Reflections on Summer, Youth and Community

I-sah, summer draws to a close and there is much to reflect upon for the summer that is 2013! It's been hectic and I am certainly a different man. U-nah-mean so much in my meditations now. Firstly, I spent an immense and intense amount of time with Keekee in Paradise... our relationship is on another level right now... I feel a tighter bond. She all make me proud since this past week, when friends come to link mi fi mek a small check on a (problematic CQ61 HP Compaq) laptop headed to the pawn shop at City Centre, anyway... out comes Keekee out the house into the garage... "I'M YOUNGGG, GIFTED AAAND BLACK!" Mi breddrin dem look in amazement then pop up and seh "Coulda only fi yuh pickney Rasta!" But sitting a 3 year old while you have signs to paint, brochures to design, t-shirt fi design, your own newspaper to try and start, your blogs to write, articles, drawings to finish, paintings to be finish, Artistes biography, PR for Artistes/Breddrin, moeny to try make, bills to pay, Cashpot fi study and try ketch... It can be heavy and cumbersome sometimes, when every 15 minutes, Daddy I'm hungry, Daddy I want juice, Daddy tie this for me please, Daddy I want to go to the bathroom (All when she a do this by herself now), Daddy can I get a paper, Daddy can help me draw this, Daddy I want to go to the shop, Daddy I want to go by Jayla. YOW! More time mi feel mi brain go sprain... but a so it go. Daddy love you.

My Grrrl Boss: Ms. Young Gifted & Black!

Then there is the added task of trying to be a good son, assist Mommy with her burdens, as they are many, do the little I can, drop the goods to the hospital etc. That wobbled some here in the summer owing to all the constant things, things, things happening.

For one their is the Youth Club as well. AH BWOY! A real story and saga, and partially the inspiration for this article... for other than the intense Keekee hours, alot of the other hours were spent throwing mental and physical powers to the Youth Club and general community matters. And can you imagine after all that effort, in the Youth Club, it went up in flames I-YAH! Jah know! You can read the Observers small take on the matter at this link: Paradise Fire! Youth Club went in the Blaze!

Just to attend is a great effort on my part to, sit, stay, pay attention. But I did... eventually now I operate as PRO. But to imagine... the Kid's Treat today and stuff gone up in flames, free food, free slippers, second hand text books etc etc etc. And granted the media says fire of unknown origin, I suspect arson.

Anyway how all this ties with summer and youth, is because between having to be constantly around my 3 yr old daughter, and her 5 and 10 year old cousins, who host tea parties and stage shows ("Paradise Sumfest" with a painted sign included) outside my un-closed door and interacting with the communities tweens and teenie boppers and teenager cockroaches more than normal, with back-to-school here and ll this youth energy, it gave me a chance to remember a lot of my youth and mildly relive and remember what those youthful days of girls boys and summer adventure and the hassle and havoc and turmoil that, that social period and various stages and cycles of development are like... Do you remember what they were like?

We live in an age today, where President Obama Nobel Peace Prize winner will trumpet his second officil war, Libya being the first, now we see the trumped up charges with no UN proof for a Syrian War. Yes come September Obama and World War 3 will be in the backdrop of the children and the youths lives and TVs. Occupy this and that and 99%ers will probably be protesting. And just like when I came into to Earth, a war was in full swing on JBC... I would grow up in the ending years of the cold war and would hear Mikhail Gorbachov and Yitzak Rabin and Yessar Arafat, Gaddafi etc... constantly in the back drop of my life.

But what about the foreground... do you remember those Calvin and Hobbes-esque summers of immortality, infinite energy and endless hours. The more well endowed among us will remember there first cars, some the first job, or even the first summer job, most will remember that first kiss! Don't! Nuff a unnu must remember when it seemed like the whole world was exploding with new ideas and you were searching and reaching out for new experiences, wanting to see and know this world. Seeing through new eyes. Youth, Puberty, Adolescence, Growth, Change. It's a bitter sweet journey and beautiful sight.

But this article has to be continued as Keekee's pressing need to watch TEAM UMIZUMI (did I spell that right) oh well... youth.... gwaan listen this Avicii till when next I write

P.S. Youth(Dax) Happy B-day! To days of summer and youth, cricket and basketball!

Open Letter to the Western Media (UNPUBLISHED)

The media is too concentrated, too few people own too much. There are really five companies that control 90 percent of what we read, see and hear. It's not healthy.
Ted Turner

Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.
Noam Chomsky

There's less critical thinking going on in this country on a Main Street level - forget about the media - than ever before. We've never needed people to think more critically than now, and they've taken a big nap.
Alec Baldwin

I am the voice of a generation
Bob Dylan

Greeting once again Montego Bay, after some introspection, rummaging through the remains of the day, I have realized I wrote a slew and rash of Open Letters tackling many of the National Institutions and Government Ministries, and realized that there is one entity or body I failed to tackle and that is the MEDIA. The media in western Jamaica particularly, and the Western Mirror is not exempted from this. For I believe the media in western Jamaica has been lackluster and underdeveloped for too long now. Once people could have escaped under the notion that we are a small demographic without a very intellectual or reading population. Not so anymore. This is the Mobay and western Jamaica of big names, characters and events like Brown Sugar, Usain Bolt, Colin Channer, Jah Cure, Queen Ifrica, Mackie Conscious, Sumfest, ATI Weekend, Jazz & Bluesfest and such. We are now witnessing a growing intellectual community with UWI now officially here and a whole host of other cultural and artistic facets growing fast behind it. Hence it seems odd we have the same floundering fledgling television stations, and only two surviving newspapers of note, and two radio stations.

I believe the western media has been slow in growing fostering and honing great talent. I sincerely believe in the second city lies the next set of big television personalities. I believe Mirror has been long overdue in becoming a western paper, with a western edge and vantage point with NATIONWIDE distribution. I believe western media has also been slow in harnessing new technology and grabbing the new generation’s attention. They have also been slow in reaching deeply and widely into the western Jamaican diaspora abroad. The media out west now needs to be a platform and voice, giving legitimacy and credibility to its talents, writers, columnists, TV personalities, to its audience.

Self-examination by western news and media organizations is always useful and crucial at this junction in Western Jamaica’s growth. In this great future, the Western Mirror needs to mean more to the minds of the people than SUSS and Death notice and Murder updates it is time we seriously go about "Preserving Our Readers' Trust." Because, politics, a republic, a democracy cannot operate without an independent, critical, and responsible press, it is now MOST incumbent on western news and media organizations to continually assess their own performance to see if they are fulfilling their obligations to the PUBLIC.

Because of its importance to the functioning of our political and social life, the press and media will always be subject to criticism and critique. It is then our obligation to take such critiques seriously; doing so requires not only responding to legitimate criticism, but having the fortitude and integrity to reject baseless attacks and the more basal natures in our society.

Today the western media is polluted and clouded with a mountain heap of archaic and ancient media pundits and demagogues it is time to whole heartedly embrace a real and legitimate generation that is of age and time and deserving of having their opinions heard. It is time to “diversifying our vantage point", but not out of fear of sales, but out of a genuine desire to report on the full scope of Montego Bay and Western Jamaica’s social and political life. We the media need to stop perpetuating some of the crudest stereotypes of the nation holds of those outside the main metropolis, like the idea we are small, backward or unentertaining and lacking in vibes or opportunity.

The Wesern Mirror in particular must understand that this paper occupies a unique place in Montegonian and western journalism, with an ability to set the news agenda and the larger political agenda that is unparalleled among news organizations, even those with vastly larger audiences. This power confers upon you a particular obligation to act responsibly and uphold the highest standards of our profession.

Reality for Old Media representatives and executives is self-fulfilling. That is, the reality broadcast through the airwaves and printed on dead wood has for so long influenced the way that the general public perceives reality, it has become inconceivable that a time would come when our pictures and words would no longer drive public opinion.

I am writing this to you as a final warning. That time has already arrived. With the advent of the Internet, people from all over the world, able to tell their own stories and reflect their own perceptions to willing eyes and ears have provided an awakening and shake at the very foundations of what you currently perceive to be reality. A whole generation will be influencing opinion through their peer groups and relying on YOUTUBE and blogs to influence and inform their understanding of our city and how it is perceived. The radio or the paper may not affect this generation if you don’t begin to reflect a modern reality and not the dream of sleeping giants the western media and news organizations have become.

Yannick Nesta Pessoa
http://yahnyk.blogspot.com
yannickpessoa@yahoo.com

List of 16 Popular Trinidadian Movies

1. Bim (1974)


2. Caribbean Fox, The (1970)


3. Crossing Over (1989)


4. Diamonds from the Bantus (2002)


5. Flight of the Ibis (1996)


6. Girl from India (1982)


7. Innocent Adultery (1994)


8. Ivan the Terrible (2004)


9. Loss of Innocence, A (2006)


10. Men of Gray (1990)


11. Mystic Masseur, The (2001)


12. Obeah (1987)


13. Panman, The (1997)


14. Right and the Wrong, The (1970)


15. SistaGod (2006)


16. What My Mother Told Me (1995)