“To hold a people in oppression you have to convince them first that they are supposed to be oppressed.” ~ John Henrik Clarke’ We keep saying these are strange times. But are they? Over ten years ago I was getting ready to travel to Jamaica for a week of high school reunion activities. I had […]
“Retribution haunts everyone, but catches up only the few.”~ Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach. I admit I was naïve. I blame Jamaica. I had grown up as a white girl surrounded by a population whose motto is ‘Out of many, one people.’ The majority of Jamaicans are descended from the enslaved Africans who were brought to the […]
“You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.” ~ Malcolm X. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” When you want to be a writer, or even an author, you aspire to create a killer first line, an opening sentence […]
“Let justice roll down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.“ ~ Amos 5:24 and Martin Luther King Jr., (Letter from the Birmingham Jail). Growing up and attending a school in Jamaica (as in any country associated with the British Colonial past) included studies in ‘Bible Knowledge’ (BK, or some variation on that name). […]
“It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.” ~ Frederick Douglass. The first time I returned to visit Jamaica after a thirteen-year hiatus, I spent a lot of my time gazing, staring out at mountain vistas, rumpled […]
“We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr. My parents were both pacifists. My father’s brothers were also pacifists and as young men in 1939, at the start of World War II, […]
“There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supercedes all other courts.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi. I left home at the age of eighteen and a half, finished with high school, ready to enter the profession of nursing. The weird thing about growing up in a small […]
“What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.” ~ C. L. Stuart. When I was about seventeen, I was itching to learn to drive. This was in Jamaica, back in the days when stick shifts were standard, automatics were rare. I was the youngest child, and only one still at […]
“The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.” ~ Epictetus. We are living through an amazing time. There are eras in your life that are special. When I started in nursing school in England in the 70s, I knew absolutely […]
“Sometimes you can find peace of mind by transferring yourself to different situations. They’re just reminders to stay… calm.” ~ Yves Behar. My father always claimed to be a late developer, not in the physical sense, but in the academic sense. He did not do well in his ‘common entrance’ an exam given to 11 […]
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