Bahama Pundit

Recasting the City of Nassau - Part 2

by Simon

•Simon is a young Bahamian with things on his mind who wishes to remain anonymous. His column 'Front Porch' is published every Tuesday in the Nassau Guardian. He can be reached at frontporchguardian@gmail.com.

Renewing the City of Nassau is a journey of self-definition and discovery: a recollection of history that informs our national longings and forward thinking. 

It is an exercise of the Bahamian Imagination that should not be calculated with limited regard for a broader vision for the development of the island and Commonwealth which Nassau anchors. 

A city’s architecture, especially the capital, chronicles a nation’s history and showcases its ambitions, priorities and dreams – and its conceits and failures.

Why I Vex...A Summertime Rant

by Larry Smith

Justice System Vicious Circle.
The lack of a decisive response to our deterioriating judicial system lies at the root of the country's problems. We risk everything with this. And moreover, since the country is run by lawyers they know exactly what the problems are, what the solutions are, and what is at stake.

According to chief lawyer Wayne Munroe, the controversy over granting bail to those accused of serious crimes is symptomatic of the breakdown of the entire system. The average citizen naturally wants these people kept behind bars until their guilt can be determined. But that raises serious constitutional as well as logistical issues.

The scale and scope of the problem is by now familiar. Former police chief prosecutor Keith Bell outlined it for us last year:

"There are 100,000 matters before the courts, including 11,000 criminal cases and 48,000 traffic cases," he said."That's about a third of the total population before the courts, and it is getting worse and worse...Our murder rate is higher than the US and three times higher than Canada...If this spreads to the out islands we will be unable to control it."

Recasting the City of Nassau – Part 1

by Simon

•Simon is a young Bahamian with things on his mind who wishes to remain anonymous. His column 'Front Porch' is published every Tuesday in the Nassau Guardian. He can be reached at frontporchguardian@gmail.com.

Two prominent figures sit in that most public of squares – Rawson, which in earlier times was simply known as “The Park” and was described by L.D. Powles in The Land of the Pink Pearl as “an acre in extent…on which were the broken remains of some benches and some dried-up-looking, coarse grass.”

From her Empire Day unveiling in 1905 Victoria Regina (Queen) et Imperatix (Empress) presided in marbled solitude in Rawson Square for 88 years until an unpretentious bronze bust of Sir Milo Butler entered this privileged space in 1993.

Field Trip to Andros —A Vastly Different Place

by Larry Smith

NORTH ANDROS -- Rivean Gibson Riley is one of the few Bahamians who has given his name to a geological feature.

A native of Staniard Creek - "it's like a gated community except we haven't got around to putting up the gate yet" - Riley was the first of an expedition to arrive at a blue hole near Cargill Creek that the accompanying researchers promptly named after him.

That was eight years ago, when he was just a young man wielding a cutlass. But since then he has earned an ecotourism degree at Hocking College in Ohio, where he made the Dean's list and won a scholarship.

Hocking is one of many colleges that send students to the non-profit Forfar Field Station near Blanket Sound. According to its website, students can "earn certification in SCUBA or sea kayaking off the world’s third largest barrier reef, learn the basics of blue water sailing, and wind-surf around uninhabited islands in The Bahamas."

That doesn't sound like a hardship assignment. But Riley has a tough job these days convincing his fellow Androsians that they can benefit from the environment that many of them regard as simply bush to be scraped, swamp to be filled or coastline to be polluted.

Black and White Heritage at Green Turtle Cay, Abaco

by Larry Smith

Green Turtle Cay's annual Island Roots Festival bills itself as a celebration of European as well as African heritage. That's because -unlike most Abaco settlements - both blacks and whites have lived together here from the earliest days, in close proximity if not always in perfect harmony.

This unusual historical context provides the backdrop for one of the country's most successful heritage events. It all began 33 years ago with a conversation between New Plymouth artist Alton Lowe and Key West librarian Betty Bruce at the opening of the little museum in Green Turtle Cay named after Alton's father, Albert Lowe.

"Betty asked me what else could be done to promote Bahamian heritage and I suggested that New Plymouth should become the sister city of Key West, which has deep Bahamian roots," Alton told me. "She immediately invited me to Key West to help set the wheels in motion."

Prime Minister’s Question Time – Part 2

by Simon

•Simon is a young Bahamian with things on his mind who wishes to remain anonymous. His column 'Front Porch' is published every Tuesday in the Nassau Guardian. He can be reached at frontporchguardian@gmail.com.

Prime Minister Ingraham faces a thick patch of thorny questions amidst a severe economic crisis as the run-up to the 2012 general election approaches with what may initially be a gradual and sluggish recovery. 

His Government’s answers to a riddle of policy and political questions might be best communicated in a series of near-term events. One of these events, the 2009/10 budget is a set piece of political drama and policy choices. 

Swine Flu Outbreak Caused by Descendent of 1918 Pandemic Virus

by Larry Smith

“So vast was the catastrophe...that our minds, surfeited with the horrors of war, refused to realise it. It came and went, a hurricane across the green fields of life, sweeping away our youth in the hundreds of thousands and leaving a toll of sickness and infirmity which will not be reckoned in this generation.” -- article in the Times of London on the 1918 influenza pandemic.

One of the most devastating fires in human history began smouldering in March 1918 in the American midwest, and exploded that August to affect more than a third of the world's population.

New research confirms that the virus that caused the 1918 influenza pandemic is directly linked to the current swine flu virus, which has the potential to cause a new pandemic.

Scientists say the 1918 virus spread in pigs and eventually produced the current H1N1 swine flu virus, which has led health authorities to declare an international emergency.