April 2 - Summer Rain

An hour or so ago I left our apartment to go to the Liguanea Post Office up the street to mail a few letters that we've had piling up. It was hot and humid outside and just as I stepped out of the gate it began to sprinkle. I considered turning back, but the rain was light and the smell of new rain on the sidewalk reminded me pleasantly of summer rain at home. There were few people out and those who were around already had umbrellas or had gathered under tarps or bus stops.

At the post office a rasta man approached me and the woman behind the counter with a piece of paper that asked for donations to help him buy food. He made some noises but formed no words. This was not the first mute rasta I'd encountered or heard about. It seemed like a ploy, though a relatively harmless and probably effective one. As I gave him $40 I wondered whether it might not be ploy. It seemed possible that he was deaf rather than mute and had never been taught to communicate verbally.

By the time I reached the Sovereign Centre, where I was planning to buy such essentials as a can opener, aluminum foil, mosquito coils and bread, it was raining quite steadily. I bought an umbrella and headed home in the warm rain. There was something peaceful about the feel of the walk and the mundaneness (is that a word?) of the errands I was doing. The prospect of sitting at home writing a blog, doing work, and reading a book while it rained outside seems so pleasant. (I am alone: Wayne is at Camper Down teaching music.)

Yesterday was quite a contrast. A hot sunny day. In the morning we cabbed and bused our way out to the country outside of Spanish Town to start working at a new school: Innswood. The school had a very nice feel to it. It smelled like the country and there was plenty of space. Everything looked and felt clean. The teachers and students were engaged and enthusiastic. Aside from the difficulty of the commute out there, I am looking forward to working there for the next couple of months. In the early afternoon while Wayne was at Camper Down I prepared for the second session of my class at Cable & Wireless. The topic was ISP liability and policy in the context of speech/expression online. It is one of my favorite topics in Internet policy, so I had fun preparing and even more fun teaching. Class went extremely well. We did a hypothetical in which I laid out a situation where the small man basically gets screwed and then asked them who to sue in the situation. With a room full of lawyers (for an ISP, no less) we came up with several options with the deep-pocketed ISP at the top of the list. When I asked what the legal claim against the ISP would be, they expressed that the ISP had a moral duty. "A moral duty?" I asked. We all knew that wouldn't go far in a court of law. Discussion was lively.

At home in the evening we cooked Kraft macaroni and cheese and watched the news. (Somehow on our last shopping trip we made a tacit decision to move away from our regular staples and buy some other stuff, including Kraft mac 'n cheese, hot dogs, and tuna fish. In a funny way, buying these American-style products seemed to be part of the process of feeling that we really live here.) I fell asleep, exhausted, a little while after hearing the latest on the Jamaica and West Indies cricket teams and matches.

Also on our last shopping trip, we went to the book store. The book store in the Sovereign Centre resembles a cross between an airport book store and a stationary store more than a Barnes & Nobles back home. Most of the small selection of books are romance or mystery books. There is a sizeable section of cookbooks as well. There is also a section of Caribbean books which contains a very odd range of books on all topics, seemingly because there just aren't that many Caribbean books that have popular appeal. Out of this section we chose Laurie Gunst's "Born Fi Dead". Gunst is a Harvard-educated historian who spent 10 years researching and writing this book about downtown ghetto life and culture in Kingston. Her book is fascinating and troubling. As I read it I keep stopping to read passages to Wayne. He suggested today that I write a sort of review of it as a blog when I am done reading it. I suspect I'll do something of the sort, so I'm giving a little advance warning now in case you want to read it before you hear my take on it. You can get it on Amazon.com here. They are also offering it packaged with "Wake the Town and Tell the People" by Norman Stolzoff, which is quite a good book about Jamaican dancehall culture. Maybe in a few years they'll be packaging it with Wayne's book too.