Miss Val's Preschool Class on Last Day of the School Year

Well, it’s that time of the year again. School is out and the kids are either home or going to camp and perhaps you’re looking for something to do with the kids (or without them.) Here’s a suggestion if you don’t mind the trip over to St. Thomas:

Jacob

Pierce

Check out the Butterfly Farm at the Havensight Cruise Ship dock.

There’s waterfalls and ponds and tropical flowers and friendly guides to explain the fascinating facts about butterflies, caterpillars and their life cycles and metamorphoses.

(Jacob met his classmate, Pierce, at the Butterfly Farm and the two of them just loved it and so will kids of all ages, even grown up ones.)

An example of how things work in the Virgin Islands
A letter sent to me addressed to my PO Box at the Cruz Bay Post Office from Jolly Dog is deposited in the “local mail” slot at the same Cruz Bay Post Office. The letter is taken to St. Thomas, put on a plane to San Juan, processed and sent back to St. Thomas on another flight, put on a mail truck which takes the barge over to St. John where the mail is sorted and the letter placed in my box at the Cruz Bay Post Office. Call me silly, but wouldn’t it have been more efficient to put in in my PO Box, which is less than three feet away from the mail slot by the way, in the first place?

Post Marked "San Juan"

This is how an express mail package goes from St. John to America. It gets there, in a rather timely fashion, but in the same rather roundabout manner. It goes from St. John to Puerto Rico then from Puerto Rico back to St. Thomas and then into custom on St. Thomas and than out to the United States proper. It’s the Island way! To demonstrate that I’m not making this up I have added the  USPS website tracking information to the narrative, shown in red.

I print my shipping label
Electronic Shipping Info Received, June 02, 2009

I bring package to the Post Office in Cruz Bay and the USPS acknowledges acceptance
Acceptance, June 02, 2009, 2:42 pm, ST JOHN, VI 00830

Package is processed in Cruz Bay
Processed through Sort Facility, June 02, 2009, 3:43 pm, ST JOHN, VI 00830

Package is sent to San Juan Puerto Rico and processed
Processed through Sort Facility, June 02, 2009, 4:40 pm, CAROLINA, PR 00979

Package is sent to St. Thomas back in the good old Virgin Islands and processed again
Processed through Sort Facility, June 02, 2009, 5:27 pm, ST THOMAS, VI 00802

Package goes to customs in St. Thomas
Inbound Into Customs

Package clears customs in St. Thomas
Inbound Out of Customs, June 02, 2009, 9:05 pm

Package sent to America
Arrival at Unit, June 04, 2009, 9:17 am, DOWNERS GROVE, IL 60515

Again my question, an answer for which I’m sure must exist, is “why not just send the mail that’s bound for St. Thomas over to St. Thomas in the first place?”

Anyone familiar with the Caribbean has certainly heard lurid tales about the fearsome natives of the Lesser Antilles, the Caribs. They have been described as bloodthirsty savages; cannibals who attacked the peace-loving Tainos, killing the men, kidnapping the women, and capturing young boys who were kept in pens to be castrated, fattened and eaten. The very word “cannibal” comes from “Caribal,” referring to the Carib tribe.

Who are these people, and what is behind the Carib myth?

The Carib’s savage reputation preceded actual European contact. Columbus first learned about them from the Lucayos, the Tainos of the Bahamas, whom he encountered on his first voyage. According to the Lucayos, a fierce and warlike people ruled many islands to the east.

Peter Martyr, who interviewed sailors returning from the first transatlantic voyages, documented: “The Caribs emasculated the boys whom they seized and those who were born of the captives, fed them fat and, at their festivals, and devoured them.”

Columbus did not personally encounter the Caribs until his second voyage, when the fleet came ashore on the island of Guadeloupe. Entering the Caribs’ homes, shore parties found “man’s flesh, duck’s flesh and goose flesh, all in one pot, and others on the spits ready to be laid to the fire. Entering into their inner lodgings, they found faggots of the bones of men’s arms and legs, which they reserve to head arrows, because they lack iron; the other bones they cast away when they have eaten the flesh. They found likewise the head of a young  man, fastened to a post, and yet bleeding and drinking vessels made of skulls,” wrote Martyr.

On Guadeloupe, Columbus found six women, two children and a young man – Tainos from Boriken (Puerto Rico) – who had been captured by the Caribs. According to Columbus’s son Ferdinand, the Tainos begged the Spaniards to help them escape. “They elected to give themselves over to an unknown people so alien to their own, rather than remain amongst those who were so manifestly horrible and cruel and who had eaten their husbands and children.”

On his next stop, which was St. Croix, Columbus rescued more Taino captives. “Two slaves had so recently been castrated that they were still sore,” reported the leader of the St. Croix shore party, Michele de Cuneo.

Later on, rumors and tall tales of cannibalism circulated throughout the West Indies.

“The Caribbeans [Caribs] have tasted of all the nations that frequented them, and affirm that the French are the most   delicate, and the Spaniards are hardest of digestion,” reads a passage in the book, History of the Carribby Islands.

A Frenchman named Laborde reported that he had had occasion to speak with a Carib whom he encountered on the island of St. Vincent eating a boiled human foot. The Carib explained to Laborde that he ate only Arawaks [Tainos] because “Christians gave him the belly-ache.”

On a similar note, there is the story that was told around the Caribbean of a Carib tribe in Dominica that became so ill, upon eating a Franciscan friar, that they vowed never to eat that variety of European again.

Knowing about this, when a crew of Spaniards sailing past Dominica needed to come ashore to reprovision, they shaved the head of a sailor like a Franciscan monk, put him in a gunny sack, tied a rope around his waist and sent him safely on his way. The Caribs, fearing indigestion, gave him a wide berth.

Tales such as these inspired Daniel Defoe’s famous novel, Robinson Crusoe, which supposedly took place on the island of Tobago. Crusoe’s “Man Friday” was an Arawak who had been captured in a raid. He had escaped and was hiding from the Caribs when Crusoe found him.

In all probability, these accounts of the Caribs’ taste for human flesh were exaggerated. The Caribs did not hunt humans for the purpose of providing food for their tribe. What they did was practice ritual cannibalism: They ate people or body parts ceremonially in order to absorb their spiritual and physical powers.

Certain human parts, such as the testicles, were considered to be especially empowering. Having nothing comparable to this in their own culture, Europeans jumped to the conclusion that the Caribs ate people for sustenance.

When they observed the two recently castrated captives in  St. Croix,* they again explained the phenomenon through the experience of their own culture, in which food animals were tenderized and fattened in this manner.

The European fascination with cannibalism had another unexpected result. At the time of the discovery of the New World, the Caribs were far fewer in number, inhabited far less territory, and had a less-advanced culture than the Tainos. Nonetheless, this preoccupation with the consumption of human beings was responsible, to a great extent, for the fact that the islands of the West Indies and the sea that they define were ultimately named the Caribbean.

More importantly, the European revulsion of cannibalism was used as propaganda to justify the enslavement of the native islanders. In many cases, when laws were passed to protect the Tainos, slavers simply reclassified their captives as Caribs.

The Roseway sailing west out of Francis Bay under full sail 4/19/2009

This beautiful schooner, the Roseway out of St. Croix, USVI, was sure to capture the attention of anyone out at sea or on the beach along St. John’s north shore as she passed by under full sail Sunday morning, 4/19/2009, heading west out of Francis Bay.

The schooner, Roseway, belongs to the World Ocean School, “an internationally focused nonprofit, nonsectarian organization dedicated to providing challenging educational programs aboard the schooner Roseway.”

The Roseway is a registered U.S. National Historic Landmark operating in Boston and St. Croix, USVI.

History of the Schooner, Roseway
In the fall of 1920 a Halifax, Nova Scotia, newspaper challenged the fisherman of Gloucester, Massachusetts, to a race between the Halifax fishing schooners and the Gloucester fleet…. read more

Judge in St. Thomas sends prosecutor to jail – for being late.
Anyone who has spent anytime in the Caribbean knows the meaning of  “island time.” We could extend the concept, if not the phrase, to the countries of Central and South America.

For those who don’t know what I mean, island time is time treated relatively rather than absolutely.

“I’ll be there at 3:00 PM,” for example, might mean that I’ll be there at 3:00, but more likely it will mean that I’ll be there some time later than  3:00.

In some cultures, in Switzerland for example, time is treated seriously and respectfully. In Switzerland, everything and everyone is on time. Everyone knows exactly what time it is. In Switzerland, every last pocket watch, wristwatch and cuckoo clock reads the same as all the others. In Switzerland, everything runs on time. Buses, trains and trolleys arrive on time and leave on time. Count on it.

For example, the conductor on any given Swiss train hangs his head out the door of the railroad car, and with his eyes glued to one of the big clocks that are just about everywhere in railway stations, he waits, transfixed before this monument to orderliness and just as the second hand hits the “12,” he signals the engineer, and the train lurches forward, on time – to the second.

Now contrast this to the Virgin Islands where I’ll venture to guess that no two watches or clocks in the territory are exactly synchronized one with the other, and no one, citizens, government officials, TV and radio stations, internet sites, even atomic clocks exposed to the tropical trade winds, no one, nobody, has the exact right time. In the Virgin Islands time is treated leisurely, approximately. This applies to dates and meetings both business and personal. It’s approximate. It’s more or less, but with later being way more common than earlier.

So it was, that upon reading an article in the Caribbean Net News, I was shocked to learn that a Superior Court Judge in St. Thomas, threw a prosecutor in jail … for being late!!!

The prosecutor was scheduled to be in Court at 4 pm on Monday for a murder case. He showed up late and the judge had him jailed. For further information read the article in Caribbean Net News