I’m a pretty fortunate guy in that, after some years in the wilderness, so to speak, I found a way to make a living doing what I like most and do best. There are people who have to do really strenuous and dangerous things to make a living, and people who don’t make much of a living at all. So, I’m a pretty fortunate guy.
Being relatively famous and successful in Belize has benefits, but there is also a downside. I can’t go the places and mingle with the people that I used to, and I miss that. I miss my roots people. When I was a young man just home from school, before UBAD and politics and stuff, I used to hang out with friends and visit Johnny’s Club and Scientist Meighan just across the Yabra bridge. My friends were Donovan Hyde (beloved but deceased), Wallace Young, Franz “Sonny” Vernon (States), Robert Pandy (New York), and sometimes Seis the barber. Those were fun days – forty years ago.
In the first course I ever sat in at Dartmouth College in the fall of 1965, the literature professor, Peter Bien, was talking about the Irish writer James Joyce, and he mentioned how much Joyce held journalists in contempt. I’ll tell you this – for sure I didn’t want to be a journalist. But sometimes, to borrow Alan Ladd’s words in SHANE, a man has to do what he has to do.
Old as I am, I still have this dream of doing creative writing. Many months ago, I started a book. It’s not really that creative, still mainly journalism, but it was gonna break me out of this thirty-year cycle of columns and editorials. The work was slow, with long interruptions. With a lot of the hassle of general election politics now out of the way, I got started again, and this time I think I’m gonna make it. Inshallah.
Continuing on the free flow side of life, I need to congratulate Tony Wright and J.C. Arzu on thirteen years of BELIZE MUSICIANS – PAST AND PRESENT on KREM Radio. Tony is very special, but you all know that. J.C. is deep, man. Unique. Gifted.
To Peter Jones in Toledo, I really felt grateful for election day. Peter is the son of the late Terrence, the self-proclaimed “baddest” man from Georgeville (Cayo), and a Mike’s Club star for many years.
After the 1998 general elections, I pressed my older children to open a club on Mahogany Street, near its corner with Western Avenue. It was called NEFERTITI. The problem was we didn’t own the building, and there was a Chinese fried chicken place downstairs. So when we brought in musicians and other performers, and had to charge extra to cover costs, our customers would buy a lot of their drinks downstairs at the fried chicken joint. This was a pain in the rear. In effect, we were having NEFERTITI promotions to make money for the Chinese downstairs. So we thought about buying the building. The Chinese got there first. They weren’t thinking. They were buying. That was the end of the Egyptian queen.
I asked Frankie Rhys Sunday morning to look for a spot where we could open a jazz and blues joint. It would have to be in a downtown area, for greater safety, because white folk are the biggest supporters of jazz and blues. I’d prefer for such a place to be in our ‘hood, but there’s too much shooting in this part of town. I’m still just thinking. If someone else would get doing, it wouldn’t be a problem.
Saying thanks to Nadia Cattouse Webb in London and Marjorie Fairweather Laing in New York for the tapes, books and other material. Nadia, I’d like for you to send your phone number or e-mail so I can get Yaya hooked up with you.
It’s really a “no no” to use a newspaper column to communicate with people overseas, but this material is now on the Internet in what they call cyberspace. It’s the easiest way for me. If Nadia and Marjorie don’t read it, someone will pass the message. I almost never write letters, and I hate the telephone. I’ve spent most of my adult life having my mail opened and my phone calls monitored. That’s the sense I got.
Roland Yorke, I wasn’t on base to receive you, but I received the records and material. You’re a special brother, and I appreciate the thought.
Dr. Dennis Young was about a couple weeks ago, but we missed each other. Dennis must be Belize’s first Ivy League grad in the modern era. He’s Harvard ’67. Frankie Rhys is Yale ’68.
Got three daughters abroad – in the United States, Britain, and Asia, and I want to send them my love and best wishes.
Sometimes I struggle on the Kremandala Show, and have to take a break. There are issues and times I feel I really have to talk to you on the show in a more authoritative way, but that is not the show’s format. So I just prefer to take a break and calm myself. I mean no disrespect.
There’s big news that made the headlines last week, with the PUP having to choose a new Maximum Leader next month. I’m supporting my son-in-law, of course, but it’s all about party executives, divisional chairmen/women, delegates and a lot of convention technicalities. I have no say in that, so all I can do is wish son-in-law the best of luck, if he runs, that is.
Where the new government is concerned, one of the guys I like and respect got left out of Cabinet. This was really rough on him, and I wished there was something I could do to ease the pain. In the days immediately after a general election victory, a Prime Minister makes his Cabinet appointments. It is a much more emotional time than the vast majority of Belizeans realize. I remember that after the August 1998 PUP victory, a guy I thought was my friend stabbed me in my back right in front of my face.You think that’s impossible, but it was cold. I went home and bawled like a baby on my wife’s bosom. Wasn’t nothing else I could do. All I was doing, was trying to look out for my youth. Cabinet blues. It’s rough.