Monday, October 24, 2011

... Gladwell and I ...

... the story's been told so often I take it as truth, part of my personal mythology, repetetive support for one of my earliest memories ... indeed, I can see the scenario now without closing my eyes ... being led through the front entrance of the public library on Tom Redcam Drive in Kingston, Jamaica, not long after my fifth birthday, by a purposeful thirty-something mother, isn't the sort of life-experience you'd expect to be emblazoned on the brain, but that day caught us on a determined mission ...

... before I had a passport, or a driver's license to guarantee my adult freedoms, I first had to get a library card, a ticket to a world of possibility and a gateway to an unending avenue of education and reading for pleasure ... for years all was so, until bookishness yielded sway to relatively sexy tele-news and glossy periodicals ...

... my book-reading love affair eventually took a hiatus but the die was cast, I was hooked on words ... the likes of War And Peace remain unfinished but National Geographic, The Economist and TIME subscriptions were faithfully renewed ... dailies were devoured, specialty-mags mined for target info, while Mad honed sarcasm and satire ... Shakespeare, Chaucer, Steinbeck and Miller, sounding like a law firm, were covered academically but my own reading stream was fed by populist tributaries ...

... eventually the book bug bit back, coming full-circle, and again Mama featured in da mix ... on a recent visit she hit me with the question, "Have you read any of Malcolm Gladwell's books?"...

... this, it turned out, was less of a query than a recommendation, to which I wasn't unreceptive, having been exposed to the author via publishing blitzes illuminating his bestseller celebrity, and, I had previously taken note of his pre-eminent New Yorker byline ... plus, knowing what he looked like, I felt a quasi-cosmic kinship not entirely unrelated to politics of hair and heritage ...















... so, God bless 'er, Mom marches me to the nearest bookstore in a manner reminiscent of our library visit in an earlier age ... by the time we exit she has gifted me The Tipping Point, Blink and the fascinating Outliers, Gladwellian pop-philosophy tomes which become my proper introduction to this modern thinker who, like me, has a preternatural penchant for verbiage, and proto-filial connections to Jamaica, Britain and Canada ...













... at this point she sweetens the pot with archival information dating from beyond her own childhood into the days of her father, my grandfather, the late Rhamos Sutherland Taylor ...

... "Teacher Taylor," as he was respectfully known, was a formidable man by nature ... an educator, and one of a legion of unsung nation-builders who, by discipline, tenacity and sense of self, embodied the fortitude of Jamaican identity leading up to and beyond 1962's independence from British colonial rule ...














... a man of average height ... "Saddie"(derived from Sutherland) to his inner-circle, possessed a crisp countenance, garrulous laugh and a passion for tall glasses of ice-water and sweet mangoes ... because of him I learned to peel an orange the skillful way, in one unbroken, coiled peel ... he had quite the insatiable predilection for citrus and fetching fruit was deemed to be one of my primary duties as eldest grandchild ...

... but, more pertinent to this anecdote than his Ortanique habit, is the fact that one of his closest friends and associates was a man I know only by the surname Nation ... fast friends since their days as batchmates at Mico College, Taylor and Nation were cut from similar country-cloth ... Mico, today a University, is a respected teacher-training facility established in 1836, roughly coinciding with the official end of African enslavement in Jamaica ... it survives as the oldest institution of its type in the Western Hemisphere ... nuff tradition, in other words ...














... such tradition is layered with inter-generational markers ... Taylor's pride, my mother Ivy, is one of the first daughters of an Old Miconian to have actually taught there too, a significant gender breakthrough at the time ... one of Nation's twin daughters, Joyce, Malcolm Gladwell's mother, is herself an insightful author, a key strand of her famous son's poly-cultural chromosomal psychology, and his own understanding of it ...

... like their fathers before them, these "girls" are contemporaries from adjacent rural towns ...

... they continue to parlay paternal impetus into lifelong contributions to community and offspring, with strong faith being a common, sustaining thread ... in fact, the other Nation twin, actually named Faith, in her capacity as board member of the Bible Society of The West Indies, is at least partially responsible for a Jamaican patois, audio re-enactment of popular Bible stories falling into my hands ...

... appropriately titled "A Who Run Tings?" in the vernacular, complete with reggae instrumental background music, this work came to me via Miss Ivy's social network ... on listening, it's not difficult to imagine looks of satisfied ('Saddie-sfied?') mirth on the faces of Taylor and Nation, runnin' tings in repose from inside the Pearly Gates ...

... as they gaze upon the vibrant extensions of their bloodlines ...

Monday, October 17, 2011

... almost artificial android autumn ...

... it sure is gettin' tres chilly 'round here ... watch the squirrels, bear and deer,
an' forget undressing bare as you dare ... dip in a lake now, privates disappear,
but, nature's concession thru powers that be ... is color-change on each deciduous tree,
a timely reminder to you 'n' me ... the best things in life are still wild and free ...













... leaves warm the cold,












... rich landscapes, behold,












... my android-tab snaps, to have and to hold ... flash-frozen, in vivid reds, greens and gold ...
magic Muskoka moments inspiring to share ... constant as time, year after year,
the cycle of life goes on ev'rywhere ... reassurance there's really nothing to fear ...

Thursday, October 13, 2011

... fast track to London ...

... the sun has long set over South Korea and the echoes of the starting pistol at the recently concluded Daegu World Track and Field Championships reverberates no more ... in replacement there is the slipstream of Caribbean athleticism and a drooling anticipation for the 2012 Olympiad, set to usher London into a bright new future ... maybe ...

... cynics will posit that Olympic gloss has dulled in modern times, given public distrust of relationships between high-performance humans, multi-syllabic pharmaceuticals, sponsorship-driven agendas and all-powerful quasi-governmental bodies along the lines of football's FIFA or the United Nations itself ... such organisations can be topheavy with empowered officials who carry weight when it comes to direction and decision-making ... career diplo-politicos sit at the UN, FIFA chiefs are ultimate footballing backroomers and International Olympic Committees are headed by the likes of the late Juan Antonio Samaranch and Jacques Rogge, names largely unknown outside of their specific circles ... the face of the 2012 London Olympic Organising Committee (LOCOG) however, is a premier athlete of modern Olympic lore ...

... legendary British middle-distance runner Sebastian Coe was transcendent on the track in his day, and true to form, has been doggedly aspirational since ... Coe is a household name in his homeland, having won gold medals, owned world records, entered politics and been granted peerage, titular membership in that most exclusive club of the realm, the preserve of Lords and Ladies ... his enduring and uncommonly close(ted?) link to former Conservative Party leader and "elder statesman" William Hague, Britain's current Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, has kept the newly-divorced Lord Coe in the UK public's voracious imagination ...

... an uncharacteristic false start and the subsequent automatic disqualification of Usain Bolt in Daegu's 100 metre sprint final sent shock waves through the sport ... that split-second, of a less-than-ten-second event, stunned observers and provoked comment from the terminally staid when Coe decreed there would be no rule change in London for Bolt, whose status as marquee king might otherwise have forced one ...













... in 1988, a similarly rejected call for exception meant 8oo metre world-record holder Coe missed the Olympics ... his ties to the not-so-distant corners of the British Empire might have seen him win glory for India, by virtue of his Punjabi maternal grandfather, since ill-health caused his failure to qualify at the British trials ... if that was a disappointment in Seoul it would undoubtably be topped in London where no-one but the competition (and the odd bookie) wants to see another major final with an empty block where Bolt should be ...













... so, the poignant drama of a sporting pinnacle is built into the fabric of Olympian battle - at every level, exposing cynicism as merely that ... every four years the universal spectacle of The Summer Games brings geo-politics into the cocktail-mix for the world to imbibe ... (even more than the Winter incarnation, which has a shallower history and intrinsic need for snow, ice, sang froid and thermal underwear) ...

... London, seat of a culture that once claimed proprietorship over so many world cultures, now becomes the focal showroom for retributive contest (dare I say reparation?), a forum for moral redress and assertive statement, in a conflict where the subordinated are wounded in pride only and human casualties are not counted by lives lost ...

... meanwhile, back in the boardroom, Lord Coe will be brushing up on his "jive" (referring to a comment he once made about Jamaican-born, British sprint star Linford Christie's speech patterns), betraying attitudinal distinctions implicit in the relationship between landed gentry and the hoi polloi ... Coe's recent genealogical quest for his aristocratic lineage led to roots in the sugar plantocracy of Jamaica, a revelation that exposed family ownership of hundreds of slaves and inter-mixture of bloodlines ...

... ground-zero in this particular plantation pot-pourri was Trelawny, the same north-western parish of Jamaica that Usain Bolt hails from ...

... period maps of the region, and others like it, survive to shine light on the ancestry of those who are descended from the principals of the lucrative industry-of-the-age, and most of the Caribbean cast of competitors will relish the opportunity to overtake Rule Britannia on the track and in the field ...

... certainly it's compelling to study the little ironies of intertwined legacies ... to wit, George Hyde Clarke, Coe's ancestor, shares a surname with the bloodline of Bustamante and Manley, scions of modern Jamaica, cousins, National Heroes and founders of both major political parties ... there's plenty reason to salivate at the thought of strands of history sharing a distilled moment of clarity in the still evolving post-colonial landscape ... it may even spawn a new dance ...















... currently, Jamaican athletes in particular are in a rich vein of dominance, just in time for 2012 - which is also the landmark 50th Anniversary of Independence from British rule ...

... celebrations will be in full swing by the opening ceremonies and contemporary demographic realities suggest there will be as much black, green and gold in evidence as red, white and blue ... think Princess Beatrice one-upping her wedding hat with a voluminous Rasta tam or Pippa skanking with Roots Manuva at a street-party ... just keep the dreadlocks wig away from Prince Harry ...