Category Archives: Caribbean

Globe Staff/file 1993

Mr. Walcott taught at Boston University and founded Boston Playwrights Theatre as a showcase for new plays.

WASHINGTON Derek Walcott, a Nobel laureate in literature who became one of the English-speaking worlds most renowned poets by portraying the lush, complex world of the Caribbean with a precise language that echoed the classics of literature, died March 17 at his home on the island of St. Lucia. He was 87.

A family statement did not disclose the cause.

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Mr. Walcott, who was born on the island of St. Lucia and published his first poem at 14, won the Nobel Prize in 1992, becoming the first writer from the Caribbean to receive the honor. In his poetry and plays, he appropriated Greek classics, local folklore, and the British literary canon in his explorations of the ambiguities of race, history, and cultural identity.

Although he taught for a quarter century at Boston University and later in England, Mr. Walcott created a distinctively Caribbean sensibility in his writing, rich with a sense of the weather, warmth, and the rhythms of island life. In one of his early poems, Islands, he declared that his poetic ambition was to write / Verse crisp as sand, clear as sunlight, / Cold as the curved wave, ordinary / As a tumbler of island water.

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His breakthrough came in 1962 with the collection In a Green Night, which celebrated the landscape and history of the Caribbean and explored Mr. Walcotts conflicted identity as a multiracial descendant of a colonial culture. In his 1962 poem A Far Cry From Africa, he wrote:

I who am poisoned with the blood of both,

Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?

I who have cursed

The drunken officer of British rule, how choose

Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?

Betray them both, or give back what they give?

The vibrant quality of Mr. Walcotts poetry was like entering a Renoir, British critic P.N. Furbank wrote in the Listener newspaper in 1962, full of summery melancholy, fresh and stinging colors, luscious melody, and intense awareness of place.

In 1973, Mr. Walcott published a book-length autobiographical poem, Another Life, that touched on his childhood, his spiritual growth, and his struggles to forge an independent identity as an artist.

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Mr. Walcott went on to publish more than 20 volumes of poetry and virtually as many plays, many of which were produced in the United States and throughout the Caribbean, often with the author as director.

His Nobel Prize citation noted, In him, West Indian culture has found its great poet.

As a pure composer of verse, Mr. Walcott had few equals in his time. He wrote in a smooth, carefully polished style, usually adhering to the traditional forms of English poetry, such as iambic pentameter, heroic couplets, and rhyme.

Caught between the virginal unpainted world of St. Lucia and the historic majesty of the English language, Mr. Walcott wrote in his poem The Schooner Flight in the 1970s, I had no nation now but the imagination.

Mr. Walcott started teaching English and playwriting at BU in 1981. He was accused several times of sexually harassing female students. He was a leading candidate for the position of professor of poetry at Britains University of Oxford in 2009, when the old charges of harassment resurfaced.

Mr. Walcott condemned what he called a low, degrading attempt at character assassination and withdrew his name from consideration. The professorship went to poet Ruth Padel, who soon resigned after admitting that she had forwarded the allegations to journalists.

Mr. Walcott published a new volume every year or two, drawing praise from such eminent literary critics as Helen Vendler of Harvard and Harold Bloom of Yale.

He enjoyed the friendship of some of the eras greatest names in poetry, including Robert Lowell, Joseph Brodsky, and Seamus Heaney. He received many literary honors and in 1981 was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, also known as a genius grant.

In 1990, two years before Mr. Walcott received the Nobel Prize, he published what many critics considered his masterpiece, the 325-page poem Omeros. The ambitious work reimagined the ancient Greek epics of Homer in modern-day St. Lucia.

What drove me was duty: duty to the Caribbean light, Mr. Walcott told the New York Times in 1990. The whole book is an act of gratitude. It is a fantastic privilege to be in a place in which limbs, features, smells, the lineaments and presence of the people are so powerful.

The poem has the scope of a novel, ranging from the Caribbean back in time to ancient Greece, the British Empire, and the 19th-century United States. Mr. Walcott evokes Joseph Conrad, Herman Melville, James Joyce, and, of course, Homer both the ancient Greek poet and Winslow Homer, the American painter of The Gulf Stream.

The characters in Omeros are fishermen who battle the weather and the sea and who struggle with their all-too-human desires and shortcomings. Helen of Troy is recast a haughty St. Lucian woman who works as a waitress and sells trinkets at the beach.

What I wanted to do in the book was to write about very simple people who I think are heroic, Mr. Walcott told NPR in 2007.

Derek Alton Walcott was born in Castries, the capital of St. Lucia. The island became an independent country in 1979 after being a British colony for 165 years.

Mr. Walcott had a twin brother, Roderick, who became a playwright, and an older sister, Pamela. Their father, a civil servant and skilled watercolor painter, died when Mr. Walcott was 1. His mother taught school.

While studying at English-language schools, Mr. Walcott became devoted to English poetry and received a scholarship to the University of the West Indies in Jamaica.

After teaching in St. Lucia, Grenada, and Jamaica, he received a Rockefeller Foundation grant, which he used to study theater in New York.

For years, Mr. Walcott wrote as much drama as poetry, and his plays were produced in Caribbean theaters, then in London and Toronto and, by the late 1960s, in off-Broadway theaters in New York.

His plays drew on folk elements and typically were written in a more casual, colloquial style than his poetry.

His play Dream on Monkey Mountain, produced off-Broadway, won an Obie Award in 1971. In 1998, he collaborated with singer-songwriter Paul Simon on the musical The Capeman, which had a short-lived run on Broadway.

In 1981, with some of his proceeds from the MacArthur grant, Mr. Walcott founded Boston Playwrights Theatre as a showcase for new plays. He wrote several pieces for the stage near BUs campus and affiliated with the university, including one, Walker, that takes a look at Bostons abolitionist roots through the eyes of the title character, a self-taught free black man.

The thing I wanted to do was to have the playwright in close contact with the actor, which is something in a professional theatre that you just dont get, he told the theater in an interview in 2007. I thought the thing that would be best for any playwright ... was to have a program in which the actors and the playwrights could relate immediately, and the actors could help in terms of the shaping of the scripts.

For those of us who knew and loved him, Dereks passing is a milestone in our lives certainly it is in mine, Kate Snodgrass, BU playwright professor and artistic director at the theater, wrote on the theaters website. And for the world, we have lost a needed presence, a gifted poet and playwright, a true literary giant.

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Derek Walcott, 87, Nobel laureate whose poetry celebrated the ... - The Boston Globe

March 21, 2017 One of the main things I set out to do as a food enthusiast is to put our own food in front of us; it matters not which part of the region you are from. My goal is simple appreciation. It is my hope that through the appreciation of our bounty, variety, and freshness, that we will strive to cook at home more often, buy what we produce, pass along cooking techniques that can only be learned by doing, and share know-how that cannot be found in a cookbook.

Sometimes the familiarity of our food can make us think that it is simple, ordinary, and unflattering. Way too often, it takes outside sources to make us realize that what we have is special and that it is food/dishes to be celebrated and uplifted. A few years ago I watched as a very famous TV chef rubbed her hands in glee in anticipation of a guest coming on her show to make Mexican-style scrambled eggs. Her enthusiasm was infectious so I stayed glued to the show; I'm always looking for new and different ways to cook familiar ingredients. When I saw the dish being made onions, tomatoes, minced hot peppers being sauted with beaten eggs mixed in I laughed, not in mockery, but with the pleasure that I already knew how to cook eggs like this. I grew up on this stuff!

What I took away from the show is that what is ordinary for someone is extraordinary for another, and, that we must constantly showcase and celebrate all of our food. Over the years, my preference for the ways in which I like my eggs has meant that I have not had this style of fried eggs in years. I made it the other day, and having not eaten eggs this way in such a long time, it brought back warm memories of growing up in Guyana. The eggs were absolutely delicious. I don't know why it has taken me so long to get back this childhood favourite.

Fried eggs, Caribbean style

1 tablespoon oil 1/2 cup chopped tomatoes Finely minced hot pepper, to taste Salt to taste 2 scallions, white & green parts, sliced wafer thin 2 large eggs, room temperature, lightly beaten

1. Add oil to pan and place over medium heat until the oil is hot. Toss in tomatoes and hot pepper along with salt to taste, stir to mix then reduce heat to low and cook until the tomatoes are soft.

2. Mix scallions with eggs and then add to pan with tomatoes; raise the heat just a little and cook, gently scrambling the eggs with the tomato mixture. Cook until the eggs are cooked through with big tender pieces of egg.

NOTE: Use white/yellow onions in place of scallions and parsley or finely minced Chinese celery(aka known as Guyanese celery), leaves only for the herb flavour.

Related post on Tastes Like Home: Crispy Fried Eggs

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Fried eggs, Caribbean style - Christian Science Monitor

According to Disneyland, about 400 million park attendees have ridden on Pirates of the Caribbean since it opened in 1967. That is an average of more than 20,000 a day. The ride is a little more than 15 minutes long.

Walt Disney (circled) posing with sculpted models used for some of the audio-animatronic figures in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. There are about 120 animated characters in Pirates, mostly human, and nine different animals.

Pirates of the Caribbean was the last Disneyland attraction Disney supervised at the park. Disney died about three months before the ride opened. The ride was originally conceptualized as a New Orleans-themed Blue Bayou Mart featuring a Pirate Wax Museum. Because of the success of the Matterhorns bobsleds in 1959, the concept of a boat ride through 1700s pirate times started to take shape.

The Pirates ride can handle about 2,300 to 2,400 people an hour.

BUILDING 1: The facade is based on the Cabildo building in New Orleans, the seat of the Spanish colonial government in 1799.

BUILDING 2: The facade is based on the Cabildo building in New Orleans, the seat of the Spanish colonial government in 1799.

ALONG THE WAY

1. Talking skull 2. Blue caverns 3. Skeletons 4. Stormy passage 5. Captain in bed The real skeleton is said to be hung on the headboard of the bed. All other skeletons are made out of plastic. 6. Treasure 7. Ship and fort After the ride was redone to use elements of the movie franchise, Captain Barbosas image and voice were added on the ship. 8. Extra boat storage behind the ride 9. Well scene 10. Bride auction 11. Chase scene 12. Singing trio 13. Buildings on fire The fire effect is made with sheets, lights and a fan. 14. Drunk with pigs 15. Jail scene 16. Shooting at TNT 17. Jack Sparrow and treasure 18. Map and parrot

GOING UP!: Conveyors are used to control the boats at the loading area.

THE LONG VOYAGE: The ride at Disneyland meanders along a 1,838-foot canal. That is approximately 1 13 laps around a quarter-mile track.

WATER WORLD: The ride contains about 750,000 gallons of water, which is the equivalent of: 55.6 average-size (21 feet diameter by 4 feet deep) pools

HERES WHAT THAT TALKING SKULL SAYS: Psst! Avast there! It be too late to alter course, mateys. And there be plundering pirates lurkin in evry cove, waitin to board. Sit closer together and keep your ruddy hands in board. That be the best way to repel boarders. And mark well me words, mateys: Dead men tell no tales! Ye come seekin adventure with salty old pirates, eh? Sure youve come to the proper place. But keep a weather eye open mates, and hold on tight. With both hands, if you please. Thar be squalls ahead, and Davy Jones waiting for them what dont obey.

FRANCHISE IN FILMS: Highest average domestic gross for movie franchises with at least two films (in millions).

FRANCHISE IN FILMS: Worldwide unadjusted gross by film in million.

Sources: Disneyland Resort, Box Office Mojo Photos: Staff, Disneyland Resorts

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Inside the legendary Pirates of the Caribbean ride 50 years later - The Mercury News

Margaret Schaffner spent the early days of her career among the high-end art community in East Hampton, New York. She jetted off for what was supposed to be a 10-day vacation with friends to Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica in the early 2000s and ended up extending her trip, whichlittle did she know thenwas the beginning of her life as an expat.

I kept being drawn back to the Caribbean and, after several stints back and forth, I

Margaret lived in Puerto Viejo until two years ago, when she and her son made the move to

There are benefits and drawbacks to each, and in my experience it really comes down to evaluating what kind of life youre trying to build and what your necessities are, she says.

Margaret says back when she first moved to Costa Rica, it was definitely cheaper to live on the Caribbean side, but today it will likely cost about the same on either coast. Different elements of your budget will vary, but overall the cost of living in both places is pretty comparable. With rental prices between $500 and $700 a month, and meals out costing as low as $5, many expats

The Caribbean is breathtakingly beautiful, its like living in a scene straight out of The Jungle Book, she explains. The nature is magical, its very un-touched. Youll be able to experience organic produce like youve never had in your life. Theres also easy access to a wide variety of medicinal plantsmany natural healers are drawn to this area.

Living on the Caribbean side will provide a fairly rustic, island-like experience. Homes are very private and spread out. Youre not going to find condos like you do on the Pacific side, Margaret says. Most homes will be simple, with outdoor kitchens run by gas. Its rare to find a home with air conditioning and if you do it will be expensive to run.

With fewer tourists passing through and a smaller expat community, Margaret says language could be viewed as a pro or a con depending on the person. I highly suggest speaking some Spanish or at least being prepared to learn, as youll find far fewer people who speak English on the Caribbean side. Also if someone wants to open a business, its important to note the smaller number of tourists.

The biggest difference between the two coasts in terms of climate is the rainy season. Rainy season can be very intense on the Caribbean side, so youll certainly need a good pair of rain bootsits entirely possible for it to rain for three weeks straight there, she said. With the weather and fewer resources in the region, you will typically also experience more frequent power and internet outages.

After enjoying the natural beauty of the Caribbean and learning to speak Spanish fluently, Margaret and her son made the move from Puerto Viejo to the beach-town, surfers haven of Tamarindo on the Pacific coast two years ago. We absolutely love it here. It was definitely the right choice for us, she said.

The biggest thing I found myself missing during our Caribbean days was a sense of community, Margaret says. My son, Odin, is a very active boy and especially for him, I was looking for more opportunity to build a friend network, for activity, and also for education.

In general, Margaret has found many of the Pacific coastal towns to be more developed and resources easier to access. Here, you can find more modern housing if you want it and air conditioning, for example, she says. And there are great school options for my son in addition to a ton of different activities for him to be involved in.

Margaret says the best thing about moving to Tamarindo has been finding that sense of community she and her son came to find. People here are just friendly and welcoming and very supportive of one another. For example, Odin is a talented surfer and the community here has completely rallied behind him; people put up money for sponsorships and come out to competitions to cheer him onthey truly want to see him succeed and that kind of community support feels really good.

Of course theres also Pacific coast sunsets, which are tough to rival.

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Caribbean or Pacific: Choose Your Paradise in Costa Rica - International Living

Derek Walcott, a Nobel laureate in literature who became one of the English-speaking worlds most renowned poets by portraying the lush, complex world of the Caribbean with a precise language that echoed the classics of literature, died March 17 at his home in Cap Estate, St. Lucia. He was 87.

His family issued a statement confirming his death, but the cause was not immediately disclosed.

Mr. Walcott, who was born on the island of St. Lucia and published his first poem at 14, won the Nobel Prize in 1992 and was the first writer from the Caribbean to receive the honor and the second black laureate in literature, after Nigerias Wole Soyinka.

In his poetry and plays, Mr. Walcott appropriated Greek classics, local folklore and the British literary canon in his explorations of the ambiguities of race, history and cultural identity.

Although he taught for years in the United States and later in England, Mr. Walcott created a distinctively Caribbean sensibility in his writing, rich with a sense of the weather, warmth and the rhythms of island life. In one of his early poems, Islands, he declared that his poetic ambition was to write / Verse crisp as sand, clear as sunlight, / Cold as the curved wave, ordinary / As a tumbler of island water.

His breakthrough came in 1962 with the collection In a Green Night, which celebrated the landscape and history of the Caribbean and explored Mr. Walcotts conflicted identity as a multiracial descendant of a colonial culture. In his 1962 poem A Far Cry From Africa, he wrote:

I who am poisoned with the blood of both,

Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?

I who have cursed

The drunken officer of British rule, how choose

Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?

Betray them both, or give back what they give?

The vibrant quality of Mr. Walcotts poetry was like entering a Renoir, British critic P.N. Furbank wrote in the Listener newspaper in 1962, full of summery melancholy, fresh and stinging colors, luscious melody, and intense awareness of place.

In 1973, Mr. Walcott published a book-length autobiographical poem, Another Life, that touched on his childhood, his spiritual growth and his struggles to forge an independent identity as an artist.

Mr. Walcott went on to publish more than 20 volumes of poetry and virtually as many plays, many of which were produced in the United States and throughout the Caribbean, often with the author as director.

His Nobel Prize citation noted, In him, West Indian culture has found its great poet.

As a pure composer of verse, Mr. Walcott had few equals in his time. He wrote in a smooth, carefully polished style, usually adhering to the traditional forms of English poetry, such as iambic pentameter, heroic couplets and rhyme.

Caught between the virginal unpainted world of St. Lucia and the historic majesty of the English language, Mr. Walcott wrote in his poem The Schooner Flight in the 1970s, I had no nation now but the imagination.

He published a new volume every year or two, drawing praise from such eminent literary critics as Helen Vendler of Harvard University and Harold Bloom of Yale University. Mr. Walcott taught at Boston University for more than 25 years, beginning in 1981.

He enjoyed the friendship of some of the eras greatest names in poetry, including Robert Lowell, Joseph Brodsky and Seamus Heaney. He received many literary honors and in 1981 was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, also known as a genius grant.

In 1990, two years before Mr. Walcott received the Nobel Prize, he published what many critics considered his masterpiece, the 325-page poem Omeros. The ambitious work reimagined the ancient Greek epics of Homer in modern-day St. Lucia.

What drove me was duty: duty to the Caribbean light, Mr. Walcott told the New York Times in 1990. The whole book is an act of gratitude. It is a fantastic privilege to be in a place in which limbs, features, smells, the lineaments and presence of the people are so powerful.

The poem has the scope of a novel, ranging from the Caribbean back in time to ancient Greece, the British Empire and the 19th-century United States. Mr. Walcott evokes Joseph Conrad, Herman Melville, James Joyce and, of course, Homer both the ancient Greek poet and Winslow Homer, the American painter of The Gulf Stream.

The title, Omeros, is the modern name for Homer, but not without other island associations:

O was the conch-shells invocation, mer was

both mother and sea in our Antillean patois,

os, a grey bone and the white surf as it crashes

and spreads its sibilant collar on the lace shore

The characters in Omeros are fishermen who battle the weather and the sea and who struggle with their all-too-human desires and shortcomings. Helen of Troy is recast a haughty St. Lucian woman who works as a waitress and sells trinkets at the beach.

What I wanted to do in the book was to write about very simple people who I think are heroic, Mr. Walcott told NPR in 2007. You can see some splendid examples of black men on the beach who can look like silhouettes on a Greek vase, and that was one of the images that I had in mind.

The result, Australian writer Michael Heyward wrote in The Washington Post in 1990, was that Mr. Walcott had written a massive, beguiling, sorrowful, triumphant poem He gives the impression that the whole of English is at his disposal, that he can make poetry out of anything he wants to say.

Marking the passage of time

Derek Alton Walcott was born Jan. 23, 1930, in Castries, the capital of St. Lucia, a 240-square-mile island in the Lesser Antilles of the Caribbean. It became an independent country in 1979 after being a British colony for 165 years.

Mr. Walcott had a twin brother, Roderick, who became a playwright, and an older sister, Pamela. Their father, a civil servant and skilled watercolor painter, died when Mr. Walcott was 1. His mother taught school and worked as a seamstress.

The Walcott children spoke a local patois that was a blend of English and French, derived from the two colonial powers that settled St. Lucia. While studying at English-language schools, Mr. Walcott became devoted to English poetry and was encouraged by a small group of artists. He began painting at an early age and was 14 the first time a local newspaper published one of his poems.

Mr. Walcott received a scholarship to the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica, where he majored in French, Latin and Spanish before graduating in 1953.

He taught in St. Lucia, Grenada and Jamaica, and in 1957 received a Rockefeller Foundation grant, which he used to study theater in New York. He lived primarily in Trinidad in the 1960s.

For years, Mr. Walcott wrote as much drama as poetry, and his plays were produced in Caribbean theaters, then in London and Toronto and, by the late 1960s, in off-Broadway theaters in New York. His plays drew on folk elements and typically were written in a more casual, colloquial style than his poetry.

His play Dream on Monkey Mountain, produced off-Broadway, won an Obie Award in 1971. In 1998, he collaborated with singer-songwriter Paul Simon on the musical The Capeman, which had a short-lived run on Broadway.

During Mr. Walcotts teaching career, primarily at Boston University, he was accused several times of sexually harassing female students. He was a leading candidate for the position of professor of poetry at Britains University of Oxford in 2009 when the old charges of harassment resurfaced.

Mr. Walcott condemned what he called a low, degrading attempt at character assassination and withdrew his name from consideration. The professorship went to poet Ruth Padel, who soon resigned after admitting that she had forwarded the allegations to journalists.

Mr. Walcott later held an academic chair at the University of Essex in Britain, but he lived primarily in St. Lucia, where he maintained diligent work habits, rising before dawn, writing for hours, then painting in the afternoon. He was usually in bed by 7:30 p.m.

He remained productive into his later years, writing plays and volumes of poetry, including White Egrets (2010), which won Britains T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, and the 2014 collection The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948-2013.

Mr. Walcotts marriages to Fay Moston, Margaret Ruth Maillard and Norline Metivier ended in divorce. Survivors include his longtime companion, Sigrid Nama, a former art gallery owner; a son from his first marriage and two daughters from his second marriage.

Mr. Walcott wrote of the sea and the lush burgeoning of life of the tropical islands from which he hailed, but from his earliest days as a poet, he marked the passage time and touched on the theme of death.

After his twin brother died in 2000, Mr. Walcott looked in the mirror and recorded his impressions in his 2004 book-length poem The Prodigal:

Old man coming through the glass, who are you?

I am you. Learn to acknowledge me,

the cottony white hair, the heron-shanks,

and, when you and your reflection bend,

the leaf-green eyes under the dented forehead,

do you think Time makes exceptions, do you think

Death mutters, Maybe Ill skip this one?

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Derek Walcott, Nobel laureate whose poetry celebrated the Caribbean, dies at 87 - Washington Post

CBS San Francisco Bay Area

Caribbean Poet, Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott Dies At 87 CBS San Francisco Bay Area Walcott was a prolific and versatile poet whose dazzling, painterly work captured the essence of his native Caribbean and earned him a reputation as one of the greatest writers of the second half of the 20th century. Walcott was long the most prominent ... Derek Walcott, Nobel laureate whose poetry celebrated the Caribbean, dies at 87Washington Post Derek Walcott, Who Wrote Of Caribbean Beauty And Bondage, Dies At 87NPR Derek Walcott, Poet and Nobel Laureate of the Caribbean, Dies at 87New York Times Los Angeles Times -The Root all 151 news articles »

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Caribbean Poet, Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott Dies At 87 - CBS San Francisco Bay Area

Awesome! Michelle Neil is an awesome sister who is on the move. In acknowledgement of March, Womens History Month, we have decided to feature Neil. She is a successful, well-rounded individual who is making our Caribbean community very proud to call her our own. Yes, our own Michelle Neil was recently appointed by Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf to the State of Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency. In this capacity she will work directly with the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention committee which is the planning, coordinating and policy-setting body for the commonwealth.

I feel extremely honored and grateful for the opportunity to serve on this committee, stated Neil proudly. I am looking forward to working with others who have impacted changes that will impact the juvenile population. Neil confirmed that she was recommended to Wolf by either a deputy, chief or possibly the District Attorney. They were involved in the final decision-making.

Neil has accomplished a lot in life. Since 2003, she has been the Senior Victim-Witness Advocate in the Juvenile Court Department of the Philadelphia District Attorneys Office. In this capacity she has seen both negative and positive changes occur in the juvenile system. For example, in 2016, there was a 20 percent decrease in overall juvenile arrests and 24 percent decrease in juvenile crimes in the schools. The decrease, said Neil, is as a result of diversion programs such as Youth Aid Panel (YAP) and Police Diversion programs. On the other hand, juvenile cases involving guns have increased approximately 6 percent.

Neil, who was born in Jamaica, earned a Bachelor of Arts in Criminal Justice from Temple University and a Master of Theological Studies from Palmer Theological Seminary. She is well qualified. She is also an adjunct professor of Juvenile Delinquency and Juvenile Justice at Harcum College. She is a volunteer with YAP, a volunteer with Team Jamaica Bickle and a very active member of her church. How does she do it? How does she balance it all?

Everyone needs a good support system and this lady is no different. She shared that at work, she has strong support. One of the chiefs and a former deputy are extremely helpful in pointing me in the right direction, she said. They help me to navigate the new role that I have taken on. However, my faith in God is what gives me balance. My favorite Bible verse is Philippians 4:13, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me; therefore, if God puts an opportunity in my way, then he will certainly equip me to do the job. He did that with teaching. Teaching comes naturally for me. It is a joy to be standing in front of individuals who have a desire to learn. It doesnt seem like work.

When asked how she is able to balance all of these responsibilities, Neil said that she is currently divorced with no children, so balancing is a lot easier than if she was married with children. According to Neil, time management skills are extremely important.

Her advice to young women aspiring to be great and successful in a competitive world: Females throughout the world are not being recognized for what they can contribute. They are not being paid like their male counterparts. Get your education. Apply for internships in your desired field, volunteer, speak to accomplished individuals in your desired field. Give your best in whatever you do. Learn as much as you can in all areas.

Neil said that she credits her Caribbean background for her success. It taught me all about hard work, she added. It also taught me to give my all and focus on whatever project I am working on. I approach everything that I do with a spirit of excellence. I am fully aware that this is only the beginning.

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Recognizing Caribbean community's on-the-move Michelle Neil during Women's History Month - The Philadelphia Tribune

Slide: 1 / of 2. Caption: Caption: Haitian students participate in an Earthquake and Tsunami Emergency drill in Cap-Haitien, on May 6, 2016. HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP/Getty Images

Slide: 2 / of 2. Caption: CARIBE WAVE Photo Archive/NOAA

If you happen to be sunbathing on a quiet Caribbean beach next week, dont be alarmed if a helicopter flies overhead warning everyone to evacuate to higher ground.

Its just a drill. A tsunami drill, actually, called Caribe Wave 2017, that will mobilize more than 300,000 people in 48 countries and territories in the Caribbean basin. The simulation will test the communication systems that connect those communities to the seismologists in Hawaii whose sensors and algorithms predict tsunamis. And perhaps more importantly, it will test the ability of local officials to get large numbers of people to drop what they are doing and move to safety.

Advertisements on local media make sure that teachers, bosses, and hotel waiters in each country know whats coming. Local police and volunteers put on orange safety vests and direct traffic; choppers issue loudspeaker warnings. But some things cant be replicated. Sometimes, tsunamis create weirdness along the seashore as the ocean recedes for long distances just before the waves roll up. The effect can be mesmerizingand some people are killed when they wander down to the beach to pick up shells or explore the ocean floor right before the big wave hits.

If it sounds involved, it is: UNESCO distributes a 147-page handbook to local officials that details how the whole show will go down next week. The chain of communications starts at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii, which uses the US Geological Surveys thousands of seismic sensors to estimate where and when a tsunami will hit. Each countrys emergency center receives that information, including wave heights and local maps of earthquake effects, through a dedicated satellite line, fax, or e-maileven Tweets and texts.

This exercise is meant to test that chain, says Bernardo Aliaga, tsunami coordinator at UNESCOs Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission in Paris. Some countries are more top down, the police will just give the order and evacuate the coastal zone. Other communities are organized through their local leaders to proceed in an orderly way through established routes.

Some placeslike the French island of Guadalupeget involved big time. There, tens of thousands of schoolchildren, hotel guests, and government workers will (calmly) run, walk, or drive to higher ground on March 21 for the evacuation drill. On islands like the Bahamas, only a few emergency officials acknowledge receipt of the tsunami center warning.

While most visitors probably dont think about the chances of a killer wave when booking a Caribbean vacation, they do happen. NOAA officials estimate tsunamis caused by earthquakes, landslides, or volcanic activity have killed 3,500 people since the mid-19th century, including a 1946 event that killed 2,000 people in the Dominican Republic and a 1918 Puerto Rico quake-spawned wave that killed 140. The Caribbeans tropical islands and coral reefs sit along the junction of several tectonic plates or above subduction zones, where two plates meet and one slides under the other, down into Earths mantle. Other islands, like Haiti, straddle strike-slip faults, where plates rub up against each other.

While the region is seismically active, what really matters is the location of the epicenter and how many people lie in a tsunamis path. Tourism fuels the Caribbean, with nearly $30 billion spent in 2015 by 29 million non-cruise ship visitors, according to the Caribbean Tourism Organization. There could be 500,000 people along the beaches in any given day, says Christa von Hillebrandt-Andrade, manager of the National Weather Service Caribbean Tsunami Warning Program based in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico.

Von Hillebrandt-Andrade and her colleagues have been running these evacuation and emergency response drills in the Caribbean since 2011. This year, the exercise will test three scenarios simulating separate earthquakes: one off the coast of Costa Rica, another off the coast of Cuba and a third northeast of the Lesser Antilles.

On the French territories of Martinique and Guadalupe, Tuesdays tsunami drill will be followed by a two-day search-and-rescue exercise that will see 500 specialized units flying in from France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Spain, according to Patrick Tyburn, tsunami coordinator for the four French islands (Martinique, Guadalupe, St. Barts, and St. Martin) and civil defense chief for the French Lesser Antilles.

These European crews will set up at an abandoned hospital on Martinique, bringing in volunteer victims who have been injured by the incoming wave. We try to take into account tourism, Tyburn says. We used helicopters during the exercise to make alerts on the beaches, and we also started to work with the port to organize evacuation of cruise ships in case of a tsunami.

While visitors might not see tsunami evacuation route signs at every beachside bar, more and more hotels are taking the threat seriously. Staff at many hotels are now training for the rare, yet potentially catastrophic, possibility of tsunami emergencies, according to Aliaga.

They realize there is a cost to not being prepared, says Aliaga. And they are not willing to pay that cost.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is avoiding costs of their own. President Trumps proposed budget calls for eliminating 14 percent of NOAAs budgetincluding a tsunami preparedness grant program. It would help local officials buy signs and sirens, and conduct drills along parts of the US coast that are most at risk from tsunamis. The Caribbean may be prepared for a tsunami, but the Pacific Northwest may not be as lucky.

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The Caribbean Is Mobilizing 300,000 People for an Epic Tsunami ... - WIRED

Chinas involvement in the Caribbean has steadily increased during the last decade, evidenced by the number of public buildings and infrastructure constructed by Chinese companies.

The Jamaican Government and China are contemplating the building of a new parliament, further deepening the relationship that has grown with little study on its implications for both Jamaica and China a type of David and Goliath story, but with the main characters working together as allies rather than enemies.

Why is China engaged in a region of small developing countries of questionable strategic value? Why are Caribbean governments so receptive to the Peoples Republic of China? Why do some regional states side with Taiwan against the One China policy? Why are Caribbean exports to one of the worlds largest markets so small? What is the region doing to attract more Chinese tourists?

The answers to these and many other questions can be found in the book: Dragon in the Caribbean written by Ambassador Dr Richard L Bernal, pro-vice chancellor of The University of the West Indies (UWI) where the much anticipated book will be launched tomorrow at 6:00 pm at the UWIs Regional Headquarters on Mona Road.

Guest speaker will be Dr Peter Phillips, former minister of finance and former lecturer at UWI, with remarks from Sir Alister McIntyre and comments from Sir Hilary Beckles, noted historian and UWI vice-chancellor. The event will be followed by a reception courtesy of LASCO and is open to the public. The book, which is not yet in bookstores, will be on sale at the launch.

One of the principal recommendations of the book is that, given the importance of the relationship with China, the Caribbean needs to learn more about that Asian giant, its history, culture, economic prowess, and political system.

Professor Franklin Knight of Johns Hopkins University suggests that Dragon in the Caribbean adds significantly to the understanding and appreciation of the policy-making powers at play in the relationship between the Caribbean and China. He notes that the book provides an overview of Chinas changing position and rise in power in the global landscape as well as its growing economic and political presence in the Caribbean.

The nature, extent and character of this development is then examined and analysed by reviewing development assistance, trade and foreign investment in the Caribbean. Bernal, the former Jamaican ambassador to the United States, outlines some of the considerations and motivations of China and the countries of the Caribbean for deepening their relationship, and discusses the challenges and opportunities for the Caribbean that this relationship presents in the immediate future.

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Bernal unleashes 'Dragon in the Caribbean' - Jamaica Observer

TEPIC, MEXICO

Twice a week, fisherman Romould Compton puts on scuba gear to dive to the seabed and clean tiny elkhorns growing in the coral nursery off the Caribbean island of Carriacou, tending them until they can be transplanted to a damaged reef nearby.

He hopes his conservation work will help to bring back more of the fish, such as red snapper, king butterfish and hind, that many islanders depend on.

"In my area we depend on the reef for our survival and livelihoods, and a lot of reef is dead," said Compton by phone from Windward, Carriacou, one of the lush, mountainous islands that make up Grenada in the southeast of the Caribbean.

"A lot of unemployment has been happening so we've got to turn to the sea to keep our livelihood going."

Across the Caribbean, scores of projects are underway to restore battered coral reefs and replant damaged mangroves, crucial to livelihoods from fishing and income from the millions of tourists who flock to the tropical beaches each year.

The intricate reefs and salt-tolerant mangrove swamps also offer protection against storms and hurricanes on climate-vulnerable islands which often lack resources to build extensive engineered coastal defenses.

Insurers are now looking closely at how ecosystems can help bolster coastal resilience, while high-tech models help determine how new hotels and infrastructure might impact the fragile ecological balance as well as local communities.

"When you talk to the prime minister of any country in the Caribbean, they absolutely recognize the path of climate change," said Luis Solorzano, executive director of The Nature Conservancy's (TNC) program in the Caribbean, which is working to restore marine habitats.

"They're also thinking, instead of providing assistance, what can we do to prevent, to try and minimize the expected damage of what we know is going to be an increasing frequency of extreme events," he said.

Using ecosystems to help buffer against extreme events such as hurricanes and storm surges could generate cost-savings of "billions if not trillions" of dollars, he said.

Climate resistance

At the Mote Marine Laboratory in Florida, scientists are trying to replicate the sea conditions they expect to see in 50 to 100 years to determine which corals are the hardiest, then cross strains to produce climate-resistant species that can be transplanted onto reefs across the Caribbean, said David Vaughan, who manages Mote's reef restoration program.

One of Vaughan's most important discoveries came by chance: He accidentally shattered an elkhorn coral and found micro-fragmentation can cause it to grow up to 40 times faster.

"If people think climate change is just a theory, they should just look at that wonderful thermometer in the field that's called corals and that'll tell them differently," said Vaughan, whose laboratory works with TNC and produces 1,000 corals a day, including bulbous brain and mountain corals.

He hopes the new coral "offspring" will be "better prepared in the future for whatever man or mother nature hands to them."

The 63-year-old, who has vowed to plant a million corals by the time he retires, said Mote is planning a laboratory to train up to 50 people each week from around the world, who could eventually replicate its coral restoration project.

With that scale-up, "we could literally plant a billion corals around the world," he said.

Getting ahead

Alongside bringing in tourist dollars, healthy coral reefs, seagrasses and salt-tolerant mangroves provide habitats for many species that generate an income for fishermen from spiny lobsters in Belize to bonefish in the Bahamas.

Reefs can also act like breakwaters to dramatically reduce wave strength, while mangroves can buffer against hurricane winds and storm surges.

Marine scientist Michael Beck calculates coral reefs can slash up to 97 percent of the wave energy that would otherwise hit the shoreline, while a 100-meter-wide (330 feet) band of mangrove can cut wave height by up to two-thirds.

High-tech modelling is helping Caribbean governments bolster coastal resilience by demonstrating how development can affect coastal ecosystems, livelihoods and property, said Katie Arkema, lead scientist at the Natural Capital Project, which has used its technology in Belize and the low-lying islands of the Bahamas.

"What we seek to do is understand how will our decisions and the decisions of governments ... affect ecosystems and how in turn will those ecosystem changes affect people," said Arkema.

The World Bank, which is helping pilot a coastal insurance project offering reduced premiums to governments working to make the region's over-exploited fisheries more resilient, said Jamaica, Grenada and St. Lucia were among those interested.

But payouts would likely hinge on countries agreeing to invest a slice of the money in marine habitats, he said.

"Increasingly, Caribbean governments are finding ways to make better use of their marine resources, [to] take advantage of their marine ecosystems, the natural assets that are so important to them," said Miguel Angel Jorge, senior fisheries specialist with the World Bank.

"They want to be much smarter about how they invest and plan with the likely climate impacts in mind."

In Grenville, Grenada, where many low-income families depend on fishing, efforts to boost coastal resilience were partly driven by the community which is involved in projects to replant mangroves and establish an artificial reef, said Nealla Frederick, TNC's Eastern Caribbean conservation planner.

"Just everybody has recognized this is happening and wants to try to get ahead of it," she said.

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Caribbean Islands Count on Coral to Build Up Coastal Resilience - Voice of America