November 7, 2010 was a Long Time Ago

Wow.  November 7.  That was the last day that I posted to this conversation.

Wow.

Ok, so I know I said (or at least if I didn't, I should have) that I'm not the most disciplined writer around.  But November 7???  That's a long time even for me.

So how do I begin to recap life in exile at the beginning of the second decade of the 2000s?

Well, the major highlights were:

1. On December 22, my work permit for Barbados was finally approved.  The application was made in September.  That's equivalent to a work visa in the US.  So, if you can read between the lines you'll guess that I was working here...um...not so legally...between August and December.  Let's hope that officials of Immigration here aren't intensly curious folk who read blogs.
2. I spent a pretty miserable time between Christmas Day and New Year's Day.  I was sick.  Not just "a cold" sick, or "the flu" sick, but sick.  I was out of work and in and out of the emergency clinic almost every day, even twice on one day during that week.  MUCH better now.  The silver lining of that dark illness cloud was that I found a remarkable medical practitioner here who has become my regular physician.


3. As of January 28, I own an automobile here.  His name is Horace. (Like cats and dogs I've had in my life, cars tend to acquire the names of jazz musicians.  "Horace" is so named because of his color...and in honor of jazz great Horace Silver) Horace is a Suzuki Swift, not a nameplate known or sold in the United States. It is very close in size to the Mini Cooper.  As a matter of fact, one reviewer compared the two side-by-side:

Swift: 3695 mm long, 1690 mm wide, and 1500 mm tall

Mini: 3635 mm long, 1925 mm wide, and 1408 mm tall

That makes the Mini slightly shorter in height and length, but a lot wider. Looks like it could be quite roomy in there.

And here's their final word on the two cars, along with a photo of my car and the Mini side-by-side.

Without a doubt, the Mini is irreplaceable. You can't hold a candle to millions of loyal fans who consider their Minis as their very own babies. But the Swift is the best-looking compact car to enter the midrange market to date, and bears a fairly good resemblance to the Mini. Whether you choose to consider it a rip-off or a tribute to the design influence of the Mini, it’s a nifty little car that should make a lot of budget-conscious people happy.

So, all in all, I'm VERY happy with Horace.  He's fun to drive and the perfect size for the island.

And finally, in the recap of my world, on January 30th, Mom came down to Barbados to spend six weeks.  So that means she's still here (soundly sleeping at the moment...) and will be so until at least March 8.  Longer if I can talk her into it.  She's spent her time relaxing, enjoying being away from the Northeast US winter weather.  No beach yet, but we'll get there.

Life in Barbados continues to be very satisfying.  Work...well, I still love my work.  Good clients (for the most part!), great, fun co-workers...and as I said earlier, the anxiety of not having my working papers has been removed.

The challenges of life in what most would consider a "tropical paradise" continue.  Barbados is still a very expensive place to live.  Since the island is so small with limited resources,  everything from food to cars to medicine must be imported...imported at a cost.  I won't even go into the details of what it took for me to arrange to actually purchase a vehicle.  Just know that for a vehicle that sells in the UK for about $15,000, I am spending more than $35,000 US.  The financing arrangements are absurd, but I had very little choice.  My car note is actually $7/month more than I was spending on renting a 20+ year old car (same make and model) without such luxuries as power windows, power steering, air conditioning or a radio.  So I'm not complaining.

Well, I've been up MUCH too late tonight, thanks to lengthy conversations with old friends Dale and Walter in New Orleans.

I'll try to be more regular with these updates, but as you can see, I still have nothing earth shattering to say!!

Have fun!

TWO RATHER INCREDIBLE WEEKS

Hey!  How ya' doin'?  Me? Oh I'm fine, thanks for asking.

It's been a long time since we've spoken hasn't it?  Mea culpa.  Mostly lazy fingers, but some interesting goings on in my neck of the woods over the past few weeks.

Lest anyone have any misunderstanding by the way, this is in no way intended to be a scholarly tome when it appears online.  I don't possess the ability to write in a creative, thought-provoking manner, commenting on relevant issues of the day.  If that's what you're looking for, there are thousands who do it well, but none better than dear friend Pam whose blog you can find at Pam's Coffee Conversation right here on Blogspot.  I encourage you to tune over there for some really excellent political writing from a perspective that I consider neither liberal or conservative, Democratic or Republican, but sensible.

So now, onto the news from Lake Wobegon. (How many of you catch that reference?)

On October 23rd. at 2:50 a.m., the Prime Minister of Barbados passed away.  He succumbed to pancreatic cancer following a period of tremendous angst among the people of this country.  In early July, David John Howard Thompson, 48, announced that he was demitting (cool word!) office for a period of three months to deal with medical issues that were affecting him.  We later discovered that he was taking treatment at New York's Presbyterian Hospital.  However, neither the PM or his office gave the diagnosis, leading to great speculation.

On August 31, David returned to the island unannouced, in the middle of the night via private jet and was taken to his residence.  The next day, his office released a statement indicating that he had retaken his office and was handling business.  Less than a week later, it was reported that he was back in New York due to complications.  During his stay there, he allowed his physician to release the details of his illness.

Between his subsequent return to the island and his untimely death, he was not seen in public again.  He taped an audio address to the nation at the end of September, not allowing himself to be videotaped because he said he did not want his altered appearance to detract from the substance of his message. During what turned out to be a very reflective goodbye to the nation, David reassured the public that he was not going to give up the fight for his life.  He attempted to be upbeat and reassuring as he asked for the prayers of the nation in his struggle.

Just a couple of weeks prior to his death, he wrote a letter to his constituents in the district from which he had been elected (St. John Parish) filled with memories of his life with them.  David Thompson was (and still is) beloved here in Barbados.  The only thing to which I can equate it is the level of public adoration afforded John F. Kennedy.  Immediately following his death, a state of mourning was announced that lasted until the State Funeral this past Wednesday.

The funeral was held at Kensington Oval, the national cricket stadium.  Heads of State from throughout the Caribbean attended.  It was a solemn and fitting tribute to the man.  Thompson was a man of the people.  On this island of more than 350,000 people, it was hard over the last two weeks to find anyone who did not have an anecdote about a personal encounter.

His life is chronicled in this article from the Guyana newspaper.

Exactly one week after his death (and when I say exactly, I mean to the minute!) at 2:10 a.m., Tomas, on Thursday 28 October a weather system, then a tropical storm on Friday, finally a hurricane on Saturday, slammed into Barbados.  The last hurricane to hit the country before T was Janet in 1955!

We were without electricity or water from Saturday the 31st until Tuesday.  Other than a little inconvenience, and getting behind in my work somewhat, the storm had little effect on me.  However, there are some 600+ homes that have been either heavily damaged or destroyed here.  But we were blessed.  Our neighbor St. Lucia was very heavily hit.  Several dead and mass destruction.

Especially hard hit was the village of Soufriere. Soufriere holds a very special place in my heart.  From 2005 - 2007, I was in Soufriere at least once a month.  And I spent three weeks there working with young persons on developing AIDS communications programming.  I came to love the town and the people.  I especially loved the Hummingbird Beach Resort, a charming and intimate property - just 10 rooms.  But every morning, we awoke to the most spectacular view of St. Lucia's Piton Mountains, a world heritage site.

The word is that a landslide covered many of the homes in Soufriere with 12 feet of mud and pushed others into the sea.  My prayers are with my dear friends there, including Joyce at the Hummingbird and her staff.

On the personal front, it has been a pretty good time for me.  I find that it really doesn't take very much to make me happy these days.  Since Wednesday, there's been some work done around the apartment.  I was having problems with the refrigerator...turns out the gasket was out along the bottom.  Quick fix and now things are staying cold.  I couldn't even get wet standing under my shower...thought that it was just a water pressure issue.  Turns out that all was required as a change of showerhead.  Quick fix...now I'm bathing under Niagara Falls!!!  Landlord Rodney was in the country for a few days (he's on secondment [another cool word] to Trinidad) and manged to straighten out my internet.  Plus he cut down a huge bush that was on the bluff in front of the apartment.  Now, I have an unobstructed view of the homes below me and sit on the patio with a cup of coffee and the newspaper looking out over the Caribbean Sea.  It doesn't get much better.  This is what it looked like yesterday.



And here's the apartment.  The apartment is part of a beautiful house.  Rodney and Lynette (along with sons Adam and Ethan) live in the upstairs part that you see.  The apartment entrance is to the right of the front entrance, under the veranda. See that door down there?

Spent a very relaxing day today.  Had lunch at the Coconut Court Hotel in Hasting, Barbados today.  Restaurant is right on the beach.  My cousin Sandra Drakes and her daughter Cristina; her father, Gerald Parris and his son Ian and grandson and I celebrated my birthday (October 29) along with Sandra's (October 27).  And we are the same age.

Then I came home and have been engrossed in the NFL since then.  Watched the Eagles hang on to beat the Colts (Thank you Eagles). And along with my friend Dennis Strong am now watching the Cowboys live up to the jokes that have been going around about them.  What?  You haven't heard?  Well, here you go!

The Texas State Police are cracking down on speeders heading into Dallas.  For the first offense, they give you 2 Dallas Cowboy tickets. If you get stopped a second time, they make you use them.

Q. What do you call 47 millionaires around a TV watching the Super Bowl?
A. The Dallas Cowboys

Q. What do the Dallas Cowboys and Billy Graham have in common?
A. They both can make 70,000 people stand up and yell "Jesus Christ!"

Q. How do you keep a Dallas Cowboy out of your yard?
A. Put up a goal post.

Q. What do you call a Dallas Cowboy with a Super Bowl Ring?
A. Old.

Q. What's the difference between the Dallas Cowboys and a dollar bill?
A. You can still get four quarters out of a dollar bill.

Q. How many Dallas Cowboys does it take to win a Super Bowl?
A. Nobody remembers.

Q. What do the Cowboys and possums have in common?
A. Both play dead at home and get killed on the road!

The sequence of the last two minutes, with about 2:04 left in the first half of the Green Bay game (cannot call it the Cowboys' game!!!) I believe have spelled the end of the road for coach Wade Phillips.  The team is just out of it.  Wade, I remember when your dad Oial Andrew (Bum) coached the Saints in the 80s.

Well that's about it for now.  Halftime.

This promises to be a fun week.  My friend Cliff is coming down from New York...taking advantage of super JetBlue fares ($380 roundtrp).  This really does take our 35+ year friendship full circle.  When we were in university, his folk had a place in St. Marten/Sint Marteen.  One vacation I went from Barbados to visit him over there. (If you see him or me, ask either one of us to tell you the hilarious airport story from that trip.)  But he's never been to Barbados. So I'm looking forward to it. 

Then there's the possibility of another visit next week, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Good night.  Have a great week.

(I was cheated last night.  We don't observe DST, so I didn't get to gain an hour sleep.)

SUNDAY ADDENDUM

Well, it has been quite a day.

Sunday afternoons have turned into an opportunity to enjoy some time with my "Barbados mentor," Dennis Strong (pictured).

Dennis is a Certified Management Consultant whom I met during a brief stay here in 2001 when I was "between jobs" and assisting my cousin Jonathan in his desire to run a bar/restaurant. Dennis and I met (those of you who know me won't be surprised at this...) on the golf course. He is another expat from the US via Canada and has been here for, oh I don't know, probably 15 years or so. It was partially through Dennis' strong encouragement that I returned to the island in 2005 and he played a huge role in my coming back in August.

Sunday for us means NFL football. Dennis is the only person I know here who follows both the NFL and the great American pastime, BASEBALL!!! (Yep, the Phillies are headed back to the World Series. I don't know what I'll bet C. Beary, a die hard Yankee fan in New Orleans who actually went to the series last year and I'm sure will be there this year.)

So I fix lunch and we watch football on Sunday afternoons. And today, we spent quite a bit of time working as well. Some great games on today that culminated with the Eagles holding on to beat the 49ers. And, the Phillies completed a sweep of the Reds, even though I didn't get to see that game.

I also received news that a friend in Philadelphia with a long-desired wish to come face-to-face with President Obama had that desire fulfilled during a rally there this afternoon.  Not only was she able to shake hands with the President, but also took the opportunity to press an issue important to her and get a response from B.O. that "we're working on it."  Way to go.


So I'm feeling pretty good tonight. Of course, it is now midnight, and I've got a long day ahead tomorrow. So for anyone reading, I hope that you had a wonderful weekend and that you have a blessed week ahead.

So long!

"A COUNTRY OF PERVASIVE AND ENTRENCHED POLITICAL ILLITERACY"

CHURCH LIFE

Good morning!

Well, it was another early morning church service today.  I honestly still wonder how I manage to get up, dressed, pick up a family member and still be early for a 6:15 a.m. church service every Sunday.  I guess the old adage about making time for things that are important to you is true.  Tynes, thank you for giving me the inspiration to attend and accompanying me every week!  The services are especially good when the Rev. Guy Hewitt, who also happens to be chair of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Board, is the celebrant, as was the case this morning.

I worship at the Christ Church Parish Church.  Barbados is made up of 11 Parishes and the Parish churches were a remnant of British rule.  Earlier in her history, one church in each of Barbados' parishes was elevated to Parish Church status which made those facilities sort of capitals of each parish.  Such is no longer the case.

Christ Church, founded in 1629, has become one of the churches that I consider a "home church" along this nomadic journey that is my life!  Included in that number are Calvary N.L. Episcopal in Philadelphia (now Calvary St. Augustine thanks to a fortuitous merger a couple of years ago between two churches, both of whom I had the pleasure of serving in as organist/choir director at various times); St. James, Austin, TX and Christ Church Cathedral New Orleans, a church and choir I miss dearly.

A COUNTRY OF PERVASIVE AND ENTRENCHED POLITICAL ILLITERACY

Ever wonder how persons outside the United States view our political system?

Unfortunately, and with all due respect to the intellegence and worldview of those of your reading this, sadly the answer is "probably not."  You see we (and I continue to place myself in that number of Americans despite my current X-pat status) tend to be inward looking without too much concern about the world around us.

As a result, I thought I'd post the following commentary from today's Barbados newspaper, the Sunday Sun.  Whadda you think?  For me, I think Peter has hit the nail on the head and said things that most commentators within the states wouldn't dare say, primarily because of the fear that those within the journalistic community seem to have of the far right.  Labelled "progressive" or even worse "liberal?"  God forbid (pun [if you caught it] intended).

MILESTONES

I want to wish a really Happy Birthday to my favorite twin friends.  HB to CAW and the Rev. and many, many more you guys.  Miss you terribly.

Continued safe travels to my dear friend MCliffL who is in the Phillipines for a few weeks, and who will be visiting this tropical rock in November.

Enjoy your Sunday...go Phillies, go Eagles!

 

ON THE OTHER HAND: Obama and the media

By: Peter Laurie

In a country of pervasive and entrenched political illiteracy, like the United States, it’s the media narrative that shapes what people think and how they’ll vote.

Cable news coverage drives the American media narrative, and politicians strive to shape the terms of the debate. Repeat a lie often enough and cable news will pass it on. Example: the claim by Republicans that the new health care bill would authorise government to set up “death panels” to decide whether grandma should be put down or not.

This lie soon became a commonplace.

All Obama’s achievements as president are politically useless in the face of a hostile media narrative and a depressed economy.  

Ever since the Reagan era, the Republicans have been more successful than Democrats at shaping the media narrative. So much so that Bill Clinton had to move to the right to compete successfully on Republican terms.
Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News has championed the Republican cause. Now having bought the Republican Party (all likely Republican candidates for 2012 except Romney are on Fox’s payroll) Fox has been relentlessly distorting the news in a virulently anti-Obama direction while trumpeting its Orwellian slogan “fair and balanced”.

CNN just regurgitates a blander blend of the vile Fox spew.

One of Obama’s objectives most forcefully and clearly articulated during the 2008 campaign was to recast the political debate in terms favourable to the progressive cause and to transcend the ideological conservative/liberal divide that has been so corrosive a force in American politics. Hence his incessant repetition of America being not “red states and blue states but the United States”, and it not being a question of “big government or small government but smarter government”.  

Obama succeeded in shaping the media narrative and was elected in a landslide, despite his being black. But since then he has too often assumed his blackness is his Achilles heel.

In Dreams from my Father, Obama recounts how he’d learnt that around white people it was best to smile a lot and not make any sudden moves. This has led him to calmly ignore most of the vileness from the right, and gave the Republicans a free hand in shaping the media narrative.

But the darker slurs mouthed by Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and the Tea Party wackos about Obama being a secret Muslim and a foreign-born socialist bent on destroying America, have one subtext:  he’s black. And they’re issuing coded invitations to rednecks with guns to deal with Obama in the good old Southern way.
For most people – Americans and others – Obama is a post-racial person (let’s face it, nobody’s going to mistake him for Al Sharpton), so that he needs to stop being so cautious and fight back fiercely against the right and its corporate financiers.

The irony is that the Republicans understand the transformative potential of the Obama presidency much better than the “liberal” wing of the Democratic Party.

If Obama succeeds, he will lay the basis for future prosperity through genuine entrepreneurship rather than financial manipulation, and will create a more innovative and fairer society.

But the right’s nightmare is that he’ll shift the political debate from “free”, that is, unregulated markets versus “big government” control, to how best to manage a market economy so as to champion the public interest and protect the vulnerable while fostering private economic growth.

This will reduce the right to a fringe group.

Should the Fox Republicans win control of Congress in the November mid-term elections they will try to dismantle not only Obama’s health care achievement but also every facet of the social safety net.
Obama has nothing to lose. He should come out swinging in the few weeks remaining before the elections.
If he does he stands a good chance of changing the media narrative.

That way Americans will see the stark choice they face.

* Peter Laurie is a retired diplomat and a commentator on social issues. Email plaurie@caribsurf.com.

NationNews.com © Nation Publishing Co. Limited 2010

EXTREME PAIN

My brain is absolutely en fuego.  ON FIRE. My eyes hurt.

Like the preverbal train wreck, I am watching it happen and just cannot take my eyes off the television screen.  I may have seen worse on television, but I cannot remember having done so.

The show is an E! Channel offering...The Girls of the Playboy Mansion.

In front of my very  eyes, there is Hugh Hefner.  My guess is that he is approaching 95 years of age.  Miss July and Miss August, 2009 (in the event that you like me don’t follow the Playmates closely, they are twins) are consoling Pop Time on a visit to Las Vegas where he is going to see an ex-20 something bimbo with whom he has recently ended a “relationship” for the first time since their “breakup.”  We are expected to believe that the twin residents of the mansion are currently “involved” with Hugh. Every time they see him, all three kiss and they say “I love you” which means of course that the phrase has totally lost all context and meaning for me.

(I looked these people up.  Hef is now just one year younger than Mrs. Doris P. Dabney at 84 years.  The twins are 21. Eeeeeewww)

 While in Vegas, the girls are doing some magazine signings that involve, I would imagine probably illegally, some children under the age of 12 having their Playboys signed.  One memorable line from one of the twins: “It’s great being recognised as a playmate and not just as Hef’s girlfriends." No I’m not making this up.  It is actually on the screen in front of me. Why do I do this to myself??

I’m sorry.  I could not keep that to myself.  I had to share it with you. You’re welcome.

166 SQUARE MILES

Barbados National Flag

First, let's look at a VERY brief look at the history of this country:

The island was uninhabited when first settled by the British in 1627. Slaves worked the sugar plantations established on the island until 1834 when slavery was abolished. The economy remained heavily dependent on sugar, rum, and molasses production through most of the 20th century. The gradual introduction of social and political reforms in the 1940s and 1950s led to complete independence from the UK in 1966. In the 1990s, tourism and manufacturing surpassed the sugar industry in economic importance. (This being in no way a scholarly journal, I feel no necessity to cite the source...although it is a good one!  So sue me.)

On country's flag, the field of blue represents the sea and sky, both natural resources in abundance,  while gold represents the sand of the island's beaches. The symbol at the centre of the flag represents the Trident of the mythical sea god, Neptune - the shaft of the trident is broken symbolising Barbados' break from Britain.

In many ways, this country, to quote a saying I've seen somewhere, punches way above its weight. It is one of the most highly advanced developing countries in the world as measured in almost all areas.  For example, literacy.  Take a look at the following table showing the highest literacy rates by country in the world:

Rank	Country	Literacy rate
1	Georgia	100.0
2	Cuba	99.8
2	Estonia	99.8
2	Latvia	99.8
5	Barbados	99.7
5	Slovenia	99.7
5	Belarus	99.7
5	Lithuania	99.7
5	Ukraine	99.7
5	Armenia	99.7
10	Kazakhstan	99.6

There.  See what I mean by punching above its weight?  Here we have one of the smallest nations on earth tied for fifth place with the third highest literacy rate in the world.  And please don't think that is a statistic lost on the people here!!!  They wear it with pride.

According to my sources at the Central Intelligence Agency (you can have the same sources thanks to Google!), the estimated population of Barbados in July was 284,589, ranking it 180th in size in the world. (The Pitcairn Islands are the smallest population with 48 people.)  If Barbados were a city in the US, it would be the country's 54th largest city, behind Mesa City, AZ and slightly ahead of Colorado Springs, CO. I used to kid a former correspondent by saying that being Prime Minister of B'dos (common abbreviation) is akin to being the Prime Minister of Germantown, one of Philadelphia's larger neighborhoods.  It isn't QUITE that small, but its population IS smaller than Staten Island, New York's smallest borough.

But here's one of the interesting things about living in this country.  It is the size of the 54th largest city with a complete national government!  There is Prime Minister and a Parliament.  There is an Army, Navy, and even an Air Force.  (Wikipedia says that the Barbados Air Wing "consists of one Cessna 402 aircraft based at Grantley Adams International Airport")

Cessna 402 - Same type as the Barbados Air Wing!

So it is not unusual here for just about everyone you meet to be related to someone else you know, or maybe a cabinet minister or even the Prime Minister.

Speaking of which, next time, I need to fill you in on the politics here, especially the Prime Minister.

Later!

AN INTRODUCTION

I am now officially an ex-pat, or expatriate.

An American living overseas (again).

This is not the first time for me.  From 2005 – 2008, I was here.  Here is Barbados.  The most south-easterly island in the Caribbean chain.  Some would say that the most Barbados has in common with the place I left in the U.S. (New Orleans) is the hurricane of 1831. That storm ravaged the island, destroying Bridgetown (the capital city) and killing 1,700 before moving onto the Windward Islands of St. Lucia, St. Vincent and then Puerto Rico, Haiti and Cuba and finally hitting Louisiana, perhaps a precursor to what was to come in 2005 with Katrina, flooding the city. This island is just over 2000 miles south of New York; 1599 miles from Miami and 525 miles from Caracas.

But for me, there are great personal similarities between these two places, some 2,100 miles apart.  I have a long history in both.  Both can lay claim to being “second homes” for me.  I think I’ve spent more time in both than my hometown of Philadelphia.  I’m sure of that fact about New Orleans having spent about 15 years there between college and work in journalism and public relations.

For me, New Orleans is the northern-most Caribbean country.  Not literally, of course, but in its mentality in many ways.  Both Barbados and New Orleans require someone accustomed to the pace of Northeastern U.S. cities, or even Midwest locales like Chicago, to switch gears.  Very few people are in a hurry in either place. 

Driving through the French Quarter and some other neighbourhoods in New Orleans, the architecture of the city reminds me of Barbados and the Caribbean.  There aren’t many other American cities where “salmon” is considered an acceptable exterior paint colour for houses.  

I’m reading a book – Understanding the Caribbean Worker – Service, Sensitivity & Culture – by Yale – trained therapist and employee assistance professional Neilson A. Waithe.  Suffice it to say at this point that (generally) what we might call “the work ethic” of Barbados and New Orleans isn’t too far apart.  I’m sure that passages from Waithe’s book and my own observations on that subject will creep into my writing...they cannot help but.

I left New Orleans for Barbados on a 6 a.m. American Airlines flight via Miami nearly two months ago on 4 August.  It is a route that I could probably negotiate with my eyes closed, especially the Miami-to-Barbados portion.  That air route dates back to the Juan Trippe and Charles Lindberg days of Pan American World Airways and Col. Frank Boreman at Eastern Airlines.  When Pan Am went out of business, their Caribbean routes were acquired by Eastern who maintained them until their demise in 1991.  Since then, the primary carrier into and out of the island has been American.  With two flights a day from Miami, one from Puerto Rico and one from New York (and a non-stop flight from Dallas starting in December), American leads the way with service from the states.  There are other options, but only if you live along the East Coast, primarily near New York.

But when I first started travelling to Barbados in 1960 (yes, this year is my [gulp] fiftieth anniversary of coming here), my family would drive from our Mt. Airy home in Philadelphia to Brooklyn, staying overnight with my grandmother’s sister, Olga Braithwaite and her husband Ulric.  The maternal descendents from that period were all first generation Bajans (the term used rather than Barbadians – Bay-juns).The next day it was off to Idlewild Field (now JFK Airport).

Until doing some research on JFK today, I didn’t realise that the airport was built on what had been Idlewild Golf Course and had two other names before being named after the assassinated president in 1963 - Major General Alexander E. Anderson Airport in 1943, and in 1948 New York International Airport, Anderson Field. But in 1960, and up until 1963, EVERYONE called the airport Idlewild.

These trips (I came down to live with my mother’s sister Ruby and her husband Seibert [Bertie] Chase) actually form the first memories that I have.  Clutching my grandmother Carmen Pilgrim’s hand, wearing my little sailor suit at age 4 – there is a photo somewhere – we boarded the BOAC Britannia for the flight to Bermuda, Antigua and Barbados.

The British Overseas Airways Corporation (now British Airways) was at the visible symbol of the saying “the sun never sets on the British Empire,” meant to symbolise the fact that until after WW2, the British Empire literally spanned the globe.  The airline was a flying symbol of the realm.  The company, probably because of my early association with it, has remained my favourite carrier (I even flew on one of their Concordes).  For those of you who may be into airlines and aircraft as I am – although I missed my childhood dream of becoming an airline pilot – BOAC gave me thrills on a number of aircraft in those early days from the Britannia (a four-engine transcontinental prop aircraft) to the ill-fated jet powered Comet, the 707 and my all-time favourite airplane, the VC-10.  The VC-10 was England’s answer to the 707 which along with the DC-8 became the world’s first truly intercontinental jetliners.  The difference was that the VC-10 was powered by four rear-mounted Rolls Royce engines, much like the configuration to be found on the 727 and DC-9 aircraft.  With her engines mounted aft, the VC-10 was a huge airplane with an extremely quiet engine.   She was a beauty.  By the way, the only other passenger airplane with a similar engine configuration ever built (four rear-mounted engines) was the Russian Ilyushin Il-62.

There were several airlines on which we flew that tried US-Barbados service, with varying degrees of success, throughout the 60s and 70s.  Among them were Air France and a short-lived national airline of Barbados called Caribbean Airways.  That is not to be confused with, nor does it have any connection to, the present day Caribbean Airlines.  Caribbean Airlines is the successor to BWIA, or what used to be British West Indies Airlines. 

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BWIA was a subsidiary of BOAC that was ultimately purchased by the government of Trinidad and Tobago and became that twin-island country’s national airline.  BWIA was shut down in the last few years and its routes acquired by the new entity Caribbean Airlines.

In recent years, Delta, and Continental offered service to Barbados from Atlanta and Newark respectively.  US Air started a daily non-stop from Philadelphia which it no longer operates and now Jet Blue flies daily non-stop from JFK.

But the major airlift into the island is from England.  Long known as “Little England,” the majority of tourists from outside the Caribbean to Barbados arrive from England.  Even though the island gained independence from Great Britain in 1966, close ties have been maintained with the island being a favourite vacation spot.  Former Prime Minister Tony Blair spent his month-long vacations here every summer while he was in office and is rumoured to be buying property here.

I didn’t mean for this first entry to be a history of my air travel to Barbados, but I guess that’s what happens.