Colorado Plateau, Mesa

Some of the most spectacular canyons carved out over centuries by nature, are to be found where Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, (called four corners which is marked by a monument) and sections of Nevada.

 

Recently, we were able to visit the Colorado National Monument in Mesa, which is a section of the Colorado Plateau and even drove around Rim Road. This route (around 25 miles long) takes you from Fruita and ends up in Grand Junction and provides you with the most panoramic, unforgettable but sometimes dizzying view of the rock formations, tunnels and city below.

This area had been populated by the Ute people, (or as they call themselves, Nuche). They are Colorado’s longest continuous residents.

Castle Gate rock formation

Can you believe climbers ascend that!

However, as part of America’s brutal and oppressive history, they were forcibly moved and confined to reservations elsewhere.

Other spectacular rock formations

 

Wining down (or up)

In my book, Colorado is one of the most beautiful states in the USA and hence one of my favorites. It is a large state and since I know I have only seen a tiny section, never pass up an opportunity to see more.

The Book  Cliffs mountain range 

 This fall we went 'wining ' in Palisades, a town so small that it doesn’t even have a proper supermarket to serve its 3000 or so residents and only a few places open before 10 am. 

The drive to get there is really spectacular though.

Palisades is close to Grand Junction , the last city in Colorado before you cross over into Utah. So close seems to be the relationship between its residents and the state of Utah, that the street signs tell you the distance between each section of Palisades and the Utah border. 

Strange since that town is in Colorado!

We went over to Grand Junction and while it seems pleasant to the eyes, us three black girls did not appear to be welcome in some places and some signs on vehicles were downright dangerous looking. 

Like the sign on a large truck declaring "I lubricate my AR 15 with the tears of liberals". 

So we never tarried long there! 

But I stray.

The little town of Palisades lies in the valley beneath the huge attractive Book Cliffs Mountain range, so named, as someone decided that it looks like a series of books on a shelf.

Here its 35 and 8/10 miles from the Utah border!

It does in parts and the general area is so attractive.

 Ironically, though close to alcohol-shy Utah, Palisades has over 40 wineries and that is why we were there. 

Many farms have grape arbors in the back and wineries in front, so wine tasting is the name of the game there.

 On this trip we booked a horse -drawn carriage to take us from winery to winery so we could enjoy the various varieties without falling into the trap of drinking and driving.

 We were so lucky that our first stop, was at Varaison Vineyards for it was the owner who greeted us and he had a wealth of knowledge.

 Better yet, he introduced us to some of his best wines.

After that, our fantastic luck ran out though, as at the other wineries at which we stopped, they told us we had to pay for the tastings.

Varaisin Vineyards

 This could be because they suffered a terrible loss in 2020, when temperatures dropped from 54 degrees to 17 degrees overnight, wiping out most of the grape crop. But if people do not get to taste the products,  don’t they tend not to buy?

Anyway, thanks to Varaison we were so well souped up, that the little tots we got elsewhere just kept up happy. Then when we returned to our hotel, it was Happy Hour.

So, our day of wine tasting was, filled with happiness, very well spent and we even made some new friends to boot.

 Beautiful Colorado I just love you, (when it’s not cold!)-

Memories

Some of the sculptures downtown Grand Junction

 

Strange christian rituals

With the recent events surrounding the life and death of the late Kevin Smith, discussions regarding strange religious practices, cults and cultism have taken center stage.

For those who have been living on Mars, Kevin Smith, a self-described doctor, prophet, healer, pastor and even king, who was addressed as His Excellency, was the founder of Pathways International Kingdom Restoration Ministers, in Montego Bay, Jamaica.

Kevin Smith with former prime minster Portia Simpson-Miller

He came to national attention after the police raided his church because of reports that they had conducted human sacrifices there. Two sacrificed persons were found dead in his church, so Smith and several of his congregants were arrested for murder.

Within a week of his arrest, as Smith was being transferred to a court hearing in Kingston, the car in which he was travelling crashed and he and one of his police escorts were killed.

While it took reports of human sacrifices to wake up the nation to outrageous religious practices, I have for years been personally repulsed by the fixation on blood in many of the Christian religions.

A human who was sacrifice3d at Kevin Smith's church

I still remember my shock when first being exposed to this strange attraction. It was decades ago at a funeral in a Roman Catholic church, when during the communion, the congregants were invited to drink wine and eat bread which the parson said symbolized Jesus’ blood and flesh.

Thoughts that this must indicate a penchant towards cannibalism, immediately arose in my mind and have stayed with me since then, as far as that religion is concerned.

For why else would the consumption of flesh and blood arise!

While the suggestion of the intake of human blood remains weird to me, blood sacrifice seems to be quite common in a number of denominations in the Christian religion, and not only in Jamaica.

I remember being invited to a feast in Trinidad while on a visit to our sister island some years ago. It was the annual convention of the Spiritual Baptists there. What I wasn’t told beforehand however was that several of the animals that had been donated by some congregants, would have had their throats cut in sacrifice during the church service!

That one stayed with me too.

Then there was the time when I visited a Kumina ceremony in St. Thomas where one lady got into the spirit. Immediately, a “Bishop” from Bull Bay, bit off  the head of a live white chicken and scattered the blood all over her.

Lawd ha massi, it was gross.

But back to Kevin Smith.

This is a report from the Daily Gleaner  about a chilling incident;"Twenty-six-year-old Kevin 'Big Dog' Grant, who was recently captured on tape drinking blood from the head of a freshly slaughtered goat, was shot dead at a rented apartment in Discovery Bay, blood-drinking ritual is common among scammers, who believe that it offers them protection from harm, help them to elude the police, and make them more successful in fleecing money from unsuspecting victims.Investigators also believe that Grant had paid a huge sum in seeking spiritual protection from the late Kevin O. Smith...."

The king with some of his subjects

Since it was revealed that the sacrifices at his church extended from animals to humans, he is being described in some church circles as a devilish cult leader.

I won’t argue with that description, however, the fact is he had quite a large and dedicated congregation and, it is not unusual for people to be attracted to cults, no matter how evil some others say they are.

One precise definition of cultism is; a misplaced or excessive admiration for a particular person or thing. That being so, both religion and its evil twin brother, politics, is full of cultists!

I combine them, as those two vocations have been responsible for the most murder and mayhem in the world throughout history.

It therefore neither unusual nor strange, that Jamaica, the country which is reported to have the most churches per square mile, is among the top five most murderous countries in the world. (47 per hundred thousand). We are in lock step with Honduras and El Salvador, two other countries that also have religion coming out of their pores.

On the other hand, countries like Japan ( murder rate .26 per hundred thousand) and Estonia (murder rate 3.5 per hundred thousand) are listed in the World Population Review as being among the least religious places in the world.

Coincidence or a direct link?

I cringe every time I hear people trying to spread religion, for though I am by no means an atheist, the most impressive doctrine I have ever heard being promoted was by the Dalai Lama.

Unambiguously stated, it is; “My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.”

No weird rituals nor drama.

https://youtu.be/t896a9UQxtc

Big up the Jamaican experience

I often get so upset about the crime, the rabid corruption in government and other problems in my country, that sometimes I forget to give thanks for the small mercies here.

So today, I will.

One great blessing in my motherland, is how we as women have personal freedoms and our rights are generally respected.

Be clear though, these rights are not given to us by government or the benevolence of the male population, but by virtue of the region and the period in which we were lucky enough to be born.

Let me start with a trivial example of how it is for some women elsewhere.

I will never forget how perturbed I was at a simple scene I saw in Guyana, which has quite a large Muslim population.

It was an exceptionally hot day and there was couple walking in front of me. It was really annoying to me personally, when the man took off his shirt because of the heat of the boiling sun, while the poor woman beside him was covered from head to toe with only eyes showing, and the garment was black to boot!

In situations like this, I have had to remind myself that it is really none of my business.

That example however, is just the tip of the iceberg, for, in some countries, being born female can be a death sentence or an entire life of misery.

Take China. For years the communist government there had a “one child” policy which led to female babies being murdered at birth, as for some strange reason, families there maintained that boy babies were more valuable/desirable than girls.

This policy was only changed this year to one allowing families to have three children. I am prepared to bet my bottom dollar however, that if a family has three girls, all or most won’t make it past their first birthday!

Look at what happens in India where it is such a widespread practice for young girls, some as young as six years old, to be married off to old grey tone men.  The very thought of that practice gives me the shivers, for that must be such terrible fate for the young girls there.

That is nothing but officially sanctioned pedophilia.

Then there is the widespread practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM.

According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), there are the approximately 200 million females in around 30 countries who have had their genital organs partially or totally removed to prevent them from enjoying sex.

Some of the countries in which this primitive cultural practice still exists are; Yemen, Iraq, and Indonesia and in some places in South America such as Colombia, India, Malaysia, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The practice is also found in pockets of Europe and in Australia and North America.

UNICEF further expounds; "In most of the countries, the majority of girls were cut after the age of five. In Yemen, 85 percent of girls experienced female genital mutilation within their first week of life."

The World Health Organisation (WHO) gives the reasoning behind this evil practice as; “FGM is often motivated by beliefs about what is considered acceptable sexual behaviour. It aims to ensure premarital virginity and marital fidelity. FGM is in many communities believed to reduce a woman's libido and therefore believed to help her resist extramarital sexual acts. When a vaginal opening is covered or narrowed (Type 3), the fear of the pain of opening it, and the fear that this will be found out, is expected to further discourage extramarital sexual intercourse among women with this type of FGM.”

Lord of mercy. Can you believe that girls are still being subjected to this wicked, painful, primitive cultural practice?

I don’t think anything else done to the female surpasses this in wickedness, for many children die or are maimed for life as a result of the insanitary means under which it done.

It was watching a recent demonstration in far-away Afghanistan that really put me on this path of giving thanks for my beautiful country and its civilized cultural practices.

In that newsclip, it showed a small group of women being beaten for simply staging a demonstration to protest the new rules which prohibit girls from going to school and women from returning to work, since the Taliban took back that country.

While the press would have us believe that the Taliban are extreme zealots who are acting against the will of the majority, I beg to differ. For if they didn’t have the support of the masses, how could a group of an estimated 20,000 fighters take over a country of almost 40 million people so easily and without serious resistance?

So maybe in that country, it is just those small groups of demonstrators who pop up from time to time who have a problem with women there being treated as less than equal there, while to the majority, that is how it should be!

Culture can really be deadly.

While I can never endorse some of the disgraceful things that are happening in my country in the name of governance, as a woman, I certainly have to stop and give thanks occasionally, for where I was fortunate enough to have been born.

 

https://youtu.be/I1E9rtbEYMA

Protecting the unborn while neglecting the already born

The reason why I keep coming back to religion so  regularly, is because it has been used for so long as a cover to oppress people.

In the olden days, it was the principal tool to keep the enslaved and oppressed in line, the well-known ruse being, if they accepted the oppression their rewards would come in the afterlife.

As slavery was outlawed and most people became less naïve, the religious scammers evolved a bit and Bishop Tutu summed up the next step beautifully; “When the missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.” Of course, you are aware that in South Africa, everything the apartheid government did was with the blessing of the Dutch Reformed church.

It was no different in other countries such as the USA and the Caribbean where slavery and later, white oppression, was the order of the day, for always, the slave masters had the full endorsement of the church.

Fast forward to my generation.

As far as I can see, the Christian religion is still mainly used as a tool to oppress the weak. Probably though, their favorite prey these days are women and children, because of their unequal physical strength!

So, while I have always been wary of Christians, the thing that drew me back to this topic today, is the most horrific story coming out of France about the sexual abuse of children by catholic priests. It stated in part; Clergy members in the Roman Catholic Church in France sexually abused more than 200,000 minors over the past seven decades, according to an estimate published on Tuesday by an independent commission that concluded the problem was far more pervasive than previously known.”

I find these reports about the catholic church especially painful, for while I don’t know much about their religious teachings and care even less, based on their operation in Jamaica, I have always been a big supporter of that denomination where through the efforts of representatives such as Father Holung, Sister Benedict and the Alpha institution,  it has only been surpassed by the Salvation Army, in assisting, uplifting and training the poor in my country.    

However, catholics internationally, are well known for their promulgation of the inferiority of woman and definitely, what we can do with our bodies, under the guise of protecting the unborn while abusing the already born.

What is happening in Texas too is a poignant example of how those who describe themselves as upright Christians, use their superior powers to oppress women, under the guise of protecting the unborn.

In this latest move, these Texan legislators too, have decided that women don’t control our own bodies, so government through them, can determine what pregnant ladies do with their’s!

I don’t know if it’s the nonsense about woman being created from Adam's rib which has driven this overreach in the Christian world, but whatever it is, it is nothing but another grab for power over us women in the name of religion.

For how is that these upright people in Texas, care so much about the recently conceived,(some are claiming that a human exists from the moment of conceptions!) when they display so little concern about the pligtht of pregnanat women and children  after they are born, especially minorities.

For according to the statistics, Black infants in Texas are twice as likely as white infants to die before their first birthday and maternal mortality is higher than the national average.

Protecting the unborn indeed while leaving those already here to suffer and die from their racist policies and neglect.

These religious zealots would be on firmer ground if they encouraged men to have vasectomies instead of  continually trying to take control of women's bodies!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJu_qutzS3Y

Jamaica an English-speaking country?

Every time I hear someone say Jamaica is an English-speaking country, I have a good laugh.  Not only because the last survey (2007) done on the topic showed that less than 18% of  us speak it, but because of the hilarious experiences I know about.

The first was when relatives from Nicaragua, Bluefields to be exact, sent their children here to learn English.

For the benefit of those who don’t know of our close connection to that part of the world, let me explain our links.

As you probably know, in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, thousands of Caribbean people including Jamaicans, went to Panama to seek work on the canal project. That was a dangerous project and thousands died, but when it was completed in 1914, some persons returned home. However, many others decided to seek opportunities in the region and those who did not remain in Panama, moved up to Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and even over to the San Andres Island among other places.

Interestingly, it was the Jamaicans who named an area on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua where they settled, Bluefileds, after our own Bluefields in Westmorland.

This is where some of my relatives settled and it was some grandchildren of one of my cousins there, who were sent to Jamaica to learn English. They went to live in Clarendon with another relative who operated a bakery there. While there, they attended elementary school nearby.

Well, that project failed badly, so after a few weeks the parents had to come and retrieve their children, for not only did they not learn a word of English, but also every second word out of the mouth of the babes was a bad word.

I heard an even more amusing story from a young lady I met in Florida where she was studying psychology. She told me she was born in East Asia, Myanmar to be exact and her parents who were doctors, wanted herself and her young brother to learn English. They found on the internet, this beautiful island in the Caribbean where it was revealed that English was spoken. Excitedly, they wrote to the government to enquire if there was any demand for doctors and were quickly recruited.

When they arrived here, they were posted to a quite large, supposedly progressive district in St. Thomas, where, she then nine, and her brother then seven, were enrolled into a local elementary school.

She enjoyed her time there and better yet, how quickly she was becoming proficient at  ‘English!’

Three years later, she was sent to a prestigious high school in Kingston and from the first day, every time she opened her mouth to speak, her colleagues in class laughed uproariously!

At first, she couldn’t understand why, then someone drew her aside to tell her she was speaking patois they were not allowed to do so in class!

Long story short, she eventually learnt English there and was happy to report that she is now tri-lingual, speaking her native language, patois and English!

I don’t how common it is for foreigners to move here to learn English only to learn that we are not really an English-speaking Country. Unfortunately, the problem does not only lie with school kids and some parents but teachers as well. For how well I remember how often I had to go in to see the English Teacher at a Spanish Town high school when I lived there, because she was marking things wrong in my children’s English homework book, when they were right!

I love patois to the point where I now have a you tube channel teaching whoever wishes, to speak Jamaican patois. I, however, love learning other languages for I totally agree with the Canadian, Yama Mubtaker, that “If people had the right skills and intention to communicate well, there would be no conflict. The better we are at communicating, the better our lives will be.”

You know, we have many young ambitious Jamaicans all over the globe teaching English. By not ensuring that all our own citizens master this international language, we are really stymieing their progress in the midst of the myriad of opportunities worldwide in so many different areas.

Why don’t we use some of these specially trained young people  who are teaching foreigners all over the globe, to teach English in those sections of Jamaica where people’s progress is being impeded because of their inability to communicate in this important international language?

Let’s start living in the real world instead of the land of make believe.

English speaking indeed!

 

https://youtu.be/EG_UIhU0uac

(268) JAMAICAN PATWAH - YouTube

 

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