#i also do not claim the crickets thems the crickets that went west

[not-so-superheroine]

Elder Graham Needs to Come Get His Mormon Cricket Legion 🦗

saw a comment youtube that read “a swarm of mormon crickets is enough to make you wish for a nuclear winter.” and another that read “i’m a latter day saint and we don’t claim them (the mormon crickets)”  then i thought, “no, you need to claim them. come get your legion of crickets, Joshua Graham.” 

[jacensolodjo]

Dude you are for some reason absolutely deciding to come up with your own history. You are incorrect on all levels. You are trying to spread guilt to other countries to avoid laying blame on the sole country that had the power to veto something that would have changed how people view Ukrainian and Russian history.

If you look at a list of who recognizes the Holodomor as genocide you may be surprised to see there are only about a dozen countries that recognize the Holodomor as genocide. How is that fine? How is that not worth continuing to fight for recognition? Russia doesn't consider it such and never has. An overarching entity like the EU parliament doesn't mean all those countries involved accept the Holodomor as genocide. Also, just managing to do that in 2022 and 2023? Are you fucking serious that means it is okay now? Nothing further needs to be said or done? So, because the US recognizes the slave trade and Jim Crow happened we don't have to say anymore on the topics? Oh, wait, yeah. That IS the opinion now isn't it hence the removal of books talking about it from US schools. Perhaps you are a victim of this kind of revisionism, right, or you champion that cause?

Russia invaded Ukraine multiple times now and we have heard crickets. Russia is still attacking Ukraine and you are telling me it isn't a big deal and they are already seen as the enemy and yet if that were true they wouldn't still be bombing Ukraine while I see people all over the West insisting that Ukraine deserves it. How quickly would the UK be defended if Russia attacked them instead? Or Germany? But because it is Ukraine we have pissants like you coming up with your own history and hand wringing about poor Russia being seen as inherently evil when yes, yes it is! It continues to exist despite all the wrong it has done that has been conveniently forgotten! Putin is ex KGB! There is a continuation of the crimes of the USSR to present day Russia because they never fucking stopped! Russia murders Muslims and queer people every day before they invade Ukraine with flimsy ass reasoning and all of that gets forgotten and somehow Russia becomes a champion and the only country willing to do something about saving the white cishet way of life taking out nazis.

You talk to me of worrying about cultural genocide while claiming nothing more needs to be done to recognize the Holodomor or the war as a continuation of deUkrainization genocide. Like I said, you are denying the Holodomor just not as strongly as you seem to think is a problem. You are the one who brought up those two things and now you are goal post moving. Just admit you fucked up by pretending you actually know how the Genocide Convention went down and that you want to pretend that Russia did not inherit problems and is not actively writing CCCP on their materiel because they actually do believe they are bringing the soviet union back or indeed believe that they are still the Soviets in shiny new wrapping paper. Or that Putin should never have been given presidency or continued presidency and his government was the one who had one of the first instances of a don't say gay bill. But somehow all of that is okay now because of fictional nazis in Ukraine. Who, indeed, are the real nazis? Those who murder Muslims, queer people, and non-Russian ethnic ppl? Or those who fight the state doing the killing, the ones who defend themselves from an invasion that has murdered thousands of innocent civilians?

Russia doesn't need you to fucking defend it because all you are defending is murder and deceit and lies. Even if we pretended Russia started with a clean state in the early 90s it would still have blood on its hands. Everyone must fight their own legacies. Why is a blood stained state like Russia any different especially when it refuses to do so? You are defending it whether you believe it or not. It is okay for the Holodomor to not be recognized as genocide since 1948 because it wasn't just the USSR against the full definition IS defense. Russia is wrongly killing thousands but it isn't the USSR is defense. Also per your 'suggestion' of demanding 'reparations', how does that work out when also, according to you, Russia actually has no responsibility for the actions of a 'different government'? Or should one admit that like Germany, there is responsibility that must be given upon the new state/gov't? Or, indeed, that in order to start the reparation process there must be an admittance to guilt which is the whole fucking problem when it comes to the Holodomor. Russia refuses to admit guilt therefore instead we should... settle for... reparations... that can't be given... without admittance of guilt...

Please actually look into the Convention on Genocide. Look into how not even a dozen countries have recognized days of remembrance for the Holodomor. Or even look at the population numbers for Ukraine before and after the year of the Holodomor and then again for the Shoah and realize who is to blame and that it should be taught all over the world that the Holodomor happened but it simply isn't and you are proving how important it is that I and many others continue the fight. Because that is what I am arguing for: recognition and education. Until that time where there is a unit in history class about the Holodomor then I will continue to do exactly as I am. America has (had) units on slavery, indigenous genocide, 'Potato famine'. Where indeed is the unit on the Holodomor, slotted between WW1/Russian Revolution/Murder of the Romanovs and the rise of Nazi Germany?

It is literally taught at the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum that it was the USSR who openly refused to allow the Convention to go on with the definition Lemkin made.

You don't get to weaponize the plight of other marginalized people to pretend like what has been happening and happened to Ukraine is somehow okay because the USSR is defunct. You don't get to say shit about 'genocide happening today' and want to turn a blind eye to the genocide of Ukrainians. You talk of forced assimilation, of cultural genocide. Pray tell what is the kidnapping and forced 'reeducation' of Ukrainian children, of punishing them for speaking Ukrainian instead of Russian? Everything you say we should worry about is already happening to Ukrainians and has been! Why is the Ukrainian genocide worth less concern to you?

Take your whataboutism and shove it. If Russia was properly seen as the bad guy in all this we wouldn't be here. My posts wouldn't need to be on this site the way they are. Twitter feeds wouldn't be full of us begging the world to pay more attention to the war. Claiming Russia isn't guilty of multiple war crimes and crimes against humanity is the epitome of ignorance.

Every once in a while, I think about how Raphael Lemkin, a Polish (and JEWISH, this is important) man who coined the term ‘genocide’ never kept quiet about “yes, USSR, I DO mean the Holodomor counts, too!” How the USSR blocked every attempt to make the official definition include what happened to Ukrainians in the early 1930s. That the only way it got approved for the use in legal trials and such like Nuremberg was because everyone bowed to USSR’s pressure to hide their evil doing. 

The man went to his grave fighting to call Holodomor a genocide. Just like the Holocaust. Just like the Armenian Genocide. 

This isn’t some bullshit ‘death of the author’ or what the fuck ever. This is telling a man who had very clear rules in mind for what counts that he’s WRONG about a thing HE CAME UP WITH. 

In essence:

A Polish Jew creates the term ‘genocide’. Everyone tells him he’s wrong about the definition of a term he created. He knew exactly what he was doing when he created the term and gave the examples of what he knew to be considered the term he created.

Raphael Lemkin lost 49 PEOPLE IN THE HOLOCAUST and you DARE to say you KNOW BETTER THAN HIM what counts as a GENOCIDE? (Yea, 49. Only like 3 relatives survived. May all their memories be a blessing.)

The Nuremberg Trials would never have happened the way they did without Raphael Lemkin but he doesn’t fucking have the right to call something a genocide SOMEHOW. 

In 1953 he published a whole speech/article that literally said “Soviet Genocide in Ukraine” aka Holodomor. 

But sure, because that one little time Holodomor wasn’t included means it was never meant to be considered one. 

Raphael Lemkin, in his own words on his original definition of genocide:

“Genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group.”

Raphael Lemkin, of blessed memory, knew exactly what he was saying. Poland and Ukraine have always been neighbors and have both been bullied by Russia. To say nothing of having their borders shifted around that a Pole could find themselves a Ukrainian and vice versa one year then go back to the start the next year. Raphael Lemkin, coiner of the term genocide, saw the destruction of the Holodomor and the Shoah and knew they both fit his definition. 

Pray tell how a nation such as Russia can overrule the man who coined the term of their crime? 

Raphael Lemkin would call the war the exact thing it is: genocide. We all know it. And I for one will continue his fight to making sure everybody knows exactly what Russia represents and what they have done and will continue to do until we are believed more readily than people want to believe an ex-KGB fuckhead. 

[californiadreaminghq]

SPOTLIGHT

NAME: Carmen Ridley FACE CLAIM: Katherine McNamara AGE: 25 TITLE: The Night Flyer OCCUPATION: Crew Member for Violent Vale DREAM: Carmen’s dream is to join a band or even establish her own. She’s a bit of a musical genius, having mastered the guitar and cello from a young age, and going on to discover her love of singing and the bass. After leaving her sleepy hometown in rural Pennsylvania, Carmen is on the hunt for any opportunity to showcase her musical talent.

INTERVIEW

If you could do anything in the world for a living, what would it be?

“Play my music and tell my stories. I don’t care if I have to start a band on my own from scratch, sitting in some garage and living a starving artist’s life. Hell, I’m already a starving artist. Give me a stage and a voice and I’ll sing for the world.”

If you could travel anywhere, where would you go?

“Oh, Rome would be awesome. Just think of all the art and culture. That’s where the Colosseum is, right?”

What is one thing that makes you different than anyone else?

“I get things done. I’m not like all those people who sit around and refuse to let their dreams carry them. I left everything behind and risked it all just for a chance at success. I’m not there yet, but wait a few years and I will be.”

BACKSTAGE

Carmen Elizabeth Ridley was destined to be a musician from the moment she was born. Her mother had played piano for their church every Sunday since she was a teenager, while her father played guitar in a bluegrass band. Her older sister faithfully studied the violin, her younger sister chose the piano, and Carmen was trained on the cello from the moment she could hold a bow. She grew up in Tionesta, a sleepy town in northwestern Pennsylvania with a mere 700 residents and little to occupy her time. After begging her father to teach her guitar, Carmen began to save up her meager allowance until she could afford her own child-sized guitar. Music was Carmen’s first love and greatest passion, though she also enjoyed painting, often on the back of her family’s barn where only the cows could witness her talent. Though she excelled in music and art, Carmen was a poor student whose mind wandered during class and whose sharp tongue landed her in detention frequently. With two model daughters headed straight for college and one who barely finished high school, Carmen’s parents could only shake their head at their middle child, wondering what went wrong.

Carmen had no interest in higher education or fancy degrees, instead opting to work at the town’s hardware and gun store where she met John. His calm, reserved nature drew her in and the two became friends, then something more. The couple shared a love of the outdoors, a passion for guns, and they even attended the same church across the street from where they worked. At last, Carmen’s parents appeared to approve of something she had done. John delighted them and put the hope of a future marriage on the table, but Carmen cringed at the thought. Though she adored John, every time he spoke of building a house for her and their future children where they could live for generations, a restless feeling emerged in the pit of her stomach, though she didn’t understand why.

After years of being unable to make friends, Carmen found herself being welcomed among John’s friends. Though she remained committed to John and was very much in love with him, Carmen found herself growing close to Shawn, an oddity among the mechanics and farmers of the group. Shawn owned a record store in the next town over and allegedly, was attempting to start a metal band, garnering Carmen’s interest more than she would dare admit. She was content with John and the ordinary life they shared, even as she found herself tolerating him more than she enjoyed him. His love of cars was downright dull, his country music paled in comparison to heavy metal, his chewing tobacco disgusted her, and he was always a little too…conventional for her taste. It was then that Carmen began to spend more time with Shawn, not in a romantic sense, but as the brother she never had. The two collaborated on a number of songs, with Shawn composing the lyrics while Carmen put them to music. The legendary summer of ‘69 was the happiest one Carmen had experienced thus far. After a long day of work where she and John would sneak off behind the dumpster during breaks, she crept off to join Shawn in his garage, drowning out the sounds of the crickets at night with wailing guitars loud enough that the neighbors complained.

Then the news arrived that Shawn and Carmen’s favorite band, Violent Vale, was moving to New York City. Though Carmen’s family detested “the devil’s music” and couldn’t determine Led Zeppelin from Judas Priest, the Ridley household was abuzz. Carmen’s estranged uncle worked as the stage manager for Violent Vale and, at last, would be back in the States for the first time in years. As her family sat around the dinner table and questioned why her uncle would involve himself with a satanic cult of British druggies, an idea began to come to her. Just a week before, John had proposed to Carmen with a ring and a promise of a hopelessly ordinary life in Tionesta until they had enough babies to fill the house he had built for her in secret. She panicked, seeing no way out except to head to New York, find her uncle, and beg him for a job. It was only a few hours of a drive, and if working with the stage crew flopped, she and Shawn could build enough connections to turn their band into something worthwhile. After bringing it up to Shawn, he declined, refusing to run off with his friend’s fiance even if there was nothing between them. An argument broke out and ultimately, Carmen stormed out, grabbing only her guitar and leaving to find John, but not before returning home to smash her cello in the front yard with a hammer. She asked him to drive her to New York, claiming her aunt was sick in the hospital and it was a dire emergency. John obliged, unknowingly driving his fiance to her new life where she would never turn back to him.

With only the clothes on her back, a few hundred dollars in cash, and her guitar, Carmen asked John to drop her off at the doors of Bellevue hospital. When he asked if he should book a hotel to wait for her to return, Carmen responded that he shouldn’t bother. She never would return. She slipped the ring off her finger, pressed it into John’s hand, and ran off into the streets before he could follow her.

After a search through a phonebook for Craig Ridley, Carmen met up with her uncle at a pizza place and explained her situation, then offered her skills as an artist and a musician. Anything he would have her do, she was willing. At last, after what seemed like hours of pleading, Craig reluctantly agreed to find work for his niece at barely above minimum wage, only because he didn’t have the heart to leave her homeless in New York City. The crew placed Carmen where she was needed, whether it was repairing guitars, running to the store for more duct tape, cleaning costumes with mysterious stains, and so on. As time progressed, she began to use her artist’s eye to weigh in on lighting and stage decor, and she would often be the one to sit in the stage wings during shows to quickly change a broken string. Though she dearly missed John, and perhaps Shawn even more, Carmen felt that she had found where she belonged. But she wasn’t there yet, no, not until she was the one in the spotlight instead of the one hiding behind the speakers, waiting to carry out orders at the whim of the band.

When Vital Noise made the decision to send Violent Vale off to the West Coast division, where other people could attempt to manage their vices, Carmen eagerly awaited the change. That is, until her uncle quit his position, claiming he was tired of moving around until the band found someone willing to put up with them. He had established a life in New York and refused to give it up, though he urged Carmen to move west with the band. With her last connection to her family now severed, Carmen boarded a plane to California, bid her aunt and uncle farewell, and began another new life.

Some time has passed since Carmen’s arrival in Los Angeles. Nothing much has changed, with the exception of her working under a new stage manager and living in her own apartment, and she fit into the west coast lifestyle with ease. Her patience, however, is running thin. The work was exhausting and paid so little that she had to pick up a part-time job at a record store. She had grown tired of taking orders and, if she had it her way, she would be the one calling the shots. But although Carmen could sing and play, her songwriter was on the other side of the country in a sleepy Pennsylvania town. Whatever chance she had of making it big was overshadowed by the Violent Vale, and only time will tell if she can step out from under them.

[spaceorphan18]

Finding Kurt Hummel: The Back-Up Plan

Masterpost

5x18: The Back-Up Plan

And we’re continuing on with another great New York Arc episode.  Kurt, however, is not in this episode as much as I remembered -- though I suppose it’s quality over quantity.  I’m also slightly eye-rolly with the June stuff since it ultimately doesn’t really go anywhere.  But these last few episodes of season 5 are a lot of fun.  So, here we go.... 

June Dolloway

Okay - had to get a side shot for all of you guys to appreciate the entire outfit here.  There’s a reason he’s holding his jacket -- those are some very tight pants there. 

Alright - so I’m going to be honest about something.  I’m not a big fan of this scene.  Really, its...just a bad scene.  The writing is horrible -- and it feels like Chris is having an awkward time saying it.  Meanwhile, Darren feels like he’s just reciting lines.  I’m not going to speculate on production values here - there are just very few times when things don’t seem to work between Kurt and Blaine (Chris and Darren) and this is one of them.  (Though - I mainly blame the weird writing.) 

And really, it’s the opening few beats. And Kurt’s ridiculous expository monologue about June where he sounds like Ryan Murphy and not Kurt.  When they get to normal chatting, things come together after that.  I don’t know...  

Anyway - (I can’t still this scene, Kurt won’t stand still) - the gist is that socialite June Dolloway is around and Kurt’s going to sing for her, and enlists Blaine to help.  Because they’re getting married and should do everything together.  

What?  

This is one of those weird show things where their idea of marriage is being joined at the hip.  C’mon, show, what are you doing? At least they get points for remembering Klaine is engaged.  

And for it being an outside scene.  One nice aspect of the NYC arc is that they were able to open it up more, and it felt like a real world instead of everything happening on one school set. 

Kurt’s happy at the end of this scene.  Let’s let that be the take away from this one. 

Moral Integrity

Kurt’s getting ready for his evening of singing in front of June Dolloway.  But is this scene about Kurt? Nope! This scene is about Rachel.  

I mean, it’s not unreasonable for Rachel to take a night off.  It’s really not - that is why they have understudies.  Her producer is kind of a dick about it.  But -- yeah, it’s been a month and Rachel’s already getting bored of her dream job?  Seriously?  

Anyway - Rachel tries to validate her reasons for going off to Hollywood to book a TV show - and Kurt’s playing the role he always play -- moral compass, good angel, Jiminy Cricket - whatever you get the idea. He’s as irritated as the rest of us at her fickleness -- and points out that lying to her producer about auditioning for a TV pilot is kind of a dick move.  

Kurt is so done with Rachel at this point.  I’m now back to wondering why they are friends because every scene they have is again about Rachel, and Kurt’s beyond annoyed.  I suppose this might be some set up for Old Dogs, New Tricks, but idk... 

Story of My Life

I’m kind of laughing that they named the dance hall after June -- because NYADA apparently only has one room - and it’s the dance hall.  Man.  

Anyway - look at these cuties in complementary outfits.  Kurt’s jazzed to meet June, but I’m still not entirely sure why. 

Alright - let’s break this down a little, because I have some things to say.  

So - this scene is supposed to be reminiscent of when they did Animal way back in season 2.  Kurt’s an awkward little goober while Blaine is suave and charming.  On one level, I get it.  June’s a celebrity, and when Kurt tries too hard, he ends up falling on his face time and time again.  (It’s also supposed to be funny - but I find Kurt’s actions cringe worthy, and I don’t come back to this performance - ever.)  

At the same time, Kurt’s not 16 anymore, and has had all this training at NYADA -- that’s got to count for something.  On top of that, I’m getting tired of a narrative that says because Kurt’s not charming in the way Blaine is that he’s not able to be professional about -- whatever.  It kind of goes back to the dialogue of early season 3, but not necessarily about passing or not passing but about how good a performer you are.  

And -- my thing is -- Kurt’s voice is incredible in this number, and until they start the ridiculous choreography, Kurt’s actually pretty wonderful.  So, I wish they hadn’t hammed it up, tbh, because the June being dismissive of Kurt would be more because of those early season 3 passing/not passing conversations instead of Kurt just failing at his performance.  

(I mean - how would have Kurt been picked in the first place if he wasn’t good at performance?) 

Anyway - the scene just doesn’t work for me, though I get it’s necessity due to plot reasons.  

There isn’t much more I’d like to comment on the song either.  Other than the lines about ‘her’ not feeling it in her bones being a clue about June’s feelings towards Kurt, I think this is the most impersonal duet they ever do.  

I may be alone in this opinion - idk, I haven’t discussed it with anyone -- but I think the whole shifty eye thing June does to confuse who she’s talking to is a weird way of doing it.  It just makes Shirley MacClaine look awkward.  

I do appreciate Blaine’s honest-to-god support of Kurt when they both think it’s about Kurt, though.  And excited Kurt remains a goober.  I say you lucked out though, kid, June is kind of the worst and you’re better off not being her lump of coal - as Blaine’s going to find out.  

Old Marrieds

This is, perhaps, my favorite scene in the episode - and one of the best Klaine scenes we ever get.  Because unlike that awful first scene, this is really where the actors shine, and Kurt and Blaine feel like a couple who’s been together for a very long time.  There’s a nice sense of familiarity and connection in the scene that does make them feel like they’ve been married for twenty-five years.  I love it.  I wish they had more scenes like this together in the second half of the series. 

So, Blaine’s getting ready for his evening with June - and Kurt’s helping him get ready.  There’s a slight tension here, as Blaine’s concerned about Kurt and his well being.  And I love that Kurt’s pretty honest about it.  He’s disappointed, and slightly jealous, but has no resentment towards Blaine about it.  He’s being supportive, and cares about Blaine’s well being, too.  Kurt’s often touted as a selfish character - but it’s moment like these that I’d argue he’s really, really not.  

I kind of love that Kurt’s back to being pragmatic about June and the situation in whole.  It’s a good opportunity for Blaine to move forward in his career, but she’s not a friend - and no, she really doesn’t have his best interest at heart, and Kurt’s probably more aware of that than Blaine. 

I kind of love the other little touches in this scene -- Kurt doesn’t want Blaine to worry about him, reminds him that they’re in this together - so even if Kurt’s not there -- he’s still there spiritually, calls him handsome, and gives him a nothing kiss (which is fantastic! because we don’t get nothing kisses between the two of them -- something that’s a nice touch that establishes, uh, yeah, these two are intimate with each other on a regular basis, but don’t need to be swallowing each other whole every time they touch lips).  

It’s a great scene. 

And it ends with this little moment of sadness for Kurt.  Yeah - he is proud of Blaine, he’s sincere in his words.  But kind of like with the whole Tony/West Side Story thing - Kurt’s struggle with making it in the real world is a lot harder than Blaine’s (though Blaine definitely has some of his own issues to work through).  And this little moment acknowledges that.  It’s a nice touch. 

--

While Kurt’s not in any of the Blaine/June scenes, Blaine does talk about Kurt quite a bit.  And one thing that most definitely comes up is the show’s weird dichotomy that you can either have love or a career.  They pulled this with Finchel back in season 3 (though I think it makes more sense then).  I think it’s fine here as a bit of drama, I can see someone like June wanting to mold Blaine into something of her own - and while being completely dismissive of Kurt based on one awkward performance, if they had any extended interaction - I could see her not liking him because he’s too headstrong to let June be in control. 

While I don’t think it’s out of nowhere that someone ‘in charge’ would ask Blaine to break it off with Kurt because reasons, this is going to stop being an external conflict and more internal when Blaine lies about the whole thing.  Idk - maybe it might have been interesting to see how they deal with Blaine getting a break but not wanting Kurt - but the two of them figuring out how to navigate it together.  I get why they went the route they did -- still, the whole June thing seems a little, idk, lacking at the end of the day. 

Helping Rachel

I don’t know why - but they’re (idk who they are in this scenario) really bad with the engagement ring continuity.  Two close ups of Kurt talking to Rachel, and in one of them, there’s not a ring.  Step it up guys, really. 

Anyway - Rachel’s stuck in LA and can’t get back for her show, and the understudy fell down stairs or something, so... now it’s Kurt’s issue?  Ug.  

So - Kurt frantically tries to reach Mercedes and Santana, who are busy being awesome friends.  Kurt ends up finding them at the diner - and says that they should do a bomb threat, or bedbug scare, or claim Barbra’s doing a free show in Central Park to stop the show -- which, agreed, are all horrible ideas.  Though Chris’s comedy is top notch in this scene.  Again, I don’t know why Kurt is so stressed out about it -- why not let Rachel have some consequences for her actions for once.  But -- Maybe cause Mercedes’s good friend juice is wearing on her, Santana says she’ll step up and play Fanny for a night. 

Couch Time

I kind of like that they show Kurt and Blaine at the brownstone instead of the loft -- nice to show that they hang out in both places instead of just the loft.  Tbh, I think Blaine’s place looks way more comfortable, and has way less Rachel in it. 

But -- as Kurt says, he and Blaine haven’t been spending a lot of time together lately cause Blaine’s spending all of this time with June lately.  Kurt’s interested in the details (though - god, all the name dropping again, this doesn’t really sound like Kurt, but some middle-aged dude who cares about these people), but the point is Kurt wants some alone Blaine time, and not just because gossip.  

It’s also brought up, again, that a win for one of them is a win for both of them.  While I do think there’s some value in being happy for your partner, I think the whole joined at the hip angle is weird in general.  This show is just...weird when it comes to relationships of any kind some times. 

Kurt is genuinely happy to hear that Blaine’s getting a showcase, and would have been 100% supportive fiance if it rested there (and he is a few episodes from now.)  But Blaine lies, I think cause he wants to spare Kurt’s feelings? Cause he doesn’t want Kurt to go nuclear on June? (I would have loved to have seen that!) Blaine’s own insecurities about the whole thing? Plot? 

The point is - Blaine says Kurt has a part when he doesn’t -- which means instead of just being normally ecstatic, Kurt’s over the moon ecstatic.  And Blaine finds himself in a self-made pickle.    

As an aside, I also kinda love that Kurt does have some boundaries.  He is not up for any kind of weird cougar-ish behavior June might be trying out on Blaine.  You can do a lot of things, Blaine, but the only sexy times you’ll be having is with me.  (And Blaine is totally cool with that.) 

And even though Blaine’s already feeling guilty about the whole lie thing - I’m pretty sure they’re gonna skip the movie and go straight to sexy times.  I mean, Mercedes and Sam have already used the couch for sexy times.  I think Kurt and Blaine should get a chance, too.  :) 

And that’s it! Yeah - not a whole lot of Kurt in this one.  But, I mean, at least there are some really great moments in here.  

[butitdidntmake]

Paedophile driven to court in hospital gown to be jailed

Shocked this story didn’t make. Roy Whiting’s crimes led to massive changes in newspapers, the law and society. This man could well have been involved in making him into the child killer who ruined many lives. Disappointed for Green’s brave victims and the diligent police who worked so hard to return him to prison this didn’t get a good show.

A convicted paedophile was driven to court in his hospital gown when doctors passed him fit to go back to prison for another 12 years following a second conviction for abusing young boys.

In a dramatic end to his trial, former sports coach Michael Green - described as child killer Roy Whiting’s mentor and idol - was hospitalised with a suspected stroke.

Police who investigated Green, drove him to court as soon as he was discharged from hospital by doctors in Brighton.

Green, 75, abused boys as young as nine, the court heard, while coaching ice hockey and when he worked as a cricket coach at an exclusive private school.

He befriended Whiting who went on to rape and murder eight-year-old Sarah Payne when they were both involved in motorcycle speedway racing in Sussex.

Green was found collapsed in his flat by police after he failed to appear in court to hear closing speeches at the end of his two week trial.

The judge ruled the trial should carry on without him.

After spending nearly five days under the care of doctors in Brighton, Green was discharged and driven straight to court knowing he would be jailed for a second time.

Still wearing his hospital gown, Green was led into the court building by the same police officers who investigated his crimes.

After a meeting with his barrister, Green shambled the last few metres down the corridor still wearing his hospital wristband to the public entrance using a walking frame, complaining of the pain he was feeling.

Prison officers in blue surgical gloves sat either side of the convicted paedophile who listened with his head bowed as Recorder Elliott QC told him she had considered the possibility he will die in prison.

One of his victims watched from the public gallery overlooking the court as Green was jailed for a second time for abusing boys in his care.

Green, 75, conducted a serious, repeated and widespread campaign of abuse, the judge told him.Green was already convicted of abusing two boys in Hampshire in the early 1980s and jailed for nine-and-a-half years in 2001.

He was freed on licence when more allegations against him were brought to police.

As the new allegations did not involve abuse after his previous conviction, he was not taken back into custody.

The 75-year-old was terrified of being attacked as he walked in and out of Lewes Crown Court each day of his trial fearing his victims or their families could try to take their revenge.

Child killer Roy Whiting idolised Green and worshiped him as a God, it was claimed.

Whiting was jailed for life in 2001 for the rape and murder of eight-year-old Sarah Payne.

His crime shocked the nation and let to the passing of Sarah’s Law which allows parent to know if a convicted sex offender could have contact with their children.

The two men met while Green was a coach with the Crawley Tigers speedway team.Green made Whiting captain of the team as they grew closer.

He was described as the future child murderer’s mentor.

Green went on to be a sports coach at Windlesham House boarding school in West Sussex where he abused boys in the cricket team.

Recorder Sarah Elliott QC said Green was guilty of abusing seven boys aged between ten and 15-years-old.In each case, he was their sports coach.

"The seriousness, harm caused and culpability of the offender are the main considerations I must apply.

“The delay in bringing these matters to trial is in part down to the shame and confusion the victims felt at what they had suffered through you.

"You used your popularity and position as their sports coach in a gross abuse of trust.

"You befriended your victims and their families for your sexual purposes.

"In relation to the offences at the school, they were borders with you looking after them in the evenings and weekends, so they were effectively trapped with you.”

Green used pornography, gifts and trips to the cinema to see racy films to groom his victims, the Recorder said.

“With some, you simply got into bed with them,” she said.

The hours Green spent as a sports coach gave him the opportunity to abuse boys for his own deviant sexual pleasure, he judge said.

“This was a serious, repeated and widespread set of offences,” the judge said.

Green shook his head as the Recorder detailed his offences and jailed him for a total of 12 years for a total of 18 offences.

Green was convicted of 17 after already admitting one offence.

Green’s successful prosecution was down to the hard work of Sussex police and in particular DC Dawn Robertson, the Recorder added.

Detective Constable Dawn Robertson, who was involved with both investigations, said; "Green's 2014 sentence received considerable publicity and as a result these seven further victims came forward to us over the ensuing months.

"We have great admiration for their readiness to help see justice done, and for giving evidence at Green's trial where he denied the allegations throughout and continues to do so even after conviction, as he did in 2014.

"It is clear that throughout that period of the eighties and nineties he was actively involving himself in different types of sports coaching, all of which had one thing in common - they gave him access to young and often vulnerable young boys who he systematically abused under the guise of helping them.

"Reports of this type will always be taken seriously and investigated wherever possible.”

The Recorder also made a Sexual Harm Prevention Order preventing Green from having unsupervised contact with any child under the age of 18.

In a heartbreaking impact statement, one of Green’s victims said his life had been blighted by the abuse he suffered.

“All my life this has haunted me and has been a dark demon I’ve had to deal with.

"The mental scars are sometimes unbearable to live with."

The court heard Green, who had also worked as an insurance agent. used his position as a trusted sports coach to attack seven more boys across Sussex between 1980 and 1994.

He was described as a sexual predator would take boys back to his home where he would then climb into bed with them.

One victim said he came forward after reading reports of another child abuse case.

“He’s the scum of the earth,” the man told police after coming forward in 2015.

"I saw something on the news and thought, he’s going to get away with it.

"I wanted to get my point across.”

He told police he had been sexually assaulted after meeting Mr Green when he was 11-years-old.

The man, now in his 40s described Michael Green as having a musky smell.

"Like a dirty person sort of smell,” the man said.

“I was scared to say anything.

"I didn’t know what to think.

"I didn’t know what would happen to me, so I let him carry on do it.

"I just blocked it out of my mind for years,” the man said.

“I was disgusted with it, but I was only young so I tried to put it to the back of my mind.”

Green even abused schoolboys in the cinema as they watch Madonna in A League of Their own and Whitney Houston in The Bodyguard.

Another man, also now in his 40s, who asked not to be named said Green was notorious as a Nonce when he coached boys in the ice hockey team.

"Everybody knew what he was up to.

"When I heard he had got the job at the school, I felt sorry for those boys.

"He would stand around naked in the showers with boys aged ten and 11.

"People would just tell him to get away from the boys.

"He was just known as a nonce.

"He was a horrible bastard.

"If I saw him now, I'd knock him out.

"We just knew him as Mick the Nonce.”

The jury were told of Green's previous conviction at the start of the trial but not about his connection to Whiting.

Prosecutor Richard Cherrill said new charges were brought when other men started to come forward after reading press coverage of the case, and from the high profile coverage surrounding other historic sex abuse cases.

He said: “We say his previous conviction is relevant.

“That is because it shows his propensity and desire to abuse young boys in his care."

Mr Cherrill told Lewes Crown Court how Green performed sex acts on boys as young as nine.

He would tell boys that they were special and he loved them and would beg for cuddles for his own sick desires.

One reported the boys felt “mystified and repulsed” when Mr Green told them to sit on his knee while he licked and nibbled their ears.

In a dramatic end to the trial, Green suffered a suspected stroke at home over the final weekend break.

Police were sent to his home after he failed to appear at court on Monday morning.

As he was waiting to be assessed by a neurology specialist, the judge ruled the case against Green could go ahead.

The jury heard closing arguments with an empty dock.

Mr Cherrill told the jury: “The defendant is ill.

"He’s not done a runner, he cannot be here.”Green was discharged and driven from hospital an hour before his sentencing.

ends

[thechasefiles]

The Chase Files Daily Newscap 28/5/2020

Good Morning #realdreamchasers! Here is your daily news cap Thursday 28th May, 2020. There is a lot to read and digest so take your time. Remember you can read full articles via Barbados Government Information Service (BGIS), Barbados Today (BT), or by purchasing a Daily Nation Newspaper (DN).

PLOT TWIST – A massive effort to improve the living conditions of struggling single mother Katura Luke has taken a shocking twist. Barbados TODAY understands that the owner of the lot at Diamond Valley, St Philip where Luke lives has given no permission for cleaning or renovations to take place on his property and has enlisted the services of an attorney to resolve the matter. As social media sensation Jordan English commenced The Luke Family Home Renovation, Mervin Jones, whose uncle owns the property revealed that rent had not been paid for the last six years and the unsightly home was in fact up for sale. “Unimpressed” with the ongoing “hype” surrounding the endeavor, Jones is instead urging Barbadians to get the full story before “jumping on bandwagons”. “You can’t just go on someone else’s land and carry out renovations just because a man goes on social media saying that we have to be sympathetic. Sympathy doesn’t pay to repair a house,” Jones told Barbados TODAY. “There is more to this story than meets the eye and I can speak because I am directly involved with it and I spoke to the landowner’s attorney and told her to get her hands on this because I don’t think any renovations are going to take place at this time,” he declared. But on Wednesday afternoon, English started honoring a promise to improve the family’s deplorable condition. Photos and videos from his social media page captured a team of youngsters cleaning a massive amount of garbage from the house with help from Jose Y Jose Liquid and Solid Waste Management. The matter was thrust into the public domain on Monday, when the 23-year-old launched an appeal to assist Luke who is living in squalor as she raises four children and battles a myriad of serious health issues. On Tuesday, management of Crane Resorts facilitated a seven-day stay for Luke and her children who have been promised a newly renovated home in seven days. The young man has since launched a website and is accepting donations to aid the initiative. Up to press time, efforts to reach English and Jose Y Jose’s Managing Director, Anderson Cherry were unsuccessful. In the meantime, Jones, who is perplexed by the developments explained that a well-kept and fully furnished house with a new television, fridge and stove was offered to Luke approximately ten years ago after the death of his aunt, who previously occupied the property. The Rural Development Commission (RDC) had been paying rent on Luke’s behalf, but stopped sometime in 2014. The caretaker added that in 2013, the house had been repaired and another estimate for improvements to the tune of $7,600 had been done. However, with no rent being paid, repairs were simply not feasible. “Three offers were made to her, including one from the current Member of Parliament for the area [Indar Weir], who is being ridiculed now to go to a house in Church Village, St. Phillip and she refused,” claimed Jones, a former school teacher, well known umpire and cricket match referee. “Now you will try to stop my uncle from getting rid of that property, which is now filled with bottles and all kinds of rubbish?” he asked. “It is laudable what the gentleman is trying to do. But when he went to the house and saw the for sale sign he should have asked some questions, because everybody in Diamond Valley knows me,” he added. When contacted, Minister in the Ministry of Housing and Lands Charles Griffith admitted that the family “is known” to the RDC. He said that an officer from the commission visited the property on Tuesday to carry out an assessment. Meanwhile, Minister of People Empowerment and Elder Affairs Cynthia Forde said she received “background information” on the unfolding situation and is preparing to meet with the relevant social agencies to develop a plan to assist Katura and her family. (BT)

‘GOV’T, CAN DO BETTER’: HOWARD ON ECONOMY JOB – From getting a passing mark in the first year, the Mia Mottley has slumped to near failing grade over its handling of the economy in its second year in office, according to emeritus economics professor Michael Howard. But he gave Government “high marks” for its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Professor Howard told Barbados TODAYwhile the administration had done a satisfactory job in their first year, they had dropped the ball this time around. He made the comments just days after the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) celebrated their second year in office on May 24. Professor Howard said: “If I had to evaluate the BLP in terms of the two separate years I think the performance was different. In my opinion, if I had to grade them I would give them a B+ for the first year and a D for the second year. “In the first year they did well and they had a right to boast of having restored confidence in the Barbadian dollar, they went to the IMF [International Monetary Fund] which I felt was necessary, and it helped to raise the level of foreign reserves and I complimented Ms Mottley in the way she went about it. The way in which she brought stability to the economy was the hallmark of the first year. “In the first year even though the level of taxation rose I think that Barbados was rescued from the previous years under the DLP.” He also pointed to the debt restructuring which he deemed as necessary and which helped to reduce the level of debt. But in evaluating the Government’s second year, the Professor Emeritus in Economics at the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill said Government’s performance left a lot to be desired. He told Barbados TODAY: “In the second year I think things went downhill. The economy remained in recession, there were more draconian taxation; the water tax continued, heavy taxes on tourism; there was a decline in sanitation, poor water management. “Somehow they lost track of the course and perhaps one of the main problems was the failure to restore economic growth. The taxation was very heavy and a lot of people especially the poor suffered a loss in welfare during that second year. “Despite the income tax reform people were burdened by the increase in direct taxation. But I wouldn’t give them a failure because the fact that they achieved the six per cent IMF surplus meant that something was achieved.” But on the Mottley administration’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis, Professor Howard said while he did not agree with everything that had been done he was impressed by Government’s handling of the challenges it faced. He told Barbados TODAY: “I would give them some high marks, although they have been some blemishes. But I would give them some high marks for the way they approached especially the health aspect of this crisis because this was a new area and even though there were one or two slipups at first I think that they did a good job in restoring confidence in people.” (BT)

GRIM OUTLOOK ON JOB FRONT – Two of the island’s corporate representative organisations are warning the country to brace for more job losses in the private sector if business activity does not pick up quickly. Chairman of the Barbados Private Sector Association (BPSA) Edward Clarke has cautioned that the country can expect companies to take some drastic measures to remain in business, including layoffs, if economic activity does not improve in the next few weeks. He warned that with revenue having dried up in some cases and being “very poor” in others, businesses will do what they have to do to survive. Clarke said while some people have gone back to work in a number of businesses which were allowed to reopen, things could take a turn for the worse if revenue remains dormant or non-existent resulting in more job losses. “What is being assessed now is what will happen if business does not pick up in the next couple weeks, next few weeks. Revenue is going to drive the decision-making. Unless businesses have revenue to support the organisational structure and staffing structure they will have to make decisions,” Clarke told Barbados TODAY this afternoon. “Once they follow the due process, you would expect people would have to make decisions for the survival of their businesses,” he added. The private sector spokesman said he hopes things would change for the better sooner than later and that Government would expand the opening hours of business and allow more retailers to resume operations where practicable. Clarke is also calling for the reopening of some restaurants in the near future while acknowledging that all this hinges on the health protocol and the continuing “good outcome” of the COVID management. “But things are slow and we are having to manage the situation day by day and hopefully things will improve…but right now it is not a good situation for businesses in Barbados at this time…very weak performance overall. Many businesses have to make some serious decisions in the next few weeks, if things don’t change,” he reiterated. And President of the Barbados Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) Trisha Tannis is also expecting more people to go home in the coming weeks and months. But while she anticipates additional layoffs, she is urging business leaders and owners to ensure they follow due process as provided for in the Employment Rights Act. “I would take the opportunity to encourage the members of the private sector, where they are contemplating or in the process of laying off, to remember to ensure they follow due process where the labour representative is concerned and the Labour Office as well,” the BCCI president told Barbados TODAY. The business sector leader disclosed that the Chamber has been getting complaints that some employers were “progressing with certain actions without due process. And I would just like to take the opportunity to remind the private sector to follow the appropriate protocol.” Tannis also warned that she expected the current bleak business conditions to continue until year-end especially if tourism remains in the doldrums. She noted that a series of major festivals which would have boosted tourism have been cancelled for this year including the United Nations’ Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Conference slated for October. “Obviously the spinnoff and trickle down benefits to the economy are going to be missed. So it remains to be seen how long…how deep, this is going to be. But we may be in for a bit of a long haul. It may not be before 2021 before we begin to see some recovery,” the Chamber head declared. “I do think there is going to be a bit of a contraction for a while. As you know, the employment levels are very high and traffic flows are still very sedate,” Tannis stated. “It is good to be able to reopen…that helps. But traffic will still be significantly down versus the prior years. I think it will be a slow and gradual climb, hopefully back to some level of buoyancy, but that timeline is likely to be protracted,” she said. Meanwhile, Government and other members of the Social Partnership are consulting on a plan proposed by Prime Minister Mia Mottley that is designed to give the political directorate more elbow room to help the economy rebound from the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Prime Minister has proposed what was initially termed a “forced savings plan” now known as a National Meeting Turn that offers “National Pandemic Solidarity Bonds” as part payment for salaries. The bonds are to be redeemed at the end of four years at high interest rates but can be cashed in at financial institutions before the maturity date. (BT)

DOUBLE TAX BLOW HURTING PENSION SAVINGS – Barbadians who are paying taxes on their income and are then required to pay taxes again on the money they have put aside to support them during retirement should be entitled to some relief from the double burden. The case has been made by Roger Cave, Investment Director of Fortress Fund Manager as he addressed members of the media Tuesday at the company’s virtual media briefing. Asked what Government could do to make the investing environment more appealing, he said the matter of taxation on pensions was a longstanding sore point. Noting that since Government removed registered retirement savings plans from the list of investments Barbadian could claim against the tax liabilities, they are now facing two tax hits; one at the source in the form of PAYE and another at the pension payment stage for sums over a minimum amount. “The one area from a policy point of view that we do need to relook is the taxation on pensions and it is a point that we raise repeatedly. We have a situation where contributions to pension schemes are no longer deductible but they are still taxed on retirement. “This COVID-19 situation has demonstrated even more so the importance of saving for long-term needs and that has increased rather than decreased. And further, to have a situation where there is a tax penalty, we need to reverse this where there is an incentive to put away those savings,” Cave urged. “We have a strong regulatory scheme with pensions with a number of local providers, so the environment is there but the policy needs to be revisited.” On the matter of Barbados’ blacklisting by the European Union over claims the country was not been meeting the standard for Anti-money Laundering and the Countering Financing of Terrorism, Cave said the development was “most unfortunate”. The Fortress top executive added: “We think there has been a number of initiatives and ongoing things to strengthen our AML processes and procedures. As a player in the financial system, we are very aware of them and think that that was a very unfortunate case. I know that representation has been made to have [blacklisting] revisited and we hope that we will be off that list sooner rather than later. “It is never helpful, especially in the environment that we are in,” Cave added. (BT)

BRANDING KEY TO SELLING BAJAN AND CARIBBEAN PRODUCTS, SAYS CADDLE – Minister in the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Investment, Marsha Caddle, believes that more must be done to utilise the Barbados and Caribbean brand when it comes to promoting and selling local and regional commodities across the world. She made this point during a live YouTube discussion on the topic, The Future of the Caribbean: Sustainable Supply Chains, Trade, and Agriculture, hosted by the Grow Local Caribbean Team. The other participants were Jamaica’s Minister of State in the Ministry of Industry, Commerce, Agriculture and Fisheries, Floyd Green; Jamaica’s Opposition Spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade and Director of Lydford Logistics, Lisa Hanna; and Oneyka Akumah, Founder and CEO of Farmcrowdy from Nigeria. It was hosted by Ethnie Miller Simpson, Managing Director of Grow Local Caribbean, an entity which provides resources for Caribbean businesses. Caddle noted that within the local agricultural sector, government was focused on identifying those things that were unique to Barbados. She suggested that branding was key to standing out, especially within a niche market and where there are economies of scale. “Branding for us is extremely important. We keep talking about niche markets and the issue even with a niche market is that we still have economies of scale. Even if we have a couple of producers who are able to create a niche high value product, because of our size it is very unlikely that we will still be able to produce enough of that product to make a dent in the market, even within the region. “One of the things we have focused on doing is identifying what are uniquely Bajan things. Black belly sheep is one of those things. It is sought after all over the world; there are chefs in different restaurants who say if we have that lamb we don’t want anything else. The same for avocado and the same for aloe vera, so we are really focused on that…,” she explained. The Investment Minister also lamented that too often Caribbean products are being packaged and resold to the region and she stressed that the islands needed to do a much better job in this regard. “We can globalise even the production but we need to really brand who we are and what we are selling. This issue came up even recently with the ‘clash’ between (musicians) Bounty and Beenie. Why is it that people are selling back to us our Caribbean product? We hear all these jingles in advertising and you have a soca rhythm in the back [or] you have a reggae rhythm, because our brand is happiness, the Caribbean brand is happiness and we are not doing anything with that. So I think as part of our overall conversation, that is a huge part of what we need to do,” she emphasised. Adding to the conversation was Lisa Hanna, who pointed out that a huge part the problem with agriculture was that the youth did not see the sector as attractive. She also complained about value added products, which are grown in Jamaica, being imported and sold on the island. “I say we need to make farming ‘sexy’ because it is where the next frontier is coming from… I should not be sitting in Jamaica and buying a packaged can of coconut water. I shouldn’t be sitting in Jamaica and buying cured mangoes from Indonesia. That to me is just criminal because what we keep doing is exporting our primary products,” she argued, adding that locals must also be able to afford locally grown products. Hanna also called for more investment into the industry and the identification of what are the global competitive advantages, especially since she did not believe there would be enough prosperity generated by feeding one’s population alone. (BGIS)

COACH OWNERS MULL FERRYING COMMUTERS – With no tourists to drive their businesses, some coach owners have now said they may very well accept Government’s offer for them to join the public transport system. But for it to be a feasible option, the contract would have to make “financial sense”, said one owner. With public service vehicles and Transport Board buses only allowed to carry 60 per cent capacity for effective social distancing, Prime Minister Mia Mottley recently announced that private coaches might have to help move commuters. With Ross University temporarily closed, Mottley said the medical school’s coaches could be used, among others. Scott Davis, owner of Williams Tours Barbados, acknowledged the offer was not ideal, but he said that with few options available, coaches might have to take advantage of the offer. He told Barbados TODAY: “There is not necessarily a great excitement to integrate because of the class of vehicle. “We have to try and create the most luxury vehicle and so to convert to that style… but I believe there are many who are going to be in the situation where that will be an ultimate game-changer for them. “Take, for example, all the Ross transportation, they don’t have any Ross students to carry around anymore and I don’t know if Government is still having to honour that contract, so I believe there will be people who will definitely fill that void who are doing that type of transportation already.” With the COVID-19 pandemic having practically wiped out the tourist industry for the near future, Davis said he may have to consider accepting the Government’s offer. He said: “As the news spread about the future it’s not looking so bright so I might be willing to come on board. I’ve gone from income to zero income and so it is definitely something I would need to consider. “I believe we all will be thinking about it for sure, so we might seem reluctant now but a couple more days without a dollar a lot of us might be coming around.” Davis recalled that several months ago, Minister of Transport  Dr William Duguid spoke to them regarding a similar initiative. He said at the time several concerns had been raised, including the basis on how routes would be assigned. General manager of Sun Tours Barbados Eva Marshall declined to comment, but another owner who asked to remain anonymous told Barbados TODAY the offer would have to be financially beneficial for him to consider. He said while he did not want to appear selfish, the bottom line was critical. He said: “This is something which is new and probably something we would have never contemplated before COVID-19. We are accustomed to setting our own rates so for us to operate in this fashion is a bit strange. “I’m not against having a discussion but at the end of the day it has to make financial sense for me as a business owner. It makes no sense having my vehicles working and having to service them if the money isn’t decent. “I think Government would have to offer us some form of concession maybe on diesel or something as well, because the majority of private coaches operate with air condition.” He said the loss of the tourist industry would be very hard on private coaches, as in some instances tourists accounted for 85 per cent of business. (BT)

GRADUATES OFFER BETTER CHANCE AT INNOVATION – Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, President of the Universities Caribbean and Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies (UWI) is predicting that there will be an increase in persons seeking higher education in the post COVID-19 period. Speaking during today’s One Caribbean Virtual Forum titled: Assessing the impacts of COVID-19 Designing the Future of the Caribbean University Sector, the historian explained that there is a historical tendency for the demand for higher education to increase during an economic recession. However, Sir Hilary stressed that while there is the expected increase in persons seeking to further develop their knowledge in skills and academic areas, it is important for governments in the region to see the importance of continuing to invest in education even though there is an unfavourable economic climate. He said members of the labour force often work towards retooling and reorganizing their skill sets, while several parents make sacrifices for their children to acquire a higher education at a moment of recession. Sir Hilary said during a recession people are focused on surviving the competition which narrows considerably against persons who are not in the higher education sector. “On the contrary, when economies are booming and there is significant growth and development people do believe that they could survive and they could do well without higher education. But, I think we will witness that as soon as the shock has been overcome we will actually see a very significant increase in our higher education within the recessionary period, the history shows that. “But at the same time, I think we should recognize that people do attend university for different reasons, and many reasons. It is not simply a matter of their employability, though I should say that the private sector has recognized that this is the age in which their businesses have to innovate and your chances of having an innovative economy, or an innovative industry or company or enterprise is increased with the employment of graduates,” he said. Sir Hilary noted that society is looking at graduates to be the innovative drivers of the future and they are sought after even in a climate where there might be an existing unemployment growth. On that note, the Vice Chancellor said the university must demonstrate to students that the content and the pedagogy of their programmes are in alignment with significant areas of development relevant to private sector growth or public sector commitment to greater service and care for communities. He added that one of the lessons of COVID-19 is that countries that have highly developed universities that have been engaged in handling the pandemic are the countries that seem to be able to better deal with the COVID-19 containment. However, he said countries that have not invested in higher education and are lacking good public healthcare systems because they have not invested in medical facilities; are having great difficulty in getting on top of COVID. “So the lesson then that we have found, certainly in the Caribbean, is that higher education, research, now more than ever, is critical in managing not only the COVID situation but post-COVID strategies will require a greater embracing of the higher education sectors. “This is a lesson that we are saying to all of our governments in the region, if you want to come out of this recession, if you need to manage post-COVID issues, this is a time when you must invest even greater resources in the higher education sector, teaching and research, and critical issues such as community empowerment and innovation,” he said. (BT)

SIR HILARY WARNS OF LOW ENROLMENT – The Caribbean has the lowest enrolment per capita in higher education throughout this hemisphere, and the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to push the region further down the scale. This is according to Vice-Chancellor of The University of the West Indies, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles. He was speaking yesterday during a “One Caribbean” virtual forum on UWITV entitled, Assessing The Impacts Of COVID-19: Designing The Future Of The Caribbean University Sector. “If we take the age cohort 18 to 30, the Caribbean has the lowest enrolment in higher education in the hemisphere. We are less than 25 per cent in the hemisphere where the average is close to 45 per cent,” he said. “We already have an enrolment crisis. We already are suffering the consequences of low enrolment in higher education and professorial training . . . so we are likely to be experiencing a further reduction in higher education when we are already in the hemisphere at the bottom of that enrolment chart,” he said. (DN)

SCORES OF STRANDED BAJANS RETURN VIA CRUISE SHIP – Scores of once stranded Barbadians are now back home thanks to Government’s decision to allow some cruise ships to use the Bridgetown Port for repatriation. Chairman of the Barbados Port Inc Senator Lisa Cummins told Barbados TODAY that in exchange for allowing those ships to dock on the island, the chartered planes coming to take the crew home were also bringing Barbadians home. Harmony of the Seas, the world’s longest cruise ship and the second largest, became the latest vessel to dock at the Port when it arrived today carrying over 4000 crew members. “What is an important part and is not necessarily known is that we would have heard about some Barbadians, including Barbadian crew members and Barbadians who were stranded abroad being able to come home. “These ships are the reason that these Barbadians are able to come home because the cruise lines are flying the planes in. They are going to be flying them in empty and say they are Barbadians in the UK or wherever, these Barbadians have an opportunity to work with our overseas embassies and they are able to get home and then they go into quarantine here in Barbados because they are staying on the island,” Cummins said. “Because these ships are repatriating through Barbados, the planes that are taking them home are also bringing our Barbadians home.” The chairman disclosed that Barbados had been facilitating crew repatriation since March 23. Cummins said more than 25 ships had already benefited from the initiative. Speaking in relation to Harmony of the Seas, Cummins said some of the crew had been on the water for close to two months. She said those crew members would be transported to the Grantley Adams International Airport where chartered flights were waiting to take them home. “But why is the second largest cruise ship in the world in Barbados at this point? Because the cruise lines have had a number of challenges with various ports around the world not allowing the ships to disembark and to allow for the chartered planes to come in even though there are protocols in place, or you have crew members that are all healthy,” Cummins said. “In the case of this particular vessel these are crew members who have been at sea, in some instances, over 60 days and quarantine periods as we know are 14 days. “These people have been stranded at sea for close to two months and so they just want to get home. So what Royal Caribbean has done is they have consolidated their crew members across multiple ships, placed them on single ships and sailed them to different ports, “Barbados is not the only one but we are the one in this area. There are chartered flights that are flying in and the crew members are going directly from the seaport to the airport to board those chartered flights and fly out to their home countries to their families,” she added. Cummins emphasized that those crew members would not be quarantined in Barbados as they were not staying here. She said they would all be moved over the “next couple of days”. “There is no local stay here in Barbados at all and they are all not moving at the same time. They are moving over the course of a couple of days at a time, so for this particular vessel and the other vessels that are berthed here, there are maybe like 25 chartered planes that are being flown in and out of Barbados to take them to the various locations,” Cummins reiterated. She said planes would be leaving the GAIA destined for the Phillipines, Indonesia, Ukraine, South America, Canada and Europe. The chairman maintained that everything had been done under the watchful eye of the Ministry of Health. Cummins said last weekend over 700 crew members were flown out. (BT)

SARGASSUM HARVESTER TO START WORK ON BEACH CLEAN UP – A new harvester to reap sargassum seaweed, which clogs beaches nationwide each year is set to get to work, Minister of Maritime Affairs Kirk Humphrey has announced. He said he expected the new equipment to significantly boost efforts to clean up the country. Addressing the launch at the Barbados Coast Guard base HMBS Pelican, the Minister recalled that the sargassum seaweed was among the challenges Government faced two years ago and a plan had to be put in place. As a result, Government spent almost $300,000 to acquire the seaweed harvester, a tractor and conveyor, Humphrey said, suggesting it would help transform Barbados. He said: “I think it is important for us to recognize that there are a few things we have to do right now. If COVID-19 hasn’t taught us anything then nothing will. We cannot continue with business as usual. So the first thing Barbados has to do is clean. And, the seaweed harvester is part of our cleaning up programme and we are going to deploy the seaweed harvester mostly along the early west coast and the south coast. “Ón the east coast we are going to continue to use mostly manual labour. We have about 75 people who are trained in how to handle the seaweed and we are about to deploy another 50, if not 75, to be able to start cleaning the seaweed [there].” Humphrey said the ministry has been very conscious about removing the seaweed in a responsible way so as not to take all the sand, adding it was “more about respecting one ecosystem, not trying to advance one at the detriment of another”. He said: “ I think we have been able to do that fairly well. We moved a significant amount of tonnage of seaweed over the last year. Certainly, with this [the seaweed harvester] we will be able to move even more seaweed. So, we are going to keep Barbados clean. Humphrey also stressed the need for much more innovation in the use of the seaweed. While noting there had already been a lot of scientific work and studies on sargassum, he added Barbadians have shown how innovative they can be through the making of fertilizers, soaps and the ministry’s own work on making energy. Humphrey said: “Fishermen, for example when they were dealing with the seaweed they made adjustments to their fishing vessels. So, instead of throwing the net on top of the water; they put the net so that it floats just below the seaweed so that they could still catch the fish below the seaweed. They have also been able to do things to protect the propellers on the boats so it does not destroy their vessels. “All of these things without anybody showing them…just innovating and responding, in a way, to issues and problems. So, I believe we are going to be able to be transformative. I think this part of our programme is going to be transformative.” (BT)

CDEMA TWEAKS DISASTER MANAGEMENT PLANS – Days away from the start of a likely above-average Atlantic hurricane season, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced the regional disaster management agency to revise its preparedness protocols. Acting Executive Director of the Caribbean Disaster and Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), Elizabeth Riley said: “We have modified the regional plans based on COVID-19 public health protocols from both the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) and from national health authorities in our member states. “Since we could not do face-to-face training this year, we are drawing upon people trained in previous years to conduct refresher courses in June. “We realise that as a result of the protocols we are committed to following from our health sector partners, there may be a lag time in terms of getting a physcial presence on the ground, so we are looking at remote support to our states and we have discussed that with national disaster coordinators.” Riley said one of the areas that needs special attention this year is shelter management. She said: “In treating to physical distancing requirements we have to explore options for additional spaces, as well as the necessary physical resources and human and financial resources at shelters, for example supplying personal protective equipment, respecting physical distance guidelines, and having adequate water supplies as well as other solutions to ensure hygiene practices are adhered to.” Experts have also focused on changes to the way shelters are to be used in the time of COVID-19. Professor Lloyd Waller, Executive Director of the Global Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management Centre, said: “Shelters can be relatively cluttered in a normal situation, but with coronavirus now and social distancing we have been identifying additional centres and plans to minimise the number of people allocated to centres. “There is usually a medical person at the shelters in case of emergency, but in this instance, some have said they have identified a medical doctor, others are training medical people already in the shelters on this, and in some cases, they are setting up stations for people who may have been evacuated and are showing signs of the illness so they can be isolated from other people. “Since February the regional disaster management agencies have been amending and reviewing their guidelines with respect to coronavirus.” Dr Laura Lee Boodram, director of Vector Control Surveillance with the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA), said that apart from COVID-19,  the region should ensure it does not face any of the other health issues that might emerge in the aftermath of storms, such as water and foodborne illnesses. She said: “Our recommendations are that we may have to source alternative additional shelters, not only because of physical distancing, but people in the shelter will have to wear protective gear and masks, and once we have that in place, we won’t be able to accommodate the same number of persons as in the past, so we would have to assign people to places where there is enough space for that. “Apart from COVID-19, there are other potential diseases that can break out in shelters, like food and water-borne diseases and these have to be constantly monitored, and medications kept on hand for those with preexisting health conditions. Yes, extra resources will be required but once we are aware of these, advance planning will go a long way to mitigate these scenarios if they occur.” (BT)  

LOCKDOWN COULD AFFECT PLAYERS PHYSICALLY AND MENTALLY – West Indies tour to England will be tough during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic but it is good to get the game back in the middle, says former Barbados all-rounder Franklyn Stephenson. Whether the three-match Test series scheduled for July 8-28 at the Ageas Bowl in Hampshire will take place is an ongoing debate as there are concerns about the safety of players travelling to England. That country has one of the highest death rates because of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, Stephenson during a telephone interview with Barbados TODAY, said once the authorities in England put the relevant safety precautions in place to protect the players, then he was all for cricket being played when that time comes. “Anything to get the game back on the field of play is of help and taking a lead from other countries around the world is a step in that direction,” Stephenson said. He added that with the amount of testing players were going to be subjected to and their privacy invaded, this was the time for the players to remain positive in what is being referred to as the new norm. “Anything for cricket. It is going to be tough. The authorities are putting so much in place; they are sacrificing so much; it is all for the sport and I am all for it. I am sure they will be safe; I am sure that they are going to take all precautions to make sure that they put strategies in place. It will be great to see cricket being played. I think that is some of the fastest progress we can make actually to inspire the people to get their sport back. “We need to look at the other countries to see how they implement breakout strategies safely and that is going to help, anything to help the game go forward will help. Unless there are breakouts and I do not see that happening because the players are going to be tested so often, their privacy is going to be invaded big time, but these are different times. But they just have to stay positive,” Stephenson said. Playing without spectators is also going to be a challenge but Stevenson insisted that going forward this will be the new norm. He said: “These are new times and I am sure they are practising for all those scenarios. They have to be less audible with their banter, they have to be careful about that because they would not have any crowds to drown out what they say to each other. But they are not dead men out there, things are going to be said and it is going to be a big loss not having the spectators. It is almost like a trial basis and I am sure we will see some new norms coming out of that without spectators.” Head of the Franklyn Stephenson Academy located at Bennetts, St. Thomas, the man considered by many the best regional first-class cricketer never to play Test cricket, offered words of encouragement to players during this time especially the young ones who are eager to get back out and play the sport they love. While Stephenson advised the players to be proactive and positive as they navigate through these unprecedented times, he also urged local authorities to observe closely the impact this lockdown could have on the mental health of players. Therefore, Stephenson, an outstanding cricket on the England and South African circuits, advocated for the current restrictions put in place by the Government to be relaxed further to allow young people the opportunity to train with their clubs. “The youngsters are going to be wondering why they are on lockdown, they can’t leave the house, they can’t play the sport, it is going to be messing with their lives for sure. I think we have to act as soon as possible to give them that outlet. I mean they say ‘no’ to playing the sport, but why not allow the youngsters to get supervision under their normal clubs. I am sure the clubs would be instrumental in keeping the youngsters (training). They cannot do it every day, but you have small groups in the evening, and I am sure the clubs would put in that sacrifice. “This will help their bodies and mind develop. We do not know what damage it is doing to them to have to sit at home all day with all that energy and all that focus on the disciplines they are normally good at. So I think the authorities have got to look at that and get together with the sporting bodies and get the youngsters out on those big wide-open playing fields to do some running around and help to develop their bodies and minds,” Stephenson said. (BT)

NEW ZEALAND BOARD CUTTING JOBS - New Zealand Cricket (NZC) will cut up to 15 per cent of staff and look to shave NZ$6 million (BDS$7.45 million) in operating costs as part of proposals to cope with “challenging” conditions brought on by the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, chief executive David White said. He told New Zealand media he had informed NZC’s 80 staff on Wednesday about the planned cuts, which would allow the board to maintain funding levels at provincial and district levels, and avoid shrinking the domestic schedule. “We have our priorities for the year, which we’re not compromising and we’re investing in those,” he told Stuff Media. “The cuts are coming from NZC, NZ$6 million, of which NZ$1.5 million is staff.”Players and staff for the national men’s Black Caps and women’s White Ferns teams would not be affected by the cost-cutting measures. Players’ annual retainers would remain as forecast for the coming season, White said. (DN)

SEARCH ON FOR GUNMAN WHO SHOT OFFICER – ‘District C’ Police were tonight hunting an unidentified gunman who shot and wounded a police officer while he was on duty in central St John. The officer, a male, who has not been named, was shot in the area of Henley Plantation around 11.45 am when police challenged a man who opened fire on them. The officer received a gunshot wound in his left forearm and he was taken to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, said Sergeant Michael Blackman. It was not thought that the injury was life-threatening but police released no further details on the officer’s condition. Police have launched an appeal to the public for information that can help them track down the assailant. Anyone with information has been asked to contact the District ‘C’ Police Station at 416-8200, Police Emergency at 211, Crime Stoppers at 1-800 (TIPS) 8477 or any police station. (BT)

GUILTY PLEA OFFERED ON GUN CHARGES – A young man has pleaded guilty to firearm and ammunition charges in the High Court. Jamar Julien Ricardo Proverbs, a first time offender, from Crawford Road, Ellerton, St George offered the plea today after originally being arrested on August 25, 2017. Lawmen were on mobile patrol that afternoon travelling along Kendal Hill, Christ Church when the noticed a motorcycle with two men on board. Proverbs was the pillion rider. When officers got the driver to stop the motorcycle, Proverbs, who was wearing a backpack, jumped off and fled. He was seen throwing the backpack into a bushy area before police caught him. Senior Crown Counsel Olivia Davis said when the bag was retrieved a small revolver, five rounds of ammunition and four empty shells were found. “Sir don’t charge me for the gun, give me a break,” he told police on his arrest. He was taken to the Oistins Police Station and told of his rights to an attorney. ”I don’t want any so go ahead and talk to me,” he told the police. He was then cautioned and asked about the firearm. He told police that while they had held him with the gun he was holding the bag for another man so he could be comfortable on the motorcycle. Proverbs also admitted that he had seen the gun the night before when he was at a “birthday bash”. He said he subsequently held it and fired two shots. “When I fired the gun it was so loud it ring my ears,” said the then 21-year-old coconut vendor who added that he gave the weapon back to his friend. The prosecutor said police investigations showed that the gun, a .32 long caliber revolver, belonged to another man and was last registered in 2005. The four shells, found in Proverbs’ possession, were fired from the weapon. The trial of the now convicted man, who was represented by attorney-at-law Krystal Fenty will continue on Tuesday, June 2 via Zoom before Justice Randall Worrell who is presiding over the No. 2 Supreme Court. The time he has spent on remand at Dodds will be detailed to the court at that time. A presentencing report has been ordered in the meantime in preparation for sentencing. (BT)

LAWYER MAKES CASE FOR CONVICT’S RELEASE – Attorney-at-law Sian Lange today urged a High Court judge to impose a sentence of time served on her client who apologised for having in his possession, a loaded gun he had “found”. The defence attorney made the submission today in her remarks on behalf of convicted man David Wayne Harper, a Bibby’s Lane, St Michael resident. Last week he pleaded guilty, via Zoom from his location at Her Majesty’s Prison Dodds, to having the illegal firearm and seven rounds of ammunition in his possession on May 26, 2017. On that day police doing traffic checks along Jack-in-the-box Gully stopped the vehicle in which he was travelling. His actions during that time caused lawmen to become suspicious and a search was conducted with his consent. A silver and black 9mm semi automatic pistol along with several paint brushes were found in his haversack. “The gun is mine I find it,” he said when asked to account for it. A further check discovered that the gun was equipped with a magazine containing seven rounds of ammunition. He told police on his arrest that he was walking through a track near Ellerton Pasture in St George when he found the loaded weapon and decided to keep it. Addressing Justice Randall Worrell  via Zoom again today the first time offender said: “ I apologise for the offence.” His lawyer then acknowledged that he had committed a serious offence and under the circumstances a custodial sentence was merited as the gun was loaded and was capable of taking a life. But, in her client’s case, she said, the gun was not used although the No. 2 Supreme Court could find it “passing strange” that he had simply found the firearm while passing through a track. While Harper had made a “bad choice”, she said, there was “no sophistication” on his part to having the weapon as he had found it, took it home, stashed it, then removed it when it began to rain, and put it in his bag. She pointed to his clean record and the fact that he had never been involved in any criminal activity before that charge. All of those factors she said should go in Harper’s favour and the court should consider a starting sentence of six years in prison. A third discount she said should then be credited for his guilty plea bringing the sentence down to four years. According to her, Harper’s previously good record should get him a further discount and the fact that the mitigating factors of his case “overwhelmed” the aggravating factors, another year should be shaved off the sentence. “That should bring it very close to the time that he has spent on remand, being time served,” Lange added. The convicted man, who is in his late 40s, has been at Dodds for 1,094 days. Crown Counsel Oliver Thomas will respond to the sentencing submissions on June 9. (BT)

BUNNY WAILER’S WIFE MISSING – The search is continuing for Jean Watt, the 70-year-old wife of musical icon, Neville “Bunny Wailer” Livingstone, who has been reported missing since last Saturday. Relatives said the dreadlocked Watt, who is also known as “Sister Jean”, was last seen in Washington Gardens, St Andrew. In a message posted on Facebook on Wednesday, relatives said they were “starting the day with a prayer for the Livingston family that Sister Jean is found”. “Meditating positively that she is being cared for by ones who don’t know who she is, but will by the outpouring of support and interest for the Hon Bunny Wailer that it will all come together. “Hail Jah Rastafari, someone I love is missing and my thoughts are racing into fear and panic. I surrender all of my fearful thoughts to you. I call upon your perfect wisdom to guide everything to ensure the complete safety and protection of my loved one. Please take my fearful thoughts from me and heal them for me. “I am willing to trust that your love ensures our safety and well-being, and there is nothing to fear. In the presence of your light, there is no darkness. No one can be harmed, threatened or in danger when they are surrounded by the light and protection of your love. “Please take my fears and replace them with your certainty of a peaceful outcome. I place my loved one in your capable hands and trust, with all my heart, that they are safe and secure. Thank you, in advance, for their safe and immediate return. Thy will be done. Amen.” Livingston is a singer/songwriter and former member of the Wailers that included the late Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. (BT)

MORE THAN 100 000 DIE FROM COVID-19 IN USA – The novel coronavirus has killed more than 100 000 people in the United States, according to a Reuters tally on Wednesday, even as the slowdown in deaths encouraged businesses to reopen and Americans to emerge from more than two months of lockdowns. About 1 400 Americans have died on average each day in May, down from a peak of 2 000 in April, according to the tally of state and county data on COVID-19 deaths. In about three months, more Americans have died from COVID-19 than during the Korean War, Vietnam War and the U.S. conflict in Iraq from 2003 to 2011 combined. The new respiratory disease has also killed more people than the AIDS epidemic did from 1981 through 1989, and it is far deadlier than the seasonal flu has been in decades. The last time the flu killed as many people in the United States was in the 1957 to 1958 season, when 116 000 died. Total U.S. coronavirus cases are over 1.7 million with some southern states seeing new cases rising in the past week, according to a Reuters analysis of data from The COVID Tracking Project, a volunteer-run effort to track the outbreak. Globally, coronavirus cases have topped 5.6 million with over 350 000 deaths since the outbreak began in China late last year and then arrived in Europe and the United States. South America is now bearing the brunt of the outbreak, with Brazil having the second-highest number of cases in the world. Of the top 20 most severely affected countries, the United States ranks eighth based on deaths per capita, according to a Reuters tally. The United States has three fatalities per 10 000 people. Belgium is first with eight deaths per 10 000, followed by Spain, the United Kingdom and Italy, according to the Reuters analysis. (BT)

PAT SYMMONDS, VETERAN OF EDUCATION AND PUBLIC LIFE, DIES – Renowned educator, former senator and privy councillor Dame Olga Patricia “Pat” Symmonds GCM, DBE died today at age 94. The iconic principal of The St Michael School began her 40-year teaching career there in 1945, becoming deputy principal in 1963 and ultimately principal from 1976 until her retirement in 1985. She was also one of the first part-time tutors and lecturers at the College of Arts and Sciences in 1963 that later became the Cave Hill campus of the University of the West Indies.  Dame Patricia, a stalwart of the Barbados Labour Party, served as a senator for 13 years from 1994. She also sat on several public commissions and was a member of the  Privy Council from 1997 to 2000.  For her long and distinguished service to education, Dame Patricia received the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Medal in 1977.  In 1985, the Barbados Government awarded the country’s second-highest honour, the Gold Crown of Merit (GCM). In 2000, Symmonds was knighted as Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire by the Queen in recognition of her life in public service and contribution to education. She is survived by her brother, the retired diplomat Algernon “Algie” Symmonds. (BT)

PM REMEMBERS RENOWNED EDUCATOR PAT SYMMONDS – A lady of great poise and impeccable manners, who mastered the English Language, and made indelible accomplishments in education, community service and politics, is how Dame Patricia Symmonds has been remembered by Prime Minister Mia Mottley. She said the renowned educator, former senator and privy councillor, who died today at age 94, lived an extraordinary life and left Barbados much better than she found it. Mottley said the Barbados Labour Party (BLP), of which she was a long-standing member, was saddened by her passing. She said that the educator was the best and probably is the last, of a unique classical group that represented the best of Barbados, exuding and instilling the importance of character and civil conduct while encouraging achievement and personally assisting and influencing hundreds as a result of a modern view of personal and national development. The Prime Minister said: “Her life was one of dedication, exemplified by long service to every institution in which she was involved. She had a historic and much loved tour de force of a career at the St Michael School, where she taught for all of her teaching career. That career began in 1945 and ended in 1985, with Dame Patricia as Principal from 1976-1985. “Her tenure remains one of the most storied in education in Barbados, and was illustrative of another central aspect of her life that she always, on merit, rose to the top and broke new ground. Her pioneering work at The St Michael School forged an education developmental nexus that was very much ahead of its time. “It included strengthening religious principles to encourage discipline, personal responsibility, humility and leadership; expansion of the school orchestra and the enlargement of the school curriculum to include sports and other extracurricular activities.” Mottley indicated that what can never be captured adequately is how Dame Patricia put a new sheen on The St Michael School as an enviable institution, nor the confidence and pride she instilled in hundreds of students’ circumstances and potential that meant the difference between failure and success. No wonder she was universally revered by those who had the good fortune to be tutored and guided by Dame Patricia, Mottley said. Dame Patricia was also a part-time lecturer at the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill and gave free tutorials, but her work in promoting and developing English as a subject of study and language, also occupies a special lofty place. She was a founding member and president of the Barbados Association of Teachers of English for 22 years from 1967, leading work that evaluated external examinations and English curricula and, in a watershed achievement, secured the separation and independent grading of English Literature from English Language. Mottley said: “It goes without saying that Dame Patricia, who was also a member of the International Federation for the Teaching of English, conducted numerous training sessions in writing and speaking English across the board. Many also in conversations with her would also get a gentle reminder of the correct construction of a sentence or correct pronunciation. Simply, there was no greater proponent in Barbados of the English Language. “Dame Patricia also had a range of interest that included Chair of the Royal Commonwealth Society, President of the Friends of St John Ambulance Brigade, of which she was also a member, the National Trust, Barbados Family Planning Association, among others. “An avid cricket fan, she was also a life member of the Barbados Cricket Association. And, of course, the Barbados Labour Party will always be deeply grateful for the gift that was Dame Patricia. “Her devotion to our party is legendary, demonstrated not only in tireless work in numerous areas but in attending almost every possible meeting, branch or national, even in later years when she had to be assisted.” The Prime Minister recalled Dame Patricia would invite budding politicians to her Strathclyde home and treated them to a taste of her delectable cooking, in the most unobtrusive way dispensing advice so that at the end of it all, they only remembered a delightful occasion. Dame Patricia served in the Senate for 13 years, becoming the first female Deputy President and was a member of the Privy Council. She was General Secretary of the BLP between 1986 and 1994 and was a President of the Women’s League. She was also a Deputy Chair of the Commission on Social Justice, Deputy Chair of the National Commission on the Status of Women. Dame Patricia received numerous awards for her powerful contributions to education, civil life and politics, crowned with her appointment as Dame Commander of the British Empire by the Queen, in 2000. (BT)

PM PAYS TRIBUTE TO RESPECTED BUSINESSMAN – It is most regrettable that for the second time today I feel duty-bound to issue a statement on the passing of another builder of Barbados — this time Ralph “Bruggadung” Johnson. He was a very successful post-Independence industrialist of Barbados and would have led the way in exporting locally-made products into the Eastern Caribbean and beyond, as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Harris Group of Companies. Certainly, thanks to his creativity, leadership and hard work, Harris Paints is today a household name, not just in Barbados, but across the Eastern Caribbean. But for all his successes as a manufacturer, you cannot chronicle his life’s journey without pausing to consider his considerable achievements in, and contribution to, sports in this country. For more than two decades, starting in 1986, he sat as a member of the board of the National Olympic Committee and was a principal architect in the founding of the local lottery, from which sports was always a major beneficiary. Bruggadung has also been president of the Barbados Yachting Association, the Barbados Squash Rackets Association, the Caribbean Area Squash Rackets Association and the Caribbean Yachting Association. In his younger days, he played basketball, football, water polo and squash and was also known as an avid motor racing competitor, with his colleagues in the Barbados Rally Club describing him as a spectacular driver. His business success and love for sports no doubt contributed to the name Harris Paints being associated with several teams in a variety of sports as the sponsor. It was this long and distinguished contribution to sports and business that led to him being awarded the Gold Crown of Merit in 1997. Above all those though, Bruggadung was Bajan — and you could not miss it in the way he interacted with others. He was Bajan by name and by nature and anyone who knew him knew that what you saw was what you got with him. I extend deepest sympathy to the Johnson and Straker families — his wife Isabelle; children Jason, Jade, James, Tracy and Amanda; brother Paul Johnson and sisters Lady Straker, Rosemarie Smith and Diane Primo. May his soul rest in peace. (Prime Minister’s Office) (BT)

The world is facing the rapid spread of the Covid-19 Coronavirus Pandemic. As we continue to do our part in Barbados please remember to stay home but on the days you have to go out wear your masks, practice social distancing (stand 6-10 feet away from each other), practice good daily hygiene, eat healthy, exercise and keep your mind active. There are 218 days left in the year Shalom!  Follow us on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram for your daily news. #thechasefiles #dailynewscaps #bajannewscaps #newsinanutshell #coronavirusinbarbados #nationalresponse #dailynews #thechasefilesblog

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The officer who refused to lie about being black

When war was declared in 1914, a Jamaican, David Louis Clemetson, was among the first to volunteer.

A 20-year-old law student at Cambridge University when war broke out, Clemetson was eager to show that he and others from British colonies like Jamaica - where the conflict in Europe had been dismissed by some as a "white man's war" - were willing to fight and die for King and Country.

He did die. Just 52 days before the war ended, he was killed in action on the Western Front.

Clemetson's first taste of combat was in 1916 on the Macedonian Front, in Salonika.

"It is as much like hell as anything you can think of," wrote a soldier who served alongside the Jamaican.

On the frontline for eight months, under constant bombardment by big guns and badly traumatised by "shell-shock", or what's now known as post-traumatic stress disorder, Clemetson, a 2nd lieutenant, was evacuated to a military hospital in Malta.

Declared physically fit, but in need of psychiatric care, Clemetson was sent to Britain aboard the hospital ship Dover Castle, which, after a day at sea, was torpedoed by a German submarine and sank off North Africa on 26 May 1917. "Dastardly," a British newspaper roared. "The enemy must be punished!"

Rescued, the young Jamaican, who'd been diagnosed with "neurotic depression" and "stress of service" from his terrible time at the front, was taken in June 1917 to the Craiglockhart psychiatric hospital for officers in Scotland.

There, Clemetson was cared for, his medical records show, by Dr William Rivers. This pioneering physician developed a "talking cure" which helped heal soldiers who, frozen with fear from combat, were depressed, unable to sleep and eat properly, and were distraught at being branded cowards by many.

Also being treated at the hospital was the war poet Wilfred Owen, a 2nd lieutenant who had written about the futility of war and the waste of young life. Owen, like Clemetson, had been suffering from shell-shock. "These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished," reads Owen's poem Mental Cases.

Clemetson spent two months at Craiglockhart, and was almost certainly the only black officer treated there. While there, his name was mentioned briefly in the hospital magazine, The Hydra, edited by Wilfred Owen.

Two years before, in 1915, he became one of the first black British officers of WW1. But the 1914 Manual of Military Law effectively barred what it called "any negro or person of colour" from holding rank above sergeant, according to Richard Smith, author of Jamaican Volunteers in the First World War.

Nevertheless, Clemetson became a 2nd lieutenant in the Pembroke Yeomanry on 27 October 1915.

History has long recorded another black soldier, British-born Walter Tull, as the first to become an officer. But by the time Tull became a 2nd lieutenant in the Middlesex Regiment on 30 May 1917, Clemetson had been an officer for going on two years. There is a distinction - Clemetson was in the Yeomanry, part of what was then the Territorial Force, rather than the regular Army.

Another candidate for the first black officer is Jamaican-born George Bemand. But he had to lie about his black ancestry in order to become an officer. Bemand, whose story was unearthed by historian Simon Jervis, became a 2nd lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery on 23 May 1915, four months before Clemetson became an officer and two years before Walter Tull.

When the teenage Bemand and his family migrated to Britain from Jamaica in 1907, and the ship he was on made a brief stopover in New York, Bemand, the child of a white English father and a black Jamaican mother, was categorised by US immigration officials as "African-Black". Yet, asked in a military interview seven years later, in 1914, whether he was "of pure European descent", Bemand said yes. His answer was accepted.

But Clemetson took a different approach.

"Are you of pure European descent?" he was asked, in an interrogation intended to unmask officer candidates whose ethnicity was not obvious and who were perhaps light-skinned enough to pass for white. "No," answered Clemetson, whose grandfather Robert had been a slave in Jamaica, he was not "of pure European descent".

By telling the truth about his ancestry, Clemetson threatened to disrupt the military's peculiar "Don't ask, don't tell" racial practices, which were conducted with a wink and a nod.

The recruiting officers would probably have preferred that Clemetson claim he was white and leave it at that. If others had followed Clemetson's stance, the military establishment could no longer claim, if pressed, that it barred men who were "negroes or people of colour" from becoming officers and that it kept leadership roles in the military for men "of pure European descent".

The question of race seemed to shape Clemetson's brief military career. Military officials spent a lot of time trying to categorise him.

In 1914, shortly after the war began, and Clemetson had enlisted, the Jamaican was examined by a military doctor. Asked to describe what "complexion" Clemetson was, the physician didn't write black or white in his medical report. Instead he decided that Clemetson was "dusky", or between light and dark.

The military did not know what to make of their new recruit, who they saw only in terms of the shade of his skin. But there was much more to the young Jamaican than this.

Clemetson had been born into a wealthy Jamaican family which had a complicated history. Clemetson's grandfather Robert, a one-time member of parliament in Jamaica, had been a slave. Robert's owner, who was also his father, freed him and went on to leave him money, a sugar plantation, and even slaves, in his will.

This dubious inheritance allowed the Clemetsons to emerge at emancipation rich and powerful, and part of a light-skinned black elite in Jamaica which dominated the British colony. Large landowners in St Mary's parish on the north coast of Jamaica, Clemetson's family also became rich in the banana trade after setting up, in partnership with an Italian-American family in Baltimore, a company to ship and distribute Jamaican bananas and other fruit in the US.

The money from these enterprises kept the Clemetsons in comfort in Jamaica and paid for their children to attend a variety of public schools and universities in Britain. David Clemetson attended Clifton College in Bristol and later Trinity College, Cambridge. One of the wealthiest young men in Jamaica, had Clemetson not gone off to fight, he would have returned home after university and settled down to life as a rural Jamaican landowner.

Instead, he responded to Britain's massive war recruitment drive.

Acknowledging the need for black and Asian men from its colonies, Britain enlisted the help of West Indians, Africans and Indians, who they confined mostly to segregated units and ordered to do some of the most dangerous and dirty jobs, among them digging and emptying toilets, burying the dead, and transporting live shells.

It's estimated a million Indians, 100,000 Africans, and 16,000 West Indians served in the rank and file, in segregated units like the British West India regiments. In Jamaica, Clemetson's cousin Cecil did all he could to encourage young men on the island to volunteer.

"All able-bodied men should go forward and show their patriotism," roared Cecil at a recruiting rally in St Mary's parish, Jamaica, in 1915. "No country's subjects were better treated," he claimed, "than those of the British Empire."

The British military hierarchy decided it could do no harm to turn a blind eye to its own racially discriminatory laws and allow a handful of black soldiers - among them Tull, Bemand, and Clemetson - to become officers, in charge of white troops.

But it was a fairly well-kept secret. Had they been aware, many Britons would have opposed even a small, select group being allowed to bypass the rules and give orders to whites. "The presence of the semi-civilized coloured troops in Europe was, from the German point of view, we knew, one of the chief Allied atrocities. We sympathized," Robert Graves wrote in Goodbye To All That.

But others thought this foolishness, faced as Britain was with possible defeat to Germany. Maj Gen Sir AE Turner said it would have been "the height of stupidity" not to allow "coloured subjects of the Empire… to take part in the war, and take their part… in crushing the Hun".

The black officers who did make it were remarkable men.

Walter Tull was a celebrated professional footballer. Another distinction might have been glowing recommendations from powerful military officials.

Education and class were a massive factor too. George Bemand came from a well-off family and attended a prestigious public school, Dulwich College. He had also been a member of the Officer Training Corps at University College, London, and been recommended by a Brigadier-General, AJ Abdy. The general scribbled earnestly on Bemand's application: "I am willing to take him."

Clemetson, of course, was wealthy and came from a planter family in Jamaica, attended a respected public school where he was a member of the Officer Training Corps, went on to Cambridge where he was in the rowing team, and also had recommendations from important military people.

He received a recommendation from Lt Col HJH Inglis of the Sportsman's Battalion of The Royal Fusiliers, the regiment Clemetson had belonged to in 1914 before he transferred in 1915 to the Pembroke Yeomanry to become an officer.

He had been attracted to the glamorous Sportsman's Battalion because it had advertised itself as a special unit for men who were at least 6ft tall and athletic, like Clemetson, who had played rugby and cricket at school before rowing at university.

Apart from the recommendation from Inglis, Clemetson also received encouragement in becoming an officer from FC Meyrick, a lieutenant-colonel in the Pembroke Yeomanry. Meyrick met and interviewed Clemetson. The Jamaican was, he reported, "in every way eligible and suitable for a Commission".

But besides the recommendations, the athletic prowess, and public school backgrounds, what it appears the military establishment most wanted black officer candidates to have, was light skin - preferably light enough to "pass" as white and fool all but the most observant.

Those who wanted to become officers but were darker-skinned, would often find themselves rejected, even if a powerful person, like the governor of Jamaica, intervened on their behalf. Take, for example, the case of Jamaican government official GO Rushdie-Gray, mentioned in Richard Smith's book.

Despite an agreement between Jamaica's governor and the War Office to make Rushdie-Gray an officer, when the Jamaican arrived in London in 1916 he was refused a commission because he was judged too dark-skinned.

"Mr Gray called today, he is presentable, but black," a War Office memo reads. "I am surprised at the Governor recommending a black man without previously informing us of his colour." There is, crucially, the memo says, "no absolute bar against coloured men for commissions… but that they did not expect Mr Gray to be the colour he is."

It appears, too, that George Bemand's younger brother Harold was blocked from becoming an officer for similar reasons. Both attended public school but while George, who was noticeably lighter than his younger brother, became a 2nd lieutenant, Harold became only a gunner - equivalent to a private. It was clear the military had decided if it was going to have black officers, they would be as light-skinned as possible.

On 26 December 1916, a year and a half after he became an officer, George Bemand, aged just 24, was killed by an enemy shell in France. On 25 March 1918, a year after he became an officer, Walter Tull, aged 29, was also killed in action on the Western Front in the "Spring Offensive". Tull's body was never recovered.

As for David Clemetson, after serving on the Macedonian Front in 1916 and being torpedoed and rescued on his way to Britain in 1917, he ended up at Craiglockhart. The hospital seems to have had a contradictory role.

Its job was to both treat the afflicted officers, but also to patch them up quickly and get them back to the front line.

Clemetson's medical records show in the two months he spent at Craiglockhart, doctors there couldn't seem to decide whether he was getting better, or was in need of more care.

On the one hand, a report reads, he was in need of "further treatment". But on the other hand, the report reads a few lines later, Clemetson had, it said, "improved much". Other reports show he was not sleeping much, and when he did he had terrible nightmares. His legs had also become so weak he could not stand properly and, the medical reports acknowledges, "his memory is not what it should be".

Clemetson did have some good news while at Craiglockhart. To his surprise, in July 1917, a letter arrived from the War Office informing Clemetson he had been promoted to full lieutenant, the only black person, it appears, to hold this rank in the British armed forces during the war.

Read more

Photographs:

David Louis Clemetson

Walter Tull died at the Battle of the Somme, March 1918

George Bemand lied about his black ancestry to ensure his commission

Clemetson pictured at Clifton College (front row seated, fourth from right)

Class was a factor as well as race: Clemetson (back row, 2nd from left) rowed for Trinity College, Cambridge

Clemetson in Clifton College's Officer Training Corps (front row seated, centre)

Clemetson's enlistment form - for the category "Complexion" a doctor has written "dusky"

[damijon-supersons]

Finding a Dream - A Super Sons Story

Synopsis: Jon has to support and comfort Damian, who’s begun to have recurring dreams of a friend he was supposed to have…a friend that doesn’t exist in this timeline…a boy named Colin Wilkes.

This is my first serious Damijon fic, so I hope you guys enjoy :D

“Damian, slow down!”

“Ironic, considering you’re the one with super speed. I’m leaving you behind if you don’t keep up!”

Jon sighed in resignation as Damian ran ahead of him. They were at an abandoned warehouse this time, another late night out in Damian’s frenzied search for someone who seemed to never actually be there. Damian leaped atop a stack of container vans, meticulously searching for any clues. Jon trudged behind him, trying his best to pretend he didn’t want to go home. Not that Damian was stopping him, but he was too worried about his friend to even consider leaving.

“What are we looking for?” Jon asked.

“Containers that have Santa Priscan labels. Crates designed to hold vials of chemicals. This is supposed to be where Scarecrow performed his Venom experiments on him.” Damian didn’t bother to check up on Jon as he jumped onto another crate.

“Right…”

Jon didn’t understand everything that Damian had said, but he didn’t feel very compelled to have Damian explain it all over again. He also didn’t want to point out that if this place had indeed been used as a villain’s lair in the past, Damian, his father, the Gotham Police Department, and even the entire Justice League would have had a record on it.

But there weren’t any records of it at all—Damian had rushed here based solely on a vague recollection from the night before.

Damian was chasing the wisp of a dream, and Jon—for better or worse—was there to watch him.

I’m not making this up! He’s real, he has a name, and we fought crime side-by-side!

That was what Damian had told Jon when the dreams had started. Jon shook his head—at first, he’d been very supportive when Damian had set out on his search, enthusiastically helping the Boy Wonder comb through alleys and rooftops for any sign of the friend that he’d dreamt about. But even a ten-year-old like Jon knew when something was pointless. Fragments of a half-forgotten dream weren’t much to go on.

It had all begun when Wally West had visited them together with their fathers. As a Flash, Wally had experienced…a lot of weird things, to say the least, the most recent of which was how he’d just returned from getting lost in the Speed Force. He’d said that the world—and time—that he’d come back to was extremely different. A lot of things had changed.  

The world that Wally had remembered hadn’t had Jon in it, the members of the Justice League had been much older, and a lot of the major events, villains and battles that had been fought had either happened differently or had never happened at all.

Jon’s father had said the same thing—that his family, like Wally, currently live in a time that was different from the one that they’d come from. It was an extremely confusing concept for Jon to grasp.

After a while of listening to the adults discuss the matter, Damian had excused himself, complaining of a headache. The next day, Damian was already telling Jon about a dream that he’d had—one that he’d adamantly claimed had been too vivid to possibly be anything imaginary.

At first, Damian had spoken of a lonely orphan clutching a teddy bear. The next day, the orphan gained strikingly red hair. And as the nights went on, the red-haired boy in Damian’s dreams gained a freckled face, a soothing voice, and then a name.

“Do you know him?” Jon had asked.

“His name…his name is…Colin,” Damian said carefully as his brow furrowed in concentration.

“Who’s Colin?”

“He was my…friend.”

So the mystery had begun. Damian had records of the time that he’d spent in Gotham ever since he’d become Robin. After the dreams, he’d had vague recollections of meeting, rescuing, and befriending this boy called Colin Wilkes…but there was nothing on the Bat Computer’s database—or any computer’s database—that held records of any orphan by that name who’d ever been rescued by Batman and Robin.

Adding to the mystery was the fact that Damian remembered meeting Colin back when he was still ten years old, but now he was thirteen—and Colin seemed to have vanished for those three years. Damian now had no other recollection of Colin ever since then, or any idea of how and why he’d even forgotten him in the first place. Not even Batman or Alfred remembered, and they’d certainly be aware if Damian had made a new friend, considering how rare an event that was.

As Jon understood the matter, Damian was remembering having a friend who’d never existed.

It was almost Jon’s bedtime and he’d just gotten into his pajamas. The crickets were chirping outside their house in Hamilton County, adding a subtly relaxing hum to the quiet evening. He was just about to close his eyes when a shrill ring pierced his tired ears—a call from Damian.

“I have a new location,” Damian’s voice buzzed in Jon’s phone.

“What makes you so sure?” Jon asked skeptically. He yawned and hoped that Damian would drop the issue altogether. “The warehouse was a dud, searching all those hospital files last week turned up nothing, and all those times we searched random alleys and buildings didn’t help, either. Dad’s starting to ask me what we’re up to…”

“You don’t get it,” Damian replied scathingly. “There’s a pattern. The things I remember are marking a path. They’re all places that I remember where we went together. This next one will be significantly important. If we keep at it, I can triangulate his possible location. I don’t care if you’re not coming.”

Jon sighed in irritation. “What’s the point of you calling me, then? You know I can’t leave you alone now that you’ve told me!”

“Be here at ten.”

Jon rolled his eyes—he could imagine Damian smirking at him. It wasn’t very easy being friends with the son of Batman.

A few hours later, Damian was already leading Jon to the outskirts of Gotham. The dirt roads and the lack of buildings that weren’t run-down gave Jon a sense of unease, but he held his misgivings in light of Damian’s mood. The older boy seemed more serious than usual today, or at the very least, more certain.

“So…what are we looking at?” Jon asked as they stopped in front of a derelict two-story building. From what Jon could tell, it was quite old, and constructed with mostly wood and bricks rather than concrete. Of course, he conceded that he might have been wrong, considering that the wreck in front of them was a barely-standing charred husk of whatever it used to be.

“An orphanage. I dreamt that—no, I remember—this was where he lived before we met,” Damian answered confidently.

“But Damian,” Jon carefully ventured, hoping that Damian wouldn’t get upset, “we already checked the registers of all the orphanages in the entire state on the Bat Computer, remember? There wasn’t a Colin Wilkes in any of them.”

Damian resolutely walked ahead, forcing Jon to trot after him.

“Damian, wait up!”

Damian ignored Jon’s plea as he went inside. “When I saw this place in my dreams, I immediately looked through old news reports—it burned down three years ago, and since they lacked funds, the caretakers never digitized their records. Before that, it was also the center of a trafficking scandal. Children disappearing, never to be found. Police thought that the arson was a cover-up.”

“Weren’t you supposed to have met Colin three years ago?” Jon asked, the doubt in his voice quite evident.

“More or less,” Damian replied as he carefully shoved aside some burnt wooden beams. “I know what you’re thinking. This couldn’t have been where Colin was if it burned down the same time we’d met. But it stands to reason that he could still have a connection to this place. There must be a clue here that leads to him somehow.”

Whatever burned the orphanage wasn’t exactly thorough. Some rooms were barely damaged and still had the scattered possessions of its former inhabitants intact. Damian had guessed that whoever had committed the arson wasn’t trying to erase evidence so much as trying to scare anyone from actually poking around.

The boys came across a room that was littered with debris. Jon thought that it was rather unremarkable, but Damian seemed to have found something. He returned with a dusty brown teddy bear clutched in his hands.

“Damian, I don’t want to judge your taste in toys…but I don’t think now’s the best time to bring that around,” Jon hesitantly said.

Damian held the toy up to his face and explained, “When Colin still couldn’t control his powers, only the sight of his teddy bear would calm his rampage. This was his totem, in a way. His teddy bear was the only thing that tethered him to his true self.”

“Are you saying there’s a chance Colin might go crazy on us?”

“I’m just taking precautions,” Damian said as he tried to pat the bear clean.

Just then, they heard a creaking noise from the roof. It sounded like the bow of a huge ship bending beyond its limits, and they could hear wood splintering and bursting apart. A loud crash erupted from the second floor, prompting both boys to duck for cover.

“I don’t know about this—this place looks like it could collapse at any second,” Jon said worriedly.

Damian didn’t immediately reply. Instead, he approached a bureau and pulled out its cabinets. The contents seemed mostly unburnt.

Then he asked, “Do you want to leave?”

Jon blinked. He couldn’t tell what Damian was thinking with his back turned. Nevertheless, his response was brimming with confidence.

“Of course not.”

“Thanks…”

Jon smiled. Damian’s voice was faint, but even without his super hearing, Jon could hear the gratitude behind it. Damian almost never expressed gratitude, so when he did, it was a huge deal. Right then, there was nowhere else that Jon would rather be.

“It stinks down here,” Jon hissed as each step he took echoed across the hall.

“Your super smelling doesn’t seem so useful.”

“I don’t have super smelling!”

“Then can you at least be super quiet?”

Jon simply snorted in reply.

When they had searched the ruined orphanage, Damian and Jon hadn’t found anything significant—no clues that might have pointed them to Colin. But Damian had been undeterred and had insisted upon searching the surrounding area. It was then that he’d found an uneven patch of dirt that suspiciously continued some distance away.

Using Jon’s still-developing X-ray vision, they’d confirmed that the indentation was a trail of sorts made by people and vehicles. It was likely that whoever was using that exact route had done it so many times that when the dirt, snow, and mud began to cover it up after some time, the path had accumulated much less dirt than the surrounding area.

The boys had followed the path until it led them to a sewer entrance that was relatively hidden from the rest of Gotham—one that Damian had inexplicably become familiar with only after they’d gotten there.

“Why do we have to wade in a sewer, Damian? I don’t think Colin would live here!”

“I saw this place in my dreams,” Damian replied warily, as if trying to reassure himself.

“Somehow, that doesn’t fill me with confidence,” Jon sarcastically replied. Each step that he took made a disgustingly wet squelch against the thin film of muck that covered the floor. He began thinking of ways to explain to his mother why he definitely needed new sneakers after this.

“No, this is…different,” Damian replied. He stopped in his tracks and fished out a couple of birdarangs from his utility belt, prompting Jon to be on guard as well. “This place isn’t where Colin could be. This place…it’s where we took down a dangerous criminal.”

“But that was years ago, right? No one could possibly be here now, so why are you getting all nervous? You’re putting me on edge here…”

Damian carefully observed the concrete walls around them. The area that they were traversing was a wide cavernous hall, with several smaller passages branching off to the sides. The only light sources were small utility lamps placed high in the ceiling, spread few and far between. This appeared to be Gotham’s main floodway, used for diverting floodwater during extremely heavy rains. But it hadn’t rained enough to cause a flood in Gotham for nearly a decade, meaning that this part of the sewer was mostly unused. It would make a good hideout for criminal elements.

“You’re still carrying that bear around,” Jon remarked.

“I told you that it could be useful if we find Colin.”

“I think you just want to keep it—”

“Shhh! Stay close. They’re everywhere,” Damian whispered.

“Who’s ‘they’?” Jon asked apprehensively. He looked around but saw nothing, making him even more nervous.

Damian lowered his stance and took a few cautious steps before answering. “I’ve been thoroughly trained to conduct stealthy surveillance. I know amateurs when I see them. They’ve been following us for a few minutes now.”

“I—I never noticed.” Jon gulped anxiously.

“It doesn’t matter. You never grew up with the League of Assassins.”

They eventually emerged from the large tunnel into an even more massive cistern, which Damian guessed was where all the city’s drained rainwater would have been collected. A multitude of makeshift lamps lined the whole circular area, casting an eerie but bright glow on the lifeless gray concrete. The dome ceiling extended almost thirty feet high, but the atmosphere still felt heavy, oppressive and suffocating.

The most noticeable feature of the cistern, however, was what appeared to be a small arena in the very middle, surrounded by several cages. Jon could clearly hear mewling, sniffling and crying coming from within them.

“Damian, those cages! Those are…!”

“Children—forced to fight to the death in some macabre game, all for the entertainment of wealthy patrons,” Damian spat through gritted teeth.

Suddenly, a disturbingly jovial voice echoed throughout the whole area.

“How very smart of you to figure that out, little boy!”

From a tunnel to the southwest came out a tall, shirtless bald man, his entire upper body covered with gruesome scars and stitches that looked like tally marks. All around him, several other burly men came out of hiding from the other tunnels, all wielding guns and knives of different kinds.

The man continued: “But I really have to ask you, how is it that two random young boys in an unfortunate misadventure happen to accurately guess my thriving little business model?”

“Business?” Jon seethed. “You’re sick! These kids are in pain! They’re hurt! And you…you…!”

“Victor Zsasz.” Damian’s voice was dripping with vitriol.

Zsasz cocked his head. “Have we…met?”

“I believe we have,” Damian replied, his tone unwavering despite the obvious hatred coursing through him. “I seem to remember cutting your stomach open and you lying on the floor in a pool of your own blood. I’m glad to see you’re looking well—I’ll have the pleasure of doing it again.”

“Damian!” Jon gasped. He’d never seen Damian this…deadly before. He was projecting a cold and calm fury that threatened to lash out at any moment.

A shiver ran through Zsasz’s men as they murmured among themselves. Zsasz himself seemed unperturbed and walked toward the two boys until he was only a foot away. He regarded them intently for a few seconds, before laughing heartily.

“Hahahaha!”

His laugh rang hollow in the cavernous cistern, and his men gripped their weapons even tighter. Jon was beginning to get scared—what exactly had Damian gotten him into?

“Kid, you’ve got guts saying that to me,” Zsasz said after catching his breath. “I think I might just like to see them for myself, even. So, that outfit…Robin, huh? Has the Bat finally found me out after all these years? But if he has, where is he? Did he really think his errand boy was enough? Or did you not tell him about this trip?”

“No, we’re alone,” Damian replied, somehow sounding almost happy with the fact.

“Naughty little Robin, aren’t you? I might have to carve some respect into your skin…” Zsasz sighed as he licked his lips. He relished looking down at the two shorter boys as he casually played with a sharp dagger in his hands.

“Like I said, I already beat you to the ground once before. We put you away in Arkham.”

“Odd,” Zsasz replied. “I think I’d remember being incarcerated or being grievously injured by such a petulant child. I’ve never been caught by Batman all these years. Are you sure you aren’t daydreaming?”

Jon saw Damian’s arm twitch. His recollection of this man, just like all the others, must have indeed been from one of his dreams again.

“And you—dressed up like Superman are we, boy?” Zsasz continued, turning to Jon. “What are you, some kind of fan who can’t get enough of the Blue Boyscout? Did Robin trick you into some make-believe game?”

“Why I oughtta—!”

“Don’t encourage him,” Damian chided Jon as he grabbed the younger boy’s shoulder.

“Well, well…” Zsasz’s men surrounded them, all sporting sickening looks. Zsasz gave them a toothy grin as he pointed the dagger at the boys.

“I’ve made a fun little show here with kids like you beating each other to a pulp. It pays us good money from certain clients. But don’t get me wrong, it’s not just the money—I also love it. You two will make fine additions to our little stable…unless you want to bleed to death where you stand.”

“Before we start this,” Damian began, his fury giving him an air of extreme emotionless focus, “I wanted to ask if you’ve ever kidnapped a boy with red hair. He goes by Colin Wilkes, an orphan. He used to live in the orphanage near here where you frequently abducted kids. He almost always carries a teddy bear like this with him.”

Damian held up the bear with one hand. Zsasz then reached out and grabbed the teddy bear, causing Jon to step back in surprise. For Jon, it was quite unnerving how Damian had let Zsasz take it, but it was even more disturbing that Damian didn’t even flinch.

“Hmm, you’re a sharp one, Robin,” Zsasz replied inquisitively. “I’d thought that burning the place down would cover our tracks. But to answer your question, no—I remember every kid that we collect. I’ve even made a mark on my skin for each one that died. None of them have—or had—red hair…unless you count the ones with blood coming out of their heads.”

With a grin and deftness that could only come from experience, Zsasz slashed the teddy bear across the throat, decapitating it. He let the rest of the body drop to the floor, the wet splash it made in the muck creating a menacing echo across the entire cistern.

Damian stared at the mutilated toy as if he could see something that no one else could. He didn’t even pay attention to Zsasz, who was waiting for and expecting a violent reaction. To everyone that was there, Damian looked like he’d momentarily spaced out as he stared intently at the soiled bear.

However, Jon knew better. His enhanced senses could definitely hear how Damian’s pulse had quickened, how the fabric of Damian’s gauntlets squeezed against itself as Damian’s hand balled up into an extremely tight fist. Damian’s face had looked calm, but Jon knew the truth—something vicious had awakened inside his friend.

Finally, after some seconds of incredibly tense silence, Damian calmly answered. “I appreciate the honesty, Zsasz.”

He then turned to Jon and commanded: “Rescue the children.”

Jon had barely nodded when three lethally sharp birdarangs zipped past his head and embedded themselves into the faces of the three nearest henchmen.

“Yaaaagh!”

Masked by the commotion and screams of pain, Jon leaped out of the fray with his superhuman strength and ran toward the cages. He looked back just in time to see two of the henchmen running after him, one brandishing a gun, and the other, a knife. Back near the entrance, Damian was performing a deadly dance, weaving through and around the rest of the grunts together with Zsasz, splatters of blood flying every which way almost every other second.

When Jon had stopped to face his assailants, one of them immediately tried to slash his face, so he’d rolled to the side. Just as he’d gotten to his feet, a gunshot rang out and he’d had to leap backward with a bit of his super speed—there was a bullet hole in the floor where he’d been just moments before.

They’re really trying to kill me, Jon thought. He was in a precarious situation. He may be the son of the invincible Superman, but his own invincibility had not yet fully developed and it seemingly manifested at random. But the stakes were too high now. If he failed, he’d die, the children would die, Damian would…probably also die. Now he had to focus. He needed to be a hero, invincibility be damned.

Jon breathed in, and with renewed determination, lunged at the grunt with a gun. He dodged a wide jab and then threw a punch of his own at the man’s torso. The man was knocked off his feet and lay sprawled a few yards away. Even with his super strength, Jon was always practicing control, just as his father had taught him—especially against other humans.

Before Jon could turn to look, the knife-wielding man suddenly threw a fierce kick to his ribs, knocking him over and forcing him to bend over in pain. Still clutching his side, Jon got up just in time to dodge a wild swing with the knife, then another, and another. He’d lost his concentration, and the throbbing pain in his ribs made it difficult to think. He managed to parry one of the man’s attacks and throw a punch of his own, but his power had left him in his flustered state and he did little to harm the man.

Jon and the man traded a few more blows before he got caught in a particularly nasty punch to his shoulder. He fell to the floor again, and just as he looked up, he heard the sound of a gun being cocked. The other man had recovered and was pressing the barrel of his gun squarely against his forehead.

Bang!

Jon blinked. Well, I’m not dead, He assured himself with extreme relief.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

More gunshots, and more squashed bullets falling to the floor. Jon could feel something inconsequentially soft flicking his forehead as if someone was repeatedly poking it with their finger.

“W-what are you?” shouted the flustered henchman, his eyes quivering in fear.

With equal parts relief and unchecked anger, Jon replied by forcefully throwing a punch to the man’s chest and sending him flying across the cistern. The wall he’d crashed into audibly cracked.

Behind him, he felt a dull thud on his shoulder. He turned around to see the other henchman staring in disbelief at his knife, which had bent at an odd angle after failing to pierce Jon’s skin.

I’m lucky. Jon thought. I have my invulnerability, but the other kids here don’t. And these men just kill and torture them for fun…

With his eyes glowing crimson, he glared furiously at the whimpering grunt.

“I won’t forgive you!”

Faster than the eye could see, he grabbed the man by the arm and threw him back across one of the tunnels with inhuman strength. The unfortunate grunt disappeared into the darkness after a particularly loud clatter of metal and concrete.

Jon exhaled to compose himself and ran back toward the cages. With his heat vision, he melted the locks and ushered the captive children to hide in one of the access tunnels. Then he ran back to help Damian.

“Damian! Are you oka—?”

The scene in front of Jon made his throat run dry. The floor was littered with the broken bodies of Zsasz’s men. Many of them had their faces horribly beaten. A couple had birdarangs lodged into their eyes. One had three knives piercing his shoulder. The sludge had mixed with all the blood, turning it into a garish hue of red. Jon rushed to them and confirmed that they were breathing—they all seemed alive, if barely. Finally, Jon looked back at Damian.

The young hero was standing as calmly as he’d had before he and Jon had separated. Damian had barely a scratch on him, and his face was spattered with blood—none of which was his own, it seemed—while sporting a perfectly impassive look. Directly across him was Zsasz, who was clutching an arm dripping with blood. He looked quite the worse for wear, with more than a dozen cuts across his whole body, and limping on one foot. More disturbingly, Damian held Zsasz’s long dagger in his hand.

“Heh, you’re a riot, boy,” Zsasz wheezed. “You would have made a great show here, gutting all the other kids…”

Before Zsasz could say another word, Damian pounced.

Jon could see it, he could hear it—Damian’s sure but steady heartbeat, his increased breathing—this was dangerous. Jon was certain that Damian was out to kill.  

“Damian, don’t!”

But before Jon could stop him, Zsasz let out a shrill scream in agony.

“Yaaaaagh!”

Jon rushed as fast as he could, using his super speed to tackle Damian to the floor. But he knew that he was too late.

“Damian…what have you done?” Jon asked in disbelief.

“Ask him yourself,” Damian replied wearily.

Confused, Jon got off Damian and carefully walked over to Zsasz, who was slumped against the wall. The man had his hands over his head, both of which had been pierced—one on top of the other—held together by his own dagger. Damian’s stab had been so forceful that the blade even penetrated the mortar between two blocks of the wall’s concrete, effectively pinning Zsasz in place.

“Hah…even after all that, you still don’t have what it takes to finish the job,” Zsasz huffed. He was finding it difficult to breathe.

Damian casually walked up to him and nonchalantly kicked him in the face. Zsasz passed out.

“Damian!” Jon chided.

“He’ll live,” Damian said. “I’ve signaled my father. He’ll be here with the Gotham PD in a while. We’re leaving.”

“Just like that?” Jon asked cautiously. He sensed that Damian was very…out of sorts, to say the least. “What about finding clues or…”

“It’s pointless,” Damian muttered. He sat back down on the cold floor and leaned against the wall. “I’m tired. I’m tired of all this. Tired of being proven wrong by my dreams, tired of thinking they were ever memories.

“My dreams showed me that we’d already dealt with Zsasz before, both Colin and I, and later with my father. It didn’t make sense that he was still at large here, and having no memories of all the times that we’d caught him. Him not remembering ever facing me or Colin made no sense at all. Colin never being in any records or anything else made no sense either.”

Jon listened silently as Damian went on.

“The only way that any of this makes sense is if none of it ever happened—defeating Zsasz, meeting Colin, being…friends with Colin.”

“Damian…” Jon reached out with his arm but stopped midway. He didn’t know if Damian would appreciate a hand on his shoulder in the middle of such an awkwardly miserable situation.

“None of what I remembered had ever happened. And Colin…Colin never existed,” Damian stood up and turned his back on Jon. “I’m tired, Jon. I’m going home. I just wasted your time.”

“Damian, I…I’m sorry…” Jon’s voice trailed off—Damian had already run ahead and completely missed his reply. He balled up his fists in frustration—why was it so hard to say anything comforting to Damian?

“I don’t see the ‘important reason’ you talked about on the phone,” Damian complained out of boredom.

“It’s important enough that I skipped school today just for it…for you,” Jon replied cheerfully.

“Tt.”

“You’ll see,” Jon assured Damian by patting him on the shoulder. He cringed, but didn’t retaliate, which Jon took for a good sign.

The boys were standing outside a hallway in Gotham Academy, just before the final bell had rung that day. It had been a couple of weeks since their encounter with Zsasz, and Damian hadn’t talked to Jon at all since then. But a few days ago, something incredible had happened at Jon’s school, and he’d called Damian, urgently asking his friend to come with him to Gotham Academy.

Rrrrring!

With the final bell, the students began milling out of their classrooms, filling the air with a hundred excited chattering voices.

“If this is your way of trying to get me into a classroom instead of homeschool, then you’re failing miserably—”

“Damian,” Jon interrupted and placed his hands on each side of Damian’s head to point him in the right direction. “I think I’ve found your friend.”

And just as Jon had said it, Damian saw a tall, lanky boy come out of one of the classrooms, his head crowned by wavy red hair. Freckles peppered his face and he had bright eyes that radiated warmth and kindness.

Damian could only say a single word.

“Colin…”

With both boys focused on Colin, they were able to hear the redhead’s conversation with some of his peers.

“Yeah, I’ll meet you guys tomorrow in the council room. Bring the drafts, okay?”

“Sure, Colin! Are you going to bring the sixth-graders again?”

“Of course! Please be patient with them—we’ll need to have new members eventually anyway, and this is the best way to expose them early.”

Damian turned away from the scene, his face an unfathomable mask of confusion.

“I don’t get it, Jon. How…? How did you find out? Why here?”

“A couple of days ago, some eighth-graders from Gotham Academy showed up at our school. Turns out they’d won some sort of environment contest or something, and as part of that, they have to tell other schools in the country about how to protect nature and stuff.

“Colin was their leader. He was on stage the longest. He introduced himself—Colin Wilkes, he said, and he looked exactly like how you said he did.”

“He looks a lot taller than I remembered,” Damian muttered as he chose to stare at an unremarkable spot on the floor.

“Well, he’s thirteen now, just like you, and you’re not exactly on the tall side—oww!” Jon rubbed the spot on his arm where Damian had just hit him.

“Why couldn’t we find him before?” Damian persisted. “We searched all the records…”

“Damian, what we searched were orphanage records, police reports, and hospital lists. We never searched schools,” Jon said as calmly as he could. He could clearly see that Damian was upset. “We were searching for Colin the kidnapped orphan. But all this time, he was Colin, the normal boy.”

“I’d already asked one of the teachers here,” he continued. “Colin was never orphaned. He was always a smart student who went out of his way to help people. He’s the president of the school’s Nature Society and a lot of the younger students really look up to him. Well, I think he’s really cool, too…you should’ve seen him when he went to our school…”

Damian gave no indication that he was listening as he watched one of the younger students approach Colin and happily talk to him about some mundane matter that Damian didn’t care about. All that he saw was that Colin was smiling, laughing, and completely at peace. Damian shook his head—he’d made up his mind.

“He looks happy here,” Damian said finally.

“Yeah, want me to call him over?” Jon asked with childlike enthusiasm.

“No, we’re leaving, and we’re never coming back.”

“What?” Jon replied sharply. “We’ve come all this way! We finally found him! Why can’t you just talk to him? Why are we leaving?”

Damian walked back out the school’s main doors with Jon in tow. He breathed in deeply without answering, as if he was also trying to convince himself.

The Colin that I’d met was an orphan. He’d been kidnapped and tortured and experimented on. He’d been injected with chemicals and forced to fight against his will. He’d seen his friends die at the hands of Zsasz, and had afterwards felt that he needed to sacrifice having the normal life of a child in order to fight crime. To be like me.

We’d met because of his suffering. If never meeting me in the first place means he gets spared all that, I’d gladly walk away. It’s just as Wally said—somehow, some way, time changed. The Colin I’d known was from a different time. This Colin right now is different, too—he’s happy. I won’t ruin that for him.

“Damian, this is important to you. He’s important to you. Don’t just waste this chance to start over!” Jon pleaded once more.

“He’s better off not having me for a friend, Jon. With the kind of friendship we’ve had before, and with the kind of life I lead now, it’s safer that way,” Damian concluded. Without waiting for Jon’s rebuttal, he walked away.

Jon fumed as he crossed his arms, staring angrily at Damian’s silhouette.

“Idiot. It’s not better for you.”

“Master Damian, there’s someone you should probably see.”

“Do I have a choice, Alfred?” Damian asked cynically. He’d been stewing in his room for a few days. For once, he’d actually kept his promise to his father to focus on his homeschooling—if only to distract himself—and Alfred’s unwelcome interruption was quite vexing.

“He was asking for Mr. Wayne, but since your father is away, I’d thought that you could entertain our guest. Perhaps you could even make a new friend.”

“A friend…?” Damian looked up at the old butler. “What do you mean?”

“He’s a young man that looks to be around your age, if only slightly taller…”

Damian’s curiosity got the better of him as he purposefully marched toward the foyer. There, seated on one of the sofas, was a tall lanky boy with wavy red hair, his freckles standing out against the shade of pink on his cheeks. He looked quite unused to the Wayne Manor’s extravagant trappings. When he saw Damian, he bowed.

“Uhm, Mr. Wayne, sir…? I’m sorry to barge in like this but I was told that—”

“Colin…?” Damian sputtered. “What are you doing here?”

Colin stared quizzically at Damian. “You know my name….?”

Jon Kent, what have you done this time? Damian immediately thought. This was definitely his young friend’s doing. Damian’s incredulity at Jon’s scheme left him speechless, which Colin mistook for a sign to continue.

“Uh, funny story, actually. One of the kids we’d met in our awareness tours called me up and said that the Wayne Foundation was looking for student partners with environmental advocacies for scholarships and such. He told me to go to this address and—sorry, is this a bad time, Mr. Wayne?”

Colin was wearing a semi-formal outfit with a neatly-pressed long-sleeved shirt and a matching tie. He had a smile that belied a hint of nerves, but his expression was radiant and full of hope. Damian thought to himself that Colin looked better that way.

“Mr. Wayne is my father. He’s currently out at work. But…I could keep you company in the meantime, I suppose. If you don’t mind, that is.”

“Not at all, uh, uhm….”

“I’m Damian,” Damian said with a half-smirk that passed for a smile.

He offered his hand and Colin gladly shook it. Damian mused that Colin’s hands were warm and friendly, and briefly wondered if it had always been that way. It was a calming sense of touch that he could get used to.

Colin serenely met Damian’s eyes, and beamed.

“Damian, huh? That’s a cool name.”

 Author’s notes:

Here’s a little background on this story. Jon Kent as we know him today is meant to be Damian’s sole almost-same-aged friend (boyfriend). But before Jon, we had Colin Wilkes.

Colin first appeared in the late 2000s before the new 52. His story was pretty dark—while Jon was cheerful, sunny and innocently carefree, Colin was an orphan who was kidnapped and experimented on by Scarecrow. He was injected with a version of Bane’s Venom, turning him into a mindless fighting machine before being subdued and rescued by Batman. After learning to control his Venom-induced powers, He later teamed up with Robin to defeat Victor Zsasz, who at the time was running a deadly child gladiator arena.

Despite his brief appearance in the comics, there’s a consensus among a lot of fans that Colin was one of Damian’s more significant first friends outside of the Batfamily. For my friends and many others, Colin would be the natural team up for Damian, both as friends and potential partners (both in and out of bed)

But when the New 52 reboot in 2011 came, many of DC’s heroes’ histories were reset, and Damian’s adventures with Colin were written out of continuity, as was Colin himself. When the DC Rebirth reboot happened in 2016, DC reinstated some old elements from before the New 52 continuity into the main timeline and mixing the two to create a balance of what fans wanted. This was most notable with Superman (who has been established as the classic Superman from the 80’s 90’s), whose history was restored but had the new addition of Jon as his son and the element of fatherhood and family in his character. Another was Wally West, who had all but disappeared during the New 52. He was reinstated in Rebirth as one of the only people who was aware that the timeline had changed (signified by the reboots). His earliest Rebirth stories involve him informing other heroes of the change in their timeline.

Even with Rebirth however, Colin was still missing from continuity, and is unlikely to make a return. Some fans of the Damian x Colin ship are still hoping, though, and I do believe that if Colin is ever going to return, it would be perfect in the just-released series of Super Sons featuring Damian and Jon.

Tl;dr

Colin was Damian’s first real friend two reboots ago, meaning they were friends from another previous timeline. With the latest reboot of DC Rebirth returning some old beloved concepts from before the reboots, I just thought that it was a bit plausible to have Colin return to Damian’s life, and I just imagined it in the most realistic and character-building scenario that I could.

[themoreuplay]

Me and my lovely Mum I’m wearing  my designer gear.

No worries, no fears just very happy years .I went to Fairhouse school  1 year in the infants and the rest in primary.One of my happiest memories at school was playing cards (not poker that came later)Tea cards, cigarette cards and bubble gum cards.My son now has a small collection but he never had fun with them.I was very good and had a large biscuit tin full.

Games I remember were” Flicksey, and Knocksey downsey”The goriest cards and my favorites were the American civil war bubble gum cards which I used to buy at the Long Riding shops,the smell of the gum lives with me today.

The Head teacher was Mrs Green,other teachers I remember were Mr Beadle who loved playing rousing classical music .Mr Hyde ,and Mrs Thomas who cared about me and will always remember her fondly.I remember country dancing ,athletics ,football and bulldog.Fairhouse also helped me understand that education gave you an advantage in life,after I failed the 11+.

Typical primary school picture

You often read on peoples posts, when talking about their childhood,how they used to go out early in the morning and came back when it got dark.Its true.I  came home from school to play football,cricket, around the back of the garages,or under the arch where I used to live.We used chalk to mark the stumps and trees for goal posts.If you knocked the ball over in cricket you were out.If you kicked the football over you had to go around and ask for it back(no one in over the wall).After tea back out again ,no homework in those days for me.

I spent many hours playing sport but also cowboys and Indians and War,Guns were a toy we all had.We went bird nesting ,newting,and going to the local Swan Mead park.Many activities were seasonal.Street games were Tin Tan Tommy, a game similar to run outs (lost my front teeth playing this game)Sticky Glue ,Hopscotch and Bulldog.

Loved it when my cousins came down from Stepney they called Basildon the “country”.Again birds nesting newting ,conkering scrumping,blackberry picking,bike riding and go cart making.Always went back to London to visit family ,that too was filled with excitement and adventure.Stepney gave us access to the whole of London .Red Rover tickets were cheap and took us to London zoo ,Epping forest fishing for sticklebacks ,Millwall,and Greenwich .We swam in the cut and lied to the police about where we lived.If we were lucky we got taken swimming to Vicky park or Poplar baths.My favorite food was Pie and Mash or Lamb stew.

Never really liked Swimming

Always plenty of clubs to go to in Basildon and must have joined them all, cubs, scouts, Basildon boys club lifeboys , boys brigade,4th Basildon where we did gymnastics, football  ,first aid, drums, and bugle made some good friends that I took to secondary school.The green hill was very close and went fishing there many times.

Mum and Dad like everyone in Basildon worked tirelessly and despite the hard times never claimed benefits even when Dad was on Strike (Ford Worker)we never went without Christmas  birthdays and nearly always had a caravan holiday once a year in Clacton or Dovercourt.Happy days sports ,crabbing ,donkey derbys,doing the twist ,okey kokey,conga,GayGordons ,with mum .Dad brought coke and crisps with the blue bag.

We read the Beano and Dandy and the small war books where the “Hun” battled the Englander and read things like “achtung Englander”and”Banzai”We listened to the radio on Sunday mornings.Jimmy Clitheroe,and Billy Cottons band show.We won the World Cup or West Ham supporters think they did.This blog is very self indulgent and for my own amusement.

Pictures above My Dad ,my 1st dog,trying to swim,day out at Maldon and the boating lake on Southend seafront.

My next blog is the teenage years which will not be published to protect the innocent.LOL

  The innocent years 1960-66 Me and my lovely Mum I'm wearing  my designer gear. No worries, no fears just very happy years .I went to Fairhouse school  1 year in the infants and the rest in primary.One of my happiest memories at school was playing cards (not poker that came later)Tea cards, cigarette cards and bubble gum cards.My son now has a small collection but he never had fun with them.I was very good and had a large biscuit tin full.

[frerick-blog1]

The numbers of quality young kids

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[californiadreaminghq]

Oh good, you made it!

Did you guys know Mandi was coming? She brought Carmen Ridley, The Night Flyer! And just on time! Grab a drink, find a spot, and make sure you finish everything on the checklist. The band is just getting started – you have 24 hours to send in your account! We’re so glad you’re here!

I. OUT OF THE STUDIO

NAME/ALIAS: Mandi

AGE: 21

PRONOUNS: She/Her

                                                 II. ON STAGE

NAME: Carmen Ridley

FACE CLAIM: Katherine McNamara

AGE: 25 (will age up to 26 if Jane Levy ends up being the FC)

TITLE: The Night Flyer (From Fly by Night by Rush)

DREAM: Carmen’s dream is to join a band or even establish her own. She’s a bit of a musical genius, having mastered the guitar and cello from a young age, and going on to discover her love of singing and the bass. After leaving her sleepy hometown in rural Pennsylvania, Carmen is on the hunt for any opportunity to showcase her musical talent.

OCCUPATION: Crew member of Violent Vale. Has a part-time job at Wichita Wishes.

                                               III. INTERVIEW

Answer the following questions in your character’s voice:

If you could do anything in the world for a living, what would it be?

“Play my music and tell my stories. I don’t care if I have to start a band on my own from scratch, sitting in some garage and living a starving artist’s life. Hell, I’m already a starving artist. Give me a stage and a voice and I’ll sing for the world.”

If you could travel anywhere, where would you go?

“Oh, Rome would be awesome. Just think of all the art and culture. That’s where the Colosseum is, right?”

What is one thing that makes you different than anyone else?

“I get things done. I’m not like all those people who sit around and refuse to let their dreams carry them. I left everything behind and risked it all just for a chance at success. I’m not there yet, but wait a few years and I will be.”

                                               IV. BACKSTAGE

BEHIND THE MUSIC: Carmen Elizabeth Ridley was destined to be a musician from the moment she was born. Her mother had played piano for their church every Sunday since she was a teenager, while her father played guitar in a bluegrass band. Her older sister faithfully studied the violin, her younger sister chose the piano, and Carmen was trained on the cello from the moment she could hold a bow. She grew up in Tionesta, a sleepy town in northwestern Pennsylvania with a mere 700 residents and little to occupy her time. After begging her father to teach her guitar, Carmen began to save up her meager allowance until she could afford her own child-sized guitar. Music was Carmen’s first love and greatest passion, though she also enjoyed painting, often on the back of her family’s barn where only the cows could witness her talent. Though she excelled in music and art, Carmen was a poor student whose mind wandered during class and whose sharp tongue landed her in detention frequently. With two model daughters headed straight for college and one who barely finished high school, Carmen’s parents could only shake their head at their middle child, wondering what went wrong.

Carmen had no interest in higher education or fancy degrees, instead opting to work at the town’s hardware and gun store where she met John. His calm, reserved nature drew her in and the two became friends, then something more. The couple shared a love of the outdoors, a passion for guns, and they even attended the same church across the street from where they worked. At last, Carmen’s parents appeared to approve of something she had done. John delighted them and put the hope of a future marriage on the table, but Carmen cringed at the thought. Though she adored John, every time he spoke of building a house for her and their future children where they could live for generations, a restless feeling emerged in the pit of her stomach, though she didn’t understand why.

After years of being unable to make friends, Carmen found herself being welcomed among John’s friends. Though she remained committed to John and was very much in love with him, Carmen found herself growing close to Shawn, an oddity among the mechanics and farmers of the group. Shawn owned a record store in the next town over and allegedly, was attempting to start a metal band, garnering Carmen’s interest more than she would dare admit. She was content with John and the ordinary life they shared, even as she found herself tolerating him more than she enjoyed him. His love of cars was downright dull, his country music paled in comparison to heavy metal, his chewing tobacco disgusted her, and he was always a little too…conventional for her taste. It was then that Carmen began to spend more time with Shawn, not in a romantic sense, but as the brother she never had. The two collaborated on a number of songs, with Shawn composing the lyrics while Carmen put them to music. The legendary summer of ‘69 was the happiest one Carmen had experienced thus far. After a long day of work where she and John would sneak off behind the dumpster during breaks, she crept off to join Shawn in his garage, drowning out the sounds of the crickets at night with wailing guitars loud enough that the neighbors complained.

Then the news arrived that Shawn and Carmen’s favorite band, Violent Vale, was moving to New York City. Though Carmen’s family detested “the devil’s music” and couldn’t determine Led Zeppelin from Judas Priest, the Ridley household was abuzz. Carmen’s estranged uncle worked as the stage manager for Violent Vale and, at last, would be back in the States for the first time in years. As her family sat around the dinner table and questioned why her uncle would involve himself with a satanic cult of British druggies, an idea began to come to her. Just a week before, John had proposed to Carmen with a ring and a promise of a hopelessly ordinary life in Tionesta until they had enough babies to fill the house he had built for her in secret. She panicked, seeing no way out except to head to New York, find her uncle, and beg him for a job. It was only a few hours of a drive, and if working with the stage crew flopped, she and Shawn could build enough connections to turn their band into something worthwhile. After bringing it up to Shawn, he declined, refusing to run off with his friend’s fiance even if there was nothing between them. An argument broke out and ultimately, Carmen stormed out, grabbing only her guitar and leaving to find John, but not before returning home to smash her cello in the front yard with a hammer. She asked him to drive her to New York, claiming her aunt was sick in the hospital and it was a dire emergency. John obliged, unknowingly driving his fiance to her new life where she would never turn back to him.

With only the clothes on her back, a few hundred dollars in cash, and her guitar, Carmen asked John to drop her off at the doors of Bellevue hospital. When he asked if he should book a hotel to wait for her to return, Carmen responded that he shouldn’t bother. She never would return. She slipped the ring off her finger, pressed it into John’s hand, and ran off into the streets before he could follow her.

After a search through a phonebook for Craig Ridley, Carmen met up with her uncle at a pizza place and explained her situation, then offered her skills as an artist and a musician. Anything he would have her do, she was willing. At last, after what seemed like hours of pleading, Craig reluctantly agreed to find work for his niece at barely above minimum wage, only because he didn’t have the heart to leave her homeless in New York City. The crew placed Carmen where she was needed, whether it was repairing guitars, running to the store for more duct tape, cleaning costumes with mysterious stains, and so on. As time progressed, she began to use her artist’s eye to weigh in on lighting and stage decor, and she would often be the one to sit in the stage wings during shows to quickly change a broken string. Though she dearly missed John, and perhaps Shawn even more, Carmen felt that she had found where she belonged. But she wasn’t there yet, no, not until she was the one in the spotlight instead of the one hiding behind the speakers, waiting to carry out orders at the whim of the band.

When Vital Noise made the decision to send Violent Vale off to the West Coast division, where other people could attempt to manage their vices, Carmen eagerly awaited the change. That is, until her uncle quit his position, claiming he was tired of moving around until the band found someone willing to put up with them. He had established a life in New York and refused to give it up, though he urged Carmen to move west with the band. With her last connection to her family now severed, Carmen boarded a plane to California, bid her aunt and uncle farewell, and began another new life.

Some time has passed since Carmen’s arrival in Los Angeles. Nothing much has changed, with the exception of her working under a new stage manager and living in her own apartment, and she fit into the west coast lifestyle with ease. Her patience, however, is running thin. The work was exhausting and paid so little that she had to pick up a part-time job at a record store. She had grown tired of taking orders and, if she had it her way, she would be the one calling the shots. But although Carmen could sing and play, her songwriter was on the other side of the country in a sleepy Pennsylvania town. Whatever chance she had of making it big was overshadowed by the Violent Vale, and only time will tell if she can step out from under them.

                                                   V. ENCORE

https://www.pinterest.com/amalorgos/the-night-flyer/ (A poorly organized pinterest board)

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5da3KFiA1qM7b0KRYJgnhb?si=UFT3Sq4TTkqOq1Ip8HfAqA (A short playlist)

[tandygoff-blog]

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[footballengland]

Football Fans remember Rodney Marsh

Rodney Marsh – Your memories of the English Soccer Legend:

Did you watch Rodney play, or go to school with him, or meet him after his playing days?

Let us know your stories and personal memories by adding a comment at the bottom of the page.

Steve Dickinson wrote:

I started supporting QPR in the 1960s as an 11 year old just as they were winning the League Cup and gaining promotion from the 3rd division.

I have 3 outstanding memories of the man on the field:

Vs West Ham It was Rod’s first game in Div 1 (he had still been injured from the end of the previous promotion season), and West Ham played a very skillful game on a typical QPR mudbath (as the pitch was then), and Rodney touched the ball 3 times – a curling shot that hit the post; a disallowed goal, and a mazy run through the slime that left everyone floundering – I felt there should be more; but the papers screamed about his return and how QPR would soon now climb the table (we didn’t !!)

Vs Birmingham (around 1972) This game was on TV and Terry Venables was now at the club orchastrating midfield – Rodney scored the best Hat-trick I have ever seen, with 3 completely different goals that ripped Birmingham apart in a 5-2 win (although I read in one of his books that he thought his hat-trick against Blackpool was better)

Vs Fulham away I am stood in Craven Cottage listening to all the Fulham Fans chanting ‘Rodney is a Fairy’ (this was the normal away fan’s chant), and the singing is deafening. The whistle can just be heard to start the game, and Keith Sanderson gives the ball to Rodney from the kick-off – he traps the ball, reverses it, spins and shoots – a la Pele and Beckham – sure enough the keeper is on the penalty spot and didn’t start moving till way too late – the ball just missed the post!! The ground fell into absolute silence, until 500 isolated voices began ‘Rodneeeeeee, Rodneeeeee’

Great days

Bill Stapleton wrote:

I live in Bradenton Florida, just down the road from Tampa, where I understand Rodney lives. I would love to meet up with him!

I grew up in West Kensington and used to walk to Craven Cottage to see Fulham when Rod was playing. I remember him getting kicked for that injury and I have a theory about that and his play. It was reported that he had ballroom dancing lessons to help him regain his balance. I have always wondered if that contributed to his amazing balance for the rest of his career.

I love magic players, who have that something that makes your eyes pop out as you say “How did he do that?” Rodney had that magic. Just one goal that I will never forget typifies what he was all about. Fulham v Nottingham Forest. Forest take a corner. The ball is cleared to Johnny Haynes of the edge of the box. He swings a long ball out to the left where Rodney is on the halfway line. He sets off down the left wing. (He’s not the quickest). Team mates sprint up the field to support him in the centre and on the right. Rodney beats one, two maybe three, like in slow motion – (How does he do that?!) and is now just inside the Forest box on the left.

The whole crowd is screaming, “Pass!” Rodney beats yet another, then curls an exquisite ball up and over Peter Grummitt, one of the best goalies in England at the time, into the far top corner.

Rodney simply lived in a different time continuum from the rest of us ordinary mortals. Not only did he bamboozle countless defenders, but he left countless spectators with their mouths hanging open, wondering how he did what he did.

John Lines wrote:

I must be one of only a handful of people that remember Rodney playing in goal. It was in a first division match at Craven Cottage in the early 1960’s.

The match was against Northampton Town and early on, Fulham keeper Tony Macedo was knocked out and suffered a broken jaw. Rodders took the jersey as there were no subs in those days. I was standing right behind the goal and remember the look on his face when picking the ball out of the net…. 4 times I think!

Pat Larkin wrote:

I played with the 2nd Team for the ROWDIES (after being recruited from the St. Pete Kickers) with Rodney Marsh back in ’78 & ’79? I can remember watching him from the sidelines & right in front of the bench, he nutmegged a defender twice while dribbling & “teasing” the guy with his dribbling skills for at least 2 minutes (it may have been a game against the Ft. Lauderdale Strikers or NY Cosmos?)….and this poor defender did not get any defensive support from his mates.

Cat & mouse game went on with Rodney just “schooling this kid”. The kid was determined to steal the ball from this old guy and Rodney turned his back to the defender, left the ball and sprinted about 10 yards to his left….with the defender following Rodney and both leaving the ball behind. Rondey then casually jogs back to the ball with the Red Faced Defender behind him just shaking his head…classic exhibition as to why he truly was the “Clown Prince of Soccer”…and as a very young American playing a game we really could only dream of playing like our friends from overseas….I will always cherish the memory!

Loftuslad wrote:

Rodney Marsh was QPR’s first superstar. With him, an unheard of team in the third division beat a first division side in the League Cup Final (when that cup really meant something!) and was the prime mover in taking them from third to First division.

He was also one of the first ‘Mavericks’ who did it their way. He claimed “QPR will ALWAYS be my team, not Man City or Fulham.” After him came ‘mavericks’ like Stan Bowles, Tony Currie, Peter Osgood, Alan Hudson, Charlie George and Frank Worthinhton. But he was a free spirit and could not play in the negative systems of England (The others couldn’t either.)

He was one of the leading lights in the Americas NASL and played on equal terms with George Best at Fulham. But he will always be related to QPR and there was uproar when he left.

It’s a shame there was less media around then, so clips are sparse with all these guys.

Maybe some people are put off him by his pundit work and comments recently but as a footballer, he will always be a genius and always be QPR!!

geniusmarsh wrote:

Rodney Marsh and Stan Bowles are by far the greatest players we have ever had at QPR. I saw Stan play hundreds of times for Rangers and Brentford, he was like a God.

Stan was more of a team player than Rod. But Rod started QPR as an entertaining team to watch, the first superstar. I have seen some polls that vote Stan with 90% and Rod with 10% that’s a joke, there was not much between them.

The difference is Stan is OURS!

He’s only thought of as a Rangers man while Rod is Man City and Fulham, who all claim him, but Stan walks down South Africa Road with everyone else and goes to the local after.

Rodney would never be seen doing that, he is not accessible to fans, and the stuff with Gerry Francis didn’t help.

I would like to have seen Rod, Stan and Tony Currie at their peaks all playing for QPR at the same time.

Rodney was like Gazza (who I have also seen) he would do sod all for 80mins, you would forget he was playing, but a flash of genius would turn the game round.

But Rodney and Stan gave us entertainment, moneys worth, a laugh, on field jokes and jaw dropping flashes of tricks, skill and pure genius, so did Currie and so did Best.

We will never see their like again.

Chris Barnes wrote:

I remember Rodney playing for QPR vs Leyton Orient one Good Friday in the early 70’s. Being an O’s fan I was in awe of Rodney who single handedly destroyed a great Orient defence without scoring.

QPR got a penalty, the man himself missed it & the O’s inexplicably went on to win 2-0. With ironic cries of Rodney, Rodney, Rodney one of the great miscarriages of justice had happened before my eyes.

Although we had won I had witnessed one of the most impressive displays I had ever seen from an English player. Rodney was too good to play for England as was Stan Bowles, Tony Currie, Glen Hoddle & Duncan MacKenzie.

What price those guys now when 80% of the Premier League players can’t speak English & don’t care if their clubs live or die! Rodney, thanks for the memory!

Darrell Storie wrote:

Grew up in London (Clapham) during the seventies, and my Da, a mad Scot would die for Fulham – he started to take me to Craven Cottage from the age of 9 onwards – which was around the time Marsh, along with George Best and Bobby Moore played for us.

My ma, a quiet and thoughtful nurse who came over from the West Indies in the mid fifties thought seeing Fulham would ‘corrupt’ me, and turn me into a hooligan. In fact it did the exact opposite – realised the trio were in the ‘autumn’ of their career, and the circus acts at Craven Cottage (especially a game against Hereford – or was it Hull when they won 4-1) were usually embarrassing.

Could see most of the fans loving it, with Best taking the ball off Marsh, and vice versa a couple of seconds later…but there were also many who realised this wasn’t going to last for long.

It was around 1977 (or thereabouts) when I followed cricket – England, that is as an antidote to the depression!

Jane Banks wrote:

I MET RODNEY MARSH, TERRY VENABLES, & TONY HAZELL WHEN THEY PLAYED FOR QPR. THEY WERE PLAYING AT CHARLTON ATHLETIC AND I HAD GONE TO THE SUPPORTERS LOUNGE AFTER THE GAME. I WAS SAT AT A TABLE ON MY OWN AND THE THREE PLAYERS ASKED IF I MINDED IF THEY JOINED ME. I WAS THRILLED TO BITS!

AT THE TIME I WAS 23YRS OLD & VERY OVERWEIGHT. HOWEVER, RODNEY BEING RODNEY THOUGHT OTHERWISE, AND ASKED ME WHEN THE ‘HAPPY EVENT’ WAS DUE! I JUST LAUGHED AND SAID “ITS ALL ME, I’M AFRAID RODNEY!” HE APOLOGISED AND WE ALL HAD A GOOD LAUGH ABOUT IT, I WAS NOT OFFENDED AT ALL.

THEY ASKED ME IF I WOULD GO AND SEE THEM PLAY AT LOFTUS ROAD, AS AT THE TIME I WAS WORKING IN A HOSPITAL IN FULHAM ROAD & HAD SAID I WATCHED CHELSEA WHEN CHARLTON WERE AWAY. SADLY I DIDN’T GO, I WAS TOO NERVOUS, AND DIDN’T THINK FOR ONE MINUTE THEY WOULD REMEMBER ME.

I CERTAINLY HAVEN’T FORGOTTEN THEM, THEY WERE GREAT COMPANY & I WAS DELIGHTED TO HAVE MET THEM. I DIDN’T HAVE CHILDREN OF MY OWN, SO I HAVE NO ONE TO PASS THE STORY DOWN TOO. I WOULD REALLY LIKE TO MEET RODNEY AGAIN. BUT I DOUBT HE WILL BE AT WEMBLEY NEXT WEEK WHEN GRIMSBY TOWN PLAY M K DONS AT WEMBLEY.

Dino wrote:

Back in the late 70’s, Rodney Marsh WAS Tampa Bay sports. He helped put Tampa on the sports map. Our football team (Buccaneers) was horrible and the Rowdies did one thing….WIN!!!

During World Cup ’94 I would chat with Rodney every Friday evening before his flight departed Tampa for Atlanta to do his gig with CNN for the cup.

My greatest memory of Sir Rodney has to be the first Rowdie game I attended, the 1978 Conference Championship with 38,000 watching(in a driving rainstorm). Rodney scored the winning goal in a shootout as the Rowdies beat the Ft. Lauderdale Strikers and advanced to Soccer Bowl ’78. Thanks for the memories Rodney!!

naiomi crofts wrote:

i just wanna say since rodney william marsh was on I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! i loved him he is my hero and i voted for him every day. then he went out i even dressed up as him an cried when he left but rodney u r da best no matter what, from your loyal friend naiomi crofts.

ps. say hi to him and his daughter joanne.

peter langston wrote:

I was his paper boy when he lived in Cornwall Road in Ruislip in the early ’70’s

alex wrote:

Rodney is such a legend, listening to him and PBT on tlkSPORT got me through my GCSE’s! if reports are to be believed i can’t wait to see him on I’m a celebrity. i have no doubt he will bring the show to life!

Steve Maddox wrote:

I find it surprising that the memories posted on this website of Rod are all from Tampa fans, with the exception of one QPR fan. Rod was a real genius and I saw him play many times for Man City in the early-mid 70’s…and also a few years later when he was with Fulham.

Despite what some people say, Rod was a massive hero at City and was adored and idolised by the fans……..

My memories of Rodney are just too many and too wonderful to recount, but suffice it to say he was just so entertaining and gifted and brilliant to watch.

He scored some amazing goals at City…..but his all round passing, dribbling and attacking ability was breath taking. I truly believe that Rod was the most gifted player I have ever seen, and although he was not the quickest, he more than made up for it with his vision, brilliant ball control and the way he read the game…he had a fantastic footballing brain.

What a joke that he only won 9 England caps….

Thanks Rod…we loved you (and still do) at City.

Sean Forrester wrote:

I worked with Rodney during his time in the media. During my career, I have worked with a number of former footballer, who have played in and won medals in World and European Cups, Champions League, Division 1, Premiership etc etc.

The vast majority of the ex-pros are happy to indulge in stories of their past glories and are rightly proud of them too.

However, in all my life, I’ve never met a player who had such a sub-standard career and banged on about it so much.

Marsh is an arrogant, psuedo intellectual tit and a more self gratified and plain wierd individual. I for one am relived to have him off our screens

Charles Rivers wrote:

I live in Tampa Florida (U.S.A.) I grew up in the 70’s and the Tampa Bay Rowdies were of course my favourite soccer team. My grandmother is from Kent, England and she taught me all about “football” as you call it.

Anyway, I was walking through Tampa Stadium one day prior to a night game for the Rowdies

when out from the locker area comes Rodney.

It wasn’t uncommon for him to come walk around and talk to people. I was 6 years old and he lifted me up and asked me my name. I told him Charles and he told me it was a Kings name.

He was very kind. A while later Rodney decided to retire and they had his “memorial game” at Tampa Stadium….when my mom purchased the program for the game we opened it up and inside was a picture of the day Rodney had picked me up. I have it still. I was wearing a green striped Interbay United shirt and my team name was Manchester City at the time.

Somehow my parents got in touch with him and we all met at his home. The next thing I know my dad bought his daughters’ all white bedroom set for my sister.

So my sister had Rodney Marsh’s daughters room set and I had a picture in his retirement program of us for life.

Thats my story I hope you liked it.

Edward Toye wrote:

Rodney was my hero when I was young and for me embodies all that is good about the game. Supremely talented, with a streak of arrogance he was a genius and for me the best English player there has ever been!

JOHN STUNT wrote:

RODNEY MARSH THE LEGEND.

I WAS LUCKY ENOUGH TO HAVE SEEN AND MEET THE MAN HIMSELF. I CAN REMEMBER HIM TURNING A GAME AROUND WITH PURE GENIUS. HE WAS NOT ALWAYS INVOLVED IN THE GAME FROM START TO FINISH, BUT JUST A FLASH OF CLASS WAS ENOUGH TO SEND US ALL HOME AS HAPPY AS LARRY, AND WE KNEW WE WERE THE GREATEST TEAM IN LONDON.

MY AUNTIE AND UNCLE HAD A FRAMED PICTURE OF RODNEY ON THEIR WALL, AND IF SOMEONE DARED SWEAR IN THAT ROOM THEY HAD TO APPOLIGISE TO RODNEY, (HOW DARE THEY SWEAR IN THE PRESENT OF A SPORTING GOD).

YEARS LATER I DROVE FROM LONDON TO STOCKPORT TO A CHARITY GOLF EVENT TO SEE THE GREAT MAN HIMSELF.

AS I DROVE INTO THE COURSE I SPOTTED RODNEY, I GOT OUT OF THE CAR AND AS SOON AS HE SAW THE QPR TOP IN MY HANDS HE STOPPPED PLAYING AND SIGNED MY TOP, WHICH IS NOW MY MOST PRIZED POSSESSION.

RODNEY WAS AND IS STILL A LEGEND I MY EYES.

Anthony Fernandez wrote:

I had the pleasure of watching Rodney Marsh play for the Tampa Bay Rowdies of the North American Soccer League for four great years. He came to the team for the 1976 season after the team had won the NASL Cup the year before. The team made it to the final two more times with him as the captain, but failed to win another championship. He was a very popular player during his time in Tampa and is remembered well here in the community to this day.

I still remember a match at Tampa Stadium when he dropped his shorts, that had ripped, as a trainer held two towels in front and rear only to have the rear towel fall to expose a full Rodney moon. The article in the local newspaper the next day had the photo with the headline “Footloose and Fannie Free”.

Mike Davis wrote:

During the late 70s, Rodney Marsh almost single-handedly made football, or soccer as we call it, a tremendously popular sport in Tampa.

He became the most popular sports figure in the city….even bigger than american football players. He was dashing, handsome and most of all great to watch play the game…. wonderfully entertaining.

He produced on the field, scoring many beautiful goals and assists, and was the centerpiece of the very successful Tampa Bay Rowdies. Even though it has been many years now since those days, he is still very fondly remembered in Tampa.

Joby Canoby wrote:

Though it was american NASL soccer, it was all we had in Tampa Bay. Watching Rodney Marsh at the age of 18-20 was amazing. For instance:

1)Seeing him go to his knees with the ball in homage to Pele against the Cosmos. 2)Watching him always take the final and usually game winning penalty kicks 3)Following him with binoculars, and seeing what opposing teams enforcers did to him to try and stop him from dominating games. (it never stopped him by the way and most of it wasn’t very sportsmanlike) 4)Joining with the other 45,000 fans screaming his name in unison after he won yet another game for us.

Frosty wrote:

Tampa Bay Rowdies – While playing with the Rowdies, Rodney provided much excitement and talent. He made others around him better and as a result allowed Fabbiani lead the NASL in scoring.

On national tv against the N.Y. Cosmos Rodney put on/displayed perhaps one of his best performances against the likes of none other than Pele, Beckenbauer, Chinaglia, Alberto. We won the highly anticipated match.

Rodney matched with Derek Smethurst was a deadly combination for any defense to go against……

John Rolfe: wrote:

Rodney Marsh – Memories

Vivid memories of Rodney sitting on the ball in the penalty area of teams like Watford and Swindon when two or three goals up: once the game was won he preferred to entertain than to go for goal all the time.

One dummy, when he was stationary, caused his opponent to jump up and land on his back in an attempt to block the ball which Rodney had not kicked.

Seeing him set up chances for Mick Leach and watch how he got on.

Watching him trip on his own feet and win penalties.

Watching him (at 4-0 with 2 goals himself already) prepare to take a penalty and walk back, and keep walking on with the crowd cheering until he reached the centre circle, running back with the crowd baying, feinting, stopping in his tracks just short of the penalty spot, watching the goalie tumble involuntarily to his right while Rodney, with a smile on his face, rolled the ball slowly to his left.

Watching from behind the Bristol Rovers goal as he struck a late League Cup equaliser by bending the ball hugely around the wall; this was in the days when they played with proper footballs of the type that only Marsh, Bowles and Rivelino could bend.

Great memories. QPR players smiled and laughed a lot during the games…

from Football England https://www.football-england.com/football-fans-remember-rodney-marsh.html

[vsplusonline]

COVID-19: Total 236 coronavirus cases in India, says ICMR

New Post has been published on https://apzweb.com/covid-19-total-236-coronavirus-cases-in-india-says-icmr/

COVID-19: Total 236 coronavirus cases in India, says ICMR

NEW DELHI: COVID-19 cases rose to 236 in India after 63 fresh cases were reported in a day, as per the ICMR on Friday while the Union health ministry figure stood at 223, as the governments in the national capital and Maharashtra announced shutdown of public places to contain the spread of coronavirus that has claimed more than 10,000 lives globally.

“A total of 15,404 samples from 14,514 individuals have been tested for SARS-CoV2 as on 20th March 2020 6 PM. A total of 236 individuals have been confirmed positive among suspected cases and contacts of known positive cases,” Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) said.

A day after he addressed the nation on coronavirus during which he asked people to remain indoors and only come out if it was extremely necessary, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a video call with chief ministers and discussed ways to check and prevent the spread of the virus.

A spike in numbers prompted the states and UTs to reinforce its efforts to contain the spread. While the Maharashtra Chief Minister said all workplaces in major cities, including in country’s commercial hub Mumbai and Pune, will remain closed till March 31, the Delhi Chief Minister announced shutting down of all malls in the national capital, but exempted grocery stores and pharmacies in them.

Despite appeals by leaders not to panic and not to hoard items, long lines were seen at grocery stores, pharmacies and outlets selling other essential stuff, throwing the caution of ‘social distancing’ to the wind.

Many in public dealing, including traders, responded to Modi’s call for a ‘janata curfew’ on Sunday, saying they will shut their establishments while a number of people opted for self-isolation as a precaution.

According to sources, no passenger trains will ply from 00:00 hours till 10 pm on Sunday while all suburban train services to be reduced to a bare minimum during ‘janata curfew’.

As per the Union health ministry, 223 in 32 foreign nationals, including 17 from Italy, three from the Philippines, two from the UK, one each belonging to Canada, Indonesia and Singapore. The figure also included four deaths reported from Delhi, Karnataka, Punjab and Maharashtra so far.

“The total number of active COVID 2019 cases across India stands at 196 so far,” the Union health ministry said, adding that 23 others have been cured/discharged/migrated while four have died.

Meanwhile, a 69-year-old Italian tourist who had “recovered” from the novel coronavirus died at a private hospital in Jaipur after suffering a massive cardiac arrest late on Thursday night, SMS Medical College principal Sudhir Bhandari said.

As per ministry data, Delhi has, so far, reported 17 positive cases which included one foreigner, while Uttar Pradesh has recorded 23 cases, including one foreigner.

Maharashtra has 52 cases, including three foreigners, while Kerala has recorded 28 cases which included two foreign nationals.

Karnataka has 15 coronavirus patients. The number of cases in Ladakh rose to 10 and Jammu and Kashmir four. Telangana has reported 17 cases which included nine foreigners. Gujarat has reported five cases so far.

Rajasthan has also reported 17 cases including two foreigners. Prohibitory orders under Section 144 of the CrPC were also imposed in Rajasthan’s Bhilwara district from Friday after a doctor at a private hospital was tested positive for COVID-19.

While Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand and Andhara Pradesh have reported three cases each, there are 17 cases, including 14 foreigners in Haryana.

Odisha, West Bengal and Punjab have reported two cases each while Puducherry, Chhattisgarh and Chandigarh have reported one case each.

During the video call, issues such as capacity building of the states and extending training to local health officials were also discussed in the call which was among others attended by chief ministers of Punjab Amrinder Singh, Maharashtra Uddhav Thackeray, Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath, sources said.

The prime minister has been pitching for involvement of people and local authorities to check the spread of the virus.

Meanwhile, former Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje announced that she and her son BJP MP Dushyant Singh have gone into self-quarantine after attending a party where singer Kanika Kapoor was also present. Kapoor has become the first Bollywood celebrity to test positive for COVID-19.

Several members of Parliament including TMC’s Derek O’Brien and Apna Dal MP Anupriya Patel also went into self-quarantine after they got to know about Singh.

“This government is putting all of us at risk. The prime minister says self isolate yourself but Parliament is on. I was sitting next to Dushyant the other day for 2.5 hours. There are two more MPs who are in self isolation. The session should be deferred,” the TMC MP said.

Many MPs also attended a breakfast meeting hosted by President Ram Nath Kovind on March 18, which was attended by Singh, who also participated a Parliamentary panel meeting on Wednesday on transport tourism and culture where 20 MPs were also present.

The Uttarakhand government banned the entry of domestic and foreign tourists into the state till further orders to contain the spread of coronavirus. Uttarakhand is the second state to do so after Sikkim.

With a Punjab woman, who had tested positive for the coronavirus, fleeing from the hospital and subsequently booked for doing so, Union minister G Kishan Reddy urged family members to not resist the government move to test and quarantine people returning from countries battling coronavirus.

Sporting and Bollywood fraternity also tried bid in creating awareness with India’s cricket captain Virat Kohli and his actor wife Anushka Sharma issue a joint appeal for self-isolation to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

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[thechasefiles]

The Chase Files Daily Newscap 5/13/2019

Good MORNING  #realdreamchasers! Here is The Chase Files Daily News Cap for Monday 13th May 2019. Remember you can read full articles for FREE via Barbados Today (BT) or Barbados Government Information Services (BGIS) OR by purchasing by purchasing a Daily Nation Newspaper (DN).

COUNTRY MOURNS GIANT OF A MAN – Nation builder and media titan Harold Fitzherbert Hoyte died yesterday morning, leaving the country – from the Prime Minister to regular Barbadians – mourning his passing. He was 77. Hoyte, the doyen of journalism in Barbados and across the region, and one of the founders of the Nation Publishing Co. Limited, died at 11:20 a.m. at his home in St Thomas, with his wife Noreen and sister Sheila Brewster at his side. He served as this newspaper’s first Editor-in-Chief and held various positions, including President and Editor Emeritus, the latter until his death. He was also chairman of the board of Nation Publishing and a director of One Caribbean Media (OCM), the parent company of The Nation Group. Hoyte had been ailing after suffering an aneurysm while on holiday in Florida at the end of 2017. Ten days ago, in honour of his sterling contribution to journalism in Barbados and the building of one of the most successful black companies in the country, Nation House on Fontabelle, St Michael – which officially opened on September 23, 1977 – was renamed the Harold Hoyte & Fred Gollop Media Complex. As news spread of Hoyte’s passing, tributes from across Barbados, the region and from the diaspora were pouring in, recognising his outstanding work in journalism. Media practitioners, former NATION staff, as well as members of the public also posted their own tributes to a “giant of a man”. (DN)

PM: I'VE LOST A DEAR A FRIEND – The following a statement from Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley, QC, MP on the passing of Nation builder and founder, Harold Hoyte earlier today. Barbados has lost one of its great patriots and I have lost a dear friend.  It was with a most profound sense of personal sadness that I learnt today of the passing of my dear friend and a true builder of Barbados, Harold Fitzherbert Hoyte at the age of 78. While Harold had been ailing for some time and the nature and extent of his medical situation served as fair notice that his end might be near, that knowledge has not been nearly enough to blunt the impact of the news.  The country has lost a prized son who has contributed more than his fair share to the development of post-Independence Barbados. It would be impossible to separate the name Harold Hoyte from the path of journalism in Barbados and the Caribbean over the past 60 years.  Equally, it would be impossible to separate him for the story of success of the enterprise known as the Nation Newspaper.  There is no Barbadian who would fail to recognise the critical role that the Nation Newspaper has played in contribution to the safeguarding of Barbados' stability since Independence. In fact, the Nation Newspaper, and by extension the Nation Publishing Company, with Harold Hoyte as its leader, represents one of the most potent symbols and examples of business success by Barbadians in our post Independence history. Harold understood Barbados and Barbadians. We saw the evidence in his editorial judgments and his professional and indeed political commentary. It was clear to all that he never lost contact with the pulse of the people. That, throughout his career remained a defining feature of Harold Hoyte. He loved his country and was never afraid to speak truth to power in its fervent defence. I can tell you that politicians on all sides of the political divide would think twice before they dared to ignore him because they knew that if they did so it was at their own peril - for he was an astute judge of Barbadians, particular on those matters he so fondly referred to as “bread and butter issues”. In my eyes, Harold Hoyte was more than worthy to hold any and all offices in this land. He volunteered his time and intellect in ways too numerous to count, but for me one of his seminal contributions was his service on the Commission on Law and Order, established during my tenure as Attorney General. At a very personal level, my friendship with Harold became even closer in the last ten or so years where he was a pillar of strength for me and where I knew I could rely on both those virtues of which I just spoke, but also his utter discretion and wise counsel. I shall miss him as will many Barbadians for his political and editorial commentary. But above all, I shall miss him as a warm, generous and committed human being. To his wife Noreen, his children Tracy and Bobby and the rest of Harold's family I extend deepest sympathies and on behalf of a grateful nation and people I extend to them the offer of an official funeral as a small but initial token of appreciation for his immense contribution to this country.  (DN)

DLP: HOYTE CHANGED POLITICAL DISCOURSE IN BARBADOS - The Democratic Labour Party (DLP) joined with those remembering the late Harold Hoyte, Editor Emeritus of The Nation Publishing Co. Ltd. Hoyte passed away earlier today, and in a statement, the DLP said his commissioning of polls forever changed “the tenor of political discourse in Barbados”. The full statement follows: It is with profound sadness and deep regret that the Democratic Labour Party notes the passing of Harold Hoyte, co-founder and Editor Emeritus of the Nation Publishing Company Ltd. Even though we were aware that he was not in the best of health in recent times, his passing has still come as unwelcome news. Harold was an icon of Caribbean journalism, an entrepreneur who staked everything he owned on a fledgling tabloid that would become Barbados’ leading newspaper and later the precursor to the regional media giant known today as One Caribbean Ltd. His visionary leadership initiated the sponsorship and publication of political polls, something previously unheard of in Barbadian media, which in itself would forever change the tenor of political discourse in Barbados. Following his sojourn in journalism, he authored a series of books chronicling the life and times of scores of local politicians as well as reviews of the roles of others; texts that are being used and will continue to be reference points for local political scholars and the merely curious. His passing will unquestionably create a void in the regional journalism and political arena. His contribution cannot be duplicated. The Democratic Labour Party would like to take this opportunity to offer our sincerest condolences to his wife, his children, siblings and close friends. May his soul rest in peace. (DN)

BBA: HOYTE’S CONTRIBUTION TO JOURNALISM WAS WORLD CLASS – For a man who always had an interest in becoming the ultimate journalist, Harold Hoyte’s name will forever be etched indelibly on the pages of media history in Barbados. His vision for the Nation Newspaper is adequately chronicled and his first Editor Carl Moore reminds us of the precision and professionalism the profession demonstrated at the time it was established in 1973. Harold Hoyte was the archetypal journalist. He was curious about everything; astute in his observations as evidenced in his writings; amiable and affable in dealing with people, with the most infectious laugh that brought a smile to the most wooden of faces. His advice to young journalists remains as relevant today as it was when he first gave it: "If you do not bring a sense of social conscience to the job, then you’re not going to carry it out in the way that you should, because you will not be able to appreciate the role that the media has to play". Perhaps our best tribute to this eminent journalist, who often shared his political analysis in the broadcast media during elections, is to raise the bar in the quality of our local journalism. His death is a timely reminder of what world class journalism looks like. It behoves us all to revisit the tenets of the Fourth Estate and honour this noble profession. Let us all place less emphasis on being a star and more on the substance of the story; less on fake news and more on facts; less on personality and more on principle. Harold Hoyte was an exemplar for the media profession. We honour his work and salute his legacy. The Barbados Broadcasting Authority joins the media fraternity in sending condolences to his wife and children as well as his immediate family and extended media family. May he rest in peace. (DN)

ST. MARY’S RECTOR ‘WILL BE MISSED’ – While rector of St Mary’s Anglican Church Reverend Jilian Crawford is remaining mum on her imminent transfer, some of her parishioners are not. In fact, not only is Crawford going to be missed, one member of the congregation went as far as to say she was the best thing to have ever happened to that church. “She is friendly and hard-working; she has done work with the Sunday school no other priest here has ever done. I will miss her – this had me crying all the time. She is the best priest we ever had,” said Vernise Codrington. Crawford is scheduled to be reassigned after May 26 to St Peter Parish Church, where she will be assistant rector. Reports indicate Crawford agreed to move on although last year it was also reported there was tension between Crawford and the Church Council over her refusal to move into the vicarage in Rock Dundo, St Michael, after the church spent $50 000 in renovations and had been paying $2 300 a month on a rental house for her in the meantime. (DN)

MEDIATOR CALLED IN – Antigua’s labour commissioner has been asked to mediate the matter between sacked West Indies selectors Courtney Browne and Eldine Baptiste and their former employers. Browne and Baptiste are claiming damages from Cricket West Indies (CWI)  for unfair dismissal after being axed when the new Ricky Skerritt administration took office in March. Baptiste and Browne, the former chairman of selectors, were served termination letters on April 10. However, their attorneys Thomas, John & Co. sent correspondence to CWI chief executive officer Johnny Grave stating that their clients were unfairly dismissed and were demanding compensation for loss of earnings, future earnings and gratuity. However, CWI hasn’t responded favourably and subsequently, the attorneys have sent correspondence to Antigua’s labour commissioner to mediate in the matter. CWI matters of this nature fall under the labour code of Antigua and Barbuda. In a letter obtained by NATION SPORT, the legal representatives for Browne and Baptiste stated: “The said termination letters of April 10, 2019, make reference to a Task Force established to review the selection system at all levels and that this . . . committee will be chaired by vice president Dr Kishone Shallow and is expected to present recommendations to the board at its next meeting in June 2019.   (DN)

SPECIAL DAY FOR SPECIAL LADIES – Mothers were shown just how special they are yesterday. Many were treated like royalty by children and spouses at a number of dining spots across the island. At the Savannah Beach Hotel in Hastings, Christ Church, events manager Dionne Vaughan said they usually got a big turnout on Mother’s Day and yesterday was no different. “Today [yesterday] we booked 180 guests and it’s always a big celebration here on Mother’s Day,” she said. “It’s not only about biological mothers but people who also really play a big role in young people’s lives.” The buffet-styled luncheon also saw guests being entertained by saxophonist Mylon Clarke. At Ocean Two resort in St Lawrence Gap, also in Christ Church, mothers were greeted with freshly mixed cocktails before dining. Assistant front desk manager Katrina Cumberbatch explained that after lunch, the mums were treated to a tour of the resort that included a visit on the roof deck. The restaurant catered for 100 people, including in-house guests. Patrons also had the opportunity to win prizes, such as a day pass for two at the hotel and a day at the spa. Some of the highlights on the menu were the eight-hour, slow-baked pork leg with apple sauce, grilled Mahi with lemon caper butter sauce, and penne pasta. There was also a special Mother’s Day buffet breakfast at the hotel which catered for 60. A large Mother’s Day cake was shared among the ladies as well. Among those dining were the Inniss and Brathwaite families. Lois Inniss said her family had been celebrating Mother’s Day together for more than 20 years. She added they cherished special occasions to bond and catch up with each other. Members of her family included former deputy chief educational officer Thelma Brathwaite, former principal of Eden Lodge Primary School Samuel Brathwaite, past principal of Sharon Primary Ruth Trotman and retired journalist at the Barbados Advocate, Heather Greenidge.  (DN)

For daily or breaking news reports follow us on Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter & Facebook. That’s all for today folks. There are 232 days left in the year. Shalom! #thechasefilesdailynewscap #thechasefiles# dailynewscapsbythechasefiles

[keywestlou]

MORNING STEW #25

Some exceptionally interesting topics this morning. Any of which could be the lead topic. Not able to choose, I have opted to do a Morning Stew.

Enjoy!

Yesterday was Veterans Day in the U.S. Day of Remembrance in England.

The Brits took an exceptional beating in World War I. Lost a whole generation of young men. One if its greatest battles occurred in Belgium. Memorialized by the Canadian surgeon and soldier John McCrae: “In Flanders field the poppys blow / Between the crosses row on row.”

In 1921, England decided the day required some thing by which it would forever be known. McCrae’s In Flanders field makes mention of poppies. Properly so. The battlefield was covered with red poppies. So the artificial small red poppy flower came to represent England’s Day of Remembrance. Eventually, world wide.

Poppies are a flowing plant. Grow in different colors. One species is the red one. It is famous not only for its war recollections, it is also a reminder of the opium plant. The red poppy is a powerful alkaloid. Some morphine producing. It has been used since ancient times as an analgesic, medical narcotic, and recreational drug.

Better you wear the man made one on Veterans/Remembrance Day than ingest in some fashion the narcotic based one.

Nikki Haley. She has bothered me since coming into prominence. Gave me the feeling she was not a straight arrow. More of an opportunist. More of one who would do most anything to get ahead politically.

She is Donald Trump in a skirt.

Her new book takes major shots at John Kelly and Rex Tillerson. You are aware of the background. She refers their seeking help from her as “a very dangerous thing…..goes against the Constitution…..goes against what the American people want…..offensive.”

Such is her view. Probably the same as those in the far right who blindly support the President.

I view Kelly and Tillerson coming to her as recruiting help to keep Trump from doing anything that would endanger the country.

Think about it.

Haley’s position as reflected in the book terrifying. Rabble rousing. Poison spreading.

What follows is difficult to believe. We have an internal immigration problem in the U.S. A serious one.

Boise, Idaho and California. Californians are moving to Boise and other parts of Idaho. In large numbers. Most have money. Boise a regular American city. Not everyone affluent.

A good share of the Boise citizens live on minimum wage or close to it. The Californians wealthy in comparison.

Real estate prices have zoomed. Since February 2018, 19.3 percent. Rents have gone sky high. Purchase and rental beyond Boise means.

The Californians bring an “attitude” with them. Sort of we are better than you. Not appreciated by the people of Boise.

Seventy percent believe Boise is growing too fast because of the California invasion.

Boise’s recent mayoral election reflects such attitude. One mayoral candidate ran on “Go Back to California!” Another accused the California immigrants as “trashing Boise.” One candidate was asked what he would do if he were King for a Day. He responded, “Build a $26 million wall.”

U.S. burger chains have recently come out with  vegetarian burger. All claim the burgers taste like meat. I tried 3 different ones. They did!

A London eatery has gone one step further. It is serving “worm burgers.” Referred to not as “Big Macs.” Rather, “Bug Macs.”

Made from live worms. Purported to be tastier than beef burgers. Also, it is claimed the “worm Burgers” will help save the planet. Requires only 10 percent of the land space that beef herds do and produce far less carbon dioxide.

A chef involved says, “Let them crawl into your menu once, and you’ll be hooked! Once you get passed the ‘yuck effect’, you’ll find they actually taste really good.”

Crickets are being considered for a side dish.

I am the child of an immigrant. My mother was born in Italy. My grandparents on both sides were born in Italy. My whole family is Italo-American.

Those that immigrated, came through Ellis Island.

On this day in 1954, Ellis Island was closed. The famous “Gateway to America” was no more. Twelve million people processed before the need ended.

A degree of discrimination was involved in the immigration process. Based on money.

Only third class passengers were required to go through Ellis Island. The poor. Those who acquired passage by buying the cheapest ticket.

Many were sickly and perhaps criminal. Ellis Island was opened to search for those who might be a risk to accept on U.S. shores. The government did not want such persons to become a U.S. burden.

My grandfather Louis came through Ellis Island. Twelve years old. He had bugs in his hair and either diphtheria or scarlet fever. Ellis Island was equipped with hospitals. My grandfather was kept in one for 3 months, cared for, cured, and released.

The first person to go through Ellis Island was 15 year old Anne Moore from Ireland.

First and second class passengers were treated better. Money apparently meant they were without illness or a criminal record.

In any event, they were submitted to a brief on board inspection following which they disembarked in New York City or New Jersey at which points they passed through Customs with no difficulty.

No Ellis Island for them.

Now for a little Key West.

Yesterday was Veterans Day. Key West always has a spectacular parade. I thought it was at 5. Went down to Duval to watch. Missed the whole thing. The parade was at 4.

Stopped into Dueling Bartenders. All locals. Spent a pleasant hour chatting.

Mary was there. We went to La Trattoria afterwards for dinner.

La Trattoria was packed as if it were season. Carrie took care of us. We were seated at the bar immediately without a wait.

I felt a tap on my shoulder. Turned and it was Elena Spottswood. I have not seen her in 15 years. One of the loveliest and kindest women in Key West.

Husband Robert with her. Robert I see each other about once a year. Ironically, always at the same place. The bar at La Trattoria.

The Spottswoods are one of Key West’s leading families. They are into everything. Robert’s father was at different times Sheriff and State Senator. He was friend to the Trumans and Kennedys. The Trumans stayed at his home when visiting Key West after Truman was out of office.

Robert and Elena are modest people. You would never know their position in the community and that of the family in general.

I hope it will not take another 15 years for me to run into Elena. I might not be here.

Stopped at Publix on the way home. Late night shopping easy. Very few shopping.

Tomorrow an important day. The public hearings begin in the Impeachment Inquiry. I will be glued to the TV set all day.

Tomorrow night, Syracuse basketball. I will still be at the TV set.

Tonight, Tuesday Talk with Key West Lou. Nine my time. Join me. So much going on in the world. I love ranting and raving and giving the news my twist as I view events. www.blogtalkradio.com/key-west-lou.

Enjoy your day!

  MORNING STEW #25 was originally published on Key West Lou