INDO TRINIDADIAN CUISINE AND ITS STRUGGLE FOR ACCEPTANCE. THE PHOTO SHOWS FOOD BEING PREPARED FOR A WEDDING IN THE 1950S

“Coolie, coolie come for roti, all de roti done.” This was the refrain that haunted many of the formerly indentured Indian immigrants in Trinidad and their descendants from their arrival almost to and including the present day. There is no immigrant story that comes without some painful recollections. It is a testimony however to the spirit of ALL Trinbagonians, that we have managed to grow beyond these recriminations and become a more unified people DESPITE the will of divisive elements such as politicians and pseudo-religious leaders. It seems odd now in a society that counts doubles as a staple food, and where roti has almost epicurean status in some places, that the derision of the Indo-Trinidadians and their food was once commonplace. One of the first articles I wrote for this newspaper back in 2012, was on the roots of Indo-Trinidadian gastronomy which is anchored firmly in the rations which the labourers received during their contracted residences on the sugar plantations of the island. Though the provisions were sometimes augmented or differed according to the estate, the general issue was as Charles Kingsley described it in 1870:

“Till the last two years the new comers received their wages entirely in money. But it was found better to give them for the first year (and now for the two first years) part payment in daily rations : a pound of rice, 4 oz. of dholl, a kind of pea, an oz. of coco-nut oil, or ghee, and 2 oz. of sugar to each adult ; and half the same to each child between five and ten years old.”

The variations would usually be the addition of a small quantity of saltfish, dried pepper or potatoes. Eked out by provision gardens, often planted with crops brought from India as seeds in the ‘jahaji’ bundles of the labourers, it laid the foundation of a spicy food culture which is as different from anything produced in India today. Those who have dined on authentic Indian dishes will attest to the immense difference from the deliciously creolized creations of Trinidad. Diversification of the Indo-Trinidadian palate came about in the 1880s when many shopkeepers realized what was necessary to attract a clientele from this ethnic group. Wholesalers began to import a variety of spices and curry ground with a ‘sil and loorha’ became more commonplace. Large quantities of ghee, channa (chickpeas). Essentials like mustard oil began to make their appearance at both rural and urban grocers.

Nevertheless, Indo-Trinidadian cooking remained an ‘underground’ scene, unknown to most other ethnic groups and rarely tasted outside of the mud huts where it was prepared unless one was invited as a guest. Tempting talkarees, rotis and meetai (sweets) churned out in the aromatic smoke of an earthen chulha (fireplace) were a well-kept secret, not by dint of cultural isolation alone, but also because of a growing sense of shame and self-loathing. Indo-Trinidadian children who attended government schools or schools operated by denominations other than the Canadian Presbyterian Mission to the Indians (CMI) were ridiculed for the lunches they carried, usually sada roti and some sort of bhagi or talkaree. It inculcated a massive inferiority complex which many carried into adulthood. This is well-remembered by persons today and finds its way into Caribbean literature such as the works of Sir V.S Naipaul and Ismith Khan. Well through the 1930s, Indo-Trinidadian concoctions was looked down upon as ‘hog food’ or fit only for the poorest classes. In a calypso sung by the Roaring Lion, he noted the cheapness of the diet by the chorus:

“Though depression is in Trinidad, maintaining a wife isn’t very hard, Well you need no ham nor biscuit or bread for there are ways they can be easily fed, like the coolies on bargee, pelauri dhal-bat and dhal-pouri , channa, paratha and the aloo-ke-talkaree”

Even doubles at its genesis in the hands of Enamool Deen in Princes Town was viewed as lowly stuff, unfit for consumption by all but rumshop drunks and hungry schoolchildren. In a memoir written by his son, Badru Deen, the struggle to introduce doubles to the urban consumer in San Juan and Port of Spain is well documented. It would be many decades before Trinidad’s most celebrated street food found a place in the national palate. As a fast food, roti was almost non-existent in the towns like Port-of-Spain where it only began to appear in the 1940s during World War II. Roadside roti-stalls were set up with all the necessary utensils, including several coal-pots, churning out dhalpouri with fillings of curried beef (ironic and at once immensely popular), goat, and curried aloo. Chicken a more expensive option. Some rumshops owned by Indians served roti as well.

It is a long and stony road that Indo-Trinidadian cuisine has travelled to gain the universal acceptance it enjoys today.

The bedrock of Christian Conservative political power has been their membership to a loose coalition of racists, bigots, nativists, xenophobes and the highest authority they all serve - greed. They are and have always been the primary obstacle to a more just and equitable American society. As always, they will lose. It's an American tradition.

to all you health nuts out there. why don't you get yourself a new hobby? thanks to you everything is no fat, no sodium, gluten-free, caffeine free, sugar-free, and all-around just fucking tasteless.
if you want to eat food like this leave the food that normal people eat alone, and eat tofu.
better yet wage your little health war on drugs. that way you can have alcohol with less alcohol, cocaine with less cocaine, and drunk driving without the drunk driving.
leave the damn food alone. what next water without H2O?

In the two weeks since the Republican National Committee declared Donald Trump the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Republican politicians have rallied around him.
They’re betting, in the words of RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, that “people just don’t care” about Trump’s treatment of women or his other flaws.
That’s a nice way of saying that the party itself doesn’t care, as long as Trump does well in the polls. But Trump’s flaws aren’t ordinary. He’s a race-baiting, authoritarian demagogue. Anyone who supports him is saying, in essence, that race baiting, authoritarianism, and war crimes are acceptable.

Trump’s collaborators, like the 20^th-century politicians who collaborated in segregation, internment, and McCarthyism, don’t want to face the full meaning of their complicity.
But they must. All of them—Priebus, Newt Gingrich, Gov. Chris Christie, and the long line of cowards and sycophants behind them—must be held to account. They must explain to the public, under scrutiny from the press, why they’re willing to suspend the fundamental values of the United States.

To facilitate this scrutiny, I’ve put together an indictment. It’s a summary of Trump’s record as a sectarian arsonist, a threat to the Constitution, and a war criminal in waiting. The indictment has 10 counts, each one specific to a transgression or a target group. These aren’t just character flaws. They’re insinuations, accusations, and threats that make Trump a menace to minorities and to the country as a whole. Here’s the list.

1. Banning Muslims. Last fall, Trump issued a series of escalating statements against Muslims. He spoke of tracking them through a database and closing mosques.
He claimed that thousands of Muslims in New Jersey had appeared on television celebrating 9/11, and he persisted in this libel despite his failure to produce evidence. Then, on Dec. 7, he called for a “complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”
This was not an off-the-cuff remark. It was a written statement, which Trump read aloud at a rally. Critics pointed out that such a ban would be unconstitutional and un-American, but Trump hasn’t withdrawn it. He views civil liberties and human rights as expendable.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
2. Sowing distrust of Christian minorities. Christie, Rudy Giuliani, and other Trump supporters dismiss the Muslim ban as an aberration. But it’s just one example of Trump’s ruthless use of fear. Ben Carson, for instance, is a member of the Seventh-day Adventist church, a Christian denomination. Last October, after two polls showed him surging past Trump in Iowa, Trump tried to scare evangelicals away from Carson. “Look, I don’t have to say it: I’m Presbyterian,” Trump told a crowd. “I’m Presbyterian. Boy, that’s down the middle of the road, folks, in all fairness. I mean, Seventh-day Adventist, I don’t know about. I just don’t know about.” Afterward, Trump’s spokeswoman said “the remark speaks for itself.”
When Trump was asked why he had brought up Carson’s faith, he feigned innocence: “I just said I don’t know about it. I said nothing about it. … I’d never say bad about any religion.” But in the video of Trump’s attack, you can hear his insinuating tone and his deliberate choice of words. This was a cynical appeal to prejudice.

Perhaps Sen. Orrin Hatch can explain to his constituents in Utah, many of whom belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, why he “totally endorses” a candidate who would target a Christian minority in this way.

3. Dog-whistling against Cuban Americans. By early December, Carson had faded. The new threat to Trump was Sen. Ted Cruz, who had passed Trump in Iowa polls.
So Trump did to Cruz what he had done to Carson. At a rally in Des Moines on Dec. 12, Trump tried to drive a wedge between Cruz and conservative Christians: “I do like Ted Cruz, but not a lot of evangelicals come out of Cuba, in all fairness. It’s true. Not a lot come out. But I like him nevertheless.” Again, the video of Trump’s remarks shows his cynical intent.

 Trump repeated the attack at a rally in Council Bluffs on Dec. 29:

Just remember this. Just remember this. You gotta remember, in all fairness: To the best of my knowledge, not too many evangelicals come out of Cuba. OK? Just remember that, OK? Just remember. In all fairness, here we are. Just remember that folks. When you’re casting your ballot, remember.

Perhaps Gov. Rick Scott of Florida can explain to his Cuban American constituents why he’s telling the GOP to “coalesce behind” the candidate who said these things.

4. Stereotyping Latinos. When Trump announced his candidacy in June 2015, he said that some undocumented immigrants from Mexico were drug mules or rapists, but others were “good people.”
Then he sank into pure tribalism. Illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, unfriendly Latinos—they were all suspect. On July 4, Trump retweeted an allegation that Jeb Bush “has to like the Mexican Illegals because of his wife.”
Trump didn’t bother to explain the logical inference that got him from Mrs. Bush, who immigrated legally from Mexico more than 40 years ago, to present-day “illegals.” When Trump was asked whether he regretted the retweet, he said no. “I don’t regret anything,” he told Anderson Cooper. “If my wife were from Mexico, I think I would have a soft spot for people from Mexico.”

Trump’s conflation of Latino ancestry with softness on “illegals” might have been forgiven as a one-time lapse. But then he repeated it. In February 2016, he told a crowd in Arkansas that he was still grappling with a lawsuit against Trump University “because there’s a hostility toward me by the judge—tremendous hostility, beyond belief. I believe he happens to be Spanish—which is fine. He’s Hispanic—which is fine … but we have a judge who’s very hostile.”
The next day, Trump was asked why he had brought up the judge’s Hispanic background. “The judge has been extremely hostile to me. I think it has to do with perhaps the fact that I’m very, very strong on the border,” said Trump. He offered no evidence of a connection between the lawsuit, the judge’s ethnicity, and the immigration debate. Instead, Trump simply repeated: “He is Hispanic, I believe. He is a very hostile judge to me. I said it loud and clear.”

Yes, loud and clear. Being Hispanic or Mexican American is, in Trump’s mind, sufficient grounds to accuse someone of judicial bias and softness on illegal immigration. Perhaps former Gov. Rick Perry of Texas can explain why he’s now praising Trump as a man who “loves his country” and pledging to “support him and help him and do what I can.”

Ralph Freso/Getty ImagesSupporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump look on during Fountain Park during a campaign rally in Arizona.
5. Practicing group blame against blacks. The worst anti-black statements attributed to Trump are 25-year-old hearsay. But in what he’s written more recently, you can see resentment. In December 2011, he tweeted about Kwanzaa, a nonreligious African-American holiday: “What a convenient mistake: @BarackObama issued a statement for Kwanza but failed to issue one for Christmas.” (The charge was false.)
In November 2014, during riots in Ferguson, Missouri, Trump tweeted: “Sadly, because president Obama has done such a poor job as president, you won’t see another black president for generations!” A few hours later, Trump complained, “President Obama has absolutely no control (or respect) over the African American community.” And in April 2015, after the death of Freddie Gray, Trump tweeted, “Our great African American President hasn’t exactly had a positive impact on the thugs who are so happily and openly destroying Baltimore!”

It’s hard to believe that Trump’s ridicule of Kwanzaa, his explicitly racial use of “thugs” (you don’t need to guess that it’s code for black people—Trump draws the connection for you), and his perpetual quest to prove that Obama wasn’t born in the United States don’t reflect some underlying animus. Trump’s 2014 tweet also provides a rationale for voting against future black candidates. But even if you give Trump the benefit of the doubt on all these things, his comments convey an ugly assumption: that a black president, by virtue of his color, is responsible for the worst behavior of other black people.

Perhaps Priebus or some other RNC official can explain why that assumption, which no Republican leader would apply to a white president with regard to the behavior of white people, isn’t flatly racist.

6. Blaming sexual assault in the military on the integration of women. Trump has a record of cringeworthy quotes about women, ranging from the indirectly attributed (“treat ’em like s---”—which Trump denies he said) to the directly recorded (“fat pig,” “piece of a--”). In April 2015, Trump’s Twitter account recirculated this joke: “If Hillary Clinton can’t satisfy her husband what makes her think she can satisfy America?” Trump’s spokesperson blamed the retweet on a staffer. But in August and again in January, Trump was at it again, retweeting several references to Megyn Kelly as a “bimbo.”

Sunday’s New York Times story, based on more than 50 interviews, suggests that Trump has trouble distinguishing between women as sex objects and women as colleagues. Even if you distrust these interviews and give Trump a pass for his crude language about some women, it’s hard to explain two tweets he posted on May 7, 2013. First he wrote: “26,000 unreported sexual assaults in the military-only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?” (The typo was his.) Nine minutes later, he added: “The Generals and top military brass never wanted a mixer but were forced to do it by very dumb politicians who wanted to be politically C!”
Trump later tried to spin his remarks as ambiguous, but his meaning was clear: When you integrate men and women, even in the military, there will be sexual assaults. Therefore, integration is dumb.

Perhaps Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the House majority leader, can explain to the women of America why he has enlisted as a convention delegate for the man who wrote these things.

Tom Pennington / Getty Images
7. Advocating torture. Many Republicans defend waterboarding on the grounds that it isn’t really torture and that it could save lives by extracting timely intelligence. Trump rejects these constraints. He told an audience in South Carolina that even if waterboarding were torture, it would be “absolutely fine,” and “we should go much stronger.” In Ohio, he said that even if waterboarding didn’t extract useful information, he would approve it and even harsher measures, because “if it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway, for what they’re doing to us.” That’s a policy of torture, without limits, as sheer retribution.

Perhaps Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, who presents himself as a faithful Christian, can explain why he’s promising to “campaign hard” for a man who preaches such cruelty.

8. Targeting civilians. On Dec. 2, Trump announced a new target in the war on terror: “With the terrorists, you have to take out their families.” In a follow-up interview, he was asked whether that meant deliberately killing family members. “They would suffer,” he said. “There has to be retribution.” On Dec. 6, he explained that because terrorists “want their families left alone,” these families could be targeted as a deterrent against future attacks. On Dec. 15, he elaborated: “I would be very, very firm with families. Frankly, that will make people think, because they may not care much about their lives, but they do care, believe it or not, about their families’ lives.” The next day, Bill O’Reilly asked Trump: “You’re not going to assassinate them, are you?” Trump replied, “I don’t know what I’d do.”

That’s at least five occasions on which Trump declared noncombatants legitimate targets, based purely on their value as hostages, and refused to limit what he would do to them. Since then, he hasn’t backed off. At a debate in March, he was asked what he would do if the military refused his orders to target terrorists’ families. “They’re not going to refuse me,” Trump replied. “If I say, ‘Do it,’ they’re going to do it.” In subsequent remarks, he said he would “have the law expanded” to make his orders legal.

Perhaps former Gov. Mike Huckabee, Sen. Tom Cotton, or Jerry Falwell Jr. can explain why they’re backing a candidate whose proposed use of noncombatants is legally akin to terrorism.

9. Rationalizing plunder. Trump says his strategy against ISIS is to “take their oil.” But as Jim Geraghty points out in National Review, Trump has preached oil confiscation since 2011—long before ISIS, in its present form, existed. Trump has said we should seize oil from Iraq, Libya, or any other oil-rich country we invade. It’s “not stealing,” Trump argues, since we’d just be “reimbursing ourselves.” The reimbursement starts with $1 million for the family of every American soldier killed in the target country, plus extra cash to “take care of other countries that helped us” in the war. The Geneva Conventions forbid such plunder, but Trump doesn’t care. He explicitly invokes the ancient rule of conquest: “To the victor belong the spoils.”

Perhaps Dick Cheney, who defends the Iraq war as a matter of national security and humanitarianism, can explain why he’s supporting a candidate who frankly advocates taking that country’s wealth.

Thomson ReutersAnti-Trump protester demonstrates outside RNC headquarters in Washington
10. Inciting violence. Trump has repeatedly encouraged violence at his rallies. On Nov. 22, he defended supporters who beat a protester at one of his events in Alabama. “Maybe he should have been roughed up,” Trump said of the protester. On Feb. 1, he told a crowd in Iowa: “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously. OK? Just knock the hell—I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees.” On Feb. 22, when a demonstrator interrupted his speech in Las Vegas, Trump told the audience, “I’d like to punch him in the face.” Trump went on: “I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks.” On March 13, after a Trump supporter sucker-punched a protester at a rally in North Carolina, Trump said he had “instructed my people to look into” paying the supporter’s legal fees.

Perhaps Gov. Nikki Haley, who purports to represent a new GOP more interested in listening and healing, can explain why she’s falling in line behind Trump.

There are lots of other reasons to vote against Trump. But these 10 counts are the core of the case against him.
They’re not about ignorance, error, or policy details. They’re about his contempt for principles. Trump has demonstrated that there’s no ethnic, racial, or religious group he wouldn’t target for political advantage. He doesn’t hate Mexican Americans, Cuban Americans, Seventh-day Adventists, or Muslims. They just happen to be the groups whose demonization, in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, seemed likely to help him. If targeting Jews or Baptists had served his interests, he would have demonized them.

Trump has also demonstrated that there’s no line he won’t cross. He would promote vigilantism. He would bar people from this country based on religion—or, presumably, based on race or ethnicity, if terrorism came from a racial or ethnic group. He would torture people just because “they deserve it.” He would target the innocent to punish the guilty. He would subvert the Constitution and reduce the world’s greatest republic, through his mercenary foreign policy, to a medieval empire.

When Trump sees black people rioting, he doesn’t look for an underlying injustice. He sees an opportunity to mock “our great African American President” for failing to “control” them. When Trump hears about sexual violence in the military, he doesn’t ask why so many men treat their female colleagues this way, or why they get away with it. He asks why women were allowed in.

This is not a man who needs seasoning, pollsters, or get-to-know-you sessions on Capitol Hill. You can’t fix him with a TelePrompter, a super PAC, or a team of policy wonks. He’s not a project. He’s a menace. He’s unfit for the presidency of any country, let alone the world’s greatest military power. When the final indictment of Trump is written, the politicians who closed their eyes to his ruthlessness and kissed his ring will be recorded as co-conspirators. To make America great again—to keep America America—they must be voted out.

If you're lost you can look and you will find me
Time after time
If you fall I will catch you I'll be waiting
Time after time

The Bamboo Cathedral, Trinidad.

Located in Tucker Valley, Chaguaramas. It is a stretch of approximately 300 metres, along the Tracking Station Road where the bamboo stalks bend towards each other forming a canopy above the road. The arches formed above bear a resemblance to those found in cathedrals and has remained unchanged for 150 years.

Let's imagine... if you glimpsed the future, you were frightened by what you saw, what would you do with that information?
You would go to... the politicians, captains of industry?
And how would you convince them? Data? Facts? Good luck!
The only facts they won't challenge are the ones that keep the wheels greased and the dollars rolling in.
But what if... what if there was a way of skipping the middle man and putting the critical news directly into everyone's head?
The probability of wide-spread annihilation kept going up.
The only way to stop it was to show it. To scare people straight.
Because, what reasonable human being wouldn't be galvanized by the potential destruction of everything they've ever known or loved?
To save civilization, I would show its collapse.
But, how do you think this vision was received?
How do you think people responded to the prospect of imminent doom?
They gobbled it up like a chocolate eclair! They didn't fear their demise, they re-packaged it.
It could be enjoyed as video-games, as TV shows, books, movies, the entire world wholeheartedly embraced the apocalypse and sprinted towards it with gleeful abandon.
Meanwhile, your Earth was crumbling all around you.
You've got simultaneous epidemics of obesity and starvation.
Explain that one! Bees and butterflies start to disappear, the glaciers melt, algae blooms.
All around you the coal mine canaries are dropping dead and you won't take the hint!
In every moment there's the possibility of a better future, but you people won't believe it.
And because you won't believe it you won't do what is necessary to make it a reality.
So, you dwell on this terrible future.
You resign yourselves to it for one reason, because *that* future does not ask anything of you today.
So yes, we saw the iceberg and warned the Titanic. But you all just steered for it anyway, full steam ahead. Why?
 Because you want to sink! You gave up! That's not the monitor's fault.
That's yours.

One of the nice things about living in T&T, is that you can always find friends to help you build a little shack to call home.

Stop asking why they keep doing it and start asking why you keep allowing it.

Cussons, My Fair Lady

Lost Facades of the 1970s Anti-Walmart

By MessyNessy

11th May, 2016

12

Does anyone remember the American retail chain BEST Products? The last store disappeared in 1997 after forty years in business selling cheap home furnishings, consumer electronics, jewellery, housewares, toys from their catalog showrooms. Their retail concept might not have worked so well, but their architecture in the 1970s and early 80s made shopping trips to the strip mall a heck of a lot more entertaining…

(c) SITE

The owners of BEST Products, husband and wife Sydney and Frances Lewis were collectors of 20th century art. It was rumoured that they even traded store merchandise to grow their art collection, most of which is housed at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts today. In the mid-1970s, they contracted American architect James Wines, founder “SITE” (Sculpture in the Environment) to give nine of their retail stores an avant-garde make-over that would reflect their artistic sensibilities.

(c) SITE

BEST Parking Lot Building designed for locations in Houston, TX and Los Angeles, CA in 1976, a fusion of the asphalt parking lot with the retail building (c) SITE

As a result, they brought the avant-garde to the average American consumer and turned the strip mall into street art…

(c) SITE

Their Houston store, dubbed the ‘Indeterminate Facade’ with its crumbling bricks, is said to have appeared in more books on 20th-century architecture than photographs of any other modern structure. In 1987, Sydney and Frances Lewis were awarded the National Medal of Arts.

(c) SITE

(c) SITE

But then came Amazon and eBay and by 1996, BEST Products was de-listed from NASDAQ. With 169 Best stores, 11 Best jewellery stores across 23 states, and not to mention a nationwide mail-order service, the Lewis family filed for bankruptcy for the second time and closed their last store the following year.

Currently all but one of their buildings have been either demolished or altered to remove their distinctive features.

via Failed Architecture

The ‘Peeling Facade’ store lost its peeling wall design to a pawnshop ↑

The store in Sacramento which had an entryway that would slide open in the morning and slide shut at night, is now a very average-looking block of concrete operating as a Best Buy.

via Failed Architecture

The only store whose avant-garde design was saved was the “forest building” in Richmond, Virginia, which is now home to the West End Presbyterian Church.

After James Wines witnessed his buildings disappear one by one from the suburban landscape, the architect who still runs his studio today, remarked that, “In France, this would never happen.”

No, it's not a result of crime, it's a result of decades of policy. Reagan started it, Clinton knocked it out of the park. The United States has 5% of the world's population and 25% of it's prisoners. Prison Reform is one of the only issues which there is bi-partisan agreement. That agreement being: we've destroyed the lives of an entire generation, devastated impoverished communities and we have to fix it. We seriously f***ed up.

Got pulled over today..Cop came up and said he just worked a long day and ended his shift..He said if I had a good reason for speeding that he'd let me go..So I said Officer my wife left me 5 years ago for a cop, and I thought you was bringing her back..he said..have a good day Sir..

Once upon a time, a man and woman fell in love.
But such things cannot last.
For the heart is a treacherous thing.
And love, love is nothing more than a fairy tale.