Showing posts with label Barbados. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barbados. Show all posts

Thursday, December 29, 2022

Fiat Lux - Carry the Light

 


Fiat Lux was the motto of my ("high school," to Americans) Queen's College in Bridgetown, Barbados. I remembered this recently when, while attempting to dust, I pulled out an old copy of The Oxford Book of Verse from the bookshelf and saw the motto on the cover. It was a school prize, for "good work in Form VI b" of which I'd been rather proud. I was a lonely ex-pat in those days and something of a "swot." Studying was how I filled my time as a "stranger in a strange land," while others were spending their free time with family and friends. 

What is the definition of that "light"? I used to believe--this being a school gift, after all--that this "light" was knowledge, and while that's certainly a way of looking at this motto, I'm beginning to see that the "light" mentioned here is perhaps a much simpler concept. Maybe it's just as simple as one word--Hope.


Reading an article by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Elizabeth Kolbert, I was struck by this sentence: "Despair is unproductive. It's also a sin." Those two short sentences got me pondering, especially as I am someone who finds themselves often stuck in "the slough of despond," expecially after looking at the news. 

Spalding Gray in his "Swimming to Cambodia" speaks of "the cloud of Evil" which continually circles the world, waiting for an opening in which to manifest This image struck me powerfully. When people give up, believing that reality is "hopeless" or "impossible" to change, that attitude simply throws the door open for the Darkness, destroying people, communities, societies--even planets.  



What's is the opposite of despair, then? Hope, of course. In the words of the familiar little song:

 "This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine..."


"Hope is being able to see that there is light, despite all the darkness."  

~Bishop Desmond Tutu

Maybe that particular light is the one we all carry, the ability to care for others, to share what we have. It can be as simple as a phone call to an aging relative or looking in on a elderly neighbor, or volunteering at a shelter, planting a tree or a garden.

"There is some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for." ~JRR Tolkien 


Sam Gamgee says these words to his comrade Frodo, whose heart is overflowing with terror and despair as he faces the completion of an apparently impossible task that will probably end his life--but may save to world.


Tolkien's fantasy is the old battle of Good & Evil, the central, familiar theme of all world religions.

"In a time of destruction, create something." ~ Maxine Hong Kingston

Despair can be cast off through action, perhaps something as simple as cleaning, decluttering, writing a blog or a letter to the editor. Even if you feel defeated before you start and believe you aren't going to be able to make anything in your future better, you did take an action that can improve your immediate surroundings, or, at least, your state of mind. 



If it's just seems too pointless to clean or cook or write another letter to your  newspapers/political leaders, sit down and write a gratitude list. At first I scoffed at this practice, but consider. Perhaps you can find three things you are thankful for. 


If you are in a house, under a roof, more or less warm and with internet access and time to read this--well there's three luxuries right there. On a more basic level, most of us also have friends or family, even if they are far away. Most of mine, especially since Covid, are far away and inaccessible for various reasons, except through the 'net. You might talk to a friend, neighbor, to your cat/dog/bird. Write a poem. Greet the sun, admire the clouds or the birds/squirrels at your feeder, the local Canada Geese who have never learned to migrate.


Or, as I'm speaking here to readers and writers, talk to yourself! Begin to tell yourself a story, which is what I have done ever since I was little and feeling sad and alone.  


🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊🕊  Happy New Year!  ðŸ•ŠðŸ•ŠðŸ•ŠðŸ•ŠðŸ•ŠðŸ•ŠðŸ•ŠðŸ•ŠðŸ•ŠðŸ•ŠðŸ•Š

 ~~Juliet Waldron

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Thursday, September 29, 2022

About Elizabeth II -- Reminiscence

 


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 Inevitable that several of us BWL authors will write about the death of Queen Elizabeth, so here's my contribution. I still can't quite believe she is gone, even after ten days of a most Royal sendoff. She's been The Queen for most of my life. I do remember George VI's death, however, as this was also big news at our house. My parents discussed how brave the king had been, during the war, staying in London with his people, throughout the nightly bombing. 

On the great stage of today's (apparently) endless train of planetary disasters, her death doesn't mean much beyond the UK and the remaining commonwealth nations, but how well I remember Elizabeth's coronation, which took place when I was eight. With an Anglophile Mom, I couldn't help hearing--and viewing (for a new wonder, a television had just arrived in our home) an English Coronation, full of glittering regalia and history. 


(Free Image from Pixabay)

The idea of showing this rite to the public had been much debated beforehand--such a break with tradition! Those grainy black-and-white images of a beautiful young Queen inside her fairy-tale golden carriage, riding through gray, battered, postwar London, now all decked out beautifully for the celebration. The procession to the Abbey was followed by film of the mystery taking place inside. This was ground-breaking, this showing of so much of an ancient ritual to the public, but it proved to be a huge hit with the viewing public all over the world.  From now on, television would give those who liked to "royal watch" a whole new tool with which to engage. 

Anticipating the event, The New York Times was suddenly full of articles on the British royal family and also on English history, a news glut on a single subject, from the time of the death of King George VI onward to the crowning of the new, young queen.   From this time, I'd date my ever-increasing, ever-expanding, sixty year passion for learning about human history. 


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Certainly, at first, this history was of the WASP kind, as that was the brand on offer at my house. I had a scrapbook filled with articles clipped from Newsweek, the NYT, Look, and whatever magazine resources we had that dealt with current events. I was not a tidy kid, so this was a messy affair of white paste and missing bits of text, but I was thoroughly engaged while making it. 

When Mom took me to England after her divorce, I ended up in a country boarding school in Penzance. Here, I found myself regularly singing "God Save the Queen." My 5th form classmates were rather surprised to learn I already knew the words, but, with a Mom like mine, this had been inevitable. I had been taught that "When in Rome, do as the Romans do" so I adapted as fast as I could in all ways. 

I'd had no idea that a person could live on cabbage and potatoes and slices of brown bread and a single pat of butter, but that was what was on offer in boarding school, so I wolfed it down like everyone else. Post-war, even in the early sixties, things were tight and war-time frugality was still the order of the day. In winter, the school was kept at 45 F., and so our wool and flannel clothing was a necessity, not an affectation. We shared a once a week bath--3 girls bathed and washed their hair in the same tub. Therefore, the water was super hot to start, but I was often allowed that first bath by default, because no one else wanted to brave the temperature.

In London, while sightseeing, I saw huge open swathes of emptiness and broken bricks in some places, in others, like around St. Paul's Cathedral, there was an expansive green void on every side, where that huge ediface stood, white and shining, perfectly alone, a miracle of survival during the Blitz. 

.  

When Mom and I transferred ourselves to Barbardos, in what was then the British West Indies, we sang "God Save The Queen" there too. Barbados was part of the old British Commonwealth, and called Elizabeth II "Queen of Barbados," but I understand that this "Island in the Sun" has become a republic (as of November, 2021), and replaced the British Crowned head with a President, while remaining as part of the Commonwealth of Nations. English rule, begun in Barbados in 1627, has ended at last,  and with it, the days of Bajan schoolgirls singing "God Save the Queen."  



--Juliet Waldron



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Sunday, October 14, 2012

Reminiscence--How I Met The Doctor


 
I was living in England with my mother, going to school in Penzance as a day student. We lived in the end unit of a row house—stone houses, streets, little gardens—just as you might imagine a British working class neighborhood. We had just moved out of an artsy Mousehole hotel to less expensive Newlyn, to the last building on the top of the hill above the harbor. Behind us was a field with dairy cows and a stubby, well-worn stone circle, through which I walked every morning, taking the back way over the headland into Penzance and my school.


We rented our telly and paid license fees, like everyone else on the street, and I began watching my first regular doses of English entertainment. It was black and white in those days, the content different from what I’d been used to in the States.
 
 
William Hartnell
 

I only saw two shows containing the original Doctor. Although I remember enjoying the story, it was never completely clear to me what the heck was going on. I remember being thrilled to realize that this show was not only about history—and with costumes which were actually period correct  (astonishing in and of itself,  as this was the early sixties)—but also about the science fiction notion of time travel. The Doctor and his two companions eventually escaped from trouble inside a little blue box, the kind I’d seen standing, dusty and unused, on street corners here and there throughout British cities.

Well, wow! Stories about history and time travel all in one show!  The main character was not only mysterious, aged and professorial, but a little sinister, too, as if he was not entirely to be trusted. As someone who liked fantasy and science fiction but who had always loved reading about famous characters in history, I couldn’t help but be intrigued. Unfortunately, no matter how much I waited for it, I never saw any more than those two shows. Soon Mom and I pulled up stakes again and headed for Barbados. (In those days, there was no TV in the West Indies.)

It was years later that The Doctor and I reconnected. My kids and I were sitting on the floor together watching PBS on our Zenith, also parked on the floor. (In those days furniture was something of a luxury.)  An odd British import began. Lo and behold--there was my time traveler and his blue box! Of course, the original doctor had gone. The new one was still domineering and mysterious, but far less of a stuffy old professor. Instead he now appeared to be in his forties, with a mod head of curly hair and clothes by way of Carnaby Street. He might have just stepped out of The Yellow Submarine.

 
 

John Pertwee, mortal enemy & friends

Okay, I thought, I’ll go with the flow. My brief, earlier acquaintance with that absent-minded elderly Doctor was still lingering in my cranial filing cabinet. This, I realized, would be a great show for the kids to watch while I made dinner. (In those days 30 Minute Meals was not a marketable idea, just the way everybody cooked, especially if Mom worked the day shift.)     
 
Doctor Who has always had rather tacky visuals. I was told by someone long ago that the Doctor’s eternal enemy, the Daleks, were actually tarted up shop vacs, hence their distinctive sloping can shape. (However, do remember that Twilight Zones weren’t all that much better. And what ‘60’s Trekkie can forget the embarrassing Gorn?) As a childhood watcher of s/f on TV—Captain Video, anyone?—I knew my imagination would do most of the work. if the concept was interesting, my brain would take it from there, just as it did when I read. Good actors and an involving story could carry off almost anything, because, as Hamlet says “the play’s the thing.” British actors, trained for the job, are, at least, skilled craftsmen, and adept at making theatrical magic happen with even the most minimal sets and effects.

After my boys became fans, almost immediately there came a change in Doctors, as reported to me by my oldest son. He  was about equally disturbed and intrigued that the hero in a series might abruptly become someone else, all while essentially playing (more or less) the same character. This new Doctor immediately caught my eye—perhaps because his clothes were no longer Victorian mod, but thrift store trippy.

 
Tom Baker

 The hat, the scarf, the manic manner, the comic timing, his diction, and his “silly walks”—Baker was a talking, Oxford-educated Harpo Marx . The kids, and their Mom too, adored Baker, and we watched the show faithfully during those years.   My youngest son begged his aunt to knit him a floor-sweeping Whovian scarf for Christmas, and we hunted used clothing stores for a cool old hat to go with it.

 Time passed for us, as it never quite does in the TARDIS. The kids got older and began to lose interest when the Doctor regenerated next. We never entirely warmed to the handsome, dapper Peter Davidson with his question marks and 1890s university cricketer’s garb. We drifted away.

Years went by. The kids grew up and had kids of their own. I went gray. One night, worn out by the local news, I looked for something else to watch at 5 o’clock and found BBC America.

 KA-ZAM! There he was, a brand new Doctor! This show clearly had a budget and  enjoyed the benefit of the CG revolution. Somewhere in the hiatus, our hoary old Doctor had become a “valuable BBC property.”

 

Christopher Eccelston & intrepid shopgirl, Rose


 

This new Doctor was different in a lot of ways, at first shockingly so. For one thing, he was an imposing guy with a buzz cut who wore black leather. Yikes! He also had a strong Northern working- class accent, far removed from the mad intellectual elitists of the past. I always wondered if this Doctor was working on his bike somewhere among the myriad rooms of the “bigger on the inside” TARDIS…

 Christopher Eccelston only gave the series 13 episodes, but I LOVED him. He was an excellent choice for the Doctor’s 21st Century revival, the ninth reincarnation of the mystery man. This was a visceral, dangerous Doctor—as well as being unpredictable and wizard-wise.  The new scripting, too, was exciting, the best writing yet, while firmly grounded in the tradition of the series.
 
Romance for the Doctor and his companion was another innovation that was a GOOD THING, adding some spice to the character’s lonely Flying Dutchman persona. (The “Companions” have been shorted in this reminiscence, but they’ve always been an integral part of the Whovian equation.) Rose Tyler and The Doctor shared the series’ first kiss. It was an electric moment.

 David Tennant
 

 
All too soon, here came a new Doctor—and, I confess, my favorite. Bring on Doctor #10, the exciting David Tennant, an admitted “fan-boy” from childhood. Here we had a bi-polar Doctor, a veritable road runner on speed, wearing a duster, a shiny suit, and Converse sneakers.  This Doctor exhibited a ferocious brand of fey, peppered with world-weariness and pessimism, all of it wrapped up inside one skinny 900+ year old Time Lord. Gilbert & Sullivan couldn’t write better patter than Steven Moffat and Russell Davies, and their Doctor—and the rest of the fine ensemble--delivered the goods.

 Regeneration into #11, and new writers have sent the show on a Matrix-out-of-Stephen-King turn. I’m slow to warm to this new Doctor, Matt Smith. All I can say for now is that like Merlin, the character seems to be aging backwards. The bow-tie-tweed jacket bit, however, seems to be a retro turn intoThe Doctor’s “academic” past.  

 
Doctor Who is quirky, by turns scary or silly, and sometimes it's dark and intellectual. It’s also shamelessly self-referential, and full of puns plus literary, scientific and topical allusions which I adore. From Pratchett to Monty Python to comedies like "Doc Martin" & "Shaun of the Dead," from forms as low as Pantomime and high as Shakespeare, all that’s delightful, witty and wise--in British entertainment is woven together in

 

Doctor Who, Greatest Show in the Galaxy.

 

 

 

 

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