I am currently listening to the dissolution of a government as the results come in from the polling stations across Barbados. The Barbados Labour Party has been in power for fourteen years and called elections a scant two weeks ago.
Media houses have raked in money hand over fist in the NY style blitz of advertising, hardhitting jingles by top calypsonians, posters, billboards, the works. The erstwhile Prime Minister has graciously conceded and emphasized in his concession speech that in a democracy it is what the people want that counts. Here every vote counts and it is the voice of the people, not an electoral college, that decides who will govern us.
This brief campaign has been characterised by a call for change because it has been felt that after their long tenure of power the Barbados Labour Party had become complacent and arrrogant and forgotten that they are the servants of the people. The Democratic Labour Party, the main opponent, has in its time served long and comfortably and been ousted on a call for change.
The people have spoken. power has changed hands and we have a new government.
No bloodshed. No violence. Very little negative campaigning. And tomorrow business will go on as usual, and we will wait with interest to see whether the longterm projects initiated by the BLP will be finished with ease or bogged down in renegotiations of contracts and the like. We will watch and see if the promises of protecting our land from wholesale purchase by non-nationals will be kept (sorry Oprah!), whether the some of the things that sounded so tempting (as well as unlikely in the long run) will come to be.
We are a small country, 166 square miles, we are highly dependent on imports and our economic mainstay is tourism with the decline of cane sugar as a well subsidized economic asset. Things cannot really change very much. It will be the Dems insteads of the Bees. It will be interesting to be here through this historic change of government. All that remains is to confirm how much of a landslide it has been.
Furball does not actually answer to any name. He responds to the sound of running water, the clink of a fork on china or the snap of pop top can. Verbal cues are just not in his repertoire.
I see very little of Furball now. Apparently my job is done. I rescued him, resuscitated and fed him. Introduced him to the greater world of catdom and now am a place where kitty chow and the occasional chicken grow.
He has been restricted to the porch because although he used the litter box provided apparently he views the whole world as a toilet. Especially any neat pile of freshly laundered clothes.
And then there are the fleas. It got to the point that I was bathing him everyday to keep him and my apartment flea-free despite diatomaceous earth and myriad other natural non- toxic to Furballs and to Bajan recipes, and then in desperation driven by an inborn dislike of having little creatures bite me on the ankles I bombed the place. Three times.
At least now the little buggers that hop onto my ankle are really little. I think I am killing them off one generation at a time. Keeping Furball in does not work. he yowls. The minute he goes out, the gang appears and they rush off to some cat mall somewhere filled with mice and crickets to be caught and bring home more fleas as presents . So he gets a separate apartment for those time he drops by for a place to sleep and do his laundry.
This morning as I filled the kettle I could see Furball and the fluffy tailed nitwit who is his closest friend playing hide and seek around a tree trunk. Necks stretched as little whiskered faces edged an eye and eartip around corners while the other ear turned backward listening for any approach from the rear.
Paws were lifted and placed with exquisite care not to disturb a blade of grass and give a warning and they circled the tree in both directions, always a tree trunk apart for about fifteen minutes then they suddenly met in the middle and exploded upwards, paws spread wide as if to hug, then chased each other round in kitty orbits that covered the whole of the backyard before they saw me watching and twinkletoed it up the stairs so fast their paws blurred.
The truly fascinating part was by the time I prepared two plates of food and opened up the backdoor, my porch was a seething mass of orange and white cats plus a grey tabby and a calico. it appears my breakfast guests have increased their number to seven.
Someone is spreading the news!
The wind is slamming all my doors while the rain is setting people on a mad dash for shelter. Bajans do not like the rain. I, with my British mother, am an anomaly. I do not carry an umbrella with me at all times to shelter from the sun. I do not retreat to the nearest overhang when rain threatens. I do not run shrieking for said overhang when rain actually falls.
I am considered - the kind would say - eccentric because I am untouched by rain. Indeed, I have been known to walk through it unshielded and reach my destination with no more than a damp drop or two on my shoulders. Not some supernatural skill, merely raindrops so widely spaced one can just avoid them if one is in a mood for mischief. Alas, I frequently am. In a mood for mischief.
In NY in the snow I would create footprints that seemed to pass through mailboxes and trees, here I content myself with seemingly magical powers for walking through the rain and staying dry, needless to say it does not always work. If needless why did I say it? Because I could and it fit the rhythm of the sentence that I wanted to create.
Right now the rain has stopped and the air smells green with moisture. Dark brown secrets as the high notes with just a trace of slaughtered frog, murdered by some careless car, washed from the road into the wind by Nature's birdbath moment.
I have spent six hours clearing clutter. Opening the pathways in my life for chi to flow and spur me on my quest for deep self-caring moments. It is a melancholy truth that I am much nicer to other people than I am to myself. Not that I treat myself badly.
I leave relationships and jobs that suck; I eat well, I lavish books upon myself whenever I travel and can sink into the heaven of a bookstore of more than 40 square feet! I say no when I do not want to do something, say it and make it stick.
I also expect that I will cope, on my own, with whatever life and the Universe choose to offer me; a broken car horn, a leaking tap and I head to the internet for instruction rather than the phone book for a plumber or mechanic. I do not ask for help, an echo of a childhood where I was the oldest and expected to be perfect, expected to cope, expected to perform.
And now I stumble over deep pockets of anger that have seethed for years and tell myself I am wrong for feeling it. Which blatantly is bullshit. Or b*llsh*t if I have to be PC. Which I abhor. A mealymouthed hypocrisy which makes perfectly good words unusable and stands on the sidelines cheering each time our soldiers kill. And there's a piece of anger peeping out if ever I saw one!
So I am practising to embrace my rage and pamper me. to treat me how I would wish to treat a child of mine. I read somewhere that we keep giving birth to ourselves.
I wonder what this me will grow up to be....
I just wrote a blog and when I did the font size and colour thing the whole page turned an odd colour and disappeared.
My immortal words (Hah!) are nowhere to be found. Believe me I have looked!
I guess it was meant for my eyes only.
We are suprisingly damp creatures, we humans. We bleed if cut. We cry when laughing or grieving. We spit. We pearl with sweat on exertion or when exposed to heat, internal or external. We ooze mucous. We are just stuffed to bursting with 'bodily fluids'.
And where does it all come from? I know I do not drink enough water. And I consume enough caffeine to have a diuretic effect so why am I still wet? As a blood donor I have learned to hydrate thoroughly for at least a couple of days before offering up my arm.
That way I can bleed out my donation much more quickly as my miser system does not fear terminal dehydration of the brain and cling to every corpuscle on its way to freedom. Then I drink lavishly afterward to give the greedy system what it needs to replace its loss.
Other times I can go for days with no more water passing my lips than what it takes to brush my teeth three times a day. I dislike the taste of water. And it has a taste.
New York water is actually the most palatable I have had, here in Bim the water is filtered through the limestone of our bedrock but now it lacks the cold bite I remember from my childhood. Indeed, at times the brownish yellow junk that stains the laundry defeats Pur and Brita and then if I drink it at all it is water boiled and tasteless without a teabag.
So once more I drink tea, very few cups of coffee in Barbados, even at the finest of establishments are worth drinking. In April in the States I will dive into a vat of coffee until my kidneys scream for mercy and the palms of my hands flame red because my liver cannot clear the toxins fast enough. It will be worth having to drink water to flush the system out.
They say we need water to live, I am sure we do, but I miss coffee more.
to find staff?
My new newbie announcer was sent from our sister company, a newspaper, last week. After a week in training she is on the air, supervised, and apart from a little natural nervousness has been doing quite well.
The studio is simple - if a little archaic - and you can flip in and out of automation if you need a break. The only things that have to be done live really would be joining the BBC for news and reading the weather and the occasional commercial script.
My own show is different because it is advertised as live from midnight till morning so I am a constant presence through the night.
Anyway, yesterday about half hour into the shift my new one starts to cry and says she needs more time to observe (at least two more weeks) she is overwhelmed at talking to everybody in Barbados and do I really think she is ready to be on the air.
Now I need someone for that time slot. My managing director and I have rotated through that slot since the first week of December rather than throwing it back to full automation bar the news and weather because we are working toward more "live" radio, not less. Yet despite our own needs, both of us would pull triple shifts before we put someone we did not consider 'ready ' on the air.
Last evening the two of us looked at each other in dismay because once a trainee is familiar with the system the only way to learn is to be on air and do the job.
I think the problem started at the beginning of the day when my director and I met with 'new' and pointed out that she was late in for the fourth time this week. And although once she is practiced at doing the set up she can come in an hour before airtime right now we want her shift to run from 1 to 7.
Two hours prep and four in the studio. Not come in at 1:45, go to the kitchen make soup, exchange endless text messages with her friends and finally make herself available around 2:30 and then break for lunch half an hour before going on air.
Any way you cut it, it is only a six hour work day, and although it requires careful attention, if you follow the log and are organized it is a snap. I had never actually DJ'd for myself before I started MTM. Always worked with an operator. All I did in the studio was turn on a microphone so the first time I did my shift here I had had fifteen minutes familiarisation with the controls and I got a lot of things wrong.
Two songs going out at the same time, mixing up the pots for the two CD players, switching the mic on but forgetting to pot up. And every mistake showed me how to do it right. With "new" I am right there to give direction so nothing dire happens but I am going to allow her to make some errors because it is the best way to learn.
I am feeling discouraged. "New' isn't sure she wants to be an announcer. If she doesn't find her place with us she is out of a job and that may be her only motivation for being there. And that is not enough.
To be good on air it cannot be just a pay cheque, there has to be something more. And going back to observation will not change the fact that when she speaks people will hear her. That is another issue resolved only by actually doing the job.
I need to find a way to make this work and as nurture and supportive encouragement don't seem to be getting anywhere I think perhaps it is time for the steel girder that runs up the center of this cream puff to make its appearance.
As someone once said to me, you can help someone get a job, you can show someone how to do a job, but you cannot help them keep a job. They have to do that for themselves.
I have always believed I can do anything I put my mind to. Not necessarily do it brilliantly, or even well, but do it. From time to time I have allowed naysayers to shake the confidence I was born with. The innate knowledge that we are all born with. That we can do it. And the minute I doubted, my ability to achieve left me.
This is currently on my mind because I have just, singlehandedly, carried a piece of furniture that weighed 175 pounds up twenty two stairs. It took four people to get it across a road and into my car. Once I got it home I was faced with the task of getting it up those stairs. With just me to achieve the deed.
So I did what I always do when I know I can achieve anything I put my mind to. I broke the dilemma down into its component parts and tackled the problem one piece at a time. In this particular case literally. It took me two days to find hex keys to fit, a deal of effort and sweat to persuade well-set screws to turn, but the whole came apart enough that the individual pieces, while heavy, did not surpass my ability to carry them.
If that had not worked, my fall back plan was a moving blanket, some stout card, some sturdy cardboard and the right place to stand.
It is unfortunate that I, along with so many others, find it easier to forget that we are designed to survive and thrive, we are able to achieve amazing feats of mental and physical performance, no doubt metaphysical feats as well, if we would just trust the process and stop resisting.
I have trained my inner self to listen for those ugliest of words and phrases, should, have to and can't. Most times when they rise to the surface of my mind or get to the barrier of my lips my filters catch them, I stop, take stock and look for a place to stand.
I have learned that the actual doing counts. I do not need to draw like Da Vinci, just like me, I do not (though I would love to) have to capture light in my watercolours the way Turner did - who knows ? He might crave my touch with pastry or a fruit punch - I just need to put the effort out and give it the best and most I have.
Not an onerous task, a life dedicated to looking for the right place to stand.
Thank you, Archimedes!
Bliss! Four days in a row. Mine to play with. Mine to go to the mechanic, to go shopping, to lie in bed and do nothing. Whatever I choose to do. Mine!
And a total surprise because I fully expected to be working with the new trainee today and tomorrow. She is enthusiastic and exhausting like a kitten or puppy that has discovered the joy of running very very fast and bouncing all over the furniture.
My boss wants to take some time off next week and as we pull the same hours and workload and she has to be there for wrapping up December's accounts she told me stay home. Take a long weekend. It will balance out the fact that neither of us has had more than three quarters of a day since the first week in December.
The numbness in my hand has spread from two fingers to pretty much the whole left side of my body, not debilitating particularly, just an odd sensation as below the surface of the skin the feeling is still there.
The doctors stroke their chins and wonder why there are no lesions to be found in my brain and I wonder why I pay them; use acupressure points to soothe arrhythmias and calm the ringing in my ears and speculate about the side effects of elevated blood pressure, low sleep and heavy stress, all things reported and dismissed because there is no MD among the letters I could tack after my name. Bah humbug on the medical profession!
What is it about doctors? I have lived in this body more than half a century (a scary thought). I feed it, bathe it, stretch and bend it, touch and cherish it and know it well. It tells me things and I have learned to listen carefully and on those rare occasions when I brave the medical domain I report in full. And they nod and go yes yes and sorry we find nothing wrong. Then I say is this normal, they say no and are you sure that's what you feel. It is a miracle that none of them are dead. At my hand.
And I have four days to play! To go for achingly long walks that push me to the extremes of breath and muscle. To sink beneath the the water and empty all the air from every corner of my lungs and lie there on the bottom, ninja sand, to pop up suddenly and feel the sting of salt in eyes and every little scratch that living has stamped into the glossy hide that holds me all together.
Four endless, blissful days!
Of course each day, each moment, is an opportunity to start over but the beginning of a new year tends to stand and wag an accusing finger; so many people are making resolutions, plans to change, articles in the papers, on the radio, address the matter of change, revision, repositioning in life.
And I wonder, this year do I want to make any other changes in my life?
In 2005 I left NY to come back to Barbados leaving almost half a lifetime (complete with its own shifts and changes) behind me.
From 2005 to 2007 I found a place to live, replaced all the things it turned out I could not live without, and relearned the reefs and currents of the job market here, struggling to find a balance between diplomacy and hypocrisy as my New York call a spade a spade bluntness offended sensibilities left and right.
I suppose telling a board that their questions were discriminatory and I didn't consider their job worth getting a darker tan and risking skin cancer over was less than diplomatic. So instead of working for a hidebound government stamped institution I help run two radio stations with a free hand (relatively speaking) and the promise of a TV station this year. Let's hear it for plain speaking!
Coming home has had some odd effects. I've lost my hairdresser - so I learned to use clippers; my dentist - I am still trying to find someone comfortable with not giving me anaesthetics; my acupuncturist - still not replaced and sorely missed as my health, despite amazing amounts of money spent with a cardiologist and others, is no longer as smoothly functioning as it was under the regular care of Doctors Li and Bao who helped me be well and full of energy with my dancer's arthritis an occasional twinge rather than the daily scream of joints it is now.
This is why I blog. Until I wrote that last sentence I had no idea what it was I needed to change for myself this year. There is a disadvantage to living in the moment at times for me. The moment passes and I leave the stresses of that moment with its passing - on one level. On others I can sometimes see minute accretions building up a reef of unresolved and uncompleted thoughts and impulses that acupuncture used to help me release and relax.
So the change I need to make is one of putting back something that was good for me and my life. Something the move here changed beyond my power to influence, and I need to renew my search for an acupuncturist who is truly practised and doesn't have to look at a book before placing each needle. not a reassuring experience at all!
And the Universe has sent me an announcer to try with. She arrived all nervous and ready to be trained yesterday, she will work the shift with me tomorrow and I shall hope to have her ready to go solo in a week. Thank you Universe, I knew you would provide!
Now I need a competent acupuncturist, please.
Nearly the end of December. Another whole year before I get to have a birthday again - unless I start celebrating the Summer Solstice as a half way mark, now there's a thought!
It has been an odd month. The drive time announcer called in sick and when queried, a week later, about his medical certificate said he was taking a vacation.
I don't understand how people think sometimes. He is parttime, works one four hour shift per day with no preparation or production work. He arbitrarily takes -with no discussion - fifteen days off at our busiest time of the year and then calls the labour department to report us when we say politely there is no need to come back.
I am general and program manager of the station and I put in a request for time off in April a couple of weeks ago.
So I have been working the drive time shift straight through for the last two weeks and am finding it difficult to set up and record interviews, edit, come up with concepts and chart the calendar for 2008 as well as interview new potential announcers.
Plus, I cannot just leave the music selection to powergold. In the last two weeks we have played 100 percent Christmas/seasonal music and it was a personal challenge to try to make the segment I was working as non-repetitive as possible.
Which sometimes meant finding the most different versions of the same song and separating them in time. We owe it to our listeners to make the format and playlist as interesting as possible.
I have currently put two songs on the no-play list temporarily because the morning man is playing them every day at the same time. I suggested changing the time, rotating through the hours as we have had listeners call to complain but that has not been taken up so they will be suspended for a couple of days then put back into circulation.
I do not particularly like being a manager. I struggle to be kinder to other people than I am to myself because I am a perfectionist which makes me a pain to work for or with at times- the fact that I have been running two stations and am faced with the quandary of joining the BBC for the six o'clock news on one station while station two has a program that starts at six which requires human intervention makes me feel like a total failure because I cannot do the impossible.
And I am fully aware that it IS impossible to be in two places at the same time.
I have arranged that by next week everything will be in the automation system on station two - suggesting that deleting old stuff will leave room for new - so all that has to be done is a quick check to make sure the music timing is correct. And the illusion that I am in two places at one time will make for better radio.
I am a producer and on-air talent at heart and it carves that heart out of me when I see sloppy practices when there is a simple fix.
It is not that difficult to do things right. It is difficult to change the habits of 25 years and I have held my tongue between my teeth so that I do not try to overturn the status quo, just nudge it gently into new paths. I have an influx of new music and new programming creeping into the system. All the promos have been redone, the new print campaign is going well and my programming is bringing in sponsors so I am generating revenue.
The last two weeks have been discouraging though. I know I am not the right pick for a drive time show - I can announce in any time slot but I don't have the flavour that makes a drive time great.
Well neither did our ex-drive time guy so he did us a favour because I was wondering how to dislodge him in the new year. It is not going to be a simple job finding someone who will please the owner's sensibilities and do the job right.
The Universe always provides but right now I need it to provide fairly quickly. Do you hear me Universe?
On December 20th our Prime Minister announced that elections will be held on January 15th 2008. Nominations will be on New Year's Day so there is a scant three weeks for campaigning.
This is either brilliant or disastrous timing. Brilliant if most people continue their involvement in their hectic personal lives as dictated by the season; disastrous if a groundswell of opinion decides the PM was trying to circumvent the peoples' right to discuss and cuss and gather to debate - and I mean debate!- the pros and cons and why's and wherefore's of each party and the candidates.
We are a tiny nation where free health care is a reality if you are not referred by a private physician for hospital care. Last year the sudden stumbling of my heart resulted in an emergency call and ambulance, tests, X-rays and hospital stay were all free. Of course I pay taxes and I am a citizen and my penchant for avoiding doctors pretty much ensures I will never be a private patient.
I need to ensure that I am registered to vote after my long period away. About the election itself my main concern is what if there is a change in the balance of power? Will it result in the massive overhaul of our roads systems which was not completed as first promised by April 2007 being even further delayed while the contractors in favour with this party or that are juggled and shuffled around?
Two and a half years of dust have already taken a toll on my respiratory system, and the daily changes to the traffic flow tax the most patient of drivers.
I have been away long enough for all the names I know and respect to have become the old guard. The new young lions of the political arena are just names without much history yet to back them so voting will be a challenge, but I will not fail to exercise my franchise.
The season has been changed. Oh it still arrives on schedule, still generates a buzz; but the underlying flavour has turned the corner to bitter sweet and love is just not what it used to be.
Of course, my dreams of love have no relation to the world outside my head, my heart. I think of love as quiet streams that sing across the rounded pebbles at the bottom, clear water, sweet to taste and cold to touch. The cold of shiver and exhilaration.
I think of love as raging torrents rushing to the edge and over; waterfalls as I fall into chaos, churning stomach, rushing heart, a topsy turvy spill into forever that scatters drops of me to sparkle on the rocks.
I think of love as steamy moments filled with fragrance from perking coffee, simmering stew, the wine scent of fresh baked bread that makes you pause to taste the air more deeply. That nails you in the moment of a heartbeat and tells you that you live.
But the season has been changed so the clink of coin and slide of plastic strums across the heartstrings. Waistlines swell and bellies aches from surfeit to overload of food reconstituted, just add water, take a pill and call it nourishment.
The santa clauses have bad beards and stinking breath and ho ho or ha ha they do not have a smile to sparkle in their rheumy eyes, their bells ring flat, a discord where there should be harmonies of silver not the clunk of brass.
The scent of Christmas trees comes in a can all tied to PCB's that circle high where angels used to fly and eat the ozone that once haloed this blue world.
And I still think of love as possible, a gentle word, a smile between two strangers, even just a nod that says I see you, we are in this together, we are not alone in this season of love.
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