The current disaster in Haiti feels very close to home for two reasons: I live in the Caribbean and Haiti, although not an immediate neighbour, is a neighbour nonetheless. I also met many Haitians during my frequent stays in South Florida. Some became my friends, and several characters in my second novel, which is set in Miami, are reflections of these very real people.
When this type of disaster strikes the worst feeling is the helplessness. So many people want to do something, but aren't sure how to go about it.
MSNBC has posted a list of links to charitable organizations active in Haiti. One of them, Yele Haiti, is the brainchild of Wyclef Jean. You can text Yele to 501501 to donate $5 via your cellphone. Another option for anyone interested in helping immediately is to text HAITI to 90999 and a donation of $10 will be given automatically to the Red Cross to help with relief efforts, charged to your cell phone bill.
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
Monday, 11 January 2010
Um, goals, not resolutions
I'm on Novel Spaces today, going on about my writing goals for 2010. You've welcome to join me there!
Not Another Top Ten List
Not Another Top Ten List
Thursday, 31 December 2009
2009 - the good stuff
In the spirit of gratitude for my blessings, I've made a list of the stuff I've had reason to be thankful for in 2009.
- Watching my son's business go from strength to strength.
- Completion of my second contemporary romance novel. Here's wishing it finds its wings in 2010!
- The launch of author blog Novel Spaces.
- My book stacks have been growing again, thanks to gifts from friends and late nights spent prowling Amazon's alleys.
- Found almost every movie I've always wanted to see on Amazon, and am thrilled to order a few every month.
- Got lots of great reviews of and feedback on Café Au Lait!
- Met more wonderful people, writers and readers, on the net.
- Goodreads, I love you! Thanks for inviting me, Sandra!
- Pillaged the M.A.C. store in West Mall several times. If I look terrible it's not for want of beauty products!
- Created a proper writing space in my bedroom.
- My Dell laptop continues to run like clockwork after more than a year, despite my initial skepticism as I don't have a good history with the brand.
- My family remains safe and sound.
- I've finally, finally gotten around to renewing expired ID and travel documents. That took some intense running back and forth, not to mention generous dollops of cash. No, I didn't bribe anyone, but when the registration office suddenly throws up its hands and tells you the name on all your documents, certificates, and expired IDs is actually your third name, and tries to foist a new first name on you, you get your butt to a lawyer to sort out the mess - and those fees don't come cheap. Deed poll, statutory declaration et al out of the way, I'm well on the way to being fully back on the grid, y'all!
- I never, ever take the beauty of my island for granted. It's easy to forget the local politics and social challenges when I look out my windows at the verdant valley where I live, or take a drive up the North Coast to Maracas Bay. It's medicine for the soul.
Sunday, 27 December 2009
Sunday, 20 December 2009
Painting-pilates
Sometimes one must compromise, though. I live with my mother and Christmas means a lot to her. I have one sister who doesn't participate on account of her religion. I have one brother who has taken his family and sailed to another island for their Christmas vacation. That leaves me to provide the 'family' and 'celebration' in my mother's Christmas.
So, my little getaway in a far-flung beach house with a writer friend begins after the big day, as I wouldn't dream of leaving my mom alone with her turkey and Christmas tree on December 25th. And, since a big part of the excitement for her is getting the house all spruced up, I offered to give her the gift of a newly painted living, dining and kitchen area.
I bought the paint on Wednesday, and figured that I'd have it all done by Thursday night - two coats on every wall as we had decided to change the colour from coral white to shy shrimp. It's four days later and I'm still not done. The pale peachy-shrimp colour on the catalogue swatch just looks pink on the wall, but it's a pink with a peach undertone, so we're not too disappointed. It might not be the colour we envisaged but it looks quite beautiful.
And I ache. Climbing ladders, balancing a can of paint in one hand while, bent at odd angles, I apply the colour to walls, stooping, stretching, lugging, pushing and pulling heavy furniture and large appliances around - it all adds up to pains in muscles I'd forgotten existed.
I'd come out of this painting jag fitter and trimmer - if the exertion wasn't making me so hungry I devour everything in sight the minute I step off that cursed ladder.
Saturday, 12 December 2009
For those who still hate Christmas
Last year around this time I ran a post in which I countered a friend's blog call to nominate the best Christmas movie ever by offering a list of 10 movies For Those Who Hate Christmas. Still not content to keep my Scrooging around to myself, I'm blogging on Novel Spaces today where I offer more twisted advice for those who're thinking of jumping the Yuletide ship right - about - now.
T'is the season - to run away!
T'is the season - to run away!
Wednesday, 25 November 2009
Naches
I'm blogging over at Novel Spaces today on the special joys of being an author. See you there!
Sunday, 22 November 2009
Almost Paradise
Photo courtesy Richard Voisin
In the valley where I raised my son, there's a waterfall just a few minutes walk away - up the road, on to a forest trail, a short hike up a boulder-strewn stream... and there it is. It's a little waterfall; everything here is island-scale. It cascades over a rim of rock into a pool of cold, fresh water. This waterfall and the area around it is my son's favorite place on earth.
Photo courtesy Richard Voisin
High above the first waterfall, further into the forest, there are other pools, other cascades. I've never ventured beyond the first falls because, well, it's lonely and isolated up there and hikers have been robbed repeatedly. One pool goes by the chilling name of Coffin Hole, and the myth is that no one has been able to fathom its depth.
Photo courtesy Richard Voisin
A few weeks ago my son did a photo shoot with some models up there, and the images blew me away. This has existed a few minutes away from me for all these years? No wonder, I thought, my son loves this area the way he does. For all those who insist on thinking I live in paradise, these shots should add weight to your argument. Paradise indeed.
Photo courtesy Richard Voisin
Photos copyright Richard Voisin / R.S.V.P. Studios. Please contact the blog owner for permission to reproduce and/or transfer images used in this article.
Tuesday, 10 November 2009
When is English not English?
I'm blogging about US versus UK English today on Novel Spaces. Come find out what you get when you ask a UK or Caribbean native for a 'ride'. :)
Sunday, 1 November 2009
Cemetery saga
Today is All Saints' Day, and tomorrow is All Souls' Day, also known as the Feast of All Souls, Commemoration of all the Faithful Departed. Both are celebrated by the Catholic Church, the denomination in which I was raised. On these days Catholics (in Trinidad & Tobago anyway) get busy cleaning the graves of departed relatives, and this is followed by the traditional 'lighting up' of the graves with candles.
I have never been interested in any of this; for one thing I haven't practised the religion in many years, and even more pertinent, I've always considered the entire production the preserve of the 'old folks' in the family: my great-grandmother ('Granny', who raised my mother), my great-aunt and my mother. My great-gran has been dead for many years, and my great-aunt is in Canada with her children, so I wasn't too surprised when my mother asked me this morning, just as I was about to start cooking lunch, if I would go with her to see about cleaning Granny's grave.
"Now?" I enquired, taken aback.
"Yes."
"All right," I replied, suppressing a little spurt of irritation.
By the time I showered and dressed I was actually looking forward to the expedition. We drove to the valley where she was raised and where I spent the first thirteen years of my life, and swung up the side road to the cemetery which is the final resting place of almost everyone on my mother's side of the family.
Aghast, I asked my mother who was supposed to maintain the cemetery. I thought it was the church, but she explained that it was a public cemetery and the City Council was responsible.
We picked our way between the graves, clumps and heaps of drying grass and found Granny's grave without much trouble. The only other person in the cemetery was an old man cleaning the grave at the back of Granny's. After a brief chat with my mother, during which she explained who she was in the town hierarchy and he did the same, they agreed that he would clean the high grass in my great-gran's grave, and they came to an agreement on the price. He started immediately, hauling his fork over Granny's headstone and sinking it into the huge clumps of wild grass while my mother and I set off, picking our way through the obstructions as she tried to find the graves of her great-grandparents, their siblings and offspring, and all the others down through the generations.
Cemeteries used to unnerve me. Usually, I couldn't get out of there fast enough, and I would try not to think of the dead bodies, rot, worms and bones beneath my feet. I would see a fresh grave, several of which we encountered today, and shudder. Something must have happened in the years since my last visit there, maybe an acceptance of mortality, but I felt none of that old dread this time, and even joked with my mother: "Careful, Mom - you're standing on someone's head!" Or maybe my old negative feelings have been ameliorated by the process of writing about this cemetery in my work-in-progress, a book set in that valley. The cemetery scene is at the very end of the book (I wrote the beginning and the end of the story first), and in it there's a sense of peace, of coming to terms with life and all its complexities. Sometimes I honestly don't know where my writing ends and my life begins.
I was fascinated as we discovered the graves of the long departed, the great-great-grandparents, the great-uncles and aunts, the cousin who died of a brain tumor the year I was born and about whom I'd heard many stories, the uncle and aunt who passed away just a decade or so ago. There was more, such as my maternal grandmother's grave, but we had to stop where the head-high grass began. And all the while I couldn't help but think that it's a shame, a disgrace, really, that the cemetery should suffer such neglect from those responsible for its upkeep. I can't pay someone to do the work of the City Council, but there's the power of the pen, and I intend to harness it to try and make a difference.
By the time we returned from our circuit the old man had a friend working alongside him, and I asked if I could take their photos for an article I was writing. Here they are - two old men from the valley of my childhood where all my oldest and deepest memories lie sleeping.
Of course we could not simply pay the good men and leave, life being what it is. When we returned to the car my mother couldn't find her keys so we traipsed back into the cemetery and my heart plummeted. We had spent the better part of an hour weaving between numerous graves, picking our way over and through clumps of grass, holes, broken gravestones and more. Much drama ensued as we called our sister to pick us up and take us to my brother's house where the spare keys are kept. They weren't where they should be, and we could not raise him on the phone. My mom, in desperation, called a friend who has a metal detector. The guy came without a murmur of protest, never said a word about being disturbed in the middle of his peaceful Sunday lunch, took us back to the cemetery, and found the key within five minutes of arriving there. And he didn't even use the detector. (Thank you, R.J.!)
My mother plans to go back tomorrow with white paint and candles to finish the job. I have the day job to attend to, so I'm not sure if I'll be involved in that segment of the proceedings. But my sister and I have agreed on one point: from now on my mother is going to keep her keys on a chain around her neck. We won't entertain any objections; we've had it up to here with her lost key dramas.
I have never been interested in any of this; for one thing I haven't practised the religion in many years, and even more pertinent, I've always considered the entire production the preserve of the 'old folks' in the family: my great-grandmother ('Granny', who raised my mother), my great-aunt and my mother. My great-gran has been dead for many years, and my great-aunt is in Canada with her children, so I wasn't too surprised when my mother asked me this morning, just as I was about to start cooking lunch, if I would go with her to see about cleaning Granny's grave.
"Now?" I enquired, taken aback.
"Yes."
"All right," I replied, suppressing a little spurt of irritation.
The cemetery, with grass cut in the foreground and high grass giving way to forest in the middle and background
By the time I showered and dressed I was actually looking forward to the expedition. We drove to the valley where she was raised and where I spent the first thirteen years of my life, and swung up the side road to the cemetery which is the final resting place of almost everyone on my mother's side of the family.
We parked outside the mildewed wall and entered the unimposing gates where I ground to a halt, flabbergasted. On the right someone had created a small dump, and I identified, among other flotsam and jetsam, a broken computer monitor. In the middle distance, and running all the way to the far perimeter of the cemetery where it began to climb to the hill and merge into forest, was a common species of tall grass, as much as six feet high, covering and completely obscuring the graves beneath. In the foreground and to the left the graves and headstones were visible because someone has recently made a half-hearted attempt to cut the grass.
The makeshift dump, with broken computer monitor in the background
Aghast, I asked my mother who was supposed to maintain the cemetery. I thought it was the church, but she explained that it was a public cemetery and the City Council was responsible.
We picked our way between the graves, clumps and heaps of drying grass and found Granny's grave without much trouble. The only other person in the cemetery was an old man cleaning the grave at the back of Granny's. After a brief chat with my mother, during which she explained who she was in the town hierarchy and he did the same, they agreed that he would clean the high grass in my great-gran's grave, and they came to an agreement on the price. He started immediately, hauling his fork over Granny's headstone and sinking it into the huge clumps of wild grass while my mother and I set off, picking our way through the obstructions as she tried to find the graves of her great-grandparents, their siblings and offspring, and all the others down through the generations.
My great-grandmother's headstone. Her mother, brother, son, and the grandson who died at 8 months are also buried here.
Cemeteries used to unnerve me. Usually, I couldn't get out of there fast enough, and I would try not to think of the dead bodies, rot, worms and bones beneath my feet. I would see a fresh grave, several of which we encountered today, and shudder. Something must have happened in the years since my last visit there, maybe an acceptance of mortality, but I felt none of that old dread this time, and even joked with my mother: "Careful, Mom - you're standing on someone's head!" Or maybe my old negative feelings have been ameliorated by the process of writing about this cemetery in my work-in-progress, a book set in that valley. The cemetery scene is at the very end of the book (I wrote the beginning and the end of the story first), and in it there's a sense of peace, of coming to terms with life and all its complexities. Sometimes I honestly don't know where my writing ends and my life begins.
Granny's grave, cleared of high grass and root clumps
I was fascinated as we discovered the graves of the long departed, the great-great-grandparents, the great-uncles and aunts, the cousin who died of a brain tumor the year I was born and about whom I'd heard many stories, the uncle and aunt who passed away just a decade or so ago. There was more, such as my maternal grandmother's grave, but we had to stop where the head-high grass began. And all the while I couldn't help but think that it's a shame, a disgrace, really, that the cemetery should suffer such neglect from those responsible for its upkeep. I can't pay someone to do the work of the City Council, but there's the power of the pen, and I intend to harness it to try and make a difference.
By the time we returned from our circuit the old man had a friend working alongside him, and I asked if I could take their photos for an article I was writing. Here they are - two old men from the valley of my childhood where all my oldest and deepest memories lie sleeping.
Of course we could not simply pay the good men and leave, life being what it is. When we returned to the car my mother couldn't find her keys so we traipsed back into the cemetery and my heart plummeted. We had spent the better part of an hour weaving between numerous graves, picking our way over and through clumps of grass, holes, broken gravestones and more. Much drama ensued as we called our sister to pick us up and take us to my brother's house where the spare keys are kept. They weren't where they should be, and we could not raise him on the phone. My mom, in desperation, called a friend who has a metal detector. The guy came without a murmur of protest, never said a word about being disturbed in the middle of his peaceful Sunday lunch, took us back to the cemetery, and found the key within five minutes of arriving there. And he didn't even use the detector. (Thank you, R.J.!)
R.J. found the keys down in here where my mother had slipped and almost fallen.
My mother plans to go back tomorrow with white paint and candles to finish the job. I have the day job to attend to, so I'm not sure if I'll be involved in that segment of the proceedings. But my sister and I have agreed on one point: from now on my mother is going to keep her keys on a chain around her neck. We won't entertain any objections; we've had it up to here with her lost key dramas.
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