Thru Novel Lenses! New Vision New Perspectives New Ideas New Directions For the New World! Futuring Sustainable Development in the Post Pandemic Planet From Pre School to Policy Making
Anyone know of a local alternative to #Microsoft and some other #software and #hardware technologies and upgrades?
Does sustaining local enterprise mean disconnecting from global technologies?
Those who know me know I do not like shopping and am an advocate to #BuyLocal so I would appreciate info so as to avoid that new #7%Tax in addition to the other taxes already paid on such products because we have not developed the necessary bilateral and multilateral regimes to ensure that locals benefit fully from belonging to a universally connected physical, technological and human ecosystem.
I am sure we have already injected significant investments in developing our own #knowledge products and #industry that would #sustain such activities even as we recognise that we are a self-sustaining #island onto ourselves already growing all of our own food, producing our own technologies and have fully developed alternative local systems to ensure we do not need to be connected to any part of the globe to sustain ourselves or economic or other activity. Of course there are always alternative endeavours to knowledge-driven engagements as joining our hard working friends on the Beetham collecting old bottles for sales... Some of the sustainable living options available....more to unfold here or anyone want to move beyond renewing, recycling and reusing old ideas and are serious about developing sustainable alternatives, contact lolleaves@gmail.com @krisamp @lolleaves @glocalpot #GlocalKnowledgePot #Worldwewantpeople #SustainableDevelopment #SDG #SustainableLiving
Explore the Landscapes of Fiction
from Trinidad and Tobago
with LiTTscapes, LiTTours, LiTTributes
What Do They Know of #Cricket who only Cricket Know Congratulations to THE CHAMPIONS: CRICKET LOVELY CRICKET: Celebrate BeyondTheBoundary and #CLR James From SporTTscapes in LiTTscapes.... the Empire STTrikes back -
...and a journey down memory lane through the SporTTscapes to Heritage Reflections on colonial origins and British attitudes to Cricket in the West Indies and Britain.....
While saying howdy to media and other friends out there in the Empire, you know I've been waiting a long time to say #LondonHasFallen since this article about the treatment in coverage of the West Indies by the British Press - Enjoy
Ask for your custommade LiTTour throgh the SporTTscapes of Trinidad and Tobago lolleaves@gmail.com @lolleaves @krisramp @glocalpot #Demokrissy#LeavesOfLife#CaribbeanLiterarySalon #Crickinfo crickinfo
The More things Change ...The West Indies
and Britain Attitudes to Cricket
KrisRampersadArchives
The More Things Change: From Montage of Articles & Columns
on Social and Economic Development
(c) KrisRampersadArchives2016
Dear Father Tony,
Please hear my plea,
To revive the economy
Try that city key
Tho of you and me
Dey making bobolee
And the poor already
Heading to vagrancy
Save this country
We call La Trinity
I may call
you that, Dear Father Tony, may I not, although we is not family, we are still
part of the Trini famalee and the human famalee, part of the same national
journey on the same ship, and I was part of your empire on the media side for
most of me journalistic life and that was how some referred to you in revered
whispers though others had less reverent terms; and it may be said, ’twas in your
empire whence I cut meh journalistic tooth and whence my career was birthed and
so you really are meh father in some sense of the word, eh Tony!
Is vexness
that have we here yes, with no avenues for constructive and creative discussion
and dialogue and debate, doors slam, you get put out, you vex, you become
branded as part of the opposition! How many times you see it replayed in
domestic and in national strife during your ninety-something years, Dear sagely
Father Tony +Sabga?
Everybody
vex, vex in this place, ‘though they hiding it behind big big smile and sweet
talk, but I doh have to tell you dat. Just like how the contentious politics
produce ah set a vex chirren, going off on their own way, mashing up party and
forming new ones and voting out this one and that one and the next one to pay
de devil or the next monster or canine; just like all them vex and mad and
angry chirren/monsters and hoodlums and hooligans in school; we have dem in the
media too, pappy yo, getting vex,
walking off, starting Independent newspapers to Express themselves and
create they own Daily Newsday and making the Guardians of Democracy cut they own
standards downsized to tabloid and rag too!
’Tis true,
Father, indeed and in word I have been a prodigal a daughter ofDemokrissy.
Of this you reminded me the last time we spoke when we literally bumped into
each other while I was trying to find the people who say they is people to sort
out me car insurance at your ivory tower on Maraval Road, and you hug me and
say, ‘Eh Eh, Kris, you abandon me’, and I hug you back and kiss you on your
cheek and shake yuh hand and assure you that I hadn’t abandoned you, ‘I thought
it was the other way around’ and you
promised to fix it and I never hear from you again.
That was a
lil while now, eh, some good time after I had returned from other prodigal
outburst to AVM Television, later again as a founding daughter of Newsday
to head your flagship Sunday Guardian - which under its previous editor, Therese
Mills, the weeklies liked to call the
Jamete of St Vincent Street. Abhorrent of meetings, I must say I enjoyed
our long private meetings Oh Father of Conglomerates on setting up that new
newspaper, The Wire, which died a natural death – maybe it would have
lasted a little longer if you didn’t decide you prefer me at the Big One, and
then cast out the thought - just like its predecessor the Evening News, because
while they might have been serving some needs for the public right to know they
couldn’t really serve the bottom line profit line requirements of the empire!
The More Things Change: Montage of Columns Discover Trinidad & Tobago (c) KrisRampersadArchives2016
’Twas some
time, too, after I walk away from the organised institutional journalism mafia a
dozen years or so ago, convinced that the future of media was a new type of
media, responsive journalism that speak to the people, and although I was not
in marketing, leaving a marketing plan and advertising concept to reflect the
convergence of print and motion picture that no one wanted to touch then but
which I see somebody just dust off and take up because maybe that’s how long it
takes corporate giants in small islands to awake from slumber.
Deny me,
once, twice, trice, if you wish, Dear Father Tony, but daughter I am, the DNA proof is before
you in this blog which derives its name from one of the last of the ‘C
Monologues’ columns – see photo this page. I would be one of the first to admit
and give you credit that this blog, Demokrissy
is itself one of your offsprings, Dear Father Gate Key Keeper of the City and Guardian
of Democracy, for being a child who run off on her own - because she ‘own way’,
nah - just as is virtually the whole media of the Triniverse is here today
living testimony of the fruit of your noble loin and toil, every one of them
whether designer tabloid or rag, but most of dem too neemakaram to admit it. Not
me! I suck the last bit of pre-vatted salt and am ready to admit to the error
of my ways!
I reckon my evil
wanton ways, now, Father. What a slur that must have been on you, my Father’s
goodly name to have those controversial ‘C Monologues’ spread out in the
centrefold of the editorial page, shamelessly baring the society’s privates for
all to see!
Why couldn’t
I understand how justified were the boardroom disciples in crucifying it,
calling for it to be constrained in consternation of its contentious content
that seemed contemptuous and contradictory of contrived commercial and
political constitutions and hence its, and mine, discontinuance which have been
otherwise falsely attributed to a Chutney Bacchanal?
Forgive them,
Father Tony, as I have forgiven them, for they knew not what they do!
Contrary to
popular belief, I heard you understood those monologues’ conterminous
connotations and tried to defend its continuation, but to contemplate that
would have meant reconfiguring the conglomerate’s constellation so ’twas best
to concur ’twas a contaminant of the body politic, rather than recognise it as
a concise map of contemporary times. Who have control over what gets into the public minds, eh? Not me, even if I were to zip meh lips fuh the rest of meh life the seeds already planted and we have plenty wire, satire, lateoclocknews, and people clamouring for truth, peace, bread and justice, equity and respect, so I could really happily retire to that spot under the Samaan tree with my friends in Woodford Square.
For your
coming to my defenses then, I thank you Dear Father Tony, in the hope that now by
my father’s will, will open the minds of those in his many mansions in his
kingdom to new plea, My Defences of Peace and for the protection of my hard earned and
hard won goodly name in the name of Demokrissy.
Since I am
in confessional mode, I admit, Oh Father Tony, to being one of the very few
people who perhaps know that the political puppet masters and the bottom line
profit pressures have never been your priorities - but the empire’s, just as I
am beginning to accept that the long days night of resistance being over, that I
am but only a daughter of this island empire set afloat but drowning in its own
wasted produce, thoughts, words and actions.
The More Things Change: Montage of Articles & Columns Resuscitation and Development of City of Port of Spain (c) KrisRampersadArchives2016
Now, I too
am sitting among piles of that garbage that I produced with the Ole Lady of St
Vincent Street – otherwise mirrored in such national yellowing and dog-eared
chronicles of our times as the Guardian of Democracy – and elsewhere since. I
sit among these piles and piles of useless words, thoughts, ideas and actions
as a reporter, writer, producer, strategist, advisor, activist, educator: from
my newspaper articles and columns and television scripts and manuscript of short
stories, films, plays, novels and documentaries, national committee reports and
recommendations for more equitable and sustained development to revive Port of
Spain and other districts too; to emerge from the ashes of the coup; to
rehabilitate delinquent monsters and their parents, trade unionists and leaders
of counter political coups; to resurface from the corruption; to regenerate
from the environmental bulldozers; to resuscitate from the stifling polluters
of people’s conscience – see photos this page. All beaming out headlines that
look like they were written today! Static society. Nothing new in the news! The
more things change!
In this
panorama, I am surveying my options, Dear Father, if I shouldn’t have left them for the
fishmongers to wrap fish as is the erstwhile fate of all news articles or
create a big bonfire and burn all of it like some people claiming to be of
higher education, who, if they not burning, banning books.
That’s why,
I have turned to you, Dear Father, Saviour of the Trinity Cross, Guardian of
Demokrissy and Gate Key Keeper of the City; Corporate Conglomerate Magnate.
Sitting here, stoned, tarred, nailed to the cross and head bowed with its
thorny crown; dis-empired, de-nationed,
dispossessed and de-robed; on the auctioneer’s executioner block, to beg
of you Father Tony - you whose rod and staff saved the nation La Trinity from
the embarrassing auctioneering of our Trinity Cross outbidding the highest
bidder with a lower bid, I am beseeching your mercy to save my head and the
honour of La Trinity which has been marked for execution and character
assassination in the eternal national chess game of blame, name and shame like
every errant monster child of this delinquent tri-headed nation, though one
State.
I beseech
you, Dear Saviour of the Trinity Cross and Guardian of the City Gates. I had
made arrangements to bring these to the feet of the former ill-fated Mayor Tim
Kee to try and find a way of resuscitating the city quays and keys and he
promised to meet me on a bench in Woodford Square but he had the keys and quays
snatched from him and the brand new and youthful Mayor give them quays and keys
to you, my wise and sagely Father Tony, and they are now dangling in your
pocket and you there wondering what to do with it.
Having
fasted for one hundred and forty days as you requested Dear Father Tony – do
the math and you would see what I mean – I can see now the error of my ways: that
rather than bow to the enticing temptations of the Almighty Dollar,
thirty-pieced silverware or corporate promotion, I have followed false prophets
of doom and gloom and a devilish path of enlightenment with dirty and false
thoughts and beliefs that knowledge and information shall set us free which were
planted in my mind by my birth father, a country farmer, who knew only how to
live by the sweat of his brow!
Dear Father
Tony, in such a repentant mode, this prodigal daughter crawls to the gateway of
the city in which is housed you’re the many minions and mansions of your conglomerate
power - passions spent, wings clipped, dreams clouded, picking leftover salt
and roti from discarded sohari leaves, beseeching to be folded back into the
flock of the lambs who would be sheep rather than be slaughtered.
You tried to warn me - in those days when we
bounced ideas about, towards creating the new tabloid to Wire or rope in errant
readers - that a mind or a life mean nothing here; it is only about which
company or corporation or constituent you keep, and my hot mouth, the likes of
which got other people fired, tell your henchman to keep it, I going ‘plant
bhaji’ – and I walked into fields of freedom and boundless knowledge.
’Tis true that I worshipped not the one true
god, the Almighty Dollar but false gods of knowledge and education and followed
my birth father’s advice into paths of enlightenment where there are no cliques,
so now I pay the price of the proleteriat, condemned with body and mind left to
solitary confinement for trying to resist and defy the tunnels of darkness
where and when it would have been easier to grope and cling to the cliques of corporate
co-operative masses.
Forgive me,
Dear Father Tony for believing that the pursuit of knowledge and happiness
should take precedent over the pursuit of the Almighty Dollar. I have erred.
Forgive me
for contending that as a messenger of the messiah and a chronicler of social
truths that the media has a greater duty to the society than chasing a profit
line. I have erred.
Forgive me
for wanting the national discourse and national agenda to be about progress and
development and not shame and scandal. I
have erred.
Forgive me
for begging and pleading and battling boardroom decisions for investments in human
not just technical capital. You saw, what my idealist’s lenses were too clouded
to see: the Judas’ among them humans, when technologies would never have
betrayed me. I have erred.
And forgive
me for running off and squandering my mind and intellect in pursuit of all of
that in spaces that would allow for such errant behaviour, beckoning and
welcoming such daring to believe that finally there was an opportunity to turn
stone into bread for the hungry, disenfranchised, marginalised and alienated
multitudes and for a more equitable and sustainable path to our development –
another ill-advised lesson from my dearly departed birth father - when I could
have been building and serving your noble empire, Dear Father Tony.
I have erred, Dear Father and Saviour of the
Cross and Keeper of the City Keys and Quays and hopefully, Guardian of this
Demokrissy.
I return to seek
your benevolent mercy and kindness as I had sought in vain the mercy and
kindness of the head of those other powerful mansions, the Houses of
Parliament. I must have erred in inviting
the former Mayor Tim Kee to join me in Woodford Square to explore some actions that
would help the vacantly starring vagrants of the People’s Parliament to utilise
their mind, memory and experiences for the edification of all. He had them there
keys snatched from him. His successor, the spanking young new Mayor, hand you
Tim’s Key, so it look like I back, right there, where I started: dis-possessed,
de-nationed, disrobed and disenfranchised, with Demokrissy under threat by a
demonic censure mill intent on overpowering the memory of the world with a
flood of garbage, and censure on thoughts, words, actions and books lest they
be used for higher edification.
So it is as
the Saviour of this Cross, La Trinity, I now, in the final analysis, address
you, Dear Father Tony Sabga, unpacking these burdens and accumulation of
useless knowledge as I prepare to meet my fate, whether it will be as a headless
corpse, a mindless lunatic or a disenfranchised and dispossessed inhabitant of
Woodford Square – all of which will inevitably tax how you put to use them
there city keys, as the Saviour of the Trinity Cross, a Guardian of the Ole
Lady of St Vincent Street and her offspring, the errant monster and prodigal daughter,
Demokrissy!
Dear and Revered
Father Dr Tony, maybe together we could put them city keys to some sustainable use
for development of our city and nation, eh?
Kris Rampersad
Your Prodigal Daughter,
Of No Fixed Place of Abode
Soon to be Burgess of Woodford
Square.
Update: Dr Anthony Norman Sabga, chairman Emeritus of the ANSA McAL Group of Companies, and one of Trinidad and Tobago's most recognised businessman died at the age of 94 on May 3, 2017. He was awarded the Order of The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, the nation's highest award, in 2011. May he rest in peace.
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