A long, long time ago I gave up trying to remember the birthdays of two women who are very close to me. One of the birthdays is in the month of September and how every year I fix my mind on November I don’t know. The other is in the month of February, and I keep getting that mixed up with the birthdays of two cousins I grew up with who have birthdays that same month. I tried. I failed. I gave up.

Aha, George Cadle P, I plumb forgot that we were about to celebrate his birthday, even though I saw it on a calendar. It happened so because in my head I had him as being born on January 19th, so it’s today, Tuesday the 18th, that I set aside to give him his props.

This daam PUP is sitting pretty with all these new holidays falling on the weekend. In normal times that would have been causing a lot of hate. There should be an asterisk beside every one of these holidays that fall on a Saturday or Sunday, and when you scroll down to find out what that’s about it should say, employers special. Hmm, when things get back to normal, students shouldn’t dare complain about all the—employers specials. What’s happened here since April 2020 is unprecedented. When school reopens they should be made to go Sunday to Sunday.

I haven’t got in yet my take about the back-benching of Commonwealth Day. I think Kareem said the day will still get its respect, just that the government and private businesses won’t pay for it. I guess I’ll be satisfied with half a loaf if this PUP doesn’t foul up on the 24th of May. I’m not ready yet to apply for my UDP party card.

What’s this, what’s this from Dickie Bradley that our area representatives no longer swear allegiance to the Queen and her heirs? Well then, will the local anti-British please drop that as one of the excuses for the failures of our leaders?

My gudnis, that Don Hector really ku tell it. He was gushing this week on his facebook page about other exploits of the great hero, how he was a champion swimmer, champion bulldozer operator, champion cane cutter (?), champion musician, and we all know, this one’s for sure, the man was a champion poet.

Now, Don Hector, beating urban boys, you and San Perdomo, in a swimming race, I don’t think that boosts Price’s swimming credentials any. Price has his big points for wading through high water on streets and swimming in spots to save himself in Hattie. Wait, maybe hihn kud a mi swim fast fu true. If he could swim half as fast as he could walk he could have been a fish.

Aha, Price hated bush, he wanted to see it cleared away, and we know that from his epic poem, so I bet he was happy for the invention of the mighty bulldozer. Pity that in the urban world the only chance you get to mount a bulldozer and tayr down bush is when there’s the need to open a street. Ahem, if you want to know about great bulldozer operators, go read Louis Lindo’s book, Tales of the Belizean Woods. In my experience with dozer operators, the best of them are a daring, dangerous breed.

Somebody properly scolded one of my heroes for saying Price said he wished he could chop cane all day. I think all those village women whose pots he liked to look into, if they had known that he was a major league cane cutter they would have held off the cooking so they could send him to the milpa to go cut the rice, shell some beans, and dig up some cassava and the daily sweet pitayta.

Ah, symbolism is great, but we shouldn’t overdo it. Price was no physical wood-cutting hero like Abraham Lincoln. Price was a city boy who had a little sea experience at St. George’s Cay and country experience from farm visits in his childhood. If we want to talk about what he was great at, we can start with keeping the books for that anti-British tycoon, Bob Turton, and fearlessly telling him what the Pope thought about his dirty pig capitalist ways.

Leroy A. Grant, in his book The Life of Robert Sidney Turton, tells us the future Father of the Nation got a stern lecture about the infallible one’s complete lack of understanding about business.

Hey, we NIP celebrate George Price too. No man is perfect. You have to have humility to grow. He was humble enough to accept PSWG’s correction, and that helped him do great things for Belize. He did. And so we join in and are very sincere when we say, Happy George Price Birthday!

Sankara died from natural causes, after being shot seven times

The African media, AFP reported this week on the ongoing trial about the 1987 murder of Thomas Sankara, the great Burkina Faso president whom his enemies shot seven times. After the foul murder, they disappeared his body and reported to the world that he died from natural causes. The brother did tremendous work to uplift his nation, but he was taken down by forces that insist on puppet regimes that support the big businesses of the world, which are owned by the people who invaded the Americas beginning in 1492. The report at the trial said the bullets that killed Sankara were fired from high- powered rifles.

AFP said Sankara was “a fiery Marxist-Leninist (who) railed against imperialism and colonialism, often angering Western leaders but gaining followers across Africa and beyond”, and that he “remains a revered figure for many and his brutal death cast a pall over the country for decades.”

One of Sankara’s brilliant initiatives was to send talented youth from deprived situations to study in universities in Cuba. A lot of Belizeans are sworn against the Marxist-Leninist philosophy of running a country, but while I’m no expert on the left, I am one hundred percent sold that a country that is locked in poverty must tweak the free economy system to address the inequalities in the society. In time, when there are opportunities for all, a people will demand some easing up of the restrictions. Any country that tolerates poverty is on the wrong path.

Sankara is a giant hero and his initiatives were completely worthy. His “friend”, Blaise Compaore, who succeeded him, and is being tried in absentia, along with others, said he had nothing to do with the overthrow. But if he was innocent he should not have taken Burkina Faso back down the dead end road that opened the country for exploitation that didn’t yield prosperity for his people.

I’d say

If they asked me if Brother Godwin Hulse was a dirty rotten crook like so many UDP ministers were, I’d say, it’s less likely than so. What’s with Andrew Marshalleck and this wicked PUP game to try and lump in Godwin with people who got a terrible beating at the polls? There are plenty enough UDPeez to flog like a dirty mat. Godwin rode in to rescue our passports after UDP philistines had run the system like a private milk cow. Godwin is a hero. Everyone knows that more likely than not he is as pure as the driven snow.

You really want to know what’s more likely than not? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s more likely than not that Rene won’t set foot back in Belize until the Reds control the House again, or until his battery of lawyers have found a loophole for him to slip through or a lawsuit they can bring to negotiate a favorable deal with.