out of it with a stick, hence the reason this one has only his trousers left. This is both to punish Judas for what he did to poor Jesus and also because bobolees are usually also stand-ins for local miscreants (e.g. politicians). As this bobolee has lost his shirt–and as so many people (still) wear cargo pants–it’s difficult to tell whom he was supposed to represent.

In searching for information about bobolees after I mentioned the word on Twitter, my Twitter contact Coty Rosenblath found this 2006 post by Guanaguanare: the laughing gull. And earlier this week, over at the Rights Action Group T&T blog, the Dread posted her own bobolee pic and put out this call:

This Good Friday we’re inviting all communities to dedicate their bobolee to one of the traitors of our national environment. Take your pick and send us a pic of your portrayal of any of the Judas Iscariots who’ve sold out our country for thirty pieces of aluminum.

UPDATE: And this just in via e-mail from Nikipedia, who’s been travelling in Venezuela: “In Venezuela they burn Judas effigies instead of beating them. We saw a big one being constructed on the outskirts of Santa Elena but we missed the burning.” Next time, we hope.

A FURTHER UPDATE: Left on my Flickr page by Luis Carlos from Venezuela: “We burn a Judas too. Always it’s a politic. This year was the minister who prohibited the alcohol for three days.”

And here’s a Judas being burned in Chile.

This is the sort of thing Vernon would know. What’s the name of the tree the object in the photo was once attached to? It’s a long, flattish pod, possibly green when it’s young, but dark brown when it ages and falls off the tree and dries and curls into this lovely coil. I cannot for the life of me remember what it’s called.

I took this photo last Sunday in Cumuto, with the new camera that Delphine’s not so crazy about. Next time I’ll take a picture of the tree as well. (See more Cumuto photos here).