I like both of these old covers.
I'm still on my blogging break and I'll be back in full swing next week. Have a terrific New Year's Eve and thanks for a spectacular 2010 at K&RD!
31 December 2010
Happy New Year!
I like both of these old covers.
I'm still on my blogging break and I'll be back in full swing next week. Have a terrific New Year's Eve and thanks for a spectacular 2010 at K&RD!
24 December 2010
The ghosts of Christmas variety shows past
It's Christmas Eve. I don't know if it's your thing or not but it's sure mine. This is my favorite day of the year, my favorite night of the year to be specific. So before I take off for a couple of days to ring in my Christmas Eve, I want to thank all of you guys for another terrific year. This little blog thing has brought so many great people into my life and they've brought so much good stuff with them it gets overwhelming to think about.
So as we get ready to show 2010 the door and usher in 2011 I want to wish all of you the very best for the coming year.
2010's been a feast on one hand and a famine on the other. Whattya say we all work on having there be more feast and less famine in 2011?
And although it's great to look forward to what's next, Christmas is always a good excuse to look back too. I'm not one to entertain a whole lot of nostalgia, it never seems like a productive use of time. However there are some exceptions. Most people get all excited every year when the Grinch comes on TV. Or how about A Charlie Brown Christmas? For other people it's all about A Year Without a Santa Claus. The Christmas stuff I remember so fondly never makes it back onto TVland or ABC Family.
I'm talking about Christmas variety shows of course. They're the ignored art form from the days of network only TV. Well thank heavens for YouTube. Even now, despite all of my classical longings, it's not Christmas in my house until I break out the Andy Williams.
Andy Williams defined Christmas for me as a kid. Everybody was nice, sung well and wore sweaters. What more could you ask for really?
And of course, Andy Williams discovered the Osmond Brothers. The addition of the Osmonds to Andy's Christmas specials ratcheted up the treacle levels to near-cavity-inducing levels but it was a lot of fun anyhow.
The Osmonds took their early fame and turned it into an entertainment moguldom that should make the Brittanys and the GaGas squirm with discomfort. These people were an entertainment machine. One of the neighbor kids and I used to ask each other all the time "Who would you want to be adopted by, the Osmonds or the Jacksons (of Jackson Five fame)?" I would always pick the Jacksons. Even then, at nine or ten, all that forced happiness made me uncomfortable. It was sure fun to watch though.
Once everybody figured out that there was money to be made in TV variety shows, Christmas specials in particular, the floodgates opened and everybody got in on the act. Watch, if you dare, this clip from Sonny and Cher. Count the B-list celebrities.
Variety shows always made for strange bedfellows. Whether it was Charo and Señor Wences chewing scenery with Donnie and Marie or Ruth Buzzi hamming it up on the Flip Wilson show, variety shows brought together the weird and the wonderful and everybody ended up singing. In the next clip, the has-been and desperate meet the new and eager in an orgy of self-promotion at any cost.
Though variety shows as a rung on the career ladder peaked in the mid-70s, the genre lived on as a vehicle for selling records as evidenced by this gem from the early '80s. I'm dedicating this to my great friends Brandon and Kevin who abandoned me and the glories of Christmas in St. Pete for the sordid bacchanal of New Orleans a couple of years ago. The memory of their drunken renditions of Hard Candy Christmas, sung a capella on my sofa every year, sustain me through hard times.
Finally, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when John Denver's agent sobered him up and explained that they were going to save his career by having him sing with puppets on TV.
It worked.
So have a great Christmas one and all. If Christmas isn't your thing, enjoy having the movie theaters all to yourselves this weekend. I'm going to take a couple of days off and I'll be back next week.
So as we get ready to show 2010 the door and usher in 2011 I want to wish all of you the very best for the coming year.
2010's been a feast on one hand and a famine on the other. Whattya say we all work on having there be more feast and less famine in 2011?
And although it's great to look forward to what's next, Christmas is always a good excuse to look back too. I'm not one to entertain a whole lot of nostalgia, it never seems like a productive use of time. However there are some exceptions. Most people get all excited every year when the Grinch comes on TV. Or how about A Charlie Brown Christmas? For other people it's all about A Year Without a Santa Claus. The Christmas stuff I remember so fondly never makes it back onto TVland or ABC Family.
I'm talking about Christmas variety shows of course. They're the ignored art form from the days of network only TV. Well thank heavens for YouTube. Even now, despite all of my classical longings, it's not Christmas in my house until I break out the Andy Williams.
Andy Williams defined Christmas for me as a kid. Everybody was nice, sung well and wore sweaters. What more could you ask for really?
And of course, Andy Williams discovered the Osmond Brothers. The addition of the Osmonds to Andy's Christmas specials ratcheted up the treacle levels to near-cavity-inducing levels but it was a lot of fun anyhow.
The Osmonds took their early fame and turned it into an entertainment moguldom that should make the Brittanys and the GaGas squirm with discomfort. These people were an entertainment machine. One of the neighbor kids and I used to ask each other all the time "Who would you want to be adopted by, the Osmonds or the Jacksons (of Jackson Five fame)?" I would always pick the Jacksons. Even then, at nine or ten, all that forced happiness made me uncomfortable. It was sure fun to watch though.
Once everybody figured out that there was money to be made in TV variety shows, Christmas specials in particular, the floodgates opened and everybody got in on the act. Watch, if you dare, this clip from Sonny and Cher. Count the B-list celebrities.
Variety shows always made for strange bedfellows. Whether it was Charo and Señor Wences chewing scenery with Donnie and Marie or Ruth Buzzi hamming it up on the Flip Wilson show, variety shows brought together the weird and the wonderful and everybody ended up singing. In the next clip, the has-been and desperate meet the new and eager in an orgy of self-promotion at any cost.
Though variety shows as a rung on the career ladder peaked in the mid-70s, the genre lived on as a vehicle for selling records as evidenced by this gem from the early '80s. I'm dedicating this to my great friends Brandon and Kevin who abandoned me and the glories of Christmas in St. Pete for the sordid bacchanal of New Orleans a couple of years ago. The memory of their drunken renditions of Hard Candy Christmas, sung a capella on my sofa every year, sustain me through hard times.
Finally, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when John Denver's agent sobered him up and explained that they were going to save his career by having him sing with puppets on TV.
It worked.
So have a great Christmas one and all. If Christmas isn't your thing, enjoy having the movie theaters all to yourselves this weekend. I'm going to take a couple of days off and I'll be back next week.
23 December 2010
Reader question: Is it island time for me?
Help! I live in a small house and I'm thinking about replacing my kitchen table and chairs with an island. Would this be a good or a bad idea? It's the only eating area we have in our small house.
I can't tell really because I can't see the space or the size of the table in question. So I'm going to answer this from the gut. My gut answer is no; don't do it.
Let me preface all of this by saying that all rooms and all clients are different. Some people get a lot of use out of an island and some rooms can accommodate one with little difficulty. However, you told me two things that are offering a clue. First, your house is small. Islands tend to work better in large rooms. Second, you tell me that your current table is your only eating area. So putting in an island means that you're sentencing yourself to a lifetime of eating at a counter.
I talk about this topic a lot. I suppose I'm some kind of a kitchen table advocate. I write for Houzz.com and I devoted a whole IdeaBook to kitchen tables a couple of weeks ago. Here it is:
Forgoing eating at a table and instead eating at a counter does a couple of things that I think are important. More important than any storage gains you might get out of an island.
The most important thing that happens at a kitchen table is that you eat across from someone, not side by side like you would at an island bar. When you eat across from someone, your dinner mate is the focus of your attention. Human beings don't just communicate verbally. We communicate non-verbally just as much and in order to pick up the visual cues someone else is sending, you need to be able to see his or her face. This visual communication happens a lot more easily at a table then it does at a counter.
In addition to the communication thing, when you're eating at a table you're having dinner in a place set aside specifically for eating. But more than that, it's a space set aside for eating with other people. It's a lot easier to make meals matter when they happen in a space set aside for them specifically. Island counters are by definition multi-purpose surfaces. Eating at one isn't an event, no matter how mundane.
But at a table, it's easier to turn off the electronics and focus on what's important --your loved ones.
When the only eating area you have is a counter, it becomes to easy to have shared meals fall by the wayside. It makes the "we're too busy nowadays" lie easy to internalize and make true in your own life. The fact of the matter isn't at all that "we're too busy." Instead, what "we" have is an inability to prioritize. If you make shared meals a priority you will have them. An important statement that you're making them a priority is to keep your kitchen table.
So, you asked and I answered. While it's true that installing an island doesn't doom you to divorce and delinquent kids, keeping your table will make shared meals a more common occurrence in your home.
22 December 2010
Postcards from New York
As I've been repeating endlessly lately, I spend last weekend in Manhattan. Glad about it, mad about it Manhattan. I am no stranger to The Big Apple but Saturday, December 11th has to be the best day I have ever spent in that city of cities.
I owe all of this to my right hand, JD. This whole weekend was his idea and it was for all intents and purposes a Christmas present. I had a couple of meetings in the city on Friday and Saturday was a day set aside for experiencing the many wonders of Gotham. Wonders I usually miss when I'm there.
JD'd booked us at the New York Palace. Without a doubt, it was the best hotel I'd ever stayed in. We were on the 31st floor and we looked across Madison Avenue and down on St. Patrick's Cathedral. That's Rockefeller Center in the middle left side of this photo.
So at around 7:30 on Saturday, I swung open the draperies and that was what I saw. I love Manhattan and I love Midtown specifically. Having a 31st-floor perch on the corner of Madison and 50th was as ideal a location as I can imagine. So after a round of room-service coffee we got dressed and went downstairs to eat breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Five-star hotels don't just have expensive rooms. I had a $30 bowl of oatmeal.
We walked around the neighborhood for a while after that and then jumped on the subway to head up to The Metropolitan Museum.
The Met is one of the world's largest art museums and it has a collection of nearly 2 million pieces of art broken into 19 sub-collections. The Met renovated its hall of ancient Greek and Roman Art four years ago and I'd never seen it. Their collection is spectacular, one of the best I've ever seen. That bronze in the photo above is more than 2,000 years old and it looks as if it were cast yesterday. Like an idiot, I didn't photograph its accompanying plaque and now I can't remember what it is and what it's representing. Any Met buffs out there who can help me with that statue?
The Met's an enormous museum and I don't think it's possible to get through the whole thing in a day. If you're considering a visit, look over their collections online first and make a plan.
From the Met (on 5th Avenue at 82nd) we headed back toward Midtown via Madison Avnue. It was a sunny, clear day and Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side is one of the best places in New York for window shopping (actual shopping too). It's a residential neighborhood and there's a shopping district that extends the whole way from up there down to Midtown. Along that stretch of Madison Avenue, you'll find everything from Hermès to Betsey Johnson. There are no fewer than four Ralph Lauren shops along that stretch of Madison.
After a quick lunch I met up with Tess, a college friend who's the media director for the National Urban League these days. Tess and her family live in Harlem and we've both come a very long way from the rolling hills of rural Pennsylvania, that's for sure.
Then it was off to dinner. I'd made reservations earlier for Charlie Palmer's Métrazur. I'd been to Métrazur before at the suggestion of the great Jai Massela from Brizo Faucets. My second visit was even better than my first and dinner that night was easily the best meal I've ever eaten in New York. What pushed it over the edge was a generous serving of truffled mashed potatoes. I'm telling you, those things will haunt me for the rest of my days.
Métrazur is in the East Balcony of Grand Central Terminal and every table in the place has one of the most spectacular views to be had in the entire city.
Despite the fact that Métrazur is perched on a balcony inside of the busiest rail terminal in the United States, up on the balcony it's nearly as quiet as a church. Sound doesn't travel up inside of that cavernous terminal and the effect is pure magic.
After a truly spectacular meal, it was time to head over to Lincoln Center and the Metropolitan Opera House for the big event. I've been learning about opera for the last five or six years. I wasn't ready for it until I hit 40 but now it's about all I listen to. It has a tradition that goes back centuries and the very act of singing operatically is a feat of superhuman strength and prowess. Seeing an opera at the Met is a goal of everybody with even a glancing interest in grand opera and JD and I had tickets for La bohème.
La bohème is the world's most-performed opera and the New York Metropolitan Opera has been mounting a production of it every season since La bohème made its US debut in 1900. I had pretty high expectations for what I was about to see and as the curtain rose on Act One and Marcello launched into "Questo Mar Rosso" each and every one of those expectations was exceeded and then some.
The Metropolitan Opera's world famous for the sets it uses in its production of La bohème. They were commissioned in 1981 and master director Franco Zeffirelli's elaborate creations nearly bankrupted the company. I knew they were going to be amazing but again, I didn't quite know how amazing.
La bohème is presented in four acts and act one takes place in the garret shared by Rodolfo, a poet, Marcello, a painter; Shaunard, a musician and Colline, a philosopher. The year is 1830 and it's Christmas Eve in Paris.
La bohème is as funny as it is stirring which is quite an accomplishment since it was composed 120 years ago. After the four Bohemians have their moment, they decide to leave the garret and go to a tavern. The curtain goes down. 20 minutes later the curtain comes back up and reveals the most elaborate piece of stagework I've ever seen.
According to everything I've read, act two of La bohème has a cast of 280 people and it includes a full marching band a live horse. After an exciting romp through the tavern the curtain goes down.
20 minutes later, the curtain comes up and the action's shifted to a snowy pre-dawn. It's at the foot of a bridge on the outskirts of Paris.
It's snowing. As in it's snowing for real. It snows the whole way through act three. The lovers reunite and swear to be together forever again and the curtain comes down.
When the curtain comes back up we're back in the garret and it's spring time.
Now usually, this kind of a spectacle is a way to hide so-so musicianship. But I assure you that wasn't the case with the Met's bohème. The main characters of Mimi and Rodolfo were sung by Krassimira Stoyanova and Joseph Calleja. I'd never heard Calleja sing before and he was incredible. That man has a voice so clear it sounded as if he were sitting next to me. Here he is singing E Lucevan Le Stelle from Tosca, another Puccini opera.
If you listen to him in that piece, pay attention to how he modulates and controls his voice while at the same time singing at something approaching 180 decibels. Many thanks to the Metropolitan Opera Company for the use of those photos.
The opera wrapped up at around quarter to midnight and we jumped back in a train bound for another hidden wonder at Grand Central Terminal, the Campbell Apartment.
The Campbell apartment is tucked into the Vanderbilt Avenue side of Grand Central and most people have no idea it's there. The Campbell Apartment is the one time office and salon of John Campbell, Grand Central Terminal's first general manager. It's been renovated back to its gilded age glory and now operates as one of the coolest lounges in the city.
We'd made arrangements to meet up with six other friends for a night cap and by the time we got there the rest of the gang was already holding court. If you have a group and you want to hang out at the Campbell Apartment, call ahead and make a reservation. That's true of any good lounge in the city by the way.
It was great to see everybody and ward off the usual round of questions about when I'm moving to The City. Yeah right. There are a few places around the world where I feel at home instantly and New York's definitely one of them. By the time we made it back to The Palace it was well past three in the morning. I don't think I'd ever been so tired or so euphorically happy in my life.
My trips to New York don't usually involve five-star hotels and opera tickets but it was a welcome change to my own vie bohème. Flying home on Sunday night was an anticlimax I'm still recovering from. I'll be back in The City again in March only without The Palace, the Met or La bohème. It'll be a working trip next time but working trips have an allure of their own. So it'll back to 14th Street for me.
I owe all of this to my right hand, JD. This whole weekend was his idea and it was for all intents and purposes a Christmas present. I had a couple of meetings in the city on Friday and Saturday was a day set aside for experiencing the many wonders of Gotham. Wonders I usually miss when I'm there.
JD'd booked us at the New York Palace. Without a doubt, it was the best hotel I'd ever stayed in. We were on the 31st floor and we looked across Madison Avenue and down on St. Patrick's Cathedral. That's Rockefeller Center in the middle left side of this photo.
So at around 7:30 on Saturday, I swung open the draperies and that was what I saw. I love Manhattan and I love Midtown specifically. Having a 31st-floor perch on the corner of Madison and 50th was as ideal a location as I can imagine. So after a round of room-service coffee we got dressed and went downstairs to eat breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Five-star hotels don't just have expensive rooms. I had a $30 bowl of oatmeal.
We walked around the neighborhood for a while after that and then jumped on the subway to head up to The Metropolitan Museum.
The Met is one of the world's largest art museums and it has a collection of nearly 2 million pieces of art broken into 19 sub-collections. The Met renovated its hall of ancient Greek and Roman Art four years ago and I'd never seen it. Their collection is spectacular, one of the best I've ever seen. That bronze in the photo above is more than 2,000 years old and it looks as if it were cast yesterday. Like an idiot, I didn't photograph its accompanying plaque and now I can't remember what it is and what it's representing. Any Met buffs out there who can help me with that statue?
The Met's an enormous museum and I don't think it's possible to get through the whole thing in a day. If you're considering a visit, look over their collections online first and make a plan.
From the Met (on 5th Avenue at 82nd) we headed back toward Midtown via Madison Avnue. It was a sunny, clear day and Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side is one of the best places in New York for window shopping (actual shopping too). It's a residential neighborhood and there's a shopping district that extends the whole way from up there down to Midtown. Along that stretch of Madison Avenue, you'll find everything from Hermès to Betsey Johnson. There are no fewer than four Ralph Lauren shops along that stretch of Madison.
After a quick lunch I met up with Tess, a college friend who's the media director for the National Urban League these days. Tess and her family live in Harlem and we've both come a very long way from the rolling hills of rural Pennsylvania, that's for sure.
Then it was off to dinner. I'd made reservations earlier for Charlie Palmer's Métrazur. I'd been to Métrazur before at the suggestion of the great Jai Massela from Brizo Faucets. My second visit was even better than my first and dinner that night was easily the best meal I've ever eaten in New York. What pushed it over the edge was a generous serving of truffled mashed potatoes. I'm telling you, those things will haunt me for the rest of my days.
Métrazur is in the East Balcony of Grand Central Terminal and every table in the place has one of the most spectacular views to be had in the entire city.
Despite the fact that Métrazur is perched on a balcony inside of the busiest rail terminal in the United States, up on the balcony it's nearly as quiet as a church. Sound doesn't travel up inside of that cavernous terminal and the effect is pure magic.
After a truly spectacular meal, it was time to head over to Lincoln Center and the Metropolitan Opera House for the big event. I've been learning about opera for the last five or six years. I wasn't ready for it until I hit 40 but now it's about all I listen to. It has a tradition that goes back centuries and the very act of singing operatically is a feat of superhuman strength and prowess. Seeing an opera at the Met is a goal of everybody with even a glancing interest in grand opera and JD and I had tickets for La bohème.
La bohème is the world's most-performed opera and the New York Metropolitan Opera has been mounting a production of it every season since La bohème made its US debut in 1900. I had pretty high expectations for what I was about to see and as the curtain rose on Act One and Marcello launched into "Questo Mar Rosso" each and every one of those expectations was exceeded and then some.
The Metropolitan Opera's world famous for the sets it uses in its production of La bohème. They were commissioned in 1981 and master director Franco Zeffirelli's elaborate creations nearly bankrupted the company. I knew they were going to be amazing but again, I didn't quite know how amazing.
La bohème is presented in four acts and act one takes place in the garret shared by Rodolfo, a poet, Marcello, a painter; Shaunard, a musician and Colline, a philosopher. The year is 1830 and it's Christmas Eve in Paris.
La bohème is as funny as it is stirring which is quite an accomplishment since it was composed 120 years ago. After the four Bohemians have their moment, they decide to leave the garret and go to a tavern. The curtain goes down. 20 minutes later the curtain comes back up and reveals the most elaborate piece of stagework I've ever seen.
According to everything I've read, act two of La bohème has a cast of 280 people and it includes a full marching band a live horse. After an exciting romp through the tavern the curtain goes down.
20 minutes later, the curtain comes up and the action's shifted to a snowy pre-dawn. It's at the foot of a bridge on the outskirts of Paris.
It's snowing. As in it's snowing for real. It snows the whole way through act three. The lovers reunite and swear to be together forever again and the curtain comes down.
When the curtain comes back up we're back in the garret and it's spring time.
Now usually, this kind of a spectacle is a way to hide so-so musicianship. But I assure you that wasn't the case with the Met's bohème. The main characters of Mimi and Rodolfo were sung by Krassimira Stoyanova and Joseph Calleja. I'd never heard Calleja sing before and he was incredible. That man has a voice so clear it sounded as if he were sitting next to me. Here he is singing E Lucevan Le Stelle from Tosca, another Puccini opera.
If you listen to him in that piece, pay attention to how he modulates and controls his voice while at the same time singing at something approaching 180 decibels. Many thanks to the Metropolitan Opera Company for the use of those photos.
The opera wrapped up at around quarter to midnight and we jumped back in a train bound for another hidden wonder at Grand Central Terminal, the Campbell Apartment.
The Campbell apartment is tucked into the Vanderbilt Avenue side of Grand Central and most people have no idea it's there. The Campbell Apartment is the one time office and salon of John Campbell, Grand Central Terminal's first general manager. It's been renovated back to its gilded age glory and now operates as one of the coolest lounges in the city.
We'd made arrangements to meet up with six other friends for a night cap and by the time we got there the rest of the gang was already holding court. If you have a group and you want to hang out at the Campbell Apartment, call ahead and make a reservation. That's true of any good lounge in the city by the way.
It was great to see everybody and ward off the usual round of questions about when I'm moving to The City. Yeah right. There are a few places around the world where I feel at home instantly and New York's definitely one of them. By the time we made it back to The Palace it was well past three in the morning. I don't think I'd ever been so tired or so euphorically happy in my life.
My trips to New York don't usually involve five-star hotels and opera tickets but it was a welcome change to my own vie bohème. Flying home on Sunday night was an anticlimax I'm still recovering from. I'll be back in The City again in March only without The Palace, the Met or La bohème. It'll be a working trip next time but working trips have an allure of their own. So it'll back to 14th Street for me.
21 December 2010
If money were no object: a Blog Off Post
The following is a Blog Off post. A Blog off is a biweekly event that's sweeping the internet. It's an event where bloggers of all stripes write about the same topic. You can learn more on the Let's Blog Off site. As the day progresses, a table will appear at the end of this post and it will list all of the participants as well as link to their posts.
The gist of the Blog Off this week is a suggestion to muse and meander about what I'd buy my loved ones if money were no object. Well, my loved ones don't really need anything that can be bought with money so I'm abandoning them for this exercise. Well, they'd be welcome to join me in the thing I'm about to muse and meander about but it doesn't involve the exchange of goods between us.
I've written quite a bit about an island in The Bahamas that's very near and dear to me, Cat Island. It has it has own keyword in my glossary it's so near and dear to me.
I never made it over to my Cat Island in 2010 but I will change that in 2011. I will.
I go to Cat Island for its isolation. I can relax there in its primitive loveliness like I can no where else. The combination of being cut off from the rest of the world and the hospitality of the Bahamian people touch me in a really profound way. The accommodations where I stay are pretty primitive but that just adds to the allure.
They're alluring because I'm a white American on vacation. The living conditions for the Bahamians who live on Cat probably don't hold the same romantic allure they do for me. The Bahamians I've come to know are a cheerful, generous lot. I doubt they realize it, but I've learned more from them than I have words to elaborate. Most of those lessons have to do with forcing me to see that most of what I tell myself is a need is an illusion.
The poverty on Cat Island may not feel like poverty to Cat Islanders but it looks like poverty to me. No one goes hungry, but life on the Out Islands of The Bahamas is hard.
I read an article in the Cape Coral, FL Daily Breeze last year that talked about the conditions at the Old Bight High School on Cat Island. I've driven past that high school more times than I can count but the article talked about how the Cape Coral Charter School System donated 2,000 text books to the high school in Old Bight. Prior to their donation, the kids at Old Bight High had one text book for every five to 15 students, depending on the subject. I read another article last October in The Bahamas Weekly that was written by the Honourable Philip "Brave" Davis, the Member of Parliament for Cat and its neighboring islands. Old Bight High School had to close in the fall of 2010 due to a lack of teachers and the unsafe conditions at the school. As of last year, Old Bight High School had 13 teachers to its 134 students. Those 134 students had to be absorbed by the already over extended Arthur's Town High School, 25 miles to the north.
25 miles is an insurmountable distance when your primary mode of transportation is your feet. I can't help but think that due to a lack of resources, any chance of a better life got snubbed out for those 134 kids with that school closure.
My proudest possession is my intellect and it hurts me deeply to hear about the educational conditions on Cat Island. That a generation of kids just had their intellectual opportunities pulled out from underneath them rubs me raw.
These kids deserve to be able to do anything they want with their lives and they can't do that without books and schools.
So if money were no object I would start a foundation, an educational foundation. A mistake a lot of western aid organizations make is that they're western aid organizations. Mine wouldn't be in the business of making sovereign people jump through hoops to get money. Instead, my foundation would be staffed and run by Bahamians, Cat Islanders wherever possible. My foundation would staff schools with Bahamian teachers and provide Bahamas-appropriate text books. My fantasy foundation would help to raise a generation of smart and proud Bahamians. They'd be a group of people who knew who they were and where they stood as integral parts of the sweeping history of the islands they call home.
But alas, my foundation is all in my head and likely to stay there. Unfortunately, money is an object all too real and the kids at New Bight High School got that for their big lesson this year.
It's unfathomable to me that schools close due to a lack of teachers and resources in a country just offshore from the US. A country where millions of North Americans and Europeans go every year to unwind.
So maybe what there is to do here is stop dreaming about money not being an obstacle to having basic needs met. Maybe what there is to do is find a way to actually lend a hand. Schools across the developed world throw away books by the truck load every year. It's true that Cat Island's schools represent a small, small portion of the total need, but they're the portion I know.
What would it take to partner up with a couple of school districts in Florida or elsewhere in the US? Anybody know somebody who can make a connection like that happen? Anybody out there want to lend a hand?
The gist of the Blog Off this week is a suggestion to muse and meander about what I'd buy my loved ones if money were no object. Well, my loved ones don't really need anything that can be bought with money so I'm abandoning them for this exercise. Well, they'd be welcome to join me in the thing I'm about to muse and meander about but it doesn't involve the exchange of goods between us.
I've written quite a bit about an island in The Bahamas that's very near and dear to me, Cat Island. It has it has own keyword in my glossary it's so near and dear to me.
I never made it over to my Cat Island in 2010 but I will change that in 2011. I will.
I go to Cat Island for its isolation. I can relax there in its primitive loveliness like I can no where else. The combination of being cut off from the rest of the world and the hospitality of the Bahamian people touch me in a really profound way. The accommodations where I stay are pretty primitive but that just adds to the allure.
They're alluring because I'm a white American on vacation. The living conditions for the Bahamians who live on Cat probably don't hold the same romantic allure they do for me. The Bahamians I've come to know are a cheerful, generous lot. I doubt they realize it, but I've learned more from them than I have words to elaborate. Most of those lessons have to do with forcing me to see that most of what I tell myself is a need is an illusion.
The poverty on Cat Island may not feel like poverty to Cat Islanders but it looks like poverty to me. No one goes hungry, but life on the Out Islands of The Bahamas is hard.
I read an article in the Cape Coral, FL Daily Breeze last year that talked about the conditions at the Old Bight High School on Cat Island. I've driven past that high school more times than I can count but the article talked about how the Cape Coral Charter School System donated 2,000 text books to the high school in Old Bight. Prior to their donation, the kids at Old Bight High had one text book for every five to 15 students, depending on the subject. I read another article last October in The Bahamas Weekly that was written by the Honourable Philip "Brave" Davis, the Member of Parliament for Cat and its neighboring islands. Old Bight High School had to close in the fall of 2010 due to a lack of teachers and the unsafe conditions at the school. As of last year, Old Bight High School had 13 teachers to its 134 students. Those 134 students had to be absorbed by the already over extended Arthur's Town High School, 25 miles to the north.
25 miles is an insurmountable distance when your primary mode of transportation is your feet. I can't help but think that due to a lack of resources, any chance of a better life got snubbed out for those 134 kids with that school closure.
My proudest possession is my intellect and it hurts me deeply to hear about the educational conditions on Cat Island. That a generation of kids just had their intellectual opportunities pulled out from underneath them rubs me raw.
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| photo from The Bahamas Weekly |
These kids deserve to be able to do anything they want with their lives and they can't do that without books and schools.
So if money were no object I would start a foundation, an educational foundation. A mistake a lot of western aid organizations make is that they're western aid organizations. Mine wouldn't be in the business of making sovereign people jump through hoops to get money. Instead, my foundation would be staffed and run by Bahamians, Cat Islanders wherever possible. My foundation would staff schools with Bahamian teachers and provide Bahamas-appropriate text books. My fantasy foundation would help to raise a generation of smart and proud Bahamians. They'd be a group of people who knew who they were and where they stood as integral parts of the sweeping history of the islands they call home.
But alas, my foundation is all in my head and likely to stay there. Unfortunately, money is an object all too real and the kids at New Bight High School got that for their big lesson this year.
It's unfathomable to me that schools close due to a lack of teachers and resources in a country just offshore from the US. A country where millions of North Americans and Europeans go every year to unwind.
So maybe what there is to do here is stop dreaming about money not being an obstacle to having basic needs met. Maybe what there is to do is find a way to actually lend a hand. Schools across the developed world throw away books by the truck load every year. It's true that Cat Island's schools represent a small, small portion of the total need, but they're the portion I know.
What would it take to partner up with a couple of school districts in Florida or elsewhere in the US? Anybody know somebody who can make a connection like that happen? Anybody out there want to lend a hand?
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