Together, we are groping our way through a time of unprecedented anxiety, distress, and uncertainty. Anxiety in the face of a potentially deadly disease that so far has no antidote. Distress at the suffering it has provoked all round. Uncertainty as to what will follow: when and in what...

How is Kingston to be renewed and revitalized? Most times, responses to this perennial question focus on block and steel renovations and highlight the role the State and large corporations must play in initiating the revitalization process. Over the years, grand announcements have been made and plans unveiled, but...

In “Walk-Foot People Matter,” I called attention to the systematic mistreatment of citizen-pedestrians.  Focusing on citizenship allowed me to emphasize that this is about the core democratic principle of fair treatment.   Today, I suggest that, besides the significant economies and health benefits of walking, one of its important, but...

In Part 1 of Walk-Foot People Matter, I highlighted the hazardous conditions under which pedestrians are forced to operate, conditions created by the indifference as well as deliberate actions of governments: that is, of the state, its agencies and personnel. Too often, however, we displace onto politicians, government and...

One might say that nowadays most Jamaicans take the following propositions as axiomatic truths: Not all motorists are “people of quality” (you know that oft-quoted line from the late Rex Nettleford about a buttu in a Benz is still a buttu). Notwithstanding this first proposition: All people of quality...

With Kingston now enjoying a certain celebrity, having been named a Creative City of Music by UNESCO in 2015, it’s useful to reflect on how those of us who live in the city experience it. As poet Derek Walcott observed in his Nobel Lecture some years ago: “A culture…is...