My former partner once said of an affair, “I don’t know how it happened.” To which I responded, “did you simply trip and fall into her pussy?” Now here I was barely in the door, furtively trying to take off our clothes off while simultaneously attempting to keep my hands and mouth in contact with my oldest and dearest friend. We weren’t drunk and less than five minutes ago I was standing on the other side of the door saying my goodnights. I honestly couldn’t tell you how it happened. Except, maybe logically, I can.
Thursday night dinners have been a regular thing since we got married. We decided we were not going to our friendship whither. The dinners entertained us through our marriages, gave us solace during our respective divorces and allowed us to swap tales from the front lines of our jobs. During one dinner we sat with laptops on the table and created profiles for each other on the usual singles sites as we shared horror stories of dates gone wrong.
Tonight’s dinner didn’t feel different in any way. We ate, we caught up, we commiserated, we mocked and then we made plans for another dinner and drinks with friends. Then we started our goodbyes, which when you’ve been friends this long can take anywhere from five to 50 minutes.
Which as the song goes, brings us back to do-do-do. We were standing at the door, hugging like we have for the last 25 years with the usual provencial cheek kisses when it happened, a slip of the lip, but instead of pulling apart we were kissing. I could taste that combination of wine and chocolate mousse on our lips and I wanted more. We wanted more, which why we were now falling back through the door starting what’s clearly a new chapter in our friendship.
I’m fascinated by the media. I have been and continue to be a consumer, albeit in a more selective manner now than ever before. I have been a contributor of both advertising and editorial content. I am fascinated and appalled. Fascinated and appalled enough to be drawn into the train wreck that is the Brian Williams fiasco. Appalled by the notion that the likely most accurately researched news programs are hosted by comedians. In 2004, I wrote my unique perspective of the newspaper business and Trinidad’s ranking on the World Press Freedoms index. Since that time we have continued to endure malfeasance from the purveyors of our news and both Trinidad and the United States have slid down on the index.
Trinidad currently sits 41st with a score of 22.39, sandwiched between Samoa and Botswana while the United States sits 49th with a score of 24.41. The score puts both countries on the low side of the ‘satisfactory situation’ benchmark. Just for reference here are the categories and scores in context.
From 0 to 15 points: Good situation
From 15.01 to 25 points: Satisfactory situation
From 25.01 to 35 points: Noticeable problems
35,01 – 55 points: Difficult situation
55,01 – 100 points: Very serious situation
Although the index does not measure the quality of the media, some the variables they grade on like pluralism and media independence should give pause to any country clawing up from the bottom of the satisfactory category. Find the index and methodology here.
13 years ago today on a sunny beach I promised to love and cherish Victoria through good and bad, sickness and health. We’ve been mostly healthy, had more good than bad and the love continues to grow. Even though our lives have settled into a routine, it is far from boring. I am still thrilled to wake up next to this smart, funny, beautiful woman who makes me a better person every day.
I look forward the two of us aging like a fine wine together. I know it’s not going to be perfect all the time but if the last decade has been any indication I think we built a solid foundation.
Day 0
When the sky broke we were sitting around and consuming fruity rum drinks. It had been raining on and off all day but we paid it no mind and kept up the drinking and small talk. Even as we prepared to head home I don’t think we realized the severity of what were experiencing. Giggling, we ran through the rain to the car and wound up soaked almost to the bone in the short trip from the house. It didn’t get better from there, the usual 20 minute drive trebled to an hour as we navigated the minefields of standing water on the road and near zero visibility as sheets of rain blew into the windshield. The wipers did nothing to clear the deluge from the window, and made spotting the standing water and avoiding aquaplaning into the median or the other slow moving traffic almost impossible. Eventually we made it home and sloshed our way in.
Rain on the rooftop when you’re falling asleep is usually comforting but on that first night it was almost terrifying as if the heavens themselves were trying to claw their way in.
Day 2
The rain continues. The river across the street has broken it’s banks and is quickly engulfing the neighbor’s yard. We still have power and water and as we watch the news in horror we realize even though we trapped in the house we’re still lucky. We have friends we can’t reach and based on the television reports their house is likely under multiple feet of water. We’ve started stockpiling water in buckets and bottles, we have candles and enough canned goods to get us through about two weeks.
Day 5
Most of the city is flooded. The river is no longer across the street, it’s in our front yard. We lost water yesterday and the power keeps flickering, cell service is intermittent, however our immediate concern is the 75 year old tree in the front yard that’s starting to list towards the house as the ground gets more and more waterlogged.
Day 6
We’re not a priority for emergency services currently because the water’s not inside the house. We’re packed as best as we can in preparation to leave. Where they’re taking us is anyone’s guess, currently 80% of the city is under five or more feet of water.
Day 10
We are encamped with a number of other survivors on the upper floors of the downtown office building, with tempers flaring due to limited food and water supplies. The rain continues to fall and no outside help or contact. The rain has cut off all outside communications, some survivors has tried to leave on the flood waters but have not been heard from again. Our choices at this point are starve to death or drown in the ever rising waters.
Before the fall of the snake oil empire I could sit down and write missives. It came easily, angry screeds, thoughtful columns. Like Hallmark, I could write something on command for every occasion. It was easy to work up the necessary vitriol, the corruption, the petty and no so petty larceny, the cronyism, the leadership caricatures, the greed and the excess. The targets were large and obvious the words came unbidden. Those were the days. with a phenomenal lack of effort I wax rhapsodic about the slightest hint of malfeasance, the latest scandal. Maybe that was the problem, it was too easy. Maybe I should have been paying attention. I was so caught up in the obvious that I missed the tiny machinations.
In retrospect, the plan was subtle. Well subtle-ish, ensure every bribe, every sexual dalliance, every bloated project, were all conveniently leaked. I thought I was so clever penning exposés and calling them out on their stupidity and greed. The light I thought I was casting on their misdeeds was simply making larger shadows for the rest of them to hide in. Then like a thief in the night, the empire was gone and in it’s place something far more dangerous and insidious. I’m sure the corruption is still here but the new empire is not only more discreet but less forgiving of its critics. Now all I can do is still quietly in the dark and lament how easily I was blinded to real truth by my ego.
Book review I wrote for my Technology and Culture in American History Class
John Ellis’ Social History of the Machine Gun documents and details the development of the rapid, automatic fire weapons in the late 19th century and its uses and effects in the immediate regional and global conflicts that followed. The primary timeline of Ellis’ work covers early attempts at automatic, continuous fire weaponry to the eventual implementation during World War I. This timeframe allowed Ellis to examine the early uses, acceptance and consequences of the technology, first in the United States and their subsequent use and acceptance as a tool in global conflicts. This time span is pivotal in the evaluation of the role class structure played in the implementation and use of the machine gun and by extension the racial undertones of the early utilization.
John Ellis gained his MA in International Relations at the University of Sussex and took a PhD course in Military Studies at the University of Manchester and has written extensively on technology and warfare. He is the author of multiple military histories including Eye-Deep in Hell: Trench Warfare in World War I, Cavalry: The History Of Mounted Warfare (Pen & Sword Military Classics), From the Barrel of a Gun: A History of Guerrilla, Revolutionary, and Counter-Insurgency Warfare, from the Romans to the Present and A Short History of Guerrilla Warfare.
The Social History of the Machine Gun is a well written treatise on the human aspect of one of the most ubiquitous tools of modern warfare – the machine gun. By extension, this book also examines the historical development of the United States as the initiators and purveyors of industrialized warfare. Ellis’ book is very personal and is more focussed on the individuals involved in the design, creation, marketing and usage of the machine gun rather than the technical aspects.
Ellis’ other conceit asserts general advances in industrialization made the development of the machine gun possible, however there were a number of preconditions only present in US society that were necessary for that development to be successful, they were: American expertise and interest in the manufacture of more complex machinery, combined with a willingness to use this knowledge in the creation of small arms and an unlimited faith in machines. These conditions and the Civil War – “the first truly modern war, in which the effects of new technology first made themselves apparent.” – helped demonstrate how technology could be used to “intensify scope, deadliness, …with a speed that would have been previously impossible.” (Ellis, 24) Simply put, the Civil War proved that war could be industrialized not just in the realms of transportation, clothing and supplies but weapons and ammunition.
Although Ellis dedicated an entire chapter to industrialization and the developments that precluded the introduction of the machine gun, much of the book is spent documenting the social and class structures that prevented not just implementation of the machine gun by the British during the World War I but also a continued refusal to accept that technology had become an integral part of warfare. In the chapters – Officers and Gentlemen and Making the Map Red, Ellis spends time explaining the social mores that held military industrialization back in the European Theatre while willing using the machine gun technology to subjugate people believed to be inferior in the African colonies. One of the key points of the slow adoption of military technology was the make up of military leadership. Specifically the British Army, leadership was most made of up the aristocracy and they were, as one scholar observed, “romantics in an industrial age.” (Ellis, 49) There was a strong belief in the supremacy of man versus machine. Even in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, this British military leadership continued to send wave after wave of soldiers to attack in time-honored formations, German machine gun embankments during the war, with disastrous consequences.
Ellis also tackles the overt racism in the use of the machine gun by British colonial forces leading up to World War I. The machine gun was used repeatedly as a tool of colonization and a method to suppress rebellion in Africa. The rational behind this according to Ellis was “…the ideology of British imperialism, whose very essence was an unquestioning belief in the innate superiority of the white race…” (Ellis, 101) This thinking allowed the British leadership to set “a low price on African lives.” and allowed them to regard colonial warfare “as an amusing diversion that had little in common with the ‘real’ wars that had been fought in Europe…” (Ellis, 102) The belief that “…the European was obviously superior to the African so why would he be ever so stupid to be baulked by a weapon that was only good for bowling over… and ‘Kaffirs’?” (Ellis, 102) came back to haunt an unprepared British military during World War I.
Ellis has put together a comprehensive and interesting work on the beginnings of the industrialization of war. He covers in great detail the folly of ignoring the changing technological landscape of warfare and how slow military leadership is to accept and adapt new methodologies. Ellis in his own way also documented the the death knell of British Aristocracy. The book is an easy read at 192 pages, with well researched notes, bibliography, bibliographical essay and index for quick reference. I would recommend this book wholeheartedly.
This summer I was required to take English Composition II as part of my ongoing attempt to get my degree. It’s the second most basic university level english class, which means it should have been a cakewalk. I speak english, I write it fairly well, I mean I’ve been rambling on here for the better part of a decade. I have proven that I can put sentences together in a meaningful manner for money at one point in my life. So why, oh why, did I fail what is clearly a basic english class?
The easy answer – I didn’t try hard enough. I didn’t care about the class and it offered me no challenges, so I took a lackadaisical attitude to the work. I didn’t submit drafts, I hated the material that we were required to read, I didn’t really review anything before submission and I didn’t submit any corrections for improved scores. The more complicated answer lies in a system so rigid that I am required to take freshman english despite all proof and indications to the contrary.
Going back to school has not been easy for me. There is a constant challenge to remain engaged and focussed while, thus far, re-hashing and pretending not to know the things I already do. What I have learned over the last three years is higher education is not about learning, it’s about about checking boxes. I’m trying to avoid being better considering I have six more semesters before I graduate but with the exception of one of my classes I don’t think I’ve actually learned anything or been challenged in anyway.
I have a fervent hope that I’m simply too old and jaded to be fully immersed in this experience but I sincerely doubt it. The education system from the top down seems less about teaching and more about fulfilling quotas. The other class I took this semester was a clear example of an exercise box checking. Professional Studies 3010, it is supposed to allow me to claim college credit for the things I’ve learned over the course of a career. However because my career path did not necessarily fit into the usual molds, I had to make a number of compromises to my portfolio and have my life experiences defined by the boxes that were available.
My final essay for my English class
Christmas has always been an interesting holiday for me. Growing up, my family unit consisted of my mother and myself. Every year until I turned 16, the Sunday after school closed for the holidays we would get on a plane and go to Jamaica where my maternal grandparents still lived. My mother would stay up late packing and early on Sunday morning a family friend would swing by and manhandle the two giant suitcase in the back of his car and take us to the airport.
Getting from our house in Trinidad to my grandparent’s house in Jamaica took a day. We would leave our house around 5:30am and drive eastward into the sun towards the airport. The flight was always full and check-in, then boarding felt indeterminable. There were no direct flights from Trinidad to Jamaica and our flight usually had three or four stops which turned a four hour trip into six or seven. The length of the trip was compounded by two problems I faced as a child – the excruciating ear pain pain I would experience on take off and landing and my propensity for throwing up airline meals.
I think the two might have been related but the limited window of the pain and regurgitation did nothing to temper the excitement of seeing my grandparents and participating in one of the best Christmas traditions – making fruit cake or as it’s known in the Caribbean, black cake. Most people hear fruit cake and think of a dry, tasteless log that gets passed from family member to family member like a lodestone, Caribbean fruit cake is completely different animal. The day after we arrived my mother and I would head to the supermarket and purchase the approximately 12-16 combined pounds of fruit, flour, sugar, eggs and butter as well as a large quantity of alcohol. We would then head back to the house where my job was the grind all the fruit – prunes, raisins, currants and into a huge metal bowl that existed only for this purpose.
Once the fruit was ground, my grandmother would pull out another metal bowl and jars of fruit that had been soaking in alcohol from the previous year and we would take turns mixing in the other ingredients until we had cake batter. The current year’s fruit I had ground went into the jars, got liberally covered with white rum and put into the pantry to soak for the next year. Once the batter was made it, the next step was greasing and lining the pans. My grandmother’s cake was the stuff of legend, my mother would take five or six cakes home with us and dole slices out to her close friends and confidantes. My grandfather’s clients and business partners would swing by during the holidays to get a slice. This was our tradition, this is how the holidays truly began for me.
The year I turned 16, my grandfather died and mother strong armed and her mother into moving to Trinidad with us. That Christmas we tried making black cake but somehow my mother managed to fall asleep and let the cakes burn. This became the excuse for a massive fight every year between my mother and grandmother which pretty much turned me off the whole holiday. The Christmas after I emigrated to the US, my wife who loves the holidays, thought it would be a good idea for use to attempt to restart this tradition. After some fits and starts we have finally perfected my grandmother’s black cake recipe. Our new tradition is to make a quarter batch in cupcake molds and share them with friends.
In Nashville it is very common to hear people make ugly comments about illegal immigrants. The city has even gone as far as allowing law enforcement officials to detain people they believe to be in the country illegally. The process to become a legal immigrant is long and costly. Contrary to the Hollywood version, marrying a US citizen does not automatically bestow citizenship upon you. My wife and I were married in 2002 and it took two years of paperwork and petitioning and a change to immigration law called the Life Act before I could even move to the United States.
In order to emigrate to the United States ther are a number of different visas which can be simplified into the following categories: family, employee, and humanitarian. Each visa has specific application paperwork with multiple pages to be filled in and requires different kinds of supporting documentation and attendant fees. These fees run in the hundreds of dollars and are non-refundable and the slightest error in your paperwork or missing documentation could result in your application being rejected. Hiring an immigration lawyer is an option but has no guarantee of success. My wife and I are both native English speakers and fairly intelligent but struggled at times to fill out the forms, which at times seemed to contain contradictory instructions. Finally we came up with a plan to fill the forms out in pencil then go over the requirements before we committed.
Having your paperwork approved is only the first step, usually there is an in-person interview. The in-person interview happens in most cases in a consular office or embassy if you are still outside the United States or a “local” field office if you are already in the country. These heavily guarded offices usually require the interviewees to arrive hours in advance and endure the elements before having their case decided in minutes by an immigration officer whose decision is final and cannot be appealed. For our final interview for my permanent resident visa, or green card as it is commonly known, my wife and I travelled to the Memphis field office. We spent the night in Memphis and arrived at the office at 7am and there were already people waiting. We were not allowed into the building until 9am and were not called for our interview until close to 11am. Our interview lasted approximately 20 minutes with an immigration officer who looked up briefly from the file in front of him to ask us for copies of our divorce decrees and marriage certificate. At the interview, we were told that my application was approved and I would receive the card in the mail. To this point we had spent approximately $5000 over a four-year period and didn’t know what the outcome would be. For families seeking a better life, that is a gamble they may not be willing to make.
I live in East Nashville, which has quickly become one of the most gentrified areas of the city. There are houses that are being sold for close to $500,000 on the same block with Section 8 housing. The dichotomy of this extends beyond the property values to something more essential – food. A food desert is defined as any census tract that isn’t within half-mile to a mile of a full-service grocery store or supermarket and are serviced instead by convenience and corner stores.
In East Nashville, the closest grocery store to the low income housing is a natural food market with prices geared towards the upper and middle income families that have moved into the neighborhood. The closest chain supermarket is about two miles away and due to the nature of Nashville’s public transit, would take four buses for a return trip. That leaves two convenience stores that are at least six blocks in either direction and neither carries a selection of fresh vegetables or fruit.
The solution to the issue of food deserts is multifaceted and requires not just access to affordable, fresh fruit and vegetables but education on how to prepare quick and meals using these items.
